The EM2 in NATO Trials, with Jonathan Ferguson

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons calm I am joined once again today by Jonathan Ferguson who is the keeper of firearms and artillery at the British Royal Armouries and the author of our our hip stamp book Boni Croft - saat British bullpup rifles which is currently available for pre-sale on Kickstarter thought it'd be really cool to talk to you about some the other elements in this book some of the cool stories that that your work and research and writing has led you to that people don't know that much of it and so focusing specifically on the m2 here I was thinking about the fact like the NATO trials and the fifties a lot of people especially in the u.s. primarily think about those in terms of the m14 and the fennel and the battle back and forth but there was a third coat equal player in those trials which was the em2 and it's way cooler looking at any of the other I don't know why they didn't adopt them I figured maybe you can help us with some context of what was going on what happened to this rifle in the tracks sure one can certainly throw I should say that there are other people have done the original research on this that I referencing Indians in the book they're a hardcore handful of people but they're really delve into this and people will be familiar with that Thomas do movies but pronouncing his name ready when you have a read it from with a 72 kick you've got which is great but some things have moved on there are some areas in there so the one of the biggest chapters in the book unsurprisingly it's about this thing and the pivot point of the whole thing as you say from 1950 aberdeen proving ground trials of the 280 cartridge several millimeter cartridge and the weapon now i think i'm talking about rather than ammunition as you rightly say most people especially in the states are thinking about what becomes the m14 versus what becomes the FN FAL like this thing is so training in behind and actually they're they're on more than equal grounds that the what the foul it's not doing well and when I spit in the 1952 tryouts accuracy is a big problem for both actually for both rifles in 280 incidentally we should say that to 18/7 millimeter cartridge 49 millimeter three-minute that case like okay Assam is an intermediate quote-unquote cartridge but it's on the high end isn't it yeah cuz it's not intermediate like five five six or the set of Russian 760 by 13 I mean it's it's like rifle cartridge white yeah so Britain is as all of the other countries after the Second World War taking the slightly different lessons away that the state sticks very much on the long range marksmanship full power cartridge trapped wants to create a lightened version of that with an automatic capability for essentially emergency use opening that's that's the u.s. idea of a light rifle as I understand it lightweight and so they will thank you over hooking on a reduced cartridge insofar as it's physically shorter so the action can be shorter the ammunition and the weapon can be somewhat lighter to fit that agreement right the cartridge is basically the same power that's 31 cents yeah it's the savage bullet I know yeah so it's but it that they're trying to recreate what they have already in the shorter case right yeah Britain along with some other countries are taking more a lesson from what Germany's doing with the geographer and wanting a genuinely lighter lower recording cartridge that allows you to use automatic fire not just in an emergency potentially bursts from the shoulder which which were being used at the time and in the assault position for an SMG okay and really that's that's where we're starting to think is and we'll see this again with the entity/program foot to replace as many weapons as we possibly can like potentially all of the weapon in Section potentially not quite where that goes but that's the idea so to do that you juice cartridge length juice beer the action they then wanted to go a major step further preserve that barrel length so they're already anticipating America needs that we need a long-range accurate rifle what's the best way to do that at same weight the main driver seems to be served with juice wait okay easiest way to do that take off the buttstock and you see it inscribed as buttless stockless we never use a ballpark term bullpup is never used as a high tree there's a side bar going to where the Turnbull pub cast wrong okay kind of nailed that wall down he's talking about that separate yeah so we end up with two competing philosophies both relatively lightweight about eight pounds both capable in a theory out that maybe six hundred yards but coming from very different places and spoiler alert the human is never going to accept a reduced power cartridge but any kind right-handed it's easy with my excited to say this but this really should have been obvious in parallel to all of this is the strong urge which pops up about 1943 to standardize with the US right to two great powers of the Allies and then later on that comes a NATO ambition it's kind of where they're going with the trance okay so how was there any effect or was there any influence on this of considering the machine gun at the same time as the infantry rifle because from what I've read one of the rationales and I've seen some of the documentation on the US side of like we need there to be the effect the traffic that I saw was about the safe zone it's like you want to be able to hit how tight six or eight hundred yards but if you have a lightweight cartridge it drops more which means you have to aim higher to hit a guy at eight hundred and if you miss estimated the range and he's only at six hundred because of the bullets trajectory the bullet will go right over his head whereas with the American cartridge it shoots flatter because it's higher velocity they have less of the saves you can miss estimate the range more work sir and still hit and at the same time the machine gun in the standard layout yep benefit more from a heavier cartridge you don't have to worry about recoil second follow-up shot yep what's that it was the British approach to this based primarily on rifle weight or was it were they trying to balance you need to keep the cartridge heavy enough for a machine gun hmm they see they seem to give up on that essentially so early on this is the idea that could replace everything in the section in the squad that there's a realization of the 280 though that's not quite gonna work and it's not that's they're not admitting a wailing of the cartridge per se it's more it's more weapon you can't give a sufficient volume of fire there's this light automatic gun idea where the m1 core sack is going and in theory a.m. one thought and the m2 Johnson could have served the light automatic gun Rob that the literature talks about how the archives talk about roles versus weapons so when they talk about light automatic gun they can be talking about a rifle serving that role and we go over this again with 1782 it's getting everywhere do an experimental like an L 86 version of the YouTube longer barrel bipod heavy barrel there well reflecting the idea that it could serve that role the first version of the handguard which doesn't survive actually has the same bipod attachment boss as the m1 Thorp does so the idea was you slap on a bipod and you've got a torn that gingka not not too dissimilar from what the m16 was issued with originally with a clip-on Y pod but that gets deleted even see them drifting away from the idea that mediums is anything but well it's rifle it's a submachine gun that's kind of it by this point but they do experiment with a heavy barrel version briefly but where they sort of hitched pitch their proverbial car is a different gun totaling a belt-fed gun for not the section so and if this is a constant obey doesn't know whether you have embedded belt for fire parents in the squad or whether it comes in from a higher level and that's where they're going so they're developing tighten gun for it I've got the same fire mount or you know like I sort of like the brand smashed up with a with a 42 it's got some pretty crude well like take the brand and turn it into a universal machine gun basically you put it better than yeah yeah so there's parallel development and again by focusing on the british bullpup metric firearms i'm not able to go into that in any great depth so you start zero get a bit of tunnel vision or not only the infantry small arms football publicly so you have to be careful but i mean they're just you know they're intrinsically interesting isn't Camellia yeah in some ways the fact that they didn't get adopt it makes them even more interesting it's the right not travel yeah exactly yeah there's a section there about exactly that this this idea that you and british empire is starting to break up come apart there's not much money there and it's this kind of what might have been but the tears are two aircraft look it's an amazing piece of engineering politicians ruin their if that's the me yeah yeah so I have two more questions let's first say what really did room yes you should know well in seriously enlarged it's definitely political but there are practical considerations as well and had we had the politics not intervened and we gone with it couldn't set ourselves office problems we mentioned cost think that the figure they worked out was you'd get five EMTs for six that holds all the other way around I should say so you get one more rifle every time which actually when you're trying to equip two hundred thousand guys that becomes a yeah few million pounds here and they're assuming that you've got your money yeah and what's interesting I think is that and then the mean will will skew to all the politics and gloss over the fact that there are inherent practical problems with not so much that the designers forward as factors as we discovered relatively recent so I have anyway the reliability figures in in the Aberdeen trials that were talking about but really not that that this this thing was fine it could have been the the foul progenitor was doing far worse accuracy reliability the law and it turned into a solid rifle yeah this would have as well I can fairly confidently okay so in parallel we've got this constant tension between Britain is trying to form its own path to 80 intermediate cartridge super compact space age yeah bullpup rifle with an object America's not having that so how does this level out at the bottom what pops out at the end and as we know it's for us the l1a1 FAL from America it's the m14 sharing the same cartridge so the politicians which some Churchill's name comes up time and again achieve that this this was a very earnest God so when we say politics it's not just cynical gameplay it's a genuine desire for these two great nations to have the same kit ideally the same rifle the same cartridge didn't quite work out that way having the same cartridge it's not an insignificant standard position at all and a certain time they really thought that huge about it but I think they just come out of one to County supply each other in almost in battle and set me at a higher logistical level to millions of rounds changing hands you can't do it I'll do it but you have the same cartridge so that means that's a better let's deal with the other room there yeah so yeah this this keen political but so pragmatic desire to standardize and America was never going to take cartridge it's they're never going to take the cartridge and by the way they're also very skeptical about just the idea of the gunfire what is this thing stood were in particular is yes Chief of Army Ordnance I forget this job title she wasn't chief of army ordnance but he was in charge of a lot of the development yeah high enough high enough up the chain to cause some real problems yeah and like if Churchill well in Churchill would probably stop her on this than he was put it that way so America was dead set against both actually but no reason why because we standardized all just a cartridge in the event why the couldn't have kept the 7-6 to vote in rifle which is what's in front of us right right now quickly though with with Churchill it's not just political it's not just pragmatic he really likes the file really really likes the flat plan something within our collection but in the Imperial War Museum collection is this beautiful deep blue finished presentation FAL rifle golden strives to Winston Churchill and on the magwell is a quote from him about how great he thinks the balance huh idea sums it up I'd be a picture in the book okay it's just if you needed any evidence that he was personally invested in something King it is exactly right huh interesting yeah so my one last question I had to comment on this opera yeah don't we put some up that this was a standard service rifle yeah we're putting optic on every service rifle until the eighties correct and yeah here's this yeah what what was who came how did such a good idea get in in the first place and then what I'm not saying salience but it's it's forward-thinking but it's not maybe quite as forward-thinking you think it's a series of concept one thing building on the net so you go for a light rifle that means and British eyes you move but the safe way that creates almost inevitably it's an in-line design which has its own advantages as you know straight line green cords good especially for an automatic fighter but that means your eye is now about the wrong right okay so you just put my insights and stalks and that's kind of a they've done for the backup sites that are on this rifle carry handle this is really where the carry humble kind of comes in it's not it's a carry hungies second it's a sight rail purse okay safe to say yeah that makes sense yeah the bigger problem is by foreshortening the gun you're foreshortening the sight base of sight wagons so your eyes you can still have your iron sights but they're inherently less accurate right just a tiny adjustment here translates to huge right so you need an optic ok so therefore thinking but it's not we are going to equip every Tommy recalling that more but we're not tell site because it's the 20th century now it's not so much that it's compensating for second sliding scale you pull one slider along the others go down you know it's okay it's like not not this was our goal in the first place but this is the best remaining solution we can see your problem we've created yes and I think that's why it's not magnifying okay correct me if I'm wrong with the standard US army optic it's still ain't online complain I mean it shifted around but yeah exactly get a Cogsworth yeah but in points which not just the US but a lot of the folks standard if you're recruited we're not being deployed what receive on your employers sec oh yeah well the same tell me it's true yeah now there was a sniper variant that had a telescopic bulky back to flying site three three-ish power okay you know where the rail like that it would've been really well set up for future improvements and changes oh absolutely well yeah I mean we got seeing photo shots online but people football the furniture ray'll maybe not that that it's that's the other aspect of the road not travel is what would have happened yeah imagine seeing guys yeah wouldn't have still had in the Falklands yes we would [Music] yeah so it's fascinating for that reason no that's skipping ahead somewhat that is kind of the only good thing about saat Angels is that they really are trying they're not just bring optic on there to compensate for it being a bullpup they're giving you more power wide field of view really that's the biggest advantage but back then it's about compensating for iron sights in this racket oh okay well we don't want to give away everything so this has been very interesting thank you for sharing all of this if you guys think this is an interesting subject and you would like to know all sorts of more cool stuff about the whole end of British bullpup rifles from the 1860s to 2018-2019 to the present day of the sa80 a 3ds leg5a please check out Jonathan's book and it's currently up on presale on Kickstarter through headstand publishing we have a link to it in the description text or a bunch of cool different versions some cool perks that you can get in on by being part of our presale and thank you for watching thanks for joining us very happy to be in you

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 101,593

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, em2, em1, fal, m14, t65 cartridge, nato, trials, rifle, studler, Jonathan Ferguson, thorneycroft to sa80, sa80, l85, enfield, bullpup, 280/30, 7.62 nato, United States, Britain, competition, prototype, nato trials, author, book, research

Id: unyEGmi7YMM

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020