Quick correction on the HEAT warhead it doesn’t melt through the armour, the jet still acts as a kinetic energy penetrator: “the shaped charge does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness; that is, the jet from a shaped charge does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic”
My father,who served with the South African Forces in North Africa, said their armoured cars were issued with the Boyes gun.The first thing they did was abandon it and have captured Italian Breda 20mm guns mounted in their cars.
you must not have heard, but Australian troops used Boys rifles to shoot snipers in New Guinea who had taken cover behind solid jungle trees. 303 rounds could get them out of coconut trees but failed on the large hardwood trees. The Boys rifles must have been a very unpleasant surprise to the Japanese. Japanese tanks were very thin-skinned too.
Yeah, I think we’ve heard that about the Australian use against snipers. We can’t capture every story about a weapon though, particularly when it’s not about the country or location we’re discussing. This vid was the context of the game. We will do some wider videos on the Boys in the future and will try to cover the Australian use a bit more.
Thanks very much Richard, Matt and team. That was interesting and informative. My late father once told me that his cousin, who had served with Field Artillery in France in 1940, once used a Boys in action. This was not against a tank but against an enemy sniper, who did not trouble them again. The Boys was used because no other small arms were to hand. PS from only looking at bullet mass and muzzle velocity, the recoil impulse from the Boys is about five times that of the SMLE.
@@vickersmg Well physics says it's about four times the bullet weight at about 125% of the velocity. However, the manual may be referring to either "recoil energy" or "felt recoil" which are both alternative measures of recoil.
A friend who was with the New Zealand army on Crete told me he had used a BOYS rifle firing at a house sheltering German Paratroopers. He said he was not sure hit hit any of them but they sure scattered for cover. He also said it was effective on the engines of light vehicles.
The jet from a HEAT round does not melt the armour, it actually punches through like a solid using kinetic energy which confuses some as it is not classed as a kinetic round. Folk get hung up on the words (I bet someone's already said that).
I saw a displayed Victoria Cross of a man from my city who fought off around 2 tanks and 30-40 Panzergrenadiers by himself with a PIAT and a Thompson while attempting to secure a river crossing in Italy. It must be bordering on the insane to have to shoot a PIAT multiple times with that weight and kick, especially when you have to do it by yourself after your friend is wounded and out of action (which is what that VC winner had to do), and fighting off enemy infantry on top of that too.
@freebeerfordworkers It was actually Ernest A. Smith, his VC was not stolen and is on display. As mentioned, he fought off around two tanks almost by himself and held off a panzergrenadier platoon.
@@HaloFTW55 Sgt. Ernest Alvia (Smokey) Smith (1914-2005) VC - Seaforth Highlanders of Canada! Like Francis Jefferson he won his VC in Italy too at the Savio River in October 1944! What was also amazing here was that his (Smith’s) VC action took place during a torrential rainstorm, where the adjacent Savio River in NE Italy had then also swollen to over 2 meters higher causing some local flooding & egregious movement, mobility & visibility conditions in the vicinity too at the time!!
The PIAT certainly appeared in Korea with 29th Infantry Brigade, before the adoption of the US bazooka during that conflict. The 17pdr, which had become the Bn. level AT gun by that point also saw service out there, but the scarcity of enemy armour and difficulty of the terrain relegated the guns to a secondary role, with one account I've read mentioning a gun being dragged out of storage to dispose of a particularly awkward enemy observation post by direct fire. I believe one occasion of the Boys bring used in the abti-material role was by the Commandos during the Dieppe raid, where it was used to engage AA gun positions, i.i.r.c.. I have an unpublished personal account from an infantryman in 11th Armoured Div., which mentions his company getting systematically blasted out of their positions by a German tank standing off as the battalion AT guns weren't forward yet. At one point an officer came running over to say he wanted a couple of men to grab a PIAT and stalk the tank, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was welcome to go and stalk it himself if he wanted. Evebtually a couple of men agreed to go with him and they set out, only for him to come running back a few minutes later, minus the PIAT and two men.
I used to work with on old guy who had been a sergeant in the Indian Army. He told me that they used the Boys anti-tank rifle for dislodging concealed snipers in tne rocky terrain of the North West Frontier, where there was always resistance to the presnce of British rule. If they were lucky the round would blast aside the sniper's cover or, at least, sca re the s**t out of him. It was not a popular weapon as it had to be carried by hand if mules weren't available.
My dad who fought in WW 11 said the boys rifle recoil was brutal. That said he was 5'9 and around 10 stone. The PIAT he was issued with, he hated! Die to his light weight the weapon sometimes did not recock and he was too short by 1/2" to manually reset. He was strong enough to compress the spring but it would not latch. Thankfully he said ,there was plenty of Typhoons to sort out enemy tanks
The Boys A/T was not so good on tanks but my Father did see his M/T Sergeant in 9KRRC shoot down an Me bf109 with one in Greece. He could still mention that event in his 80’s! It was fired off a sandbag in a quarry.
@@vickersmg What you must remember with the Greek campaign is that a noticeable part of the British division was TA and they were allied to amazing ANZAC troops against SS divisions who were quite badly mauled while advancing against a fighting retreat.
My dad was an infantry sgt during WWII and was also a marksman. When he was still a L/Cpl he was given a Boys anti - tank rifle to play with. He absolutely hated the recoil. Fortunately, he was given the role of BREN gunner.
Well it likely helped but still left a significant effect. One commenter here calculated that the power of the round was likely five times as much as 303 yet the manual says the recoil was only twice as much so perhaps the weight of the gun absorbed three times the power of 303 but no more.
What about the Winchester .50 BMG anti-tank rifle designed for the UK? Looked a lot like an overgrown M-1 Carbine. Both of these rifles paired with an oversized rifle grenade would have been effective well into the late war period and could double as snoper and anti-material rifles as well
A loaded PIAT weighs about the same as a Browning 1919A6 "LMG" which tells you what an impractical turd that particular MG was. Unsurprisingly not seen again in Korea unlike the PIAT. PIAT was still floating about with territorial battalions in to the late 60s apparently with no interim weapon between it and the Gustav.
@@vickersmgeven us Cadets in 1972 borrowed and used the 3.5 inch Rocket Launcher, (with dummy heads, (were they wooden?) ), on the range at Pirbright. They seemed to still be available if needed by real soldiers, even then.
Yes we’re not suggested the 3.5-inch RL disappeared straight away but the PIAT was obsolete from 31st August 1956 so there would have been no authorisation for ammunition or even proofing old stocks. I think those ancient corporals were spinning a yarn!
Thank you for this excellent presentation; please; there is no need to go into your bona fides to how or why you possess these articles of history; No government/king/queen should dictate what a person of no conviction of maleficence or of criminal history; may not own said article. again thank you for these videos; they are informative, fun and intriguing with facts I was not aware of.
Hopefully you’ve seen the video where we explain the requirements for section 5. If not, it’s on the channel now. We don’t get into the politics of it as we’re not here for that but it explains the practicalities and the differences between it and other systems.
The PIAT was just a bad path to go down while everyone was progressing into the path of rockets and to a lesser extent recoilless rifles the Brit’s hit a dead end with this monstrosity. Ridiculously heavy, short ranged, an impractical mechanical trigger and launcher, couldn’t be pointed downhill
Well you can subscribe with a metric thumbs up too. The USA would be quite a big 1% in your calculation as well. BTW, we take a very flexible approach to metric and imperial and often use both. www.thepoke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2otfbry1cfo71.png
