Show us your Guns!

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Can anyone tell me what kind of rifle my grandfather is carrying in this photo? It's taken in the early 50's, in Israel (possibly during the 1956 War, but I'm not sure).

Yes it's a Sten. Most likely British surplus left over from the war in British occupied Palestine.

 

[thunderw21]

Did I hear 7 shots? I thought an M-1 had an 8 round clip? Anyway, seems to have a bit of recoil, but is it easy to hit a target in spite of that?

It does have 8 but if you look closely you can see that an unfired round is ejected (actually it just fell out) when I worked the action after the failure to feed. Now that I think about it, I don't know how that happened without it being fed into the chamber. I just remember seeing it loose on top of the en bloc before it fell out.
Afterwards I picked up the round and examined it. No dimple on the primer so I fired it with no problem.

The recoil is managable. Worse than an AR-15 and AK, mind you, but once you get use to it it's nothing. Though, it's not like you see in the movies (Saving Private Ryan, for one) where the actors fire off 8 rounds in 2 seconds without the rifles even moving an inch.

 

[carebear]

Zulu great Movie ! I loved the part where they sat there listening to the " Train ". The .45 ACP was also adopted as a " Man Stopper " during Americas involvement in the Phillipines. The local guerrillas the Moros (?) were jacked up on drugs. The .38 did not fare too well but the .45 did. A friend of mine told me a story about his experience with the .38. He was an Armed Guard and his friend had to use his during a scuffle. The Guard put 2-3 rounds through the guy but he was still fighting. When they finally subdued the guy they found 2 bullets inside his shirt ! It went straight through the guy without putting him down.

The .38 round nose also tended to penetrate rather than expand, wasting a lot of the energy it potentially had to deliver.

Modern bullet design helps a lot of the smaller calibers perform better than they did historically.

 

[carebear]

It does have 8 but if you look closely you can see that an unfired round is ejected (actually it just fell out) when I worked the action after the failure to feed. Now that I think about it, I don't know how that happened without it being fed into the chamber. I just remember seeing it loose on top of the en bloc before it fell out.
Afterwards I picked up the round and examined it. No dimple on the primer so I fired it with no problem.

The recoil is managable. Worse than an AR-15 and AK, mind you, but once you get use to it it's nothing. Though, it's not like you see in the movies (Saving Private Ryan, for one) where the actors fire off 8 rounds in 2 seconds without the rifles even moving an inch.

Or, you're a sissy.

Just kidding.

Hard to believe our grandfathers, who probably averaged a good 10-20 pounds lighter than us, carried and fired those .30 cals without whining for 4 years.

You'd find me b---ing about my M-16 (at least mentally) a couple miles in on any op.

 

[Alon]

Thanks for your help, gentlemen. I was always wondering what kind of a rifle that is. He actually served in a mortar team, not as a rifleman.

 

[David Conwill]

Thanks for your help, gentlemen. I was always wondering what kind of a rifle that is. He actually served in a mortar team, not as a rifleman.

Technically that's not a rifle, that's a submachine gun (to Americans) or a sub-machine carbine (to a period Brit). Rifles are longer and fire a more powerful round.

-Dave

 

[Story]

Thanks for your help, gentlemen. I was always wondering what kind of a rifle that is. He actually served in a mortar team, not as a rifleman.

That explains it - mortar crews are primarily concerned with servicing their piece and personal protection weapons are secondary. STEN guns are short ranged, cheap and of dubious reliability. Rifles were in short supply and would have been prioritized to infantry units.

In the first days, the Israeli soldiers were so badly equipped that the only arms were locally made Sten guns, homemade bombs and a few trench mortars begged or bought on the black market from the departing British army.
www.telfed.org.il/content/south-africans-roles-early-israel

by April 1948 the Haganah had managed to accumulate only about 20,000 rifles and Sten guns for the 35,000 soldiers who existed on paper.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab-Israeli_War -

Some additional reading
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=7/a/archives/191220031

 

[LondonLuke]

Strictly speaking, none of these are guns


A gun is either an artillery piece, or a massive thing mounted onto a ship

 

[carebear]

Strictly speaking, none of these are guns


A gun is either an artillery piece, or a massive thing mounted onto a ship

Unless it's on a WWII-era US battleship, when it becomes a 16" naval rifle.

 

[dhermann1]

I guess it's too late to rename this thread "Show us your firearms". Something about the word "gun" has more impact than any other word. I guess. [huh]

 

[John in Covina]

Technically that's not a rifle, that's a submachine gun (to Americans) or a sub-machine carbine (to a period Brit). Rifles are longer and fire a more powerful round. -Dave

*************
Yes, generally battle rifles fire a full sized round like 30-06, .303, 762X54R and the big Mauser rounds. These are potent rounds with a good sized recoil even in those heavy battle rifles. When attempts to produce them in full auto to operate like a squad weapon they tended to be uncontrolable in full auto.

Older battle rifles may use a clip such as the Garrand or a guiding clip like the 1891 & m44 Russian rifles as opposed to a swappable enclosed magazine.

Moving from the battle rifles the use of magazines become more prevelant and a neccesity for quick reloading.

Carbines tend to fire a smaller round such as the 30 cal carbine or a pistol round.

Taking some nods from carbine an assault rifle is smaller and lighter than a battle rifle, often having a pistol grip like the M-16 and using a smaller rifle round such as the 223 (5.56 by 45?), the AK round 7.62X39 and several more exotic rounds developed. These are not full power rounds so the rifle is more controllable if use with full automatic fire. This also is because in modern fighting the proximity of the enemy tends to also be closer so a full power round is not needed as much.

Sub machine guns and sub machine pistols like the Sten, Thompson, Schmeisser, MP5, various others like the Mac 10, and Skorpion all use pistol cartridges. This allows for better control in full auto and is designed for as the MAC inventor said: "A room full of surprised colonels." The Thompson was envisioned as a trench broom for WWI.

Thompsons are most associated with Chicago style gangland murders had a logo of "On the Side of Law and Order" talk about irony.

As with any firearm info it is filled with controversey, so let the bones of contention fly.

 

[Diamondback]

John, it's worth noting that even though the popular association is '20s Chicago, the Thompson was one of the few things Al Capone and Eliot Ness could agree on, and was a favorite among the Secret Service for a while. (When someone broke into Blair House while Truman was sleeping there, the lead agent's first response was "Where's my Thompson?") And IIRC the FBI even considered them to be viable tools into the '70s/'80s, enough so to even commission a special run of them in 10mm from Auto-Ordnance West Hurley. (And to cause AO to add the 10mm full-auto and semi-only to their pre-'86 catalog for civilian sales, too... wonder how many were FBI agents doing private purchases because they weren't issued Bureau Typewriters?)

 

[warbird]

Strictly speaking, none of these are guns


A gun is either an artillery piece, or a massive thing mounted onto a ship

Incorrect. A gun is a device which fires a projectile at high velocity. It can be a flat trajectory device like a rifle, gun or pistol, or a large gun not necessarily of a flat trajectory. A rifle is a gun, but more correctly it is a rifle. A rifle is one due to the rifling in its barrels. Rifles can have small cartridges such as .17 HMR or large 50 BMG. They are all rifles. It could be long a old Hawkens or as short as carbines. It could be militarized or a hunting sporter. A shotgun is a gun, but not a rifle. I pistol has rifling, but was made to be used with one hand. It is a gun, it is a pistol. Large rifled and non rifled devices not carried by hand are also guns, such as howitzers.

This it's not a gun technically speaking is kind of silly and mostly incorrect as well. It's kind of like the clip v. magazines correction crowd. Yes magazines and clips are different, but tell that to a WWII and Korean War vet who always referred to either as clips. You gonna tell them they're wrong? Not me, they used em they fought with em they can call em whatever they like. It know exactly what they mean.

 

[Diamondback]

lol At least nobody's quoting Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann yet... or they already did and I missed it.

 

[dhermann1]

This is my rifle, this is my gun . . . . . .

 

[Diamondback]

:eusa_doh: D'OH! :eusa_doh:

 

[dhermann1]

You didn't see the inevitable slide that this discussion was taking?
For those who don't know the rest of this little bit of doggeral, ask your dad or your uncle.

 

[Diamondback]

Dan, saw it, and it was more like a plea to not go there.

 

[warbird]

Now back to the regularly scheduled program.

Show us your guns!

I need to get the camera out and take a couple myself. My latest, an old CZ 550/602 African Safari in .375 H&H.

 

[rumblefish]

My latest, an old CZ 550/602 African Safari in .375 H&H.

I'm looking forward to seeing this.