Non-standard, substitute standard, and captured weapons in British and Commonwealth service

The FM 24/29: Almost a Standard Weapon?

I have been browsing on the net as usual and turned up something interesting. It seems that in 1939-40 Britain and France were working on some collaborative armaments production projects which would have involved some exchange of equipment, with the French getting some British stuff and vice-versa. The main idea in the initial stage was for each ally to help make up deficiencies in the other's arsenal. For example, the British would help make up the French deficiency in AA guns and anti-tank rifles, while the French would help the British with anti-tank guns. These projects as planned were pretty extensive and I've only learned a little about the subject so far, but one infantry weapon the British were definitely interested in was the FM 24/29. This weapon was pretty comparable to the Bren and available in numbers, and with Bren production still not quite up to desired levels arrangements were made to provide the FM 24/29 to the British Army to make up the difference. The British were so anxious on this score that they agreed to accept the FM 24/29 in the 7.5mm French caliber. Deliveries were supposed to start in June 1940 and it was planned to provide 2,000 guns a month. This information comes from the late Stéphane Ferrard on the ATF40 forum. He found a lot more about these projects, I'm only just getting started tracking it all down.

 

The British got several hundred 25mm Hotchkiss A/Tank guns on carriages as part of this program. I am not aware of any small arms though. This excludes those that came across with French troops and ships, from Dunkirk and other ports.

Regards

AlanD

 

The plan alluded to above was aborted by the German attack. As you say, the only French small arms which seem to have gotten to Britain were those which came over in the evacuation. I am only starting on the research about this--ATF 40 isn't an easy site to search--but so far it appears that the FM 24/29 was the only French small arm which would have gone to the British under an official arrangement The 25mm Hotchkiss Mle 34 did reach the BEF and there were plans to make the 25mm Hotchkiss in Britain. The Hotchkiss H39 tank was to have been made in the UK as well, mainly for French use and for export to the states of the Little Entente (Greece, Yugoslavia, etc). The British were also to get some Char B1bis from the French. Britain was to supply 3.7" and 40mm Bofors AA guns and Boys antitank rifles to France. The Brandt 81mm Mle 27/31 mortar, the UE 2 carrier, the 75mm M1897 field gun (modernized--maybe for anti-tank duty?) and the 47mm SA 37 anti-tank gun were all to be supplied to the British. That's all I've got so far, details are scanty. See post #12 at French tanks in Commonwealth units if France survives 1940? and Stephane Ferrard's post on the following ATF40 page, 23rd from the top I think: armement automatique léger

 

Winston and the Admiralty Search for Arms on the Continent, pre-Dunkirk

What follows comes from Malcolm Atkin's book To the Last Man.

As indicated in the previous two posts, even before Dunkirk the government was aware of the shortage of arms and was seeking to correct it by purchasing foreign weapons. The government naturally preferred to deal with the French, since they were Britain's allies, but Churchill (then at the Admiralty) thought that other sources should be sought as well. Accordingly, on April 22nd 1940 he sent Robert Boothby to Liège, the center of the Belgian firearms industry. There Boothby found 9,000 rifles, over 100 machine guns, and 1,000 Schmeisser submachine guns ready for immediate delivery. In Amsterdam, Boothby was offered between 200,000 and 400,000 rifles with 1,000 rounds of ammunition each. The Minister of Supply, Leslie Burgin, shot the idea down. The project couldn't have been completed anyway because of the German invasion on May 10th. This story is very interesting, and I wish Atkin had more detail on it. It's not clear to me if Churchill was acting on his own in sending Boothby or if he had government approval. I suspect the former, which would partly account for why Burgin was opposed. As we know, WSC was prone to act on his own. Perhaps he was thinking of getting non-standard weapons for the RN and the Royal Marines so as to free standard types for army use. Secondly, who was Boothby talking to, particularly in Amsterdam? I don't think the Dutch had a very big arms industry so I don't know where they would come up with so many rifles to sell. Thirdly, what weapons are we talking about? The Schmeisser SMGs are obvious enough. Pieper made the MP28 under license in several calibers, though Atkin doesn't say which caliber those thousand guns were in. As to machine guns and rifles, FN made the BAR Type 30 and Type D and the FN Model 30 Mauser for commercial sale. Or was Boothby being offered surplus Belgian Army stuff, like the Model 1889 Mauser? I have even less idea what the rifles under discussion in Amsterdam could have been. The standard Dutch rifle was the M1895 Mannlicher, but I doubt that the Dutch had anything like 400,000 available for sale to a foreign power. If anyone has any further detail on this story I'd love to hear it.[Late note: I checked Atkin again and the rifles offered to Boothby in Amsterdam were Mausers, type and caliber not specified.]

 

In regards to the previous post (484) I suspect that the rifles Boothby saw in Liège were indeed FN 24/30 series guns, probably in 7.92mm. I have just learned to my surprise that the French purchased 6,500 FN 24/30s in that caliber, taking delivery between July and December of 1939. These guns were supposedly sent to the French colonies, either to give the garrisons therein something more modern or to free standard types for the metropolitan army's needs. If the French were buying FN 24/30s in 7.92, it would make some sense to offer their British allies the same weapon.

 

Might this help you expand your knowledge?

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/4b6c1547-819a-4da6-94a2-8fcb0e065d26
Reference: VNST II 2/26
Description:
Report by Robert Boothby to Vansittart after visit to Belgium, Switzerland and France.
Date: Mar 1940
Held by: Cambridge University: Churchill Archives Centre, not available at The National Archives
Language: English

TD

 

Thanks. Boothby's arms mission to Liege and Amsterdam took place a month later. The document at the link is not available online and unfortunately I'm not in the UK so I can't go look at it in person. It's not clear to me what capacity Boothby was acting in when he undertook these missions. I don't think he even had an official position until Churchill later made him parliamentary secretary for the Ministry of Food.

Boothby was a bizarre character. Evelyn Waugh might have dreamed him up. 'A Shit of the Highest Order!' The Story of the Charming Lord 'Bob' Boothby - Flashbak

 

Hugh Pollard and Arms Acquisition for SOE: American handguns, Russo-Spanish Vickers guns, and Spanish SMGs

Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard was an even more bizarre character than Robert Boothby, which is saying something, and unlike Boothby he was genuinely dangerous. As a young man Pollard was mixed up in an insurgency in Morocco and in the Mexican Revolution. During the Great War he moved into intelligence and propaganda work, roles he continued to fill just after the war for the RIC during the Irish revolt. At some stage, Pollard was recruited by the SIS. A zealous Catholic, Pollard was an extreme right winger in politics and close to the BUF if not an actual Fascist himself. In 1936, he played a significant role in smuggling Francisco Franco from the Canaries to Spanish Morocco. He drank too much, was untrustworthy with money, and behaved with a noisy arrogance which reminded one of his friends of the German Crown Prince. He was also prone to shooting off revolvers in unsuitable places, like people's offices. Pollard was a firearms expert, wrote several books on the subject, and was for a long time the shooting editor of Country Life. When WWII broke out he came very close to being interned under 18B, but SIS made the police lay off him and he was assigned instead to the weapons section of Section D of MI6, the kernel of the future SOE. Pollard did some useful work in this job. Section D needed oddball weapons for its clandestine work, non-standard types which could not be traced back to the British government. Pollard must have had some excellent contacts, because he managed to acquire weapons in or from Portugal, the States, Italy, and even Japan. Pollard placed ads for weapons "for a friendly foreign power" in American firearms magazines, offering $40 each for Colt or Smith & Wesson revolvers and automatics in .45, $30 for .38 and .32 automatics, and $25 for .25 and .22 automatics and revolvers of smaller bore than .45. He also managed to obtain some ex-Spanish Republican weapons which had been sitting forgotten in French dumps, including several hundred crated Vickers guns in 7.62mm Russian caliber and a small lot of "Spanish tommy guns." The latter apparently included one or more examples of the so-called Naranjero, a scaled-up Spanish copy of the Schmeisser MP28 in 9mm Largo caliber. The Naranjero seems to have influenced the design of the Lanchester.

 

TTH. Pollard was gone from the Arms Section in around August 1940 -from memory. He ended-up as an inspector at Woolwich Arsenal and would appear to have ceased being actively involved with SIS, at least at this point.
What is your source for Pollard placing the advertisements in American Rifleman? I am familiar with the adverts but not who placed them.

Regards

AlanD

 

The authority (not the source) is Malcolm Atkin's book Section D for Destruction. See Section D for Destruction
There is a footnote there but since it was just a Google preview I couldn't trace the original source.

 

TTH, you are a nuisance... in the nicest possible way of course. A week or so before your post I read about a large quantity of Mausers being available in Antwerp but couldn’t remember where and have spent ages looking for it, finding related references, but not the specific source that I had read – until now!

The following comes from memo MC(40)38 dated 2/2/40, on ‘Armament supplies to Turkey’, written by the Secretary of State for War, Oliver Stanley.


Burgin updated the Military Co-ordination Committee (with WSC in the Chair) 15/4/40, a week before Boothby’s trip, as follows:

So whatever was available would have been for the Norwegians.

Was there really a “pre-Dunkirk complacency regarding the requirements for small arms” as Akin contends? I only have the Google preview so can’t tell what Akin’s source was nor assess its context, but in the light of the above, it seems harsh.

 

Great stuff, we're getting hot on Boothby's trail now. These German Mausers must be at least some of the rifles Boothby was negotiating for in Amsterdam, since your document says they were in the hands of a Dutch bank. The total quoted to Boothby, though, was higher, 200,000 to 400,000. Atkin implies that Boothby was looking for arms for Britain, not arms which could go to the Turks or the Norwegians. It's clear, though, that both the British and the French were looking to bribe neutrals into friendliness by providing arms, cf. the intention stated in a previous post to send H39 tanks to Balkan countries. I hope we can learn more about the Boothby mission, and especially about his visit to Liege. As regards pre-Dunkirk complacency about arms, it does seem to me that the British and French might have done better to secure arms supplies for their own forces instead of the Turks, Norwegians, etc.

 

Latin American 7.92mm Mausers for Egypt

Among the various arms Anglo-French armaments projects mentioned at French tanks in Commonwealth units if France survives 1940? is one along the same lines as the purchases proposed above for the Turks and Norwegians. Under this plan, the French would purchase Mausers in 7.92mm in Latin America to arm the Egyptian Army. This idea is curious in several respects. Egypt was technically independent and neutral, of course, but very much under British domination. The Egyptian Army at that point was equipped with British weapons and the introduction of the 7.92 Mauser into the Egyptian inventory might have led to so some supply and maintenance problems. The only justification that I can see for the plan would be to free Egyptian .303 rifles for British use. Seeing as Britain was Egypt's guardian, though, I can't guess why the French would be brought in. It's possible that the French had the money and the connections in Latin America to swing the deal, but that brings us to the question of supply. Just where in Latin America were these rifles to come from? Most of the armies in that part of the world were pretty small and I can't think that any of them had large stocks of surplus rifles lying around. The Mauser was widespread there, but in 7mm or 7.65mm, not 7.92mm. Was it intended to manufacture the Egyptian rifles in Latin America? As far as I know only two Latin American countries had domestic rifle manufacture at that time, Argentina and Mexico. The Argentines eventually made the Ballester Molina pistol for SOE. Their Mauser was the M1909, a long Gewehr 98 type. The latest Mexican rifle was the Modelo 1936, a short Mauser type with some features borrowed from the M1903 Springfield. I suppose either of these could have been adapted to 7.92, but the whole thing is a great mystery. I'll have to dig into this on ATF 40, but as I said that site is not easy to search.

 

True that. I have a DWM 1895 Mauser in 7x57 with Chilean crest on the receiver and stock.

 

I just joined ATF40 and posted an appeal for information about the Franco-British deals. I'll pass on what I learn.

 

The Argentinean Mauser rifle M1891 was basically a derivative of the Belgian Mauser 1889: the weapon was rejected by the German army, but accepted by Belgium.
In Argentina several thousands of them were produced at Fabrica Militar de Armas Portatiles in Rosario
Since that time FN has quite good connections to Argentina
I could imagine that France made contact with Argentina via Belgian business connections.

Mauser versions in 8x57 IS from Latin American production are extremely rare, but a conversion to this caliber should not pose too many problems for a reasonably competent gun manufacturer: FMAB produced them for Ecuador in this caliber postwar.
And I don't see any logistic problems for a "neutral" country like Egypt, as the ammunition was produced internationally in more than sufficient quantities.
This would have relieved the British .303 production in any case.

 

More from SOE's Arsenal: Suomi and Erma SMGs, Webley .32 automatic pistols, Mauser machine pistols, Belgian BARs

SOE had more odd stuff than the rest of the British forces put together. I have recently dipped into two works about SOE's Polish section, Station 43 by Ian Valentine and an article by Jeffrey Bines. Both give brief descriptions of the training given to Polish SOE agents in the UK and they mention a number of unusual types. One mentioned by both is the Suomi submachine gun. The British had tested the Suomi successfully and they had come close to adopting it, but that did not happen because the Winter War cut Finland off as a source of supply. The Suomi was also produced in Sweden (Husqvarna), Denmark, and Switzerland so maybe some arrangement could have been made there, but it wasn't. Nonetheless, Ian Skennerton did find a record of an order for 500 Suomi guns, presumably a service trial quantity. Some Suomis were also among the guns surrendered by the Spanish Republican troops who crossed into France; some of these were later used by the French, and as we have seen Hugh Pollard was able to get some SMGs from the ex-Spanish scrap pile. However they were obtained, it made sense to train the Polish SOE agents on them because the Poles had a small number of Suomis in service prior to the German invasion. Valentine and Bines differ on the second type of SMG the Poles trained on. Valentine gives it as the "Thomson" while Bines (writing later) gives it as something he calls the "Erga." The latter is almost certainly the Erma EMP, or EMP35. A fair quantity of these German guns were used during the Spanish Civil War. In May 1939, British ordnance reported that "1000 of this make [Erma] could be procured at short notice" for British use. The reference was likely to surrendered Spanish Republican guns then sitting in dumps in France. Apparently some 3,250 Ermas were surrendered to the French by the Republicans. After the war broke out the French issued the Erma to the Corps Francs, but only 1,000 or so were used because of the lack of sufficient spare magazines. Again, it seems likely to me that the Ermas issued to Polish SOE in the UK came from this source. I think it likely that the Poles trained on this gun because it had been in Polish service in 1939, again in small quantities. I can't recall the specifics, but I think some of the Ermas used in Spain may have come from Polish sources in the first place. [NB: This is doubtful.]Valentine and Bines both report that the Poles trained with two handguns, the Webley .32 and the Mauser machine pistol (i.e. Schnellfeuer). I have seen a photo of an SOE .32 Webley with a silencer, so perhaps this was the version used by the Poles. As for the Schnellfeuer, Skennerton found a May 1940 record of the acquisition of 150 or so of these guns from the firm of E. Grimard in Liege. Valentine says that the Poles also practiced on "Belgian automatic rifles." Valentine isn't always very clear about his firearms terminology (he seems to think the Suomi was an automatic rifle too), but unless he means the Pieper MP 28 he must mean FN-made examples of the BAR. FN made two types of BAR at that time, the Type 30 and the later Type D, which featured a quick-change barrel. The Type 30 was much more popular on the export market and was sold in some numbers. The Type 30 was also very similar to the Polish Wz 28, the Polish army's standard section automatic, so once again it would make sense to allot any to the Polish wing of SOE. I'm making some guesses here, but I think they're fairly informed guesses. Note that the Schnellfeuers and the possible FN BARs both came from Belgium, so perhaps Boothby had something to do with them.

 

I would think that if the Allies sought Mausers for conversion to 7.92 or new manufacture in that caliber in Argentina they would have been more interested in the M1909 and not so much the M1891. The M1909 was newer and more modern and Rosario had a production line for it. A 7.92 Mauser for the Egyptians wouldn't have been much of a problem if their entire army had been re-equipped with it. I imagine that neither the British nor the Egyptians would have been very happy with a mix of .303 and 7.92 in the same force. It's clear that when it came to non-standard weapons the British almost always directed such types to various subsidiary and second and third line forces, private armies of various sorts, etc., leaving the standard items for the front line ground forces. That simplified supply.

 

Mausers from Bolivia

This just in: a lot of 5,000 Mausers in 7.65mm were purchased during the war from Bolivia, going to the UK via Canada. See British contract Ballister-Molina

 

6 Inch Gun Mark XII

Well, firearms oddities continue to pile up, but I'm taking a break from those and getting back to coastal guns for the moment. The 6 Inch Mark XII was a Vickers design for the RN, 45 calibers long. It appeared shortly before the Great War and was widely employed, arming the secondary batteries of the Queen Elizabeth and R class battleships as well as the B-E cruiser classes. Over 400 were made and most of these were still intact in 1939, so surplus guns were emplaced in emergency coastal batteries. There were three different subtypes of the weapon and it could fire either 100-lb. or 112-lb shells, HE and capped AP. The quoted range figures are 13,500 yards at 15 degrees with the 100 lb. shell and standard charges, 20,020 yards at 20 degrees with 112-lb. shells and super charges. These I suppose are for shipboard mountings. I can't find any contemporary photos of the Mark XII in coastal use, but I did find some nice models.