In rod we trust

That’s what she said. 😳

Haha… rod

A rod so hot you could lose your fingers getting it to shoot.

And so the man who looks after it must be the Rod Steward. I'll get my coat...

Hi Jonathan! First of all, thank you so much for your videos (these and the Gamespot ones too!) they are incredibly interesting and the way you explain things is really pleasant to listen to. I just wanted to ask whether the reversed thread on the breach was done for a specific, mechanical reason here, or is it a question of threads not being standardised at the time? i.e. "righty tighty, lefty loosy"...as it were :) Thanks!

@@pawelkaras7231 Thank you! 'lefty loosy' definitely was standardised by then, this opposite thread cocking piece is just so that you don't accidentally unscrew the breech when trying to cock the gun. I suppose it was more logical to make the breech thread 'righty' as that's how bolt actions work, and then the cocking piece 'lefty' to avoid unscrewing the breech piece.

@@jonathanferguson1211 Thank you! :)

Thanks for the information. I love filling my brain with stuff I'll never use but I don't care

A welwand huh. Hahaha

Now all he needs is a distinctive, quirky pokey stick.

@@dbracer I'm sure Royal Armory has something unique in its collection that can do the job.

@@dbracer I see you are a man of culture as well.

@@Torque_Mk1 We'll have a rummage

Hints of Forgotten Weapons, in a very good way

Most people who have seen war, especially soldiers, are very big fans of diplomacy.

Sounds like he was doing secret squirrel shit.

My German uncle's father was killed on the Russian Front.. post-war my uncle joined CND and is a pacifist.

@@john-paulsilke893 For those who have been there, war quickly loses its' romance

Fucking hell, I'd like to hear a few of his stories!

You could say I'm making a Welrod for my own back... (I'm so sorry).

.. and the Mexican Drug Baron Gold Engraving 😆

and it obviously needs a foregrip and maybe a stock

@@nudl3Zz 100 ROUNDS DUM MAG

@@nudl3Zz Having the foregrip attached, where should that be located at? Near the trigger? The stock, may be detachable or fixed. Having a telescopic sight, either it could be perpendicular to the trigger or not... Obviously these parts expose more than conceal

Not for this gun. The method of carriage you're talking about was for the 'Welwand', not the Sleeve Gun. You can see the former illustrated (complete with elastic strap) in Melton's book 'The Ultimate Spy Book' p.181. It was a much slimmer, lighter design in .25 ACP.

@@jonathanferguson1211, I stand corrected, the info I’m going on is from the danish resistance movement, and only saw a crude drawing and it was back in the early to mid 90s, and it was very hush, hush!

@@MyTv- The original "suspension" for the sleeve gun was a lanyard cord that went up the sleeve and ended in a leather tab that attached to a "braces button" that all men used to have on their trouser waist band. The tab when attached held the sleeve gun between the elbow and wrist. The mode of operation was to cup the hand and use the other hand to slip the tab off the button allowing the gun to drop into the shooting hand. The tab would end up about breast height under the jacket and which was easily reached after the gun had been fired to pull the barrel back into the sleeve. The hardest part is to reconnect the tab back onto the waist band with one hand, however I would imagine that men were more used to performing this task when wearing braces were commonplace. The Danish example is a local variation, and is not the original issue item. I suspect they had knowledge of both the sleeve gun and wand and did some swapping of techniques.

@@MyTv- Oh, interesting - well it's possible that the Sleeve Gun had an elastic lanyard, we just haven't found any evidence of it. The official Sleeve Gun trials documentation and catalogue entry don't mention one. Alternatively what you saw was referring to the Welwand. If you happen to come across the source, please do email us. It would be the only evidence of either gun actually seeing use, whereas the Welrod does have evidence of use.

@@jonathanferguson1211 Ill see what I can do it wasn’t yesterday! :)

Possibly - there's a lot of confusion and very little concrete info on these guns, especially the Welwand (not this!).

Once you take the magazine out of the Welrod, it looks a lot more like a bicycle pump. The grip and magazine are one part, so it ends up looking basically like this one but with a bit of a lump on it.

Thank you! Congratulations on finding early access to this one :D

Instant MacWelman - ground up and cooked in an instant. You provide the bun and condiments.

We have a couple more interesting Welrod variants we could cover, but the Sleeve Gun ends at this Mk. II. There's the separate Welwand but I think the only example (seen in 'The Ultimate Spy Book' p.181) is in the CMSM at Maldon (don't quote me on that though; it's been years since I went and I didn't then understand what I was looking at!).

Because with a dagger you'd been seen doing it; with the sleeve gun, in a crowd, you could get away before anyone realised what had happened.

Edged weapons require some skill and a lot of strength to use effectively. Guns like this are essentially guaranteed penetration daggers in terms of the damage they inflict. One guaranteed lethal-depth 'stab', basically.

Thanks so much for the feedback :)

We may never know, unfortunately. There are no reports of actual deployment, never mind usage.

@@jonathanferguson1211 after seeing how it fires, maybe someone made the executive decision that their operatives are more valuable with their fingers still intact

All I can tell you well rods are remarkable silent when fired, so if used well, we'll rods at least could have been quite usefull in the right hands.

A .32ACP firing solid slugs from a 3" barrel isn't going to be useful at killing a man unless you shoot him directly in the brain at point-blank range. The bullet is neither accurate or powerful enough for anything else. Unfortunately this is the same issue with the Welrod, except that you could presumably reload and finish the guy off a lot quicker if you didn't brain him with the first shot (assuming he hasn't immediately started thrashing around and screaming for his friends). I strongly suspect the DeLisle was much more useful if you actually needed to silently kill somebody in WW2. .45ACP in an 8" barrel hits a lot harder and more accurately than .32ACP in a 3" barrel.

@@harveywallbanger3123 I respectfully disagree. Remember this was a weapon intended for use at close range. So .32ACP has enough energy to be lethal if fired centre mass, or a headshot. Basically hit the heart, lungs, liver and there's a high chance of a critical hit due to hypovolemia, ie blood loss. It's one of those things I've been curious about, so the choice of .32ACP vs the humble .22LR Rest I guess would be down to training. So HVT and bodyguards may know the HVT's been shot, but not from where or by whom, it being a sneaky and easily concealable weapon. Training probably included the art of looking confused/shocked & totally innocent having just slotted your target. The DeLisle was more like a Val, and much less discrete. Also curious whether some other rounds were evaluated. The UK used to use a 9mm(?) 'Rook' round, which was a fairly short rimfire cartridge in Rook guns intended for the quiet, and relatively safe elimination of pests. As a kid, I sometimes found fired rook rounds in our garden. That was originally an orchard before being developed, so presumably the catridges came from pest control there.

the likes are concealed as well.

It's an acquired taste. Some people are fascinated by the weird and bizarre, others not so much. I'm in the later, I really have to wonder whether the resources and manpower put into such frivolity was worth it. A silenced pocket automatic could probably have done the job just as well and the number of times it was used was probably miniscule. Winston Churchill was a great man, but an amateur soldier, who greatly overestimated the worth of special operations forces and their toys like this.

The KZfaq algorithm god is a fickle one :) The only logic I can ascribe is that guns that have appeared in video games easily take off, little-known stuff like this tends not to.

I think we ended up editing out the bit where I said we don't have any evidence of its usage. Sadly, there is none! But with 150+ made I would imagine it must have been carried in anger at least once by someone.

Thanks for the reply! Some SEO stuff (think the correct name is ‘Gubbins’) went through Wallis and Wallis auction house earlier this year. Might be worth a nosey around their previous auction catalogues. Keep up the good work! Excellent video as always.

@@yorkshirejoinery2869 Oh bloody hell, we missed that! Not enough time in the day (in a good way). Thanks for letting me know.

@@yorkshirejoinery2869 Any relation to Grommit?

Thanks Russell!

Could have been a perfect cover story,"I was just a foot soldier". After all, he would have been sworn to secrecy. Or not, and he was what he said he was. Just food for thought.

@@williamromine5715 hmm, I'm more inclined to think it was an attachment of some sort William. There were two ancient bayonets as well, the plug in barrel type so very old.

Could well be! I really need to bottom this out.

You don’t reload. You walk or cycle quietly away with the gun up your jacket sleeve.