As an avid viewer of this series and the firearms expert reacts series too, if he DIDN’T wear some sort of pop-culture reference shirt I’d be little disappointed lol
No script, just a gentleman who's passionate enough about history that he simply knows the story. The Armo(u)ries is in its own class for quality of presentation. Top shelf work, as always.
Thank you Nicholas! To be fair this is one I know very well. Some episodes do see some cuts as I check my notes... I envy Ian McCollum's ability to do (mostly) one takes :)
Fascinating talk Jonathan! Thanks for the shout out - I was up in the gallery telling people about Vickers Guns so couldn't get down to the talk (hence why I'm catching up now). What a wild design and a fascinating group of chaps behind it!
I recall, as a young Army recruit in the 1960s, being taught to fire grenades from the shoulder, with a SLR, the recoil was horrendous, bruises covering my right should, down my arm and extending onto my chest and flank. Later we got M79s then the joy of the M149 and later the M203. I had the surprise of shooting one of the opposition in the stomach with a 40mm grenade and my commander later complains about the mess.
It was a very professionally run show, as is this video, I appreciated the sub-title: (laughs curatorialy) at 31:50 . I also have to say that it is a buzz to hear myself ask a question.
Fascinating story, thanks, Jonathan and the team! I wonder what selection of grenades was envisioned for this design. As for why it was based on the Martini-Henry action, I would hazard a guess that it had to do with the relative availability of civilian and old decomissioned military rifles as opposed to the Lees, which were desperately needed for war effort, as well as the potential benefits of higher case capacity so as to increase the range.
This was a great day last weekend I loved it. It was great to meet you face to face Jonathan. Im also flattered to have had my semi-mumbled question about converting Martinis into projectors similar to how the French did with the Gras.
I want one! I've a manically giggling sixteen year old in my head! I remember shooting grenade launchers in The CCF. It always pays to suck up to the rangemasters down on the beach at The Small Arms Ranges on Dungeness Headland . As appetizing as it's name implys. About forty miles from were I'm typing. Your enthusiasm for your subject was always so infectious. Be safe, and always stay free.
35:12, I think Jonathan missed a really obvious reason to use a Martini-Henry over a Lee-Enfield... The War... The Enfields were in use in the trenches, The Martinis were just laying around in storage. Why cut up newly manufactured rifles that are needed at the front when there are hundreds of old ones that will do the job just sitting there? IMHO
Perhaps! Still, for development purposes at least, civilian Lee pattern rifles were readily available. As to how far ahead/how clearly Chevallier was thinking in terms of military mass production/conversion it's not clear to me that there *would* be quantities of MH rifles to convert, and indeed they'd have to restart the military .450 Martini ammunition production line to produce the propelling blanks, whereas if they'd gone .303 they could have adapted existing ammunition supplies. Also, in terms of quantities of obsolete/obsolescent rifles, I would expect that there would be more Martini-Metfords and Martini-Enfields in unserviceable condition than MHs. Certainly worth considering. If only they had written down their thinking!
@@jonathanferguson1211 Holy cow! a response from the man himself!!! Keep up the great work! Very interesting to hear your much more informed take on my thought. I appreciate it truly. Maybe You should develop a lecture for engineering students on the importance of documenting their work. To any inventors/engineers in this comment section: WRITE IT DOWN!!!! All the best to you Jonathan.
I love this channel because I love engineering and mechanical devices and seeing how they work. Twenty minutes in, still no demonstration of the firearm and I'm *glued* to the screen. Jonathan, you're a wonderful story teller. This channel, along with Forgotten Weapons, are tops in the subject.
Thanks Jonathan, Jack and team. It is great to see this online, so i can freeze-frame and ponder the patent drawings. Relative to the Martini buttstock (and the firer's shoulder), I wonder if the 'trombone action' would actually increase overall felt recoil but the spring system might make it a lot less snappy. As regards launching beer cans, didn't Webley use to make a can launcher powered by .22 long blanks?
I bought a beer can launcher powered by .22 blanks for my dad about 40 years ago - a fun alternative to clay pigeons - sorry, can't remember the make, but they certainly existed.
@@jonathanferguson1211 No need to apologise - I though the day went pretty well and you absolutely nailed the live performance of #WITW. Now that the topic of recoil and recoil mitigation for grenade launchers has been raised, I may be able to do some work on that, once I have escaped more pressing projects.
Great Presentation Jonathan and gang! I hope this video will spark someone into building a modern working prototype of this prototype just to see exactly how if it functions and how effective it may have been... I know there are plenty of inventive firearm history detectives here in the US that could probably find a reproduction/sporterized/shot out martini that could be sacrificed in order to model this "antique flare/soda can/tennis ball launcher" with a 16" minimum length tube 😇 Although someone that also had an SOT would be nice, as to be able to stick exactly to the original dimensions, because the ATF hates everything fun or interesting, even if it's historical firearms research... 🙄😉👍
Jonathan, I Love the shirt. You never fail to amaze me with the depth of the Royal Armories collection. RU-vid & other Internet venues are the only way most of the world will ever see the collection. About 40 years ago, I used Aluminum soft drink cans (2-11/16", 68mm) filled with dirt fired from a mortar made from steel drive shaft tubing. An ounce or two of FFFG black Powder sent a dirt-filled can tumbling end-over-end 400 to 500 yards, out of a 24", 60 cm long mortar tube. The dirt-filled can weighed the same more than many rifle grenades at 24 ounces or 700 grams. I remember the mortar being the same size as the tube on the Blanch-Chevallier Grenade Discharger prototype. If I were to try and make a working model of the Blanch-Chevallier Grenade Discharger prototype, I would use a percussion black powder muzzle-loading firearm as the primary platform. The payload would be a thin Aluminum, Copper, gliding metal, or plastic shell filled with inert material minimizing exposure to the US NFA & Destructive Device laws. I would consult an attorney knowledgeable in these laws before doing much more than talking about the project. Drive shaft tubing is awfully thin, but it might be possible to cut shallow rifling using Electrochemical methods and still have a decent safety margin using black powder. Boring out a piece of drill-stem or thick wall steel tubing would give any wall thickness desired. The kind of steel is of little consequence as long as it is sound and not too brittle at the pressures plack powder develops. A grenade with a short copper tube on its base could engage the rifling as Greener's hollow base bullet and the Minie ball by relying on the chamber pressure to expand the hollow-base of the bullet to engage the rifling and form a gas seal. A bore riding band near the nose of the grenade should improve its accuracy. For someone building a copy of the Blanch-Chevallier Grenade Discharger, finding a source of springs before they do anything else might be a good idea. It will be less expensive and take less time if the springs are a stocking item rather than being made to order. Springs from the bale chamber on small square hay balers or heavy-duty shock absorbers come to mind. Wandering around a well-stocked junkyard should yield other sources.
Always a pleasure to listen to Jonathan, his enthusiasm is infectious, on the martini thing, could it have been a suitable fire arm that was cheap and easy to aquire
My guess is that several amateurs, (probably American) have already headed into sheds and basements to start work on replicas. Even if Martini-Henrys are too scarce to cut up, the interesting bits could find themselves on all sorts of actions. For a "proof-of-concept", a nail-gun round could do.
48:00 I think what he said about the armouries keeping weapons used in crime is very important, because these pieces often carry a lot of evidence that could become relevant again later down the line. Sometimes museum pieces have hidden information on them that can't be extracted with current technology, but 20-30 years later when new analysis methods are invented. And I think there's no better place for things like that than a museum, because they have the storage capacity, they have the personell to look after it and they have the means to preserve literally everything about it and the know how to find out things, like, where a gun could have been sourced from, that persecutors won't necessarily have
Although I saw this before, probably when it came out, I'm glad it popped up again as I have been working on a project that I've been pitching to the UK MoD for an anti-ambush grenade launcher. However, inspired by the nomenclature used here it has been renamed as a "Counter-ambuscade bomb-projector."
I do not think the movement of weapon part alone soaks up recoil because things flying forward as the gun is fired just add extra recoil. What I think it's meant to do is increase the time the grenade is held in barrel (perhaps improving accuracy?) but more importantly to prevent gasses from going forward out of the barrel and adding to the recoil. The gasses are trapped behind the piston. That or it's just like the Thompson friction locking system - the designer has a wrong conception of physics, the mechanism does not work as intended but is not necessary so the weapon works regardless.
Interesting point - I did consider that the designer had his physics confused but as I haven't much of a clue about physics myself, I didn't like to speculate. Certainly there is no mention of your explanation anywhere in the historical sources, whereas the patent makes clear that this was all about recoil - "101,108. Chevallier, A. L., and Blanch, H. J. Feb. 21, 1916. Barrels; recoil, modifying.-Relates to muzzle attachments for small-arms for throwing grenades or case-shot, and consists in mounting on the barrel a a sliding sleeve c, forming a barrel extension, which fits on a piston b rigidly secured to the barrel, and is pressed rearwards by a strong spring e. The grenade j is centred by a wooden sabot i. On the discharge, the sleeve c moves forwards relatively to the barrel, and acts as a recoil-absorber."
@@jonathanferguson1211 Thanks for quoting that text. This does indeed sound like misunderstood physics as @MarcinP2 suggests. I think the Blow-Forward Schwarzlose 1908 (see ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HyvkQBSDmH0.html ) illustrates this problem quite well. Those of us who do not have access to one of those may be able to experience the issues involved by comparing the felt recoil of (i) any conventional spring operated air rifle or air pistol where the piston travels forwards towards the chamber to a (ii) a pneumatic 'recoilless' air weapon of similar performance. My first target air pistol was a spring operated Original (Diana) Model 5 but I eventually upgraded to a pneumatic Feinwerkbau Model 100. In between, I used Original Model 6 and Model 10 recoilless air pistols, which are still spring operated but use a second dummy piston that travels rearwards to balance out the recoil when the main piston is driven forwards.
@@derekp2674 Thanks Derek - if I hadn't only figured out the patent just before the event and realised my understanding of the *intent* was lacking, I might have run it past you or another engineer contact. It does seem rather Blish-locky - but worse!
As soon as I seen Martini Henry Action in the title it brought me back to my shooting day starting with a 22 Martini Henry Action rifle, Then moving up to a BRNO 223 and then, Moving up to a Lee Enfield No4 MK1 T, Luckily after saving up I then had the Martini Henry Action 22 bored out to a 308 as it was a heavy thick barrel 🤗
After a couple of minutes I think I finally figured out how the gun works, but frankly Jonathan's explanation made me go the wrong way this time. So it's not the back end of this gun that's recoiling as he's putting it, at least not in relation to the shooter. Him mentioning the barrel sliding out the back of the gun threw me off. Like, where is the Martini barrel supposed to slide out? There's action behind it, barrel's fixed to it, it doesn't make sense! Then I got it, it's the large bore barrel, the "cup" for the grenade, that is the bit that is moving, and it's moving forward (like, it follows the grenade) in relation to the shooter, compressing the spring and exposing the Martini Henry barrel in the process. Phew. It took me way longer than it should. I still have doubts. Do I even get this right?
Well, it's all relative - I described it as the barrelled action coming out to the rear because the patent emphasises that the large outer barrel assembly is the "inertia weight" but in reality I believe they are simply moving away from each other, almost like a balanced recoil system. The brief patent description seems to support this "101,108. Chevallier, A. L., and Blanch, H. J. Feb. 21, 1916. Barrels; recoil, modifying.-Relates to muzzle attachments for small-arms for throwing grenades or case-shot, and consists in mounting on the barrel a a sliding sleeve c, forming a barrel extension, which fits on a piston b rigidly secured to the barrel, and is pressed rearwards by a strong spring e. The grenade j is centred by a wooden sabot i. On the discharge, the sleeve c moves forwards relatively to the barrel, and acts as a recoil-absorber."
@@Torque_Mk1 Please don't ask how I know this, but not all patented gun inventions end up working as the the inventors desired and claimed for the patent application. Given the revelations from Jonathan's research into Mr Enever, a patent would have given him a unique selling proposition to punt out, irrespective of whether or not it was technically viable.
The grenades it was designed to fire could be of the French egg grenade type (F1 or the "Blue Egg" type with sheet metal case) with a percussion ignition fuse or such. The grenade retention clip would most likely also engage the ring around the "Blue Eggs" thin metal shell casings Most likely none held at the royal armoury to test fit.
One reason for probably not using the lee-enfield action and 303 calibre may have been that grenade blanks used ballestite and cordite as propellant, the flame and heat produced in a very short barrel like used in this design would have a heat problem affecting the grenade. Which may cause cook off or damage to the grenade.
I watched the minstrel one the other day. Massively dodgy in the modern age (although they were mocking the concept) but I havnt laughed like that in a long time.
I watched the minstrel one the other day. Massively dodgy in the modern age (although they were mocking the concept) but I havnt laughed like that in a long time. I can definitely recommend wodehouse audiobooks (blandings are the best imo) for a chilled out Sunday morning
Another great content from Jonathan, no doubt about it. Videography and audio needs improvement though... and perhaps a brighter ambience would be better.
Perhaps it was deliberate not to use a lee Enfield so that only 450 blanks were available so preventing a mixup! Have you fired a dog trainer dummy launcher even with a .22 blank it can be quite painful to your hand!
A lot of people dont realise that a lot of 2nd line troops guarding the UK were using ancient single shot rifles. The whole home defence of WW1 is yet another understudied aspect of it
Enever looks different in Reynolds's Newspaper of Sunday 06 May 1923 “Hectic Career of Enever the Evasive” - any chance the picture about 30 minutes in is the Swiss inventor? Or did Enever his hair and grow a moustache later in the 20s?
Great spot - I somehow missed that despite searching the newspaper archives - it only comes up for me when searching on 'Enever' alone! Still, it's a very poor photo and could, I think, still be him. Most likely an old file or even passport photo of him as a younger man. Enever and Chevallier were similar in age, and the chap pictured in Reynold's appears sigificantly younger than either of them. Monocle-wearing wasn't that common either. So, the bloke with the gun could perhaps be either of them but I still tend toward Enever.
I only managed to find the article in Reynolds by searching for "monocled rogue". I meant to type "did Enever dye his hair" because he sounds like the type of cad and bounder who would do that but stupidly it didn't occur to me that it might just have been an old picture.
I am guessing it was meant to be fired with both hands near the action, not one out on the "barrel". This wasnt unheard of, look at the colt revolving carbines. If you try to hold that barrel, it would be like trying to hold the slide on a blowback pistol..
I feel sure that I've seen line shooting rifles based upon the Martini-Henry - in fact I think "Quint" uses one in Jaws? that would suggest it was a go to option for one offs?
If it is constructed as you describe then it is not going to absorb recoil. So either it is an incredibly bad design or you are wrong. The x-ray is inconclusive as it is unclear if the piston fits over the barrel or in front of it. You don't show a picture taken down the barrel, from the muzzle end, that would give important information. Ideally, you need to take it apart, so its construction can be completely established.
I suspect you're right that it wouldn't work - I bow to those with superior understanding of physics and if I'd had more time (as noted I had only just understood the designer's intent upon revisiting the gun for this event. However, the patent description is clear that this system is *intended* to reduce recoil and it's equally clear that the only way this weapon can function (whether it 'worked' or not) is in the way described, with the large outer barrel acting as an "inertia weight" (the designer's words) and the barrelled rifle action sliding out the rear. Annoyingly I did arrange a clip filmed down the muzzle but in all the excitement failed to request it be played. Looking down the barrel confirms that this is a piston affixed to the muzzle of the internal (rifle) barrel upon which the outer barrel must have slid. As noted, it's seized in place.
That reminds me of Samuel Colts' early career. Impersonating a doctor, stealing factory machinery and pretty much scamming captain Walker. Also reminds me of Hiram Berdan.
The earliest known use of the mortar was in 1413 in Korea. It's not as if British troops had nothing else on hand. I can't see the application for this grenade launcher, which breaks your shoulder should you try to use it as the rifle it once was.
At 42:52 you mention a tubular grenade "Invented" to load into the gun in the game and only the Japanese had similar. Umm, going on the Swiss heritage of Chevalier, the Swiss during WW1 had a tubular grenade based off an Austro-Hungarian tubular grenade
Re the grenades for this, presuming Mr Chevalier is French or Belgian would it perhaps utilise grenades from one of those two nations rather than British? As to the question of using Martinis instead of Lee-Enfields, I imagine there would be a lot of surplus (cheap) Martinis in relatively good condition.
Chevalier was a naturalised Brit for a decade by this point, as mentioned, so he was likely working with some experimental design of grenade of hi own, if none of the British designs seem to fit.
I know that they had to use only certain lee Enfields to fire the grenades, they had certain ones which were reinforced and basically only fired blanks to prevent mad accidents firing a live cartridge into a grenade base, so I wouldnt trust firing it from a martini henry in the slightest. I always thought that small mortars of the time were a bit rubbish and underused/developed considering their great potential in trench warfare.
Great presentation but it does have the feel of a C student doing his final presentation in Public Speaking 101 class. LOL The nervous laughs throughout and the jokes that work in your head but not so much in practice vibe.
I think there never was a grenade. I think the grenade shaped object shown in the drawing was just a demonstration dummy. I am guessing back then there were restrictions to deal with.
