We'll start working on it

Hi,it’s John wick here.Love this channel.

"I'm here to chew bubblegum and show guns and I'm all out of bubblegum."

2:27 😊​@@cpt_nordbart

Recommend you check out C&Rsenal, and Forgotten Weapons. This subject also has a heap of human psychology.

@@tamlandipper29 nah he should check out demo ranch because he blows s*** up!

I don't think I have that one in me to be honest, but never say "never"!

Just stop being honest. There, problem solved. Matt, Vic, Rich, Ian and Othais will help (I'm at a safe distance to volunteer them). Getting hold of porridge-eating Peter's manuscript of his ultimate Bren book (that never appeared) could be useful. On a more serious note, "Death Rattle: The British Soldier's Machine Gun 1870 to 2015" was a fair attempt but had a few issues. It needed more in-depth research and some serious editing. And the binding was crap. It fell apart as soon as I opened it.

Any pictures of those 4 prototypes?

@@aceofhearts573 The pictures I have are in the collector grade book mg34/42 vol 2. All 4 still exist and are in a museum in Prague.

@@jonathanseverin amazing. I always wondered if there had been a belt version of the mg26 or if they at least try to make some after the czech found out about the mg34. I do know the Italians made a general purpose machinegun based on the bren that was belt fed, it was made by Breda but it lost to the german mg3

Supposedly the Germans modified Madsen light MGs into belt feed.

@@christophercripps7639 I have seen a picture of a belt fed Madsen on the forgotten weapons website but I dont know if it was made during german occupation

@@babalonkie It was indeed excellent. I understand why it was eventually dropped but wonder why we haven't seen a more direct equivalent weapon fielded, taking the most useful attributes of the Bren and using more modern design/manufacturing methods? To my mind an accurate DMR/LMG hybrid that can be pressed into a SFMG role with a bit of additional hardware, operable by a single man (either from the shoulder or bipod) but enhanced when served by a small crew, fed with the section's standard rifle mags that can be swapped in a second without moving the weapon from the aim, seems like a hell of useful tool. I'm also curious about the dovetail the very early Mk1s had, which was intended for mounting the No37 telescope (why the No37 is so very robust). Had that feature not been deleted would a low-mag optic on the section LMG have proved as useful "back in the day" as it does today? Would it have accelerated widespread deployment of optics more generally?

@@babalonkie Oh yeah don't get me wrong all the R&D work to invent a slightly different rifle to equip the 150,000-odd British forces isn't the most sensible use of resources. You'll never get enough of a performance edge from a Britain-designed squaddie-proof 7.62 or 5.56 AR-type rifle to make it worthwhile. That's what the MoD is trying to do on the quiet with the SA80 replacement -- buy off-the-shelf AR15s. My money's on the Colt Canada C8 but any of the big manufs' equivalents will work. If you're concerned about robustness of supply chains you're far better off taking something extant and proven and setting up a small modern production line somewhere in the UK and running off a batch every now and then. As to your other point about having your own-made gats turned on you? Well it's happened before plenty of times. When the lead wasps come past you you don't tend to be that interested in whose factory the rifle came out of. Also, politicians tend to be conspicuous by their absence in such situations. They're usually far more concerned by "optics" -- yes if you build a rifle factory you have to sell rifles abroad to make ends meet. Politicos are more worried about Moldovia (to whom we sold our distinct rifles last year, them being an ally) doing a spot of ethnic cleansing on their Ruritanian neighbours and getting flak for it because they're using rifles bought off the Brits than about British troops catching a few rounds from same rifle. Especially if said ethnic cleansing appears on the 9 o'clock news. All that American gear left behind is a bit of a storm in a teacup mind. That part of the world wasn't exactly short of a few million rifles before, a few thousand extra won't make much difference except for propaganda purposes. Heck the Chinese have been making M4 copies for a couple of decades and what with them cosying up to Afghan (:cough: minerals :cough:) I'm sure they could have all the carbines and NVGs they could eat. Does boil my piss a bit that all that kit which wasn't disappeared by the ANA didn't get a few demolition charges before the pull-out but hey ho.

@@lordsummerisle87 in tne 50's the UK still had conscription and a planning assumption of a standing force of 300,000 soldiers. This only fell below 200,000 in the 70's over a decade after the move to an all professional Army. Numbers only dropped below 150,000 in the 1980's.

@@tzazosghost8256 I don't disagree with you my friend, but I'm not quite sure the point you're making. My point was that doesn't make an awful lot of sense for the UK to develop its own smallarms *today*, rather to buy OTS or at most to produce an already proven design onshore. I'm sorry that I didn't communicate that clearer! :-)

India used their Bren's in mainstream service until 2012.

It’s the voice.

Tell us there's a log fire...

ya i was thinking of that exact design when i saw this!

You can’t convert a Bren in the same way and there is only room for a push through belt and the soviets used pull types with their rimmed rounds. Look where a PKM feeds and the belt comes up parallel to the chamber. One of the reasons Russia MGs are always lighter, shorter receivers. You can’t do that to a Bren of course bc the gun was designed to feed from a box. Which is ironically where the West got their belts from; German mg34’s designed to accept belts or drums (boxes).

This reminds me of their attempt to make a belt fed conversion for the rpk

It's quite interesting to see how a good idea on paper doesn't necessarily translate in practice. As cool as it would be to know this as "that British post-war MG that was replaced in the 80's" it was simply not meant to be.

I thought the same, and now we know why they didn't go forward with it. With that being said, they could've taken what was learned with the MG34/42 and implemented that instead, but they decided to get weird with the pillar.

There were several attempts to turn the BREN into a belt fed.

It already exist, made by CZ and chambered by 54r at Warsaw pact days.

@@jalpat2272 The UK VZ 59 really only had the gas system of the Bren. There was an earlier design first chambered in 7.62x45mm and updated to 7.62x39mm which had more in common with the Bren and the ZB26 / ZB33. It was the UK VZ 52 (7.62x45) and VZ52-57 (7.62x39). It could feed from either top loaded box magazines and belts. The the UK VZ 59 in 7.62x54R is still issued to the Czech and Slovak armies though I think it is being replaced by FN MK48 Maximis at least in Czech service.

Put many rounds through a 240 and never had any gas plug problem.

Bren was never a viable option for heavy suppressed fire

@@Interdiction I agree. I used to be an M-60 gunner in a Weapons Squad. The amount of 7.62mm ammo is tremendous to carry. For me the gunner carrying. 300 rounds on my body on bandoliers in cloth pouches 100 rounds each one on the gun and 300 in my ruck and 300 on my assistant gunner in his ruck during the 1989 Panama Invasion. Yeah it sucked.. Adrenaline rush and pouring sweat from being scared. fuck yeah!!! The Bren required plenty of loaded magazines. All squad or section members in a British Infantry Section or squad was required to have 1 or two loaded BREN magazine on them during combat.

Difference being that Ernest Vervier did it right.

LMG gunner Op Corporate. During the deployment training we had the opportunity of target practise against drones that the RCT had (fairly large remote control planes).The operator got really aggressive because we shot them all down. I think there may have even been punches thrown. As you say, very accurate impressed the hell out of range staff during Brecon, they had been so used to gpmg's being used.

@@GolfMike09 Did a lot of GPMG SF on South Georgia, 1982. We were Recce Plan; basically a slightly adjusted COP, Fermanagh, 1982 (1 Para took over from us as Corporate and Paraquet were in planning stages. One of our roles - we arrived just after hostilities - was to establish SF firing points on Shackleton heights. But also to patrol the 4 disused whaling stations. Our gunner swapped his GMPG for his LMG for those long patrols. Wonderful days. I was on the gun in a rifle coy after about 6 months. Gunners love their guns. That section weapon ethos you get in training - portage and cleaning shared - goes out the window once at you Battalion. Hands off!! It’s mine! All mine! 😎🤟

During one assault in the Pacific (Guadal Canal I think) the sustained fire of their Vickers (Browning) style gun helps a small contingent of Marines to win against a very much larger Japanese force

@@MrAvant123 That was the water cooled Browning 1917 and while they did prove decisive in turning back Japanese charges the 1917 suffered rather persistent problems with failures to extract cartridges meaning that the very few trained machine gunners were running up and down the line fixing stoppages throughout. Despite being a J M B design it was never the reliable beast that the Vickers was.

Where's my matchstick........

Thank you, I shall do!

The Czech engineers at Brno managed to adapt the design to accept mags and belts (ZB Vz 52/57 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/laiTgrWIlZyllXk.html)

@@bamaboni that weapon is much like the Korean spin, mag and belt fed. TADEN was pure belt fed. Though it’s interesting I’ll give it that.

@@Duke_of_Petchington There's also the UK Vz 59, which only feeds from belts. However I wouldn't say it's a Bren, more of a BESA in GPMG form

Yep with all the companies dying off we ended up with inexperienced people making the criminally bad L85A1 which I'm sure got people killed undeservedly due to it's inability to function.

Britain's real strength in firearms design was always taking others guns/ideas and improving them and crucially, avoiding Not Invented Here syndrome. It meant for most of the 20th century we had very good weapons. See US Lee's action into the Lee-Enfield, US Maxim into Vickers and Pom-Poms, US Lewis gun, Czech derived Bren gun, MP-18 derived Lanchester, Czech designed BESA, US Browning MG's, Swiss Oerlikon (and Polsten), Swedish Bofor's, Swiss Hispano Suiza, German derived ADEN cannon, Canadian/Belgian Browning Hi-Power, Belgian FN FAL, Belgian FN MAG...even the L85 was essentially a rebuilt AR-18. How many fully 'British' firearms were there? Sterling SMG, Sten, EM1 and EM2 (both designed by Polish refugees), Webley pistols, TADEN guns...and thats it really. Even AI's superb sniper rifles are ultimately using Mauser actions... Our real skill in design and building was always in artillery....

Even then Sterling and Sten are blowback SMG's that were proved, in overall design, years before...you could add the Beardmore Farquhar MG, Farquhar Hill rifle to the purely UK list (neither of which entered service), but not the Vickers Berthier or Vickers GO...

@@dogsnads5634 I suppose it depends how far back into the lineage one considers an unbroken nationality of any particular design. If we take it to extremes we could say that all metallic cartridge guns are based on Paully's designs (who was Swiss but living in Paris), or all rifled guns based on the 15th century German invention of rifling, or all based on the Chinese fire lance c.1000AD. I would say that while AI didn't invent the two-front-lug rifle (of the sort we commonly ascribe to Mauser) but the important thing they developed was the chassis style of construction. They could have put any other accurate bolt/receiver combination on that design and still the result woudl have been just as industry-changing. Equally the Sten was a transformative design (moreso than the Lanchester, which was more or less a straight copy of the MP28) because it was a reimagining of how to achieve the outcome (a blowback 9mm SMG) using different facilities and materials than the original.

I am not sad... imagine British troops and civilians destroyed by weapons with "Made in UK" on the side... If you cant imagine that... take a trip to Afghanistan... you will now quickly meet your end by something "Made in USA".

That's what troop trials are for. The engineers who develop weapon systems are not the sort of people who should be wandering around with live ammunition. Then there's the problem of the government scientists who specify and assess the things. We had a system that the troops loved in a couple of programs, but the government chose the competitors for their own reasons. In one case we had been working with the troops and the development agencies and met exactly the requirements, but the procurement people made the decision and liked the system that had better marketing. I got to talk to one of the people who made the decision ten years later, by then he was a sales dude. I took great pleasure rubbing his nose in his mistake. The system they chose did not work out for them, or the Royal Signals.

yes, indeed, but being a open bolt MG weapon, usually the requirement when loaded ready for action, if the opening action also moved the belt, it might not have enough force against the main spring and cock the firing spring to ready - plus all that movement only on opening, when the operator is already dealing with recoil and trying to stay sighted on target.... ..so they split the sections of the actions involved, to spread them across the recoil and loading cycle(s) IMHO, to try to keep accuracy and existing differences in training from BREN to newer prospect, whilst hoping to have a longer RoF with the belt vs the Mag.

Once a vet always a vet, there are no former vets. I did blankfire system development at ROF Blackburn, we belted up two batches of 2500 blanks then fired the first belt without a break, left it for ten minutes to heat soak, fired another 2500 and checked at the end that the projector was still working. We got the barrels bright orange and burned the surface off, but the GPMG just kept going. Our armorer did clean them between uses though.

Yeah the LMG. Very nice.

An interesting idea. In such an arrangement what would you do about the locking shoulder? It seems like it would be in the way.

If they put the lug on the back of the bolt carrier as you're describing, the bolt carrier would had to have been extended quite a bit as the bolt normally sits right at the back of it. This would have required the receiver to be extended as well. That slot in the receiver for that lug to travel in would have to be covered by a long top cover, which goes against what they seemed to be aiming for with the more compact top cover. It's hard to tell from this video, but I'm guessing that the bolt carrier didn't have enough mechanical advantage over the 'turret', in addition to the excess friction.

@@JumpSeeker Yes the top cover would be longer than on the Taden and other prototype but not much longer than on the MG42 or M60. The FN MAG also has longer top cover. I agree that the lack of mechanical advantige over the turret was probably the problem with the Enfield prototypes.

@@lordsummerisle87 The channel for the operating knob would start from behind the location of the locking shoulder.

@@hendriktonisson2915 Ah I see, so the feed lever with its drive slot would be above the locking shoulder, with the vertical arm of your L-shaped lug running the entire height of the receiver. Yes that seems like it would work, though I agree with Jumpseeker that the both receiver halves would have to be significantly lengthened, which would cause a commensurate increase in weapon weight and the manufacturing setup would have to be modified. It's not absolutely clear but I wouldn't be surprised if Enfield were trying to find a way to either retrofit Brens into Tadens or at least reuse a lot of the tooling. Something similar to the M1/M14 debacle.

Sounds like that would have been a bonus if he'd ever ended up as a PoW😅

Similar with the EM-2 except for that part about working extremely well.

That day is coming, dw.

Sterling Armaments sar 87

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rLN7oZZzp8enj4k.html See video related, operated like pan magazine on DP28 or Lewis gun I'd imagine

I've no clue what you said but it sounded great

Shortness of action has a value of its own in terms of weight savings. Just look at PK and PKM for an example.