D-Day 80th Anniversary Special, Part 1: Paratroopers, with firearms expert Jonathan Ferguson.

The tremendous offensive was hard fought. The Nazis knew that each hour that passed diminished their chances of throwing the Allies back into the sea, but the American, British and Canadian troops were advancing steadily on the soil of France. The

paratroopers

received last-minute instructions before undertake the Coast Invasion 100 miles across the English Channel. These are the heroes who made the first contact with the enemy. Hey guys Jonathan, welcome back to something a little different for you. This time we'll be looking at some of the weapons present on D-Day. Well, we're doing this in collaboration with our friends at the Imperial War Museum and we'll be delivering them to you later, so let's first use the humble Sten pistol, but with a bit of a twist. turn so that the Sten has been developed as a bit of a rambunctious, the last type of weapon, um with the brand one, although it still had wooden furniture, more traditional, that type of more traditional feature, um, but it was a steel tube very cheap, um, a simple recoil mechanism with just a gap block with a spring. behind him, picking up the bullet, slamming it into the chamber and firing it, no, no bells and whistles, although it had the shift lever, the selector, um, um, for semi-automatic, because British Doctrine said this is a carbine automatic that you are supposed to fire in one shot.

First shots that then got cheaper and cheaper, uh, the Mark I, the most prolific variant, no wood, no peeling down, no pistol grip, no real grip on the front, you just hold on to the heat shield and You hope for the best, um. The Mark III was more of an offshoot made by a toy company, um, but there was a super cheap version of the Mark I where the body wasn't even a stretched tube, it was just a wrapped piece of sheet steel and that was too much. cheap and we had to reduce it. The other problem is quality control.

You're mass producing these things on a production line without a qualified well, not necessarily with a qualified workforce. They are doing the best they can, but some things. coming out of the factory in less than ideal conditions and all of this along with a couple of inherent design flaws which I'll get to leads to a terrible reputation in some quarters, some being because the infantry comes from beautiful blued steel and Walnut BRS and some enfields is because this is not the best, but in 1944, the allies are about to return to Europe, preparing for D-Day, Sten gets an injection in the arm and we get this Gucci. variant of the Sten, the mark five uh, in fact we can see in the magazine how the houses there mark five Roman numerals still at this point, after the war it becomes an Arabic numeral, so you will see the mark five noted since both They end up much better overall.

You can see right away that this one, I think, has been refinished after the war, but it's pretty indicative, so we have a phosphating and then a nice hard black paint finish on the top, whereas the STS were just phosphated and shipped Through the door. there's that pistol grip that I mentioned, we've got a nice number four rifle style stock complete with a trap for a cleaning kit so that your infantry are more familiar when they come in as recruits, interchangeably between things like the rifle, the Bren. and the Sten are not stuck with a simple tubular or skeletal metal stock, it is much more comfortable to lower the cheek for more accurate shooting.

We also have additional furniture on the front, this Thompson style gangster grip that is not on the drawing is not on the official drawing for the Mark 5 stand, which is a little curious, it is from late '43 um, but when these things go into service in '44, it's there and it disappears again in '45, but by D-Day this. The grip is absolutely there now, the photos and the images, you'll see they're holding them like this, ready to pop up and shoot, which seems to be a hangover from the old Mark I and Mark III, where they decided this.

It wasn't

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icularly conducive to a great shot, it has more to do with it being uncomfortable to carry with the barrel down, I think when holding the heat shield, um, and the same goes for that grip, which is why they carry it like that, I which means that if we have to respond quickly to an enemy, this is how they are going to shoot him too, whether from the Assault position down here, we see it done or if they take him up to the shoulder, to shoot more accurately moving forward again, we have The number four rifle again has a front sight style, a much thinner blade than the huge triangular front sight of the previous St, so in theory it is a little more accurate, but we still have a single aperture hole in the back and has a number four rifle style.

There's also a front sight protector block, so it's like they're trying to fuse the two weapons in some way and that extends to the bayonet, which is literally a number four Mark I bayonet for the number four rifle. It works the same way. we have a snap closure that twists in and out and it's a simple hardened steel spout. Now the Sten Mark 2 had a bayonet and no one seems to have used it, while photos and images from D-Day onwards see these bayonet attacks quite frequently now is that due to going on the offensive, possibly it is because the bayonet number four is a lot better than the MK 2 St bayonet probably that too um so you'll see this setup quite a bit and we even have this um sling of this in this example which is nice now although most troops heading into the D-Day would have been equipped if they had a St in the first place, so their sections lead their

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ist troops.

I've been hanging out with Mark 2 maybe even Mark iiii STS um standard stuff, but you're certainly the parat regiment um probably other more elite units that were getting new Gucci Mark 5 stands to go to war so we know that the sixth Airborne had them because there's a really nice photo in the iwm archive of a bunch of guys holding them uh and the different Paras unit I think later in the arnum photo that shows the same weapons that they must have thrown with those and also um actually a colleague identified for me, thanks Matthew um Companies B and D of the 2nd Ox Oxford Battalion and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were also marked five STS, so if you're dropping with your even kit, which means that the cylinder head is off and St stored in your mag out kit. remove the cloth and the weapon strapped to your chest so that it doesn't stick out anywhere and don't get snagged, or if you are conventional infantry and you are going to enter a glider and pile up, you will most likely benefit from a good compact weapon like the Sten and, frankly, this is the best of the Sten, of course, whoever is using the March 5 STS on D-Day and the Paras, it's hard to underestimate the importance of that unit, you know.

The phrase spearhead is a little cliché, but they really were, you know, these are the best ones you have available to put them up to Behind Enemy Lines and they should have automatic firepower, you know? They're landing with other weapons, they're going to retrieve those weapons from wherever they land, but this means that they have on them, um actually, despite all the complaints, a very good, decently reliable, decently accurate, um and Close Quarters weapon. that was actually a great combination, okay, next in our D-Day weapons we have the M1 A1, this

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here very well, a carbine, very briefly, the M1 carbine, uh, introduced as what is later known as a personal defense weapon, that is, a weapon for officers and for troops who are not necessarily expected to fight much on the front lines um very capable if they need it if it's artillery and/or machine guns or something like that they're being invaded uh an officer who can enter between them with This with his men if necessary with something that is a middle ground between a famous 1911 A1 pistol and the M1 Garand um or the 1903 Springfield in some cases, full power R rifles, for what are heavy, long, cumbersome but powerful and accurate, is what the The infantryman needs The rifleman needs, if you are not front line infantry, something super short, light and practical was ideal, and thus the M1 was born and six million of those things became one of the most prolific weapons of World War II, much more common than the Thompson we know and love from all over pop culture, then it was realized in '43 that if the Allies returned and they were fighting the Nazis, a version for

paratroopers

would be needed, and then what do they do well?

Conventional rifle or shotgun style wrist and wooden stock. Cho, that wasn't literally converted, as far as I know they were made new, but the design is a conversion. Cut that graft into a wooden pistol grip so you still have something to hold on to and possibly for the Close Quarter battle, this is mainly so you also get a bit more control and then your wooden stock is replaced by a simple steel wire, a metal plate on this side that holds a bit of cleaning. oil bottle, then this one is also intact which is really nice and on this side it doesn't really replicate the nice comfortable wooden stock but a leather lining so your face doesn't freeze in extremely cold weather or whatever be, and a pivoting buttplate.

We'll see why in a moment it sits against a spring-loaded cast metal buttplate and snaps together at the top and bottom. Oh, there's also a sling loop on the bottom because you've lost the ability to mount the sling. the to the wooden stock um all of the above is the same as the M1 carbine there is a lot of good information about the M1 available so you can dive in if you want we are focused on the parachute rifle or carbine um However, I must mention the caliber, so which is a 30 carbine that is designed for this weapon and is essentially a three inch Magnum pistol cartridge, a relatively small ball compared to a Thompson, anyway, it travels at a pretty old speed of knots, but no. a full power rifle cartridge by any stretch of the imagination, but very very controllable for Rapid Fire unlike the Mark 5 Sten, it is not a submachine gun, the M2 would be automatic, but the M1 and M1 A1 are semi-automatic.

It's fast shooting with this thing, so to end up on the butts, this may not be ideal. Most folding stocks have a latch to unlock them. This is just to overcome the resistance. There is actually a spring plunger installed in this area and if you can see it. but it relies on distorting the steel wire until it explodes, bends down and pushes two small protrusions out of the notches on the bottom of the grip enough that it can then bend and that's where a folding butt pad comes in where you simply The wooden stock pushes it out, it doesn't lock, uh, closed like most modern folding stocks do, it just stays there and you can see a groove forming in the stock, sorry, on the power stock. where this thing doesn't really deploy like it should and just sits there, but like a skydiver with this stuffed against your gear strapped to your chest, the thing stays short enough to not snag on anything. as you come out and then you land, you grab the rifle and if you're in a real emergency, you can grab it here and fire off some shots from a sort of impact reaction shot.

Spot shot, but in all reasonable scenarios. you grab the stock, deploy it, put it in order and fire it correctly, so in some ways it's a real obstacle. um, I just think they were only available for a few months to convert the design into a parachute rifle with the folding stock, so it was never going to be perfect, but it was what was needed on D-Day, when American paratroopers did, limited alternatives. At that point you know that the Thompson has already been redesigned without a removable stock and weighs an enormous amount, so the M1 was a great choice, but if you jumped in with a conventional M1, it could catch on B, you'll probably break it in half .

In a collection I worked with previously, we actually had one that someone had jumped out of a plane in perfectly serviceable condition. Landed on it, split it in half, and performed a field repair with some iron straps, so the M1 A1 was the way to go. A little more parachute gear. It's not actually a gun, but it's been mistaken for a gun in a movie. Normally I don't talk about things that aren't related to guns or

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, but this little device here in this nice little box, this is an example of modern production of this article is actually firearm-adjacent thanks to a well-known movie that I'll come back to in a moment, strangely enough, I came across one of these for the first time that I can remember, in person, on vacation in a museum from the air and they had a Dakota plane with the real D-Day, there is a flyable D-Day, a tested plane.

He flew on D-Day. I know about the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Friends of ours and their plane is also associated with both painted in D-Day stripes. Anyway, one of these washanging from the ladder and the guide quite excellent. There, this is at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum in Florida, near Cape Canaveral, and the excellent guide there, John Paati, who is a Vietnam veteran attack pilot involved in all kinds of amazing things. He showed us the plane and he showed me. The um, the clicker and this is something like that, went over my head. I don't think I would have heard it very, very loud.

I don't know if you can tell through the microphones, but this started out as a sort of children's toy um and was co-opted for D-Day as a sort of Challenge and Response Code system among paratroopers, so US Airborne 80c Airborne sure um 10 first. I think possibly everyone else had one of these or as many as they could cast. had them and you would click as a challenge if you heard someone in the brush or something and the correct answer was and then you knew that was a friend, not a foe because these guys are sometimes scattered around Miles because depending on the speed of the aircraft when they are released on their parachutes.

The other way to do it, of course, was to shout or whisper or whatever code word depending on the situation, but this was the primary means of doing it, now on D-Day. Why are you talking about this? This guy handles weapons well. There's a scene in The Longest Day released in 1962. Some of you are already remembering this, I'm sure, and the skydiver clicks on his challenge and receives a click created by a rather suspicious-sounding fly. Double click back, but it's pretty obvious that some kind of gun bolt is operating combined with the sound of the same thing they used to make the Foley for the clicker, which was probably the clicker itself, um, and then he, because it's in the movie and it's not. the audience doesn't realize this and very sadly the character is shot a little unconvincingly in that scene with clicks and clicks and what happened is that the German soldier who heard the challenge click responded with two operations of his k98k vault, which makes no sense. not at all, uh, maybe if I had lifted the bolt and then tapped it to make some kind of click, but it would still sound different than this um no, no bolt action rifle sounds like that um, so it's indicative of the confusion that It must have existed during the day, e

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ly at night, but to be honest, it's a pointless Hollywood scene, but tie this into a rifle, which means I can talk to you about it.

Thank you all so much for watching this episode as always. visit our website, our traditional museums here in the UK, definitely check out our partners, uh, history of weapons and war, so you can see our content there ad-free, which is good, it's all the same content ours and a number of Partners who are friends, really people we've been working with for years in different ways, who cover weapons and war well in a very interesting way, so see if that's something you would like to do register. There is also our Royal Armor membership program. which gives you several benefits including behind-the-scenes access of different types, so please visit the website again to learn more about it.

That's the end of part one, we have a full second part coming up on the weapons of D-Day and I hope you'll join us next week here at Fort Nelson, at the top of the downhill passes, our D-Day display D, a history of ports that brings to life memories and stories of what happened during that time. There are 10 silhouettes scattered throughout the fall. It depicts a different individual who was an eyewitness or involved with D-Day and World War II. I feel privileged that Fort Nelson has decided to use my father as part of this exhibition. It is vitally important to commemorate D-Day because of the significance it had in World War II and the sheer size of the operation is something that should never be forgotten.

We really look forward to welcoming you here in Fort Nelson.