“The final victory of Germany over England is now only a matter of time. Enemy offensive operations on a large scale are no longer possible. The chief of staff of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht, General Jodl, who wrote these lines on June 30, 1940, was in excellent spirits. France had fallen a week before, and at the beginning of the month, the Anglo-French and Belgian troops barely managed to get their feet off the continent, leaving the Germans their equipment.
Nothing prevented the Third Reich from finally polishing and implementing the plan of Operation Sea Lion to seize Britain. The British people, whose troops after fleeing from Dunkirk were left practically without tanks and artillery, could oppose the Germans with a strong sea and air fleet, as well as unshakable patriotism, a spirit of resistance. In the face of mortal danger, Churchill managed to rally the people, and the nation was ready to fight to the last drop of blood.
On May 14, 1940, Minister of War Anthony Eden, speaking on the radio, called on men between the ages of 16 and 65 to join the newly organized Volunteer Local Self-Defense Units (later the Home Guard). By the end of the month, these units already numbered 300,000 fighters, and soon their number increased to 1.5 million. The most acute problem was the provision of volunteers with weapons, uniforms and equipment. At first, the Homeguardsmen carried on duty in their casual clothes and armed themselves with anything - hunting or sporting guns, or even golf clubs and pitchforks. Realizing that German tanks could not be stopped with agricultural implements, the Ministry of War hastily began to develop and mass produce the simplest weapons.
Smith without Wesson
The homeguard's primary task was to destroy enemy tanks and armored vehicles. Since the Boys' 13, 97-mm anti-tank rifle, which was in service, could no longer fully correspond to the rank of anti-tank rifle, various extravagant designs began to enter the militia.
One of them is a three-inch smooth-bore grenade launcher developed by the Trianco Engineering Company. Its chassis was a two-wheeled carriage, which at the same time served as an armored shield for the calculation: to bring the weapon into a combat position, it was only necessary to overturn it on its side. In order to prevent the Homeguards from confusing and putting their weapons upside down in the heat of battle, the right wheel (it is also a swivel pedestal) was made with a concave bottom, the second, on the contrary, with a convex one. The gun was easily moved by the efforts of two people, but over long distances it was towed by ordinary civil cars or even motorcycles. A self-propelled version on the chassis of the Universal Carrier armored transporter was also developed. Shooting could be conducted with both high-explosive and armor-piercing grenades. The firing range of armor-piercing ammunition was 180 m, high-explosive - 450 m, however, fire on the area could be fired at a distance of up to 600 m, which allowed the dispersion of grenades at such a distance.
Another exotic anti-tank weapon was the Blacker Bombard. Conceived back in 1930 by British Army Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Blacker, the 29-mm "bombard" could fire grenades made on the basis of a two-inch mortar mine - a high-explosive anti-tank weighing 9.1 kg and an anti-personnel fragmentation weighing 6, 35 kg. Black powder was used as a propellant - of course, this was not done from a better life.
The weapon turned out to be bulky (the bombard itself weighed 50 kg and more than 100 kg - the machine for it), with disgusting accuracy (an anti-personnel grenade at the maximum distance could only get into a football field, and when firing at point-blank range, the fragments threatened to hit the calculation of the gun; for that to get into the tank, fire had to be opened from 50-90 m), so it is not surprising that even at homeguard, bombards were treated badly. The commander of the 3rd Battalion of the Wiltshire Militia aptly described the situation: “I was told that 50 of these guns were allocated to my battalion. But I see no way to use them, so they just add to the piles of scrap metal already lying around on the outskirts of Wiltshire villages. " Despite all the problems, 22,000 "bombards" with full ammunition were in service with the Homeguard until 1944 and were even supplied to the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition - for example, in the period 1941-1942, the Red Army ended up with 250 guns of Lieutenant Colonel Blacker.
The hammer as an anti-tank agent
Military Training Manual No. 42 "Tank: Hunt and Destroy" for the militia offered even more exotic ways to disable armored vehicles. For example, it was proposed to use cables, similar to aerofinishers, forcibly stopping aircraft on the deck of an aircraft carrier; such a cable should be attached to the trees.
Another way to stop the vehicle required the well-coordinated work of four people from the Homeguard's tank hunter team. Hidden behind the wall of a house or in the roadside bushes, the hunters waited for the tank to catch up with them. After that, two members of the team ran out of the shelter with a rail at the ready (however, as noted in the manual, instead of a rail, you can also use a cannon, a crowbar, a hook, or just a wooden bar of suitable thickness) and stuck it into the chassis, between the roller and the sloth. After the chassis was jammed, the third number of the crew poured a blanket, which was wrapped around the stuck end of the rail, with gasoline, and the fourth Homeguardian set it all on fire.
The guide also considered plan "B" - in case the militia fails to get either rail or gasoline. According to him, a hammer was enough to disable the tank (it could be replaced with an ax, which was included in the obligatory set of "hunters") and a grenade. With a hammer in one hand and a grenade in the other, the fighter had to wait for the enemy car on a dais (second floor of a building, tree, hill) and, seizing the moment, jump on top of it. Then the homeguard man should have pounded the tower with a hammer and, having waited for the surprised fascist to emerge from the hatch, throw a grenade inside …
Incendiary British
A separate point in the homeguard's defense system was fire - any pyromaniac would be delighted if he could get acquainted with the devices designed to plunge the landed Germans into the depths of a fiery hell.
First, the fire mixture (25% gasoline, 75% diesel fuel) was simply proposed to be poured - by gravity from the slope or using the simplest pumps. It was calculated that 910 liters of fire mixture are required to create a six-minute fire center measuring 0.5 x 1.5 m. Fuel could also be “packed” into barrels, turning them into improvised incendiary landmines. Buried on the road, they were set on fire with an electric detonator.
Soon an improved land mine was developed - it could be camouflaged on the side of the road, and at the right moment the expelling charge sent the burning barrel directly to the convoy of equipment. Subsequently, this land mine was once again modernized: now the fuel flew to the enemy not in a barrel, but in the form of a burning jet pushed out by compressed nitrogen. The roaring column of flame, crossing the road in the blink of an eye, made an indelible impression on the testers - what would have happened to the Germans, it’s scary to even imagine.
However, the British did not limit themselves to landmines alone. In Homeguard, the home-made infantry "Harvey's flamethrower" became widespread. It was a 100-liter tank with a fire mixture and a cylinder with 113 deciliters of compressed air. A crew of two people transported weapons on a specially made iron cart.
To make it easier to carry the flamethrower, the fighters of the 24th Staffordshire Tettenhall Battalion at Homeguard designed a self-propelled version on the chassis of an old Austin 7 car. In theory, the militia was supposed to water the enemy from a distance of 22 m for three minutes, but, most likely, he would simply become a kamikaze, driving into position and exploding.
Finally, the coastal defense system included the widest use of combustible mixtures. So, on the beaches, as well as along the bottom at some distance from the coast, it was planned to lay pipes with valves placed in them at regular intervals. When the landing craft came close to the shore, the valves opened, oil from the pipes floated up and set fire to. It was understood that the German order would not withstand the landing in dense thick smoke and the choking airborne units would fail.
Air defense flamethrowers, meanwhile, were waiting for Luftwaffe aircraft - for example, a heavy stationary version gave out a torch about 30 m high vertically upward. Another heavy, but self-propelled version of an improvised armored car had a slightly smaller vertical flamethrowing range. The Basilisks, homemade weapons of war, which were armored Bedford QL trucks with flamethrowers, were to be on duty as well.
In contrast to the various means of throwing fire, the militia also had a combat water cannon mounted on a Universal Carrier armored personnel carrier. A thick hose supplied to the powerful hydrant behind the shield an almost unlimited amount of "ammunition", which acted almost silently and unobtrusively.
London Improvisation Orchestra
Another problem facing the homeguard was the lack of armored vehicles. Since even the army lacked it, they had to get out on their own.
Across the country, from home garages to huge factories, militias began converting personal vehicles into ersatz armored cars. Basically, the transformation consisted of adding a few sheets of iron to the doors and windows of the family car, as well as installing a light machine gun on the roof. However, where production capabilities allowed, options were born that were more similar to armored cars: with a completely closed armored hull and one or two machine guns in turrets. In some Homeguard battalions, even buses (including double-deckers) and agricultural tractors have undergone alterations and reservations. However, all these machines had extremely dubious combat value, since the hastily made "armor" practically did not protect against bullets and shrapnel, and you could safely forget about driving on the overloaded chassis of old sedans and coupes on rough terrain.
The first industrially manufactured ersatz armored car was the light reconnaissance armored vehicle Beaverette ("Bobrik"). All manufactured armored products were entirely used for the needs of the armed forces, so the body of the Standard Motor Company armored car had to be made of 9 mm thick boiler iron, fixed on a wooden frame. The armament of the open-top vehicle consisted of a 7.71 mm Bren machine gun and a Boys anti-tank rifle.
According to the state, "Biveretta" relied on a crew of three people: a shooter and two drivers (it was believed that the first driver would die as soon as the car entered the battle, so a spare had to be present). In subsequent modifications, the length of the chassis of the vehicle was reduced, the thickness of the "armor" grew to 12 mm, and the hull became completely closed and acquired a turret. A total of 2,800 Beaverts were produced, some of which served in Ireland until the early 1960s.
Heavier "armored vehicles" were built on the basis of trucks. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway company originally solved the problem of the lack of armor plates: a wooden box was mounted on the truck platform, inside which there was another one, but smaller. Pebbles, rubble and small cobblestones were poured into the gap between the walls, which was 152 mm. In the walls of the boxes there were loopholes with steel dampers, and the glass of the cabin was protected by boiler iron. The vehicle, designated Armadillo Mk I, was armed with a machine gun and could withstand machine gun fire. A total of 312 ersatz armored cars were produced.
Armadillo Mk II, 295 copies of which were made on the basis of the three-ton Bedford truck, had an elongated box, as well as protection for the radiator and gas tank. 55 Armadillo Mk III had a shorter box, but were armed with a one and a half pound cannon.
Messers Concrete Ltd took a different path - the old commercial two- and three-axle trucks received reinforced concrete armor that could withstand even an armor-piercing bullet. The machines under the common Bison brand had various shapes of concrete boxes and cab protectors.
In general, fortunately for the militias, none of the described suicidal methods and mechanisms of confronting the Germans in reality was so embodied. Hitler soon attacked the USSR, and he was not up to the landing on British territory.
Bombard Blacker
British Army Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Blacker has developed many exotic weapons. At one time he offered to put into service even … a crossbow. The light mortar-mortar, called the "Blacker bombard", despite all the design flaws, was nevertheless produced in the proper number of copies and entered the regular units of the British militia. The 29-mm bombard could fire several types of grenades, but at the same time it had a monstrous weight (more than 150 kg with a machine tool) and such a dispersion of shells that it was possible to hit the target precisely from a distance of no more than 40-50 m. The first bombards were made in the end of 1941, and by July 1942, there were more than 22,000 guns in the units. The commanders and soldiers did not like the clumsy mortar, in every possible way refused to use it, and even secretly sold the incoming bombards for metal.
Serial bottle thrower
The militia used completely insane designs - for example, the Northover projector firearm bottle thrower was made in the amount of 18,919 pieces. Like all homeguard weapons, the bottle thrower was extremely simple and consisted of a barrel-pipe with a bolt. The whole set cost £ 10 (about $ 38) - despite the fact that the Thompson submachine gun then cost more than $ 200!
The gun was fired with a bottle number 76 (caliber 63, 5 mm, half a kilo in weight) with white phosphorus, which burns at temperatures above 800 ° C and ignites on contact with air. The effective firing range was 91 m, the maximum - 274 m. Due to its low weight (27, 2 kg), the Northover projector was usually placed on motorcycle cradles or even garden wheelbarrows. The main purpose of the crew was tanks, but judging by some photographs, the Homeguards were going to fire from a gun and at low-flying aircraft …
