L1A1 in the Twilight War

[dude_uk]

According to my copy of "The Modern British Army, Terry gander 1988". The L4A4 was not issued to frontline units, but issued to support units (Engineers, Signals, etc). Probably as a section (Squad) LMG.

The GPMG remained the section MG up until the introduction of the lSW. However it seems they still used it as a section weapon in the first Gulf war and the Paras and Marines refused to stop using them as section weapons.

[.45cultist]

Even if civilians can't have the L1A1's, destroying them or M14's, M1911's, etc. seems like a criminal waste of taxes. Can't they be sold, loaned or given as aid. If they must be deactivated, part them out and sell the parts.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Even if civilians can't have the L1A1's, destroying them or M14's, M1911's, etc. seems like a criminal waste of taxes. Can't they be sold, loaned or given as aid. If they must be deactivated, part them out and sell the parts.

Just to increase the sadness factor...
In some cases in Australia, such rifles were dismantled and all the steel parts melted down for scrap, any wood parts were simply burnt. Some other cases involved cutting all the steel parts into small pieces and dumping the results into the ocean.

[CDAT]

Even if civilians can't have the L1A1's, destroying them or M14's, M1911's, etc. seems like a criminal waste of taxes. Can't they be sold, loaned or given as aid. If they must be deactivated, part them out and sell the parts.

Not sure of L1A1 and other non-US weapons. But US weapons (in the US) they for the most part can not sell any weapon or part of said weapon if it is or can be full auto. (like the M14) They also stopped selling pistols not sure if because they sold them all or if new political head. There is the CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program) that sell old us weapons they have sold so many that for the most part they only have M1 grands left to sell.

[James Langham]

According to my copy of "The Modern British Army, Terry gander 1988". The L4A4 was not issued to frontline units, but issued to support units (Engineers, Signals, etc). Probably as a section (Squad) LMG.

The GPMG remained the section MG up until the introduction of the lSW. However it seems they still used it as a section weapon in the first Gulf war and the Paras and Marines refused to stop using them as section weapons.

Worthh noting that for many years the L4 was preferred to the L7 by the Royal Marines for arctic warfare as the mag was more reliable than a belt in the snow.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Worthh noting that for many years the L4 was preferred to the L7 by the Royal Marines for arctic warfare as the mag was more reliable than a belt in the snow.

Interesting! I had read that the RMC preferred the Bren over the Jimpy for artic warfare but the general explanation was that the Bren was better able to cope with artic conditions. However if it's because magazine fed was more reliable than belt-fed then the reason is more that magazine-fed won't drag all the snow/ice/other crap into the feed mechanism rather than the Bren itself was better able to cope with the freezing conditions compared to the Jimpy.

The impression given by the book I read was that the Bren was able to cope with the conditions better than the L7 - that's quite a different situation to the preference for mag over belt!

P.S. For those unfamiliar with British military slang: the MAG58 was produced under licence in the UK as the L7 General Purpose MachineGun AKA GPMG. When said as a word GPMG sounds like "jimpy".

[James Langham2]

I do have a slight advantage here, I was trained on the Been, my mate wrote the Osprey book on it and I have trained the author Dan Abnett how to use it... :-)

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I do have a slight advantage here, I was trained on the Been, my mate wrote the Osprey book on it and I have trained the author Dan Abnett how to use it... :-)

Nice!

That's what I love about this forum, there is such an incredible range of experience & knowledge among the members here that there's always something new to learn

[James Langham]

There is a lovely bit of trivia on the Bren - it ejects downwards meaning when it was used in open topped recce vehicles in WW2 it regularly sent hot brass down the back of the driver's shirt!

Other nice bits of trivia include the fact that if the barrel locking nut wasn't engaged you could end up running down the range carrying just the barrel (less of an issue with the L4 series that was only issued with one barrel).

A belt feed version was submitted in the trials that resulted in the GPMG being adopted.

There was a special 100 round AA mag that was a drum BUT this blocked the sights as it was intended for AA use only.