What type of weapon did a British Royal Marine help a soldier and firearms expert create?
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Eric A. Sykes Eric Anthony Sykes (5 February 1883–12 May 1945), born Eric Anthony Schwabe in Barton-upon-Irwell, Eccles, Greater Manchester, England, was a soldier and firearms expert. He is most famous for his work with William E. Fairbairn in the development of the eponymous Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife and modern British Close Quarters Battle (CQB) martial arts during World War II. Originally working for an import/export company selling weapons in East Asia, he claimed he volunteered for and served in the British Army as a sharpshooter on the Western Front during World War I. Returning to China in 1917, he joined the volunteer branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) Specials with the rank of Inspector in 1926.
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William E. Fairbairn William Ewart Fairbairn ( ; 28 February 1885 – 20 June 1960) was a British Royal Marine and police officer. He developed hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai Police during the interwar period, as well as for the allied special forces during World War II. He created his own fighting system known as Defendu. Notably, this included innovative pistol shooting techniques and the development of the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife.
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BSA Welgun The Welgun was a prototype submachine gun developed by the British irregular warfare organisation, the Special Operations Executive. Although it performed well in tests, it was never adopted, and was produced in small numbers only.
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Guy Griffiths Guy Beresford Kerr "Griff" Griffiths (6 June 1915 – 12 July 1999) was a Royal Marine pilot. He served as a pilot during the Second World War and gained notoriety as a prisoner of war for using his artistic skills to forge documents and provide misinformation by feeding Nazi intelligence with fake sketches of British aircraft. After the war he continued to fly various types of aircraft as a test pilot and has the distinction of being the first Royal Marines officer to fly a helicopter.
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Winchester Liberator The Winchester Liberator was a 1962 prototype 16-gauge, four-barrelled shotgun, similar to a scaled-up four-shot double action derringer. It was an implementation of the Hillberg Insurgency Weapon design. Robert Hillberg, the designer, envisioned a weapon that was cheap to manufacture, easy to use, and provided a significant chance of being effective in the hands of someone who had never handled a firearm before. Pistols and submachine guns were eliminated from consideration due to the training required to use them effectively. The shotgun was chosen because it provided a very high volume of fire with a high hit probability.
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Rifleman's Assault Weapon The Rifleman's Assault Weapon (also called "RAW") was a close-support rocket-propelled grenade developed around 1977 and put into limited service by the United States Marine Corps in the 1990s. It was developed in response to a military requirement for a multi-purpose close support weapon. The RAW's rocket-propelled spherical munition was fired from an ArmaLite AR-15/ M16 rifle and was capable of blowing holes through masonry walls and disabling light armored vehicles.
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VSEL Heavy Engineering Workshop The VSEL Heavy Engineering Workshop located at Michaelson Road in the Barrow Island area of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England is a Grade II listed former ammunitions workshop that belonged to Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering. Known locally as the 'Gun Shop' the vast complex was constructed in stages between 1875 and 1900 and consists of 42 by 11 bays (roughly 1100 ft by 360 ft or over 9 acre of land - a larger footprint than nearby Devonshire Dock Hall). The building was a major component of the engineering division within Vickers and supplied the British Army and Royal Navy throughout World War I and World War II. Everything from basic shells to heavy duty gun turrets for ships, tanks and other land vehicles were produced and assembled at the workshop. The Historic England states the following of the building: 'It clearly indicates the scale of operation of the shipbuilding and engineering works at the turn of the century; its roadside frontages make a major contribution to the industrial scene in a town where the buildings of other major C19 industries have been almost completely swept away.'
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Pattern 1861 Enfield musketoon The Pattern 1861 Enfield musketoon was a short-barrel version (610mm or 24 inches) of the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musket, having a faster rifling twist rate (1:48 versus 1:78), along with more rifling grooves (five grooves versus the Pattern 1853's three grooves), which made it more accurate than the original rifle. The shorter rifle was therefore easier to carry and reload.
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RML 8 inch howitzer The RML 8 inch howitzer was a British Rifled, Muzzle Loading (RML) Howitzer manufactured in England in the 19th century, which fired a projectile weighing approximately 180 lb . It was used in siege batteries and in fortifications.
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Lever action Lever action is a type of firearm action which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area (often including the trigger guard itself) to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is worked. This contrasts to bolt-action, semi-automatic, or selective-fire weapons. Most lever-action firearms are rifles, but some lever-action shotguns and a few pistols have also been made. One of the most famous lever-action firearms is the Winchester Model 1873 rifle, but many manufacturers—notably Marlin and Savage—also produce lever-action rifles. Even Colt's Mfg. Co. produced 1883 until 1885 6403 lever-action Colt-Burgess rifles. Mossberg produces the 464 in centerfire .30-30 and rimfire .22. While the term "lever-action" generally implies a repeating firearm, it is also sometimes —and incorrectly— applied to a variety of single-shot or falling-block actions that use a lever for cycling, such as the Martini–Henry or the Ruger No. 1.
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.303 British The .303 British (designated as the 303 British by the C.I.P. and SAAMI) or 7.7×56mmR, is a .303 in calibre (with the bore diameter measured between the lands as is common practice in Europe) rimmed rifle cartridge first developed in Britain as a black-powder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee–Metford rifle. In 1891 the cartridge was adapted to use smokeless powder. It was the standard British and Commonwealth military cartridge from 1889 until the 1950s when it was replaced by the 7.62×51mm NATO.
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Musket A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smoothbore long gun that appeared in early 16th century Europe, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus capable of penetrating heavy armor. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket went out of use as heavy armor declined, but as the matchlock became standard, the term "musket" continued as the name given for any long gun with a flintlock, and then its successors, all the way through the mid 1800s. This style of musket was retired in the 19th century when rifled muskets (technically rifles, but still referred to as muskets) became common as a result of cartridged breech-loading firearms introduced by Casimir Lefaucheux in 1835, the invention of the Minié ball by Claude-Étienne Minié in 1849, and the first reliable repeating rifle produced by Volcanic Repeating Arms in 1854. By the time repeating rifles became common, they were known as simply "rifles", ending the era of the musket.
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Frederick Beaumont Frederick Edward Blackett Beaumont (22 October 1833 – 20 August 1899) was an English-born British officer of the Royal Engineers who produced several inventions, including a tunneling machine which bore his name, and the Beaumont–Adams revolver.
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Royal Ordnance L9 Royal Ordnance L9 is a British short-barrelled 165 mm gun used for combat engineering, particularly the demolition of defences.
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BL 4 inch naval gun Mk VII The BL 4-inch gun Mk VII was a British high-velocity naval gun introduced in 1908 as an anti-torpedo boat gun in large ships, and in the main armament of smaller ships. Of the 600 produced, 482 were still available in 1939 for use as coastal artillery and as a defensive weapon on Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS) during the Second World War.
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Rapier (missile) Rapier is a British surface-to-air missile developed for the British Army to replace their towed Bofors 40/L70 anti-aircraft guns. It was unusual in that it used a manual optical guidance system, sending guidance commands to the missile in flight over a radio link. This provided it with very high accuracy, so only a small warhead was carried.
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Sten The STEN (or Sten gun) was a family of British submachine guns chambered in 9×19mm and used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and the Korean War. They were notable for having a simple design and very low production cost, making them effective insurgency weapons for resistance groups.
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Joseph Montigny Joseph Montigny was a Belgian gunsmith, from Fontaine l'Evèque near Brussels, and the developer of the Montigny mitrailleuse, an early European machine gun, in 1863. The design was based on the early 1850s prototype of a volley gun by the Belgian officer Fafschamps. Montigny managed to offer his design to Napoléon III, who adopted it in 1867, with Colonel De Reffye making various improvements to the weapons.
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BL 8 inch Mk I – VII naval gun The BL 8 inch guns Mark I to Mark VII were the first generations of British rifled breechloaders of medium-heavy calibre. They were initially designed for gunpowder propellants and were of both 25.5 and 30 calibres lengths.
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Horseman's pick The horseman's pick was a weapon used by cavalry during the Middle Ages in Europe and Indo-Persia. This was a type of war hammer that had a very long spike on the reverse of the hammer head. Usually, this spike was slightly curved downwards, much like a miner's pickaxe. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with "war hammer". A metal-made horseman's pick called "nadziak" was one of the main weapons of the famous Polish Winged Hussars. A weapon of late make, the horseman's pick was developed by the English and used by their heavy Billmen, a unit of heavy infantry. It was used with great success during the Hundred Years' War. A use of the horseman's pick was to tear men from their mounts.
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Improvised firearm An improvised firearm is a firearm manufactured other than by a firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith, and is typically constructed by adapting existing materials to the purpose. They range in quality from crude weapons that are as much a danger to the user as the target to high-quality arms produced by cottage industries using salvaged and repurposed materials.
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RML 6.6-inch howitzer The RML 6.6 inch howitzer was a British Rifled, Muzzle Loading (RML) Howitzer manufactured in England in the 19th century, which fired a projectile weighing approximately 180 lb . It was used in siege batteries and in fortifications.