Another relic of the British empire

[old tanker]

Smith & Wesson shipped a good number of revolvers to the Commonwealth. Here is a reasonably early gun, serial 881544 would suggest late 1941 production. Marked "UNITED STATES PROPERTY" would indicate it is a Lend-Lease gun. The proofs are Australian and it underwent "Factory Thorough Repair" in 1954. (The cartridges shown are loaded with the NEI #169A bullet and 2 grains of Bullseye which is reputed to duplicate the .380 MkI)

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Information

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[browningautorifle]

A nice clean example of an earlier model that had the earlier pattern grip scales. Those were replaces with plain slabs later... Nice revolver.

[Peter Laidler]

Come on old tanker, let's have a look at a large pic of your avatar

[old tanker]

Come on old tanker, let's have a look at a large pic of your avatar

This picture is from February of 1970, a maintenance day at Tay Ninh base camp. I was a twenty year old Staff Sergeant tank commander. An extra mount for an M2 caliber .50 is visible at the loader's hatch. My own .50 was mounted outside the cupola on a flex mount, another very common modification made to the M48A3. You can see the misbegotten M73 coax on top of the ammo boxes on the left fender. Proof, that given enough money, Springfield Arsenal could build a sorrier, more unreliable machinegun than the French Chauchat.

[browningautorifle]

You can see the misbegotten M73

I saw that right off, never had the chance to handle one though. My thing was the 1919A4...guess I didn't miss much.

I remember when the Turk army imported a mass of M48's to Nicosia Cyprus, 1980 I think it was. We listened to them unloading them for hours back behind their lines. Never did see them after that.

[old tanker]

I saw that right off, never had the chance to handle one though. My thing was the 1919A4...guess I didn't miss much.

I remember when the Turk army imported a mass of M48's to Nicosia Cyprus, 1980 I think it was. We listened to them unloading them for hours back behind their lines. Never did see them after that.

The M48A2C's I started out on still had the M37 Browning which was that last version of the M1919 series the US Army used. Rather than convert them to 7.62 NATO, the wonks in Ordnance inflicted the M73 on us. One of the biggest flaws was the lousy attachment between the receiver and the barrel jacket. It was only made worse subjected to the bouncing around it got when the tank was in motion. The final insult came when thirty years later they finally relented and adopted the M240 for tanks. Soldiers were not supposed to realize that Ordnance had rejected the MAG in 1958. The current crop of troopers do not even realize that 240 is a belt fed evolution of your namesake, the Browning Automatic Rifle.

[browningautorifle]

I'm aware of a great deal of that...for instance I've owned three BARs, used the M240 in the CDN army for couple decades as the C6, and used the 1919A4 in the 7.62 role. You were lucky not to have had to deal with that. After the simple(relatively) M1919A4, changing a few parts and calling the same gun a 7.62 would have caused you to drink. Later when we received the MAG for CDN service and old soldier friend of mine remarked "Where was this stuff when we WANTED to do this!!?" He was right of course, user friendly equipment makes things better when times get rough. Saves lives too...

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Ah, yes; "local modifications"!

I had the dubious honour of doing the "intro" course when somebody decided to "upgrade" the NEW "Fire Support Vehicle" version of the much-abused M-113 in Oz service.

The first version had been to slap a turret from an obsolete Saladin Armored car, on TOP of a 113 carrier and call it "the Beast". It actually worked, but it was too heavy to "swim", except in a downwards direction. There were still a few floating, (or not, as the case may be), around in the late 1970's.

Some years later, well after the Brits fielded the "Scorpion" series of light AFVs, some bozo got the urge again; thus the 76mm gun turret of the "new" Scorpion series, grafted onto the unfortunate M-113. As Bullwinkle would say; "This time, fer sure!"

Yes, it was lighter (just) and a bit more "modern" inside, but, as, at the time, Oz armour MGs were Brownings or nothing, there was a lot of "creativity" involved in grafting a .30-cal browning into the mount designed for the MaG-58 / L7.

There was also a great deal of paranoia about leaping into the turret and landing a size eleven on the "Tritium" sight system, which, if broken, required the vehicle be evacuated post-haste; radio-active gas and all that.

The thing was still too top-heavy to swim and was eventually quietly and unceremoniously "disappeared". "Tanks" on the cheap are generally NOT a good idea.

[fjruple]

This picture is from February of 1970, a maintenance day at Tay Ninh base camp. I was a twenty year old Staff Sergeant tank commander. An extra mount for an M2 caliber .50 is visible at the loader's hatch. My own .50 was mounted outside the cupola on a flex mount, another very common modification made to the M48A3. You can see the misbegotten M73 coax on top of the ammo boxes on the left fender. Proof, that given enough money, Springfield Arsenal could build a sorrier, more unreliable machinegun than the French Chauchat.

old tanker-- You are quite right about the M73, it was sorry piece of junk it was so bad they tried ti fix it and re-number it as the M219 which was just bad. I always wonder why the Army ditched the .30 M37 Browning in favor of the M73. The M37 was a great tank co-axial gun.

--fjruple

[Peter Laidler]

When Dolf Goldsmith was writing the Browning MG books, he came to Warminster where we were using up the last of the M1919 guns, ball and blank ammo. So the Armourers there had a LOT of experience on old Brownings - including some that still had the US lend-lease tank number painted on the covers. We'd kept the Brownings when the tanks were disposed of (they all had to be either paid for or disposed of by certified destruction/disposal methods. Firefly's went to Portugal) in order to equip our newer tanks in the future............ but I digress......

Anyway, neither I nor any of those other Armourers have ever heard anyone say anything bad about the 1919 Browning - or probably the M73. Great gun. Another squirt from the oil can usually fixed any fault/stoppage