Everyone knows that the Second World War brought many new developments in the world of weapons and even forced to radically reconsider certain aspects of the conduct of hostilities, as well as changed the view of soldiers' weapons. Precisely due to the fact that the Germans showed the effectiveness of the intermediate cartridge and weapons for it, the idea that lived in the heads of the designers materialized into quite real and effective ammunition. In this article, we will try to get acquainted with the cartridge and the machine gun for it, which were supposed to become the main means of destroying the enemy for the British army, but for a number of reasons not related to the world of weapons in any way, and did not receive distribution.
As you know, Germany was the first to implement the idea of an intermediate cartridge in a more or less serial model, which proved its effectiveness, while the rest of the countries, although they had quite successful developments, still the process of working on the weapon was very slow. After the end of the Second World War, Great Britain, like many other countries, has come to grips with the development of an intermediate cartridge and weapons for it. Looking ahead, it is immediately worth noting that the result was very good, if not excellent for that time.
I think it's worth starting with the ammunition, since it is he who sets the main characteristics of the weapon. After World War II, the British had two ammunition at once, which claimed to be an intermediate cartridge. Their caliber was.270 and.276. Since it was quite costly to develop in parallel, a cartridge with a thicker bullet was chosen, namely a.276 caliber. Subsequently, the caliber of the ammunition was "rounded", and it became known as.280 British, although the actual caliber was 7, 23 mm, the bullet was packed in a 43 mm long sleeve. This is not to say that the development of the ammunition went smoothly, in order to achieve an excellent result, specialists from the Belgian company FN were invited, and even Canadians were involved. In general, they did not disdain any help, and for this reason.
Despite the obvious success that the ammunition expected, one country with a three-letter name was not satisfied with the fact that it was the British cartridge that could become massive, and not the one that is produced by them. At first, the United States flatly refused to accept ammunition with a caliber of less than 7.62, to which the UK decided to try to find a compromise and change its ammunition, adjusting it to the requirements of a picky "ally". There was even an attempt to use the bottom of the T65 cartridge case (7, 62x51), but it was not possible to persuade. In the end, the United Kingdom, in spite of everyone, took its.280 British cartridge into service, and after a short period of time, thanks to pressure from other countries, it removed it from service and switched to the well-known 7, 62x51. It is noteworthy that in the subsequent ammunition 7, 62x51 was considered excessively powerful and 5, 56x45 appeared. But what is even more interesting, the modern 6, 8 Remington, which is rightfully considered much more effective in comparison with 5, 56, is close in its characteristics to the British cartridge. It is clear that a completely successful ammunition was not abandoned and it was produced for the same civilian market in various variations, but the army did not receive it. Here is such a squiggle.
No less interesting was the weapon that was designed for this ammunition. Oddly enough, but the first sample, which was designed, was in the "bullpup" layout, in fact, the fashion for this layout among the British began with it. It was designated as EM2. Weapons were developed under the direction of Edward Kent-Lemon at Anfield. The basis of the weapon was automation with the removal of powder gases from the barrel with a long piston stroke. The barrel bore was locked before firing with the help of two lugs diverging to the sides, which came into engagement with the receiver of the weapon. Locking occurred due to the fact that inside the bolt, after it stopped in the forward position, the trigger mechanism continued to move under the influence of the return spring. It was he who put forward the locking stops. When fired, the piston first pulled the trigger back, the stops were removed, and after that the bolt itself began to move. This is not to say that the system is new and revolutionary, but quite interesting. Such an automation system, when the firing trigger was placed in the hollow body of the shutter, contributed to the high reliability of the weapon in case of contamination, since dirt simply could not penetrate inside, respectively, the reliability of the device was high enough with a proper approach to production, which is already a "plus" for this sample …
In addition to the automation system, an interesting point in the weapon can also be considered the fact that the main sight was a low-magnification telescopic sight, although along with it there were also open sights, which were "just in case."
The total length of the weapon was 889 millimeters with a barrel length of 623 millimeters. The weight of the apparatus was equal to 3.4 kilograms. The weapon was fed from magazines with a capacity of 20 rounds, which were spat out at a speed of 600 rounds per minute. Effective fire could be fired at distances up to 650 meters.
Based on the foregoing, we can say with confidence that not only we had gunsmiths who were ahead of their time, and not only we had really good and effective samples that were simply buried. However, in this case it may even be good.
