Lets go to see a lot of guns-Hundreds of them

[Vikram]

Friends,

It has been sometime since we had paid visit to a place of interest to us gun lovers. What we have here is the mother of all gun rooms as you will find out shortly. So far, I have presented you only the sporting arms dimension of England. Now, let me take you through a tour of the London Imperial War Museum.
http://www.iwm.org.uk/



Sanguinary as war always is, history of it is nevertheless fascinating. This museum houses preserves and presents war in all its totality and not just guns and armaments. However, there were sections, such as the Holocaust section, where I could not use my camera.

I have had these pictures, hundreds of them, for some time. I have been lazy to put them up. Without wasting too much time, let’s begin the tour. There will be too many of them but worth watching.

Origin of World War-I- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria assassinated in Serbia




War machinery-


War is on-





Indian Sepoy-











Trench Warfare







Is this the largest Mauser actioned rifle you have seen? For me,it is. The Mauser 13mm TuF Gewehr!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauser_1918_TuF_Gewehr






The Partisan’s explosives-Molotov Cocktail et al.


For the Knives men!




It’s not only humans that fought the war!



Tirpitz the Pig-saved from a German ship that became a Mascot for the British!


I know,I know that you are chafing at the bit asking where the guns are.






Belgian FN-Browning 9mm automatic carbine and 12 bore American Iver Johnson “Champion”used by Irish Volunteers during the Easter Raising of Dublin in 1916.








The Polish 7.92 Wz35 Anti-tank rifle. I honestly doubt if they had any success against tank armour.

















Handguns:

9mm Model 1912 Steyr automatic pistol made by Austria-Hungary for the Romanian Army



You have no idea how big is this .44 Smith&Wesson revolver -Made in Germany in the 1870’s for the Russian Imperial Army.The bottom one is the 9mm Belgian Browning 1903 automatic made for the Russian imperial army.







A rather tasteful .45 Colt automatic of a US serviceman










Machineguns:

The British .303 Maxim Machine Gun Mark-III. Guns like these ushered in the Trench warfare deadlock which made charging en masse against enemy positions made prohibitively costly in terms of human lives.










The Big Stuff-





Submarines!























A Rolls-Royce Merlin mark25 aircraft engine:




Field Marshall 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein ‘s uniform and medals ,pistol, sword etc.



The star of the show. T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, and his passion that ultimately took his life- His Brough Superior SS100 Motorcycle. He owned seven such motorcycles.




Lost resort of a coward. Cyanide capsule of Nazi SS members.


WW-desert cruiser.-Can you believe it that they crossed deserts with those machines?



However, the most curious of them all, for me, was this.


Yes, that is a Cogswell Harrison 8Bore SXS that some British Airmen used to shoot incoming German flights. Well, it was during World War-I. I wonder if they have some one to shout “Pull”. Some wildfowling practice must have done some good. LOL.

End of War:





Exhausted but utterly satisfied, I step out of the museum only to be greeted by this par of humongous 15” British Naval guns. Each weighed a staggering 102 tons, fired an 876 kg shell onto a distance of nearly 30 Km!






As I rush towards the Vauxhall tube station, I spot this wittily beckoning board


Much as I was tempted to rest a while and have cold refreshing, non-alcoholic, beverage, I had to rush as I had a train to catch out of London.

If you can’t go to London to see the museum, don’t worry, there is nothing that I haven’t covered in this piece except the London Blitz-bunker room experience. A big stalwart of a man who looks like a bouncer and talks in Cockney (put-up I suspect) takes you through that experience while the German Luftwaffe tries pound your bunker. You can feel the floor shudder beneath your feet.


Hope you enjoyed it.

Best-
Vikram

[archer]

Amazing experience. Thankyou Vikram.

Regards,

Parag

[jashwantsinh]

Good one..really much informative..

Regards,

[hvj1]

Thanks Vikram

[sa_ali]

Lovely,

[sudhaiob]

wow!
sudhaiob

[Vassili Zaitsev]

Vikram.......kudos to you and amazing tour !!!! Wish to visit the same ..

[xl_target]

Wow! Great job Vikram!
Thanks for the tour.

[herb]

Wow! Thanks for sharing. Interesting motorcycle?

Herb

[MoA]

One of these days... I will drum up the motivation to go there. Much rather visit Hendon, if it stops being so damn cold.

[Vikram]

Thanks,gentlemen.Pleasure to share.

Wow! Thanks for sharing. Interesting motorcycle?

Herb

It's a Brough Superior SS100.Considered to be the Rolls-Royce of its day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brough_Superior

Lawrence got killed while driving the one you see in the picture.He had seven of them.

MoA, it is really worth visiting. It can be done in a few hours.

Next time,if I could, I will do Leeds armoury. I visited it once briefly but unfortunately did not have my camera at that time.

Best-
Vikram

[Sakobav]

Thanks like always a great write up ...is Monty's pistol a Colt ?

best

[Vikram]

is Monty's pistol a Colt ?

It looks to me a Browning 9mm 1903.

Best-
Vikram

[timmy]

Vikram, thanks so much for posting these pictures! I went through the Imperial War Museum in 1994, and many of the pictures are recognizable even now. What I also remember was the cockpit section from Monty's bomber/transport plane (I think it was a Halifax), the mock-up of the Mosquito bomber that was lots of fun (despite its crude appearance) and the mock up of a WW2 London air raid shelter. But the most memorable thing for me was one of the engines from Rudolf Hess's Messerschmidt 110 that crashed in Scotland. This is a real piece of history, since there are still so many questions about that whole event. The engine was sitting on the floor and I could put my hand on it -- a real piece of history.

Since I didn't take any pictures, yours have made a little record for me.

One thing I noticed was the top receiver view of a Mosin Nagant and a M95 Winchester lever made for the Tsarist regime during WW1.

Another was the Polish 7.92 Wz35 Anti-tank rifle. Don't be too quick to judge this, since its effectiveness was made obsolete by the rapid development of tanks during WW2, and what we've come to associate with the idea of tanks is quite different from what was famously used by the Nazis in their original "Blitzkrieg" at the beginning of the war. They were not using Tiger and PAnther tanks -- the early ones mounted machine guns and small cannon, and in fact the Nazis made a lot of use of Czech tanks captured after the Munich "Peace Agreement" made famous by Neville Chamberlain.

These tanks had nothing like the armor of tanks later deployed in the war. Earlier in your pictures, there is one of a Mauser antitank rifle from WW1. The Germans fielded ~50 caliber bolt action antitank guns in WW1, which were upscaled versions of Mauser bolt actions rifles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13.2_mm_Ri ... k_(Mauser)

The British developed the famous Boys antitank rifle that was used during WW2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_anti-tank_rifle

Both of these rifles have been acquired and used by folks looking to build .50 BMG long range hunting rifles.

The Polish version of the antitank rifle is outlined here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kb_ppanc_wz.35

You should note that the cartridge used is essentially a .50 caliber case, necked down to take an 8mm bullet. Also note the muzzle velocity, which is faster than the 220 Swift!

I first became interested in this weapon when I read about it in the book The Polish Campaign 1939 by Steven Zaloga and Victor Madej. (Zaloga has become a military author of some repute.) Here's the paragraph about the wz. 35 (wz is the abbreviation for wzór, meaning "model"):

One of the most secret weapons developed in Poland was the 7.92mm Kb ppanc wz.35 "Ur" antitank rifle. Tis rifle was remarkable both for its light weight and for its excellent antitank performance. It was capable of penetrating 33mm of armor at one hundred meters, enabling it to penetrate most German tanks of the period. This was made possible by a revolutionary tungsten-carbide-core SC round which was later successfully copied by the Germans for tank rounds. A total of about 3500 were produced before the war, with 92 per infantry division and 66 to 78 per cavalry brigade. The rifles were kept sealed until mobilization, with stamps indicating "Rifles for Uruguay" on the boxes, hence the Ur name. They were not issued until the war's outbreak, but this did not hamper their use, since they worked like any standard bolt-action rifle. They proved very effective in 1939.

Now, immediately you might notice that Zaloga and Madej mention a tungsten core "SC" projectile, while the Wiki article mentions a "DS" projectile without tungsten. Here's another article with a little additional information:

http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/foreign/hem2 ... i/Wz35.htm

I don't know how to square away the conflicting information here; the Wiki seems to be well-referenced (as is the Wiki on the cartridge, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.92_DS). On the other hand, this interesting article: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/ATRart.htm also agrees with Zaloga and Madej, regarding the use of tungsten in the bullet.

Regardless, tungsten or not, the wz. 35 was pretty much state of the art in the day it was developed. It used a cartridge case capacity that was similar to the ~.50 caliber antitank weapons of the time (which the British continued to use well into the war), but its innovation was the use of a smaller caliber, ultra-high velocity bullet.

This little bit of babbling is quite tangental to the Imperial War Museum, but as this is a gun board that deals with all sorts of firearms issues, I thought that the digression was warranted.

How I'd love to go through that place again!

[Vikram]

Another was the Polish 7.92 Wz35 Anti-tank rifle. Don't be too quick to judge !

Tim,

That's worth it weight in gold."Judge not a book by its cover" . I stood there and said "No way that;s going to knock of tanks". And the guy sagely nodded in agreement and uttered "Naaaah".LOL.

Well, one lives and learns and thanks for the edification re the Polish tank buster. Very interesting.

Please be kind enough to pick any item of interest and share your observations and views whenever it is convenient to you.

I also wish Cottagecheese is here to share his views.He is still with us,BTW, but a bit distanced due to lack of Internet.

Best-
Vikram