Picture of the day

[ipscgraz]

Produced my Colt Manufacturing Arms c.~1920 - serial number 130.
.45ACP six-round cylinder fed with half-moon clips, swing out cylinder, double action, lanyard ring.
A new iteration of the New Service Double Action design of 1909, the M1917 was commissioned by the US Army along with the Smith and Wesson M1917 to supply its troops with .45ACP guns before more Colt M1911 pistols could be made. This stopgap solution allowed for a standardization of the cartridges used on the front without sacrificing newer pistol designs.

 

[ipscgraz]

in 1945, HMS Venturer sank U-864 in the only confirmed action in which a sub sank another when both were submerged. Venturer tracked the noise of U-864 for several hours before calculating time, distance, bearing and target depth to launch a successful torpedo attack.

 

[ipscgraz]

This sounds like a PO'd teenager wrote this...

Mauser M1917 Trench Carbine
Manufactured in Oberndorf, serial number 31.
9mm Parabellum, 40-rounds removable magazine.
This semi-automatic carbine was proposed by Mauser to the German army for trench parties trench raiding parties in competition with the Luger P08 fitted with the 32-rounds snail drum, which at the time was hogging all the fun. It was however refused because Mauser should focus on more important thing. Later the Bergmann MP 18.1 designed in 1916 by Hugo Schmeisser would officially replace all this custom bull#### with true submachine gun class.

 

[ipscgraz]

Lewis M1914 Automatic Rifle
Designed by American colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms in England c.1913-1942 - Serial Number 34049.
47-rounds .303 British pan magazine, gas-operated full automatic.
An iconic WW1 weapon design if there’s any. Colonel Lewis was initially slapped with rejections by a bunch of ######s [sic] from the US army, so he went off to Liège in Belgium to found his own company, Armes Automatiques Lewis, and started to look for buyers in Europe. Success soon followed when discerning militaries from around the world, like Belgium or France before the introduction of the Chauchat which supplanted it as the most common light machine gun, and Lewis managed to secure a deal with BSA to supply the British army.
The barrel’s aluminium sleeve or shroud or whatever supposedly helped with air-cooling the gun by using the muzzle flash to draw in cool air from behind, but the guns deployed in anti-aircraft roles did very well without it.

 

[ipscgraz]

1877 Colt Bulldog

 

[ipscgraz]

WW1 trench design and how to construct them

So you want to dig trenches. In the world of home security nothing will keep you quite as safe as kilometers of barbed wire and deep trenches, backed up by machine gun emplacements and heavy artillery. A must have for any concerned homeowners.
But what exactly is a trench? At the start of ww1 a trench was a simple ditch you would dig to give yourself some cover from the enemy while fighting. The trench was expect to have men fight shoulder to shoulder all along the length of it. This early type of trench proved to be disastrous when facing heavy artillery, and so the soldiers began spreading out along the trench, digging them deeper and further fortifying them. This is the birth of trench warfare.
A trench would never be dug in a straight line. Trenches would instead be made in a zigzag pattern to better protect the soldiers from incoming artillery and to prevent a massacre should the enemy be able to take a section of the trench. The trench would never be in a direct line for more than about a dozen meters before making a turn. This zigzag pattern would later in the war evolve into fire bays along the front, completely isolating sections of the trench from their neighbouring sectors.

Early in the war the trenches would be built in a systematic pattern which would often include 3 separate lines of trenches. The first one facing the enemy was called the fire trench, which was constantly but lightly manned to prevent enemy encroachment. The second line was the support trench which is were the soldiers from the fire trench were supposed to retreat to when attacked with an artillery barrage. Way in the back, around 100-250 meters from the support trench was the reserve trench, where reserve troops would be massed to launch counterattacks should the fire trench be taken. These trenches would all be connected via communication trenches, which were used to move men, supplies and even telephone lines between the front and command in the rear. There would often be several trench complexes like this many kilometers deep so that even if the first trench was captured you could just entrench yourself in a similar predug trench complex further back from the front. This deep defense system made a decisive breakthrough virtually impossible.
There would also be several temporary trenches called Saps that would among other things connected listening posts in no man's land to the main trench complex.
This layout proved utterly inefficient against the growing power of heavy artillery and many parts of the trench would faze out the support trench.

The design of a trench varies drastically in sophistication. You can technically dig a ditch and call it a trench, but the trenches of the western front were a different beast entirely.

A trench has to be at least 2.5 m so that a man can walk through it upright. The earth wall of the trench facing the enemy was called a parapet and the earth wall facing the rear was called a parados. The parapet would almost always have a fire step to enable soldiers to peek out of their trench and fire at the enemy. There would also be several loopholes made of metal to allow soldiers to peek into no man's land with the risk of getting a surprise lobotomy from an enemy sniper.
The walls of the trench would often be revetted with wood frames, sandbags or even sometimes braid wood to keep the trench walls from collapsing from either the weather or heavy bombardment. The floor of the trench would usually be covered by wooden duckboards.
Dugouts would also be made at regular intervals along the trench. A dugout was an underground hideout where the soldiers could seek cover from artillery fire, sleep and eat. While the British and French dugouts were rather simple in their construction and only about 2.5-5 meters underground, the Germans took their dugouts very seriously and built the at a minimum 4 meters underground, they would be constructed with concrete, have ventilation and sometimes even be up to 3 stories deep with stairs connecting the levels.

An unending line of barbed wire covered almost the entire frontline of trenches and would usually be 15 meters deep or deeper. The wire was ment to slow down attackers trying to cross no man's land and it proved devastatingly effective at it's job. So effective in fact that attackers would often shell it with heavy artillery before an attack in hopes of opening up a path through it.
There are 3 main ways to dig a trench. Entrenching, sapping and tunneling. Entrenching is the fastest and most efficient way and it's basically just a line of soldiers digging straight down, but the diggers would be completely exposed to enemy fire. Sapping was done by extending an already made trench and was safer, but a lot slower since only about 2 men could dig at a time. Tunneling is the same as sapping except a small roof of dirt would be left to cover the trench until it was finished and then the roof would be removed.
You may think that the only place to build a trench would be on a flat ground, but trenches can be built on many different terrains and have been built both in alpine terrain and sub sea-level terrain. Although the sub sea-level trench warfare in Belgium proved to be less than optimal.

In trench warfare any height advantage, even if its just a few meters, would give you a severe advantage over your enemy. If the enemy was above you, your trench would suddenly give you very little cover against enemy fire. This big weakness meant that many fierce battles would be fought over what was previously just a nameless hill in the landscape.
Now you know how to build and design an effective trench complex to protect yourself and your property. It might not make you the most popular person among the homeowners association, but even the most daring burglar will pause at the sight of your kilometers deep trenches, barbed wire and more.

 

[Sharps '74]

West Berlin and East Berlin police and border guards in a stand off

Reminds me of the conversations I had with two of my German (now ex) wife's socialist brothers re: life in the DDR vs life in the BDR. I shut them down by asking how many people had been shot going across the wall INTO the DDR as opposed to trying to escape. Neither was willing to put it to the test.

 

[bearhunter]

Fun fact:



I watched one tow a banner up and down the beach at Palanga in Lithuania in the early 2000's. Moved as fast as the sun, or so it seemed. A mighty thing, the AN-2. And one can get a "modernized" version with a turboprop:

And because it's a military-themed photo thread...

I saw one of those with huge tires land on what appeared to be a sand bar in the Negra River. Landed at what appeared to be a walking pace, but of course much faster. It settled on that sand bar as gently as a mosquito.

When the first fellow came out the side door and jumped down onto the sand bar, he sunk in to his arm pits. The other person inside, tossed him a rope and pulled him back in, with some difficulty.

The pilot just gunned the engine and took off without a hiccup and went looking for something a bit more solid down river.

 

[diopter]

Nice Video of AN-2
https://youtu.be/0Johd3Rkv7c

 

[donor]

AN-2 was a very needed replacement for Nikolai Polikarpov designed U-2/Po-2 biplane from 1928.It was meant to be larger,even more versatile and capable of operating everywhere in Soviet Union unlike its predecessor. U-2/Po-2 was a replacement for U-1 trainer,a licence build Avro 504 biplane.

While we know a lot about ww2 use of Po-2 for both armed and unarmed service it should be noted that it was also a workhorse of flight schools,Aeroflot,Arctic, agricultural aviation and various security forces for many decades. AN-2 filled those big shoes marvelously.

 

[grelmar]

Sometime in the 20's, Alberta Provincial Police showing off some highly collectible WWI surplus. Wonder how much that MP-18 would be worth nowadays?

 

[Tikka223]

Sometime in the 20's, Alberta Provincial Police showing off some highly collectible WWI surplus. Wonder how much that MP-18 would be worth nowadays?

And people are complaining of the militarization of police these days. Pretty sure cops don’t have machine guns.

 

[oldstarfire]

Yup, they do --"Patrol Carbine"
Hear them at the police range in the summer in Wpg

 

[Grizzly Adams]

And people are complaining of the militarization of police these days. Pretty sure cops don’t have machine guns.

We might need those to keep Ottawa off our backs.

Grizz

 

[Onagoth]

The harsh realities of imposing your beliefs and systems on other countries. Two Hungarian revolutionaries walk past the bodies of Soviet secret policemen killed during the Hungarian Revolution, 1956.

Too bad humans generally don't learn anything from history

 

[koldt]

Sometime in the 20's, Alberta Provincial Police showing off some highly collectible WWI surplus. Wonder how much that MP-18 would be worth nowadays?

Its probably a Lanchester

 

[tiriaq]

The drum magazine is visible.
No bayonet lug.
It is an MP18.

Don't know what one is worth these days. The drum alone probably a couple of thousand. Saw two MP18s for sale in the '60s - one was $125, the other $135.
If you go to forgottenweapons.com, Ian as a video of one being fired. Also on CnRsenal.

 

[ipscgraz]

Jan 21 1915
“A British soldier takes part in snap shooting instruction with a Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle at the British Army School of Musketry in Hythe”

 

[kayceel]

Possibly even the '30's. With the rumrunners hopped up vehicles and heavier firearms the various police forces upgunned to be able to reach out if their vehicles weren't fast enough to catch them. Manitoba Provincial Police supposedly mounted a Browning 1919 on a P O S Essex - which slowed it down even more! Would have been interesting to see the subframe mount they came up with. One of my uncles told stories of driving a Model A with a six cylinder hop up that you had to reach back to shift gears. Booze tank was on passenger side and across the back seat - he quit at the "dairy farm" in the Winnipeg Polo Park area and rode the rails after getting shot at a couple of times.

 

[marshall]

The drum magazine is visible.
No bayonet lug.
It is an MP18.

Don't know what one is worth these days. The drum alone probably a couple of thousand. Saw two MP18s for sale in the '60s - one was $125, the other $135.
If you go to forgottenweapons.com, Ian as a video of one being fired. Also on CnRsenal.

Don't know about the MP18, never had it, but back in the 1960's I restored one of the bikes, but the side car is different, mine never had a side door think the car was a HD one, not Indian. But what is the SMG?