U.S. Navy WWII ships's small arms compliment

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Found it.

In HMAS Mk lll, page 31

Will try to upload.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

This time, for sure!

[Bob Womack]

Every video I see of guys shooting the Lanchester ends with a big smile.

Bob

[Peter Laidler]

When we sold ships to foreign Navies, they were usually sold as 'with stores' as the Navy says or complete to CES as we Army types would prefer it. Sterling would often get requests for Lanchester spares from the South American Navies who were large scale purchasers of our RN ships and who's Naval format/doctrine was closely allied to ours for some reason. Sterling would supply spare parts while they were still in stock and remanufactured some parts up into the late 60's/early 70's but non interchangeability caused some problems that could be overcome with hand fitting. Eventually they offered to sell Chile (good customers.....) Sterling L2A3's/Mk4's at cost PLUS the equivalent number of Lanchesters. Or something close to that simple formula on the basis that the Lanchesters could go to other nations as refurbished spare parts

Certainly the two big RNZN Cruisers I visited during a bit of a jolly, the Blackpool and Royalist had racks of Lanchesters and a big RAN aircraft carrier docked at Sydney (woolamoolooo as I seem to remember?) had Lanchesters and SMLE's

[Peter Laidler]

Further to BinO's picture, while I was in NZ doing some job somewhere - probably at Devonport - someone gave me 6 or so of those cap bands with simply HMNZS on them, similar to the HMAS shown on Bruce's pic. The man told me that they'd been commissioned as film props in the early 60's for a NZTV documentary regarding the sinking of the Graff Spee when one of the big ships involved was from the NZ Navy. Wish I still had them. Mind you, I expect the RNZN wish they still had those two big cruisers..........

Off the page a bit but......... When I was writing the Sterling book, some of the papers mentioned that a small pro-rata % of Lanchester guns should be manufactured so as to accept the what was described as 'the American rifle bayonet in service' This will have been the P'14/17 bayonet at the time. I have never ever seen one or heard of anyone ever a) having one or b) seen one either including a large importer. I can only assume now that at the time, the guns were for the Army and it's true that initially, large quantities were earmarked for the Army. Presumably by the time production got under way that idea had been kicked into touch. But there's always a chance that an early Mk1 was fitted with a P'14 type extended bayonet standard. It would only be a slightly different, almost indistinguishable sling loop/bayonet standard casting. I'm sure that there is a lot more to be unearthed about them.