Another possibly useless Bren Accessory

[boltaction]

I bought this many years ago at an auction in Saskatoon for about $45, and it wasn't until several years later when I got a copy of "The Bren Gun Saga" and my first Mk I Bren that I realized what it was. I haven't seen another one, but then I haven't looked. I don't know how common these are, but imagine that not a huge number survived. It's a fussy little piece......

Ed

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[Kev G]

Ed nice FLS,and thanks for adding another to the list.
Yours is the first in the 13 range.
Register is now updated -
CI - 16317
D - 16125
RL - 15920
- 15235 Warminster
CS - 15020
- 13653 ca
CH - 11525
RB - 11132
xx - 10010
NT - 8354
TG - 8239
PB - 7731
RW - 7431
KG - 7382
WW - 7377 (a)
AM - 7323
MB - 6642 (Ca)
JB - 6015
xx - 5819
WW - 3031 (b)
PH - 2951
AK - 2901
AF - 2874
DG - 2643
- 2559 Belgium
- 962 USA

Others at Singleton AUS
Battery Todd FRANCE
Shop in AUS

Anyone else have an FLS not on the list they care to add ?

ATB Kevin

[Peter Laidler]

These fixed line sights are mentioned in some threads of way back. Not exactly a useless bit of kit but almost, nearly a useless bit of kit. It was from the days when the Bren was going to be all things to all men. In fact, reading the early reports, it would appear that the Bren was going to put all other Infantry weapons out of business.............. It was even suggested that provision was to be made for a Bren bayonet and a grenade launcher no less. There was even a role for it in the AA business that we've recently gone over. Alas, while the big boys got on with the big boys toys like the Vickers, the Bren eventually - after a troubled start in battle - settled down to what it did best and excelled at. That of the section level machine gun.

Longest serving bit of kit in the British Army - if you exclude Bedford trucks. Fromn August 1938 until Feb 2002 and then, by default, until 2008

Can anyone out there tell us when the last Lanchesters went from the Australian and Canadian navies. We had some Australian Navy Lanchesters from a submarine in 1969. Any later bids?

[Peter Laidler]

Talking of useless accessories, I wonder if the most useless accessory must have been the spotlight projector. I never met anyone who had ever actually used one. I do know an old technical quartermaster who had several, brand new, still in boxes. He eventuially threw them away and commented to me that '............ what utter rubbish. Whoever thought that they served any use.........? The boxes were certainly useful and I've still got a couple for keeping all of my paperclips and other odds and ends in'
The next most useless bit of kit - magazine loaders! Apparently, if you got the charger loading type, then you could be sure that you got your ammunition in loose boxes of 32. But if you had the loose ammo 'hopper' type of loader issued, you could be sure that your ammo came in - yep, chargers!

The most ironic thing was that right from the start, the time to load a magazine by hand (according to the Army training syllabus called the TOETS (or toe-etts) or Test Of Elementary Training, at XX seconds (if someone could fill us all in with the time please.........) was FASTER than with the magazine loader. Ridiculous or what?

[Brit plumber]

TOETS, now theres one I've not heard in a few years. It astounds me that in the RAF we have people who can't put 30 rounds off 5.56 into a SA80 mag in 60 seconds. Anyone who can't must have the manual dexterity of a fish.

[Patrick Chadwick]

All very good, but sorry, I don't speak Bren.
So perhaps you insiders could enlighten me and a few thousand others who are too shy to speak up.

Just what is this mystery object?


Patrick

[Peter Laidler]

Good question Mr C, well put too! KevG, you're the expert in the 'object', you give em the full details. But very briefly, it was a fixed line sight. Not quite (or even nearly....) a dial sight for indirect fire but a nearly, sort of a baby dial sight. The problem was that it was neither fish nor fowl and didn't really do anything in the horizontal mode that the traversing stops didn't achieve more cheaply. In fact the fixed line sight on the 30 rounds-at-a-time Bren didn't do anything that a 250 rounds at a time fully dial sighted Vickers MMG couldn't do in a more fierce and ferocious way.

Care to expand on that KevG and others

Just a bit of history too. When you hear mention of a 'double dovetail' Bren, these are the very earliest Brens with TWO dovetails on the left hand side. The rear one contained the standard but oh-so-complicated drum type sight while the vacant front dovetail was to house the fixed line sight. But the fixed line sight proved to be frill, if not a complete fraud - and an ever increasingly expensive one. So once we'd had our backsides kicked out of Europe and needed to rationalise, the dial sight AND the housing on the left side of the Bren had to go. Thereafter, they were single dovetail sided or Mk1A Brens - except in Canada, where they were called Mk1M Brens

[Brit plumber]

[Peter Laidler]

THere's the sight fitted to the front dovetail on an early-ish Bren. You set the gun up on the tripod roughly for elevation then roughly for line, then cross levelled it all up with the spirit level, then reset it again, this time accurately for elevation and accurately for line. Then fired 30 rounds in short bursts at the unseen target identified on a map. In the meantime, the big boys further down the line had done all that work with their feared Vickers guns or, if you were lucky and the enemy even UNluckier, with the ferocious 3" mortars. Nowadays of course, you'd call in air support...............

Yep, the Bren fixed line sight is up there with the best of them. Or should that be - with the worst of them? The saving grace of course is that like the magazine loaders, they are now worth a kings ransom

[Patrick Chadwick]

You set the gun up on the tripod roughly for elevation then roughly for line, then cross levelled it all up with the spirit level, then reset it again, this time accurately for elevation and accurately for line.

Well Peter, I am familier with the artillery concept of aiming "over the hill" at something you cannot see, by using something you can see as an offset aiming point. Works best for a very curved trajectory. But a Bren surely, like a rifle, does not have much of a howitzer trajectory at usable ranges (OK, I'll modify that, some of my black powder rifles do have a howitzer-like trajectory!) So unless the enemy is conveniently lying still and unprotected well behind a very slight rise in the ground at an extreme range while you go through this adjustment performance, you can hardly "drop it on them". Or have I missed some kind of military fundamentals here?


Patrick