Mk4 Butt Plate

[Peter Laidler]

Nice one Tanky........... I remember the shooting team who preferred bullshi....... er........ spit and polish above practicality. They had lovely polyurethane varnished woodwork on their L1A1 rifles and practiced until they were pretty good. In fact one of them mentioned that they were poised to sweep the board of prizes. That is until the day of the big Army competitions at grizzly Bisley. Sadly, it started to drizzle and then rain and these clowns found that after the run-downs, they couldn't hold the gleaming, thick with varnish rifle pistol grips and hanguards. There were bullets going everywhere and they, sadly, came 3rd from last! The OC called in the Training Major for a what Officers call 'an explanation, with the door closed - without coffee............' if you know what that means (yes, I had a few, followed by 'extras............')!

Big chuckles all round and the sad event wasn't even given a mention in the annual Regimental journal. Yep, oil your woodwork and polish your boots

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[peregrinvs]

A quick public note of thanks to KevG who has sorted me out with some Bren spares including a Mk4 buttplate.

I noticed it's marked 'MC'. Is this the mark for Monotype Corporation and did they produce Bren parts after WWII?

Thanks,
Mark

[Peter Laidler]

The outside contractors such as Monotype, BSA and Holland and Holland had their contracts cancelled as soon as the MoS could do so. After all, they were merely sub contractors. Thereafter any like work was given to the Government owned arms factories. Any work still in hand, as you now know with the H&H saga was completed and the remainder costed, paid for and returned to Ordnance or scrapped. You'll read in the little Sten Gun book of what happened in a little press shop who made some stamped, pressed and fabricated parts. At CRD, there followed a thank you letter from the Ministry of Supply and that was about it! The following weeks later the MD called the workforce together and told them that the 20 hour shifts were finishing and that the 'casuals' and the women 'production line' staff were being laid off with no redundancy pay. However, they did have a big party locally, paid for by Climax Rock Drill to celebrate. But they each had to contribute a very small part of their Ration Allowance, in the form of a coupon, to ensure that there was sufficient 'allowance' for food at the the evening dinner/dance. Times were tough!

[peregrinvs]

Apologies for dragging this one up again, but I noticed when I swapped them over that both the Mk2 buttplate and Mk4 buttplate were Monotype marked. Any ideas on whether Monotype made both types of buttplate at once, or did they start making the Mk2 and then change over to the Mk4 later?

Cheers,
Mark

[Kev G]

Monotype and Inglis both started out with the MK2 and then changed over to the MK4 butt plate (LoC) indicate 1943.
AFAIK Lithgow only made the MK4 butt plate.

atb Kevin