THE SMITH GUN

As my friends well know, I have long been interested in invasions of Britain, and especially the story of 1940 and Operation SEA LION (Fall Seelöwe). Interested too when a recent BBC 'Antiques Roadshow' asked their military specialist what rare item he would most dearly like to discover. His answer: the Smith Gun.

In recent months I have tracked down two survivors of this rare weapon: one at the Imperial War Museum's Fort Nelson in Portsmouth; the other in the National Army Museum, Chelsea.
 

This remarkable innovation was designed by the director of a toy company for the defence of the British realm. The regular army would have nothing to do with it, but the Local Defence Volunteers (later 'Home Guard') thought it was wonderful. The most remarkable feature of this unusual weapon was the way of getting it into action. turned on its side, one of the large disc wheels became the base; the other the roof. The smoothbore barrel traversed around the axle. The gun could be towed behind a motor-cycle, though the placard warned: 'THIS SIDE UP - SPEED NOT TO EXCEED 20 M.P.H.'

 

2011 ABF TOUR

 Every year I support 'ABF The Soldiers' Charity' (formerly the 'Army Benevolent Fund') by volunteering to lead a battlefield tour. In 2011 we decided to stay in Britain. And whyever not, since the country is rich in battlefields! This year's tour covered 'Secret War'.

Yes, they really did!



First we visited Chicksands, Britain's Defence Intelligence and Security Centre (DISC). Within this high-security establishment are both the Intelligence Corps Museum and the Medmenham Collection. As a member of the Medmenham Club, I was pleased and proud to show our tour members this collection of aerial photo reconnaissance artefacts. The exhibits range from 19th Century balloons and kites to modern imagery.

Of particular interest is the unque 'Wild' (pronounced 'villt'). In 1940, Britain had only one working Wild-A5, the sole machine capable of extracting vital information from high-flying Spitfire sorties. So, a further two machines were acquired from Switzerland, smuggled through Germany to Sweden, dismantled, and flown to Britain in Mosquitos. On one of the last trips, the aircraft was almost bounced by a German fighter and very nearly needed to dump the bomb-bay cargo, including the engineer!



WILD A-5



Next stop Duxford. There is so much to see there, it is no surprise that two-day tickets are increasingly popular. As an Army group we started at the Land Warfare Hall.

Chrysler A57 Multibank 445 hp (Sherman M4A4)



Sturmgeschütz III



But of course as an active airfield the main theme of Duxford is aviation-related.

Lastly we spent a full day at Bletchley Park, 'Station X'. Here the German codes were famously broken, and radio intelligence intercepted by the 'Y Stations' (including Chicksands) interpreted. The 'Bombe' machine broke the ENIGMA code with its 156 million, million, million variations; and 'Colossus', the world's first semi-programmable computer broke the output of the high-level Lorentz coding machine. Rebuilt and functioning, Colossus can be viewed today, its hundreds of valves glowing and its paper tapes spinning around at 30 miles-per-hour! Here, the war was shortened by, quite possibly, a full two years.

the story of Panzer IV no. 535

The front and back jacket illustrations of my latest book depict a wrecked Panzer IV of 5. Kompanie, 3. Panzerregiment. I have today posted some information about that tank in the section of my website devoted to 'Over the Battlefield Operation BLUECOAT'.

Download a Chapter

To accompany a talk given at The Tank Museum, Bovington, on 27 January, I am making available a download of the chapter on which it was based. This is a brief study of German armour tactics in Normandy. 

The piece is actually a draft preview of an Appendix to the forthcoming fourth volume in the 'Over the Battlefield' series: working title:

 'TIGERS AND DESERT RATS IN NORMANDY'

For a limited period, this chapter will be freely available on the Dowloads page of my website.

If you have any comments, please feel free to use the 'contact Ian' facility on the website.

DANESFIELD

I have just added a short piece about my recent visit to the Second World War A.C.I.U. at Danesfield to my website. It's under 'News'. If you would like any more info on the subject, please feel free to ask!

Happy Christmas.

Ian

December update

An American guest arrives at Southampton and I drive across the country to welcome him for a few days visit to England.

Where to start? Well, how about showing a vistor from a country a couple of centuries old... something built 4,000 years ago!

PS Also on my website I have recorded a visit to the British Army Small Arms Collection.

OCTOBER UPDATE

SORRY to have been quiet for so long. A lot has been happening, and I shall review very quickly. July saw our Silver Wedding Anniversary. Joy would have liked to go to Mauritius but in line with the current Age of Austerity the Family Finances stretched as far as the Lake District. The Queens Head Hotel in Troutbeck is very highly recommended, and we enjoyed a circular walk around Ambleside and back over Wansfell Pike, with fantastic views the length of Lake Windermere.

As plans for my next book, the fourth Over the Battlefield, come together, I travel around gathering material and information. A trip to Shrewsbury to interview a former officer of the County of London Yeomanry (there's a clue!) permitted a brief march around the 1403 battlefield - it is well signposted with good paths.

Incidentally, if you would like a good book on British battles, including Shrewsbury, FREE!, just go to:

http://books.google.co.uk/books

and look for Brook, 'Fields of Battle'.

TARA: microfilm reader and monitors.

Next essential stage in the project was a long-awaited return to TARA - The Aerial Reconaissance Archives. No longer of course at Keele but residing at RCAHMS in Edinburgh. It's a long way from Cheshire, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to spend three full days trawling through sortie plots and extracting aerial images of various bits of the Normandy battlefields.


And now, one more long journey to yet another archive before I finalize my plans for the forthcoming volume. This time south, to Kew. Watch this space.