Picture of the day

I wonder how they dreamed up their emplacements. The guy on the Bren and his aid, would get one hell of a lot of distracting muzzle blast every time one of the troopis behind them opened fire.

I don't ever recall seeing such a set up, unless the rear guard was quite a bit higher than forward guard. Not a lot of though went into that placement IMHO.

Maybe a staged pic, with re enactors???

By the by, they didn't have No4 rifles in WWI but I can see the similarity. The shovel looks to be period as well.
 
Good day fellow Nutz :) New day new picture !!!

MOUNTIES.jpg


Cheers
Joe
 
Don't know where or when the photo was taken, but I can ID most of the equipment in it.

Fellow in the Sidecar s exhibiting a Bergmann (Schmeisser's Patent) MP-18I 9mm SMG, which only came into service about the middle of 1918.

Fellow on the Motorcycle has a "stripped" Lewis .303 LMG with the 47-round pan magazine. Guns of this type more commonly were AIRCRAFT guns.

The MOTORCYCLE is an INDIAN Power-Plus built by the Hendee Manufacturing Company in Springfield, Mass. Crankcase could be marked either to Hendee or as the "Indian Motocycle Company", "motocycle" being an Indian-trademarked word. Yes, the spelling is correct. The Girder forks and L-head engine are rather well-shown and of Indian type. Harley-Davidson at that time was using a leading-link fork and an F-head engine, so it is NOT one of their machines. BTW, the British Army had quite a number of Harley-Davidson sidecar outfits as well as solo machines; I knew a man who rode one in 1917.

Beyond this, I'm stumped.

Hope this helps a little.

I REALLY WANT an outfit like that!!!!!
 
@Smellie:

I sat in every position in that Sherman and trust me when I say, tanks have NOT gotten bigger. The gunner's position on the Sherman is smaller than the Leopard C2 and 2. All those optics and computers in the Leo's make for very, very little room. Either way, the gunner is the worst position comfort wise from 1917-2012 haha.
smellie said:
@Recce 21:

If you think the Crew Commander's seat in a Sherman is cramped,I would advise you to try some time as the Gunner. You barely have room to SWEAT.

Got the T-shirt.
Click to expand...
 
Guys, I am a long way from infallible, believe me.

What I did was download the photo and then blow hell out of it. The round shape of the Trommel magazine is quite visible; the MP-28 used a stick mag.

FUGAWI has an excellent point. What WE think of as a "Mountie hat" is what the Americans call a "Boy Scout hat". US Army still calls it a "Campaign hat". American Drill Instructors still use them.

ALSO, the US military bought large numbers of INDIAN sidehack outfits during the Great War......... and so many from Harley-Davidson that HD used whitened-down wartime paint as their standard colour until at least 1929, although with the addition of a "snappy maroon stripe"! Even the first Knuckleheads used this as their standard colour and they only came out in late '36 for the '37 model year. As some of the PBI in the Trenches, HD was thinking the war was going to go forever.

It is entirely possible that FUGAWI is orrect ad that these are American troops.

The heavily-armed motorcycle idea could not go far in the Great War due to the appalling landscape over which much of it was fought, but the idea was used extensively by the Germans and the Italians both in the Second War and the wars leading up to it..... with considerable success.
 
smellie said:
Don't know where or when the photo was taken, but I can ID most of the equipment in it.

Fellow in the Sidecar s exhibiting a Bergmann (Schmeisser's Patent) MP-18I 9mm SMG, which only came into service about the middle of 1918.

Fellow on the Motorcycle has a "stripped" Lewis .303 LMG with the 47-round pan magazine. Guns of this type more commonly were AIRCRAFT guns.

The MOTORCYCLE is an INDIAN Power-Plus built by the Hendee Manufacturing Company in Springfield, Mass. Crankcase could be marked either to Hendee or as the "Indian Motocycle Company", "motocycle" being an Indian-trademarked word. Yes, the spelling is correct. The Girder forks and L-head engine are rather well-shown and of Indian type. Harley-Davidson at that time was using a leading-link fork and an F-head engine, so it is NOT one of their machines. BTW, the British Army had quite a number of Harley-Davidson sidecar outfits as well as solo machines; I knew a man who rode one in 1917.

Beyond this, I'm stumped.

Hope this helps a little.

I REALLY WANT an outfit like that!!!!!
Click to expand...

Smellie, throw me a bone and give me a short bio on yourself, you know so much that its astounding.

If he won't do it will one of his friends explain who this guy is? Rarely am I in awe of someones knowledge like this.
 
The Americans used a lot of French equipment in the Great War, but the CSRG was a definite BUST and it was their only LMG until the BAR got into production in the middle of 1918, a year after they got involved in the war.

Originally, the Lewis had been an American design and in .30-'06 but it failed the tests at Springfield in 1911. But the gun tested was a toolroom sample. Lewis had a few more made and one of those was the first MG to be fired from a flying airplane: 1912.

The Belgians had adopted the Lewis for their army, built by FN, but their country was overrun in 1914. Being that the Belgian cartridge was identical in performance to the .303..... and Britain had no LMG....... work proceeded apace to adapt the Lewis to the .303 cartridge. Guns were made by BSA in England and on contract by Savage in the USA. Colt made Vickers Guns in .303.

When the US came into the war, they had 400 machine-guns of 9 different makes. These INCLUDED a few Vickers Guns in .303 and a few Lewises in .303.

The important point is that the US Army had hardly any machine-guns...... but they had TWO factories tooled-up to make the things.

The Vickers was re-engineered to the .30-06 and Colt handed a huge contract, Marlin got a contract for the Browning 95 (which had been made in .303) and orders to re-engineer it for .30-'06 as the Marlin Machine Gun M.1918......... and Savage was handed a contract to build the Lewis Gun...... in .30-'06.

Matter of fact, the MAGAZINE on the Lewis in the photo does not look like the distinctive .303 47-round mag. I would suggest that it could be a .30-'06 mag, which also was 47 rounds.

But the American DID have the critters.

Check out George M. Chinn, THE MACHINE GUN, US Navy Printing Office, 1955 for more information. You can download all SIX incredible volumes over at milsurps dot com for FREE.
 
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