BSA-Brilain's Armourer B.S.A By John Waiter "Although its armaments output ranged over a wide field from shell to bomb fuzes to gun car- riages, it was, appropriately enough, small arms which furnished the company's chief con- tributio'n to victory. Indeed, of all the precision weapon's up to a calibre of20 millimetres manu- factured in Britain during the war, no less than 50 per cent [excluding Sten Guns] were pro- duced in B.SA. factories ... And just as in the Great War the company's name became insepa- rably linked with the Lewis machine gun, ·so in the World War it became linked with one gun above all the others it made-the Battle of Brit- ain 0.303 Browning, which, perfected by B.S.A. and Government technicians, was acknowl- edged at the time to be the finest aircraft ma- chine-gun of its calibre in existence ... " Donq- van M. Read, The Other Battle, 1946. ' THE AREA surrounding Birmingham, in the Eng- lish county of Warwickshire, has long been the cen- ter of a metalworking industry. As early as 1538 the. chronicler John Leland reported that, "there be many Smiths in the towne, that used to make knyves and all manner of cutting tools, and many Lorrimers that make bittes, and a great many Naylours, so that a great part of the towne is maintained by Smiths, who have their iron and sea-coale out of Stafford- shire." Arms manufacturing had become a feature of the· area by the 17th century; during the English Civil War, in 1643, the Royalist general Prince Rupert had even sacked part of Birmingham in an attempt Above-Three versions of the BSA Piled Arms trademarks. The central one is the oldest, being registered in. 1880. The "seal" variant was used on advertising literature produced in the 1920s, while the modernistic mark on the right has been used since the early 1970s. WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UK' Above-"t:'hree infantry rifles of the ·1870s. Top to bottom: the Snyder R1fle, P/53, w1th the Mark 3 bolted action· the Mark 2 Martini-Henry; and a Continental European rival the Austrian Werndl, offering a drum-type breech. (Pattern Room Collec- tion, RSAF Enfield Lock.) Right-The actions of the Snider (top), with the Mark 3 bolted breechblock, and the Martini-Henry. tQ halt the flow of arms to the rival Parliamentar- ians, whose cause was generally favored in the town. The Birmingham Proof House still possesses an order dated 15 July 1690 to supply the Board of Ord- nance with 200 "snaphance" muskets each month (they were actually flintlocks), in return for "seven- teen shillings per piece ready money"-the first of many contracts undertaken on behalf of the British government. Traditionally, the Birmingham trade used a Group Contract system, in which gunsmiths who were incapable of handling large-scale orders by themselves simply banded together until they were big enough to acquire the contracts. This system worked effectively for 150 years; by '!815, and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, for example, it has been estimated that the 7,000 men occupied directly in the gun trade were making some 550,000 guns per annum. In addition to guns made to government or- ders-the frequency. of which was governed by con- temporary .political stability-revenue also came ' from the African barter trade and the boom that fol- lowed the European unrest of 1848. The Crimean War (1854-6) .caused 156,000 mili- tary longarms to be ordered from contractors in Bir- mingham, compared with only 75,000 ordered throughout the remainder. of the United Kingdom. However, the Birmingham trade viewed the instal- lation or production machinery in the Royal Small Arms Factory at' Enfield Lock with justifiable con- cern, as the government had clearly bacmpe dissatis- fied with the Group Contract system. Birmingham's Loa.dU'!l Martini Brmh Action.' Martini Brttch Action. (Opm) (C!.ud ond Firtd) Martini Action. (Coclud "''".1'• fir~) WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKA Martini-Metford Artillery Carbine, Mark 1. (Courtesy of lan Hogg.) gunmakers had failed to ensure a steady, efficient large-scale supply of weapons; there had been disas- ters after the first "Gun Trade" contracts had been placed for the P/53 Enfield rifle-muskets, when sev~ eral major cantractors had failed to fulfill their obli- gatiol}.S"and the British government had stepped in to unravel the mess. In June, 1861, the Birmingham Small Arms Trade, which had been formed to regulate the fulfil- .ment of military contracts, met to consider the for- mation of a company to make military small arms by machinery. The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, better known by the acronym BSA, was the ' direct result. Formed with an initial capital of £24,500, the new business bought 25 acres of land at Small Heath, on the southeastern outskirts of Birmingham, and be- gan to build a factory. Armoury Road-in which the BSA factory still stands-was built to link the new works with the principal Birmingham-Coventry thoroughfare, Golden Hillock Road, and the Great Western Railway was persuaded to erect a station nearby. For the 1first 2 years ofits existence, BSA was gov- erned by a committee of its shareholders and an American, Cary MacFarland, was appointed works engineer during the critical period of formation. The first Board of Directors was elected at a general meeting on 30 September 1863, where John Good- man became chairman, with John Swinburn, known for his dropping-block rifle action, as his deputy. The other directors included Joseph Wilson, Samuel Buckley, Isaac Hollis, Charles Playfair and Charles Pryse, many of whom are remembered as gun- makers in their own right. Much canvassing had been done, but it proved dif- ficult to acquire large-scale military orders as BSA 38 GUN COLLECTOR'S DIGEST An example of the Lee-Enfield Cavalry Carbine Mark 1, introduced in August, 1896. All British service issue was made at Enfield, but BSA made "Trade" patterns, differing only in the omission of the royal cypher mark- ings. (Courtesy of I an Hogg.) had no previous record on which to base negotia- tions. Many people believed the company to be to'o new and untried. Finally, an order for 20,000 Brit- ish-type short rifles was acquired from Turkey and preparatory work began. Though this contract was to be beset by problems solved only when the British government "lent" Turkey 10,000 rifles (the 10,000 replacements made by BSA, when eventually deliv- ered, were returned to government stores), the first British government contract followed in 1866. BSA had successfully tendered to convert 100,000 miscel- laneous Enfield rifle-muskets to the Snider breech- loading system, and the order was worth the hand- some sum of £98,750. A night shift was soon working to boost production to 3,000 guns per week, the first part of the contract being completed with 15 minutes to spare. The .War Office was more than satisfied when the last guns of the second batch were deliv- ered 7 weeks ahead of schedule in February, 1868. BSA's future was assured: the company had risen to become the largest privately-owned manufactory in Europe injust 7 years. In 1865, a BSA-made Whitworth rifle had won an open contest to find a suitable breech-loading small- bore rifle, and a BSA Whitworth muzzleloader took the Queen's Prize at the National Rifle Association meeting at Wimbledon the following year. Most of the Whitworths, however, appear to have borne their inventor's Manchester address, and the part played by BSA in th~ir manufacture remained un- acknowledged. The commencement of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 caused the nervous British government to ask BSA how many guns could be produced if the need arose; however, BSA was fully committed to an order for 300,000 .Russian Berdans and had no spare capacity either to arm the belligerents-which WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKThis a Rifle, Charger-Loading Lee-Enfield Mark 1 *-a conversion of original Lee-Enfields (many of which were made by BSA) authorized in August, 1907. The principal change lies in the addition of guides for "chargers" (strip- per ~flps in US parlance). · would have been a huge market-or even equip Brit- ish forces! This was largely due to the Russian in- spectorate, which so persistently revised the design of the Berdan that production was proceeding at a .- snail's pace. Patriotism prevailed in the end, and BSA dutifully adapted machinery. The government was satisfied with BSA's, estimate that 20,000 Sniders could be made by March, 1871, and a ful'ther 48,000 by the end of December. Soon, within 2 weeks of receiving the order, the factory was working double-shift on Sniders. Exasperated with the Russians, BSA had written off a considerable capital investment, as only 10 percent of the original Berdan order had been fulfilled when the contract was revoked. A few pounds were recouped by selling surplus guns and parts to the French, but BSA had learned a bitter lesson. In the summer of 1871 the British had adopted the Martini-Henry rifle, a sturdy dropping-block action rifle designed by an American, Henry Peabody of Boston, Massachusetts, and perfected in Switzerland by Friedrich von Martini. There would be no more governmental orders for BSA-made Sniders, and some time would elapse before the first contracts for the new Martini would reach Small Heath-toge.th- er with the necessary tools and gauges required from Enfield. An extra 5-shilling royalty was paid on the final20,000 Sniders, but the company ran so short of work that part of the workforce was laid off-a recur- rent theme in the early history not only of BSA, but also of most other large British arms-making com- panies in the late 19th century as the pendulum of government orders swung back and forth . There were many dark days in the 1870s J nd 1880s, when the BSA factory shut down for months on end. In 1872, Turkey announced an intention to re- The breech of the SMLE, at least 2 million of which were made by BSA in two world wars. (Courtesy of Arms & Ar- mour Press.) equip its armies, whereupon BSA sent two of its se- nior managers to Turkey. They were to collect a BSA Berdan to take part in the Turkish war ministry tri- als, but the gun did not arrive in time and was ex- cluded from the trials. What seemed rank bad luck was seen in a different light when it was learned that BSA's Turkish agent-also acting for Colt and Remington-had deliberately withheld the BSA Berdan. The year 1873 brought an order for 40 million llmm cartridge cases from t he Prussian govern- ment,.which caused considerable consternat ion at Small Heath and was solved only by the purchase of 'the Adderley Park Rolling Mills to gain extra manu- facturing capacity. The opportunity was also t aken to dissolve the original BSA and reconstitute the company as the Birmingham Small Arms and Metal Company Limited (BSA&MCo). BSA&MCo was soon embroiled in patent litigations, most of which were brought by Colonel Roden, a beneficiary of the Snider Patent, or the National Arms & Ammunition Company, which owned the Martini pat ents. BSA and its sister company, the London Small Arms Company of Old Ford Works, Bow, London, eventu- ally had to pay royalties to NAACo. but the three agreed to share all contracts acquired by any of the companies individually. BSA&MCo's share was 40 percent, NAACo's 33 percent and LSA's 27 percent. Forever a thorn in BSA's side, :.NAACo eventually went into liquidation in the 1880s. Its fact ory at Sparkprook was operated by the British government until sold to BSA in 1906. British government contract s ground t o a halt in 1878, and, to make matters worse, the British gov- ernment then auctioned 100,000 suppose~lyobsoles cent (but eminently serviceable) guns at Weedon. These were sold ih minutes, raising a paltry £15,000, ,..._._ .... """"'-· . -----·- ...... ___ _ WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKand the bottom was effectively knocked out of the military rifle market. In April, 1878, short-time working was introduced at Small Heath; on 19 Au- gust, the factory shut completely while the directors sought other fields of engineering in which to com- pete. The winter of 1878179 was a particularly harsh, and many of the BSA's workers found work only on m:unicipal and charitable projects. A small order for 6,000 rifles caused the factory to re-open in August 1879-it had been shut for a year-and bicycle manufacture was considered for the first time. Eighteen-Eighty brought a demon- stration of the Otto Bicycle, whose inventor rode. it up and down the boardroom table, then down stairs and out towards Birmingham ~t what the more el- derly directors described as "a reckless pace." Yet the Board had been impressed, and an order for 200 was readily accepted. Bicycle production was to prove a successful stopgap when rifle contracts were few and far between, but BSA was first and foremost an 'arins manufacturer: three times the bicycle man- ufactory saved the company from a premature de- mise, but three times government matters inter- vened! The first such occasion occurred in the late 1880s. BSA had been given an order for 200,000 .402 caliber Enfield-Martini rifles at the beginning of April, 1886, but this was speedily cancelled while the Brit- ish developed the Lee-Metford instead. After fulfill- ing an order for 38,100 Martini-Henry Mark 2 rifles, received in August, 1887, BSA was requested to· make 125,000 Lee-Metford magazine rifles at the rate of 1,200 a week. The order was placed on 5th February, 1890, but the company may have had pri- or warning and begun tooling some time previous- ly-particularly if Ian Skennerton, in his excellent book The British Service Lee, is correct in stating Right-Neariy 150,000 Lewis Guns were made by BSA between 1912 and the end of the First World War. (British official photqgraph.) 40 GUN COLLECTOR'S DIGEST that the first rifle was assembled on April 25th, proofed on April 30th and delivered on June 16th! Once initial orders for the new magazine rifles had been completed, BSA&MCo introduced a sporting Lee-Metford in February, 1892, soon to be followed by a "Trade Pattern" ~avalry carbine. These -are rarely encountered in modem collections, and it is presumed that production was relatively small. However, during this period, small numbers of gov- ernment-pattern Lee-Metford Marks 1 * and. 2 rifles had been purchased by the British South Africa ·Company between December, 1894, and September, 1895, and a further 3,400 Mark 2 rifles had been sold to Afghanistan. The South Mrica Company guns are amongst the most desirable of the BSA collectables, as many were carried on the ill-fated Jameson Raid of 1896 by the Rhodesia Mounted Police. Bicycle production recommenced in November, 1893, and soon practically all the obsolescent shell- making plant had been converted. The first women 'Yere employed, and a double-shift assisted b~cycle making rather than another panicky arms contract for the government. Orders grew rapidly, reaching £4620 per week in May, 1895, a.nd the factory was extended to cope. In April, 1899, BSA&MCo accept- ed a trial order to make internal combustion en- gines, but, on the threshold of success, war and gov- ernment contracts intervened again. Forty thousand Lee-Enfield rifles had been or- dered in 1896, but contracts had declined thereafter. No'Y the prospects of war in South Africa persuaded the War Office to submit its predictable request: how many rifles could BSA&MCo make, and how quickly could they be delivered ... ? As. the rifle-producing plant had been idle for some time, BSA&MCo could only report that 6 months would elapse before vol- ume deliveries began. However, the company wisely .· Left-This BSA-made Browning aircraft gun is a Mark 2, dating from 1937. (Brit- ish official photograph.) WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKacquired enough steel for 20,000 Lee•type rifles- war had become inevitable. On 6 February, 1900, BSA&MCo finally received a telegram from the War Office ordering the production line to be readied, and an order for 41,360 Mark 2 Lee-Enfield rifles arrived the next day. So many sighting problems had been reported from South Africa, where British marksmanship had been tried and found wanting, that the company also had to produce great quantities of new sights to be shipped overseas for local substitution. New buildings were hastily erected within the confines of the Small Health site, day and night shifts worked around the clock, and an output of 2,500 rifles per week was finally attained. The traditional pattern of peak and valley repeat- ed itself. The Boer War ran its course, and govern- ment orders declined again. BSA&MCo had also un- dergone another major reorganization in this period·, leading to the dissolution of the company at the end of 190,2. The Adderley Park Rolling Mills were sold to Nobel's Explosives Ltd, becoming the Birming- ham Metal & Munitions Company (BM&MCo), while the gun-making division reverted to its origi- .. n al BSA title. Though the largest rifle-maki.ng organization in the British Empire·, BSA could not compete with German exporters subsidized by their government in an attempt to corner the arms market in South America and the Far East. In the 5 years leading up to 1914, British government rifle orders receir ed by BSA amounted to only about 7,500 new guns per year-only about 5 percent of the factory's produc- tion capacity, which had been increased when the old National Arms and Ammunition Company fac- tory at Sparkbrook had been sold to BSA (by the gov- ernment!) in 1906. Large quantities of old Lee-Met- ford and Lee-Enfield rifles had been converted to charger-loading in 1908-10 and 1913, about 100,000 of which were allotte~ to BSA, but there was little profit in such work. The company survived this pe-' riod largely because of the success of its airgun busi- ness, which had begun with the Lincoln Jeffries rifle in 1904-5, a revival ofbicycle-making, and the inter- est shown in the War Office Miniature rifle (intro- duced in 1908). The first complete BSA bicycles ap- peared in 1908, a motorcycle made its debut in 1910, and BSA also entered the automotive business by ac- quiring the British Daimler car-making concern. In 1912, Isaac Lewis had asked BSA whether bar- rels could be made in quantity for his light machine gun, one of which had been demonstrated at the ~is cussions. The BSA Board had been sufficiently im- pressed to place its experimental department at Lewis's disposal, .and a BSA-made Lewis Gun was shown at Bisley in 1913. Fourteen shots were even fired from a Grahame-White biplane, _flying at 500 feet in a full gale, 11 hitting a white groundsheet target. Though less than 50 men were engaged on Lewis Gun production in August, 1914, war galva- nized production; by 1916, more than 10,000 ma- chines, in a new Small Heath factory, were making 2,000 machine guns per week. In all, 145,397 assort- ed Lewis Guns were supplied to the British, Belgians and Russians, and the spare parts on hand in No- vember, 1918, would have made many thousands more had they been needed. Nineteen-fourteen was another bad year for BSA bicycles; the commencement of the First World War swung the pendulum back to arms production, and soon the double-shift system was in full swing again. Output of Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles was stepped up, with the factory working 24 hours a day, 7 days each week. Production that had started at 650 , Top-The belt-fed Besa tank machine gun was de- rived from a Czechoslovak prototype. The Mark 3 is shown here with the pistol grip, which doubles as the cocking handle, in its forward position. Above-The 55 caliber Boys anti-tank rifle was made in surpris- ingly large quantities between 1937 and 1943, by which time it was completely outclassed-through remaining useful against soft-skinned vehicles. This is a long-barreled Mark 1. (Courtesy of lan Hogg.) GUN COLLECTOR'S DIGEST 41 WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKBSA 665,000 Rifles No.1 Mk4 in its Shirley factory. ~They were essentially similar to the post-1949 Mk2 pie- ~,;.::;;.-· tu red above, but had a different trigger system and a plain, · rather than reeded upper handguard. (Courtesy of lan The V-42 sub-machine . gun, designed by Vese- . ly, was an interesting and efficient design fea- turing a unique maga- zine containing two rows of cart~idges in tandem. guns per week ' in September, 1914, climbed to 4,360 weekly after 6 months, attained 8,000 by January, 1916, and finally peaked at 10,000 by the beginning of 1917. Read's The Other Battle credits BSA with making 1,601,608 complete Mark 3 and Mark 3* Lee-Enfields duri'ng the First World War, while Skell!nerton, in The British Service Lee, puts the to- tal at 1,581,854. It has also been estimated that nearly a half-million more could have been complet- ed from the parts on hand at the Armistice. One of the rarest of the BSA military rifles dates from 1915, when BSA equipped 225 Charger-Load- ing Lee-Enfield Mark 1 *rifles with "Galilean" opti- cal sights in which the magnifying lens lay immedi- ately behind the muzzle. ·only one survivor has been identified. In addition to the rifles, guns, cycles, airplane en- gines and airplane parts, BSA also made the Con- stantinesco interrupter gear for the Royal Flying Corps, which ensured that cowling-mounted ma- chine guns could fire through the propeller arc with- out amputating propeller blades. The boom of war presaged the slump of peace. At the Armistice, the Small Heath, Redditch and Sparkbrook ·factories employed 13,000 people, al- most four times the entire workforce in August, 1914. Factory space had trebled, but the company J:iad become too large to be manageable . In 1919, therefore, three operating divisions were formed__: BSA Guns Ltd, BSA Cycles Ltd and BSA Cars Ltd- but the gun business re~ained very much the poor relation. Its rifle and machine gun plants lay idle for nearly 17 years, fated to be a perpetual debit on the balance sheet while the meager output of sporting and air rifles kept BSA Guns alive ... despite being described in one Directors' report to the shareholders as a "very reverse of profitability." I 42 GUN COLLECTOR'S DIGEST , Hogg.) / During the late 1920s, BSA made a handful of Ad- ams semi-automatic rifles for the Fairfax Rifle Syn- dicate Ltd, some Thompson machine carbines, and Thompson automatic rifles to compete against the Pedersens being touted by Vickers. The Thompson rifle was singularly unsuccessful, not least because its hesitation-lock breech opened with such ferocity that one ejected case actually stuck mouth-first in a wooden door. Attempts made by BSA to interest the British government in guns designed by the Hun- garian, Kiraly, also failed, and several promising machine guns proved abortive. Finally, in 1935 , BSA received an order from Iraq for 16,000 SMLE ri- fles, the Lee-Enfield production line was brought out of mothballs and restored, and 50 guns emerged only 100 days later. O~tside BSA, no one believed that these guns were anything other than assembled from existing parts; the skilled labor force had been ' dispersed, doubters said, and the old machines had lain unused for too long. When volume deliveries commenced a few weeks later, the doubters choked back their words. By 1938, it was obvious that Britain would soon become embroiled in another major war. BSA would clearly be a major supplier of small arms and was al- ready involved in the production of Browning ma- chine guns, the Boys anti-tank rifle, a medium ma- chine gun (later known as the Besa) and the SMLE. · The first few Brownings had beEm delivered in September, 1937 ,. the conversion of 50,000 Lewis air- craft guns to rudimentary land patterns had begun in 1938, and the Czech-designed ZB53 medium ma- chine gun-credited to the Holek brothers-had been under consideration since the beginning of 1937. A new factory was being built at Redditch to house the new machine gun production line. When the first completed gun was test fired in June, 1939, WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKThe perfected Besal machine gun greatly re- sembles the Bren Gun, but offered simplified construction, a pistol grip doubling as a cock- ing handle, and a differ- ent locking mechani!)m. The Besal was officially adopted in February, 1943, but, ironically, was never ordered in quantity. (Courtesy of lan Hogg.) it became evident that revisions were necessary in the Holek design and production halted until the be- ginning of 1940. When production resumed, the gun was named "Besa" in acknowledgement of the part played in the modifications. Britain declared war on Germany in September, 1939, and 'BSA was asked to produce No. 1 Mk 3 (SMLE) infantry rifles at top speed. Contingency plans had already been made for war production, and a night shift was already being worked. The main plant at Small Heath was making Browning machine guns, Boys anti-tank rifles, No; 1 Mk 3 in- fantry rifles, components and magazines for the Bren Gun, fuzes, primers, 40mm cannon shells and 2-pounder anti-tank gun carriages, while the subsid- iary factory in Redditch was making 7.9mm and 15Il)m Besa machine guns. By January, 1940, 2,000 Lee-Enfield rifles were being made each week and the barrel-making mill was working at full capacity. Plans for a simplified version of the SMLE were finally passed in February and the Rifle No. 4 Mk 1 was ordered into produc- tion. By May, the 7.9mm Besa machine gun was be- ing made at 200 per month and the first 15mm-cali- ber gun had been delivered for testing. By August, production of Lee-Enfield rifles had passed the 150,000th made since the first new order had been placed in 1936, BSA being'the only manufacturer as neither the "shadow plants" at Fazakerley and Maltby .(under control ofthe Royal Ordnance Fac- tories) nor the BSA Shirley factory had attained pro- duction status. Small Heath had even begun over- hauling 138,000 1895-model Winchester lever- action rifles that had been stored at Woolwich Arsenal since the end of the First World War! Birmingham was a prime target for Luftwaffe raids, German intelligence being well aware of the The Welgun was another of the BSA-made sub-machine guns to promise much, but deliver very little. Designed by !he Special Operations Executive department at Welwyn , 1t dates from 1943. (Courtesy of I an Hogg:) importance ofBSA and the other local companies en- gaged in making weapons and munitions. Though BSA had begun to disperse vital machine tools to feeder and subsidiary plants, high explosive bombs knocked out the barrel mill on the night of26/27 Au- gust 1940-it had been the only one operating in Britain at the time-and destroyed several hundred machines ep.gaged in the production of rifles and ma- chine guns. A raid damaged the drawings office de- voted to the Hispano and Oerlikon cannon in Octo- ber, but the worst was to come. On the night of Tuesday, November 19th, the Small Heath factory may have been singled out as the prime target. The district was carpeted by bombs, two or three striking the southern end of the New Building housing major portions of the Brown- ing, Boys and Lee-Enfield production lines. The en- tire southern portion collapsed; despite the heroism of the emergency services, 53 workers lay dead, nearly 100 were injured and 5 acres of the 42-acre site had been damaged to the point of destruction. Three days later, a "follow-up" raid wrecked the main drawing office, and its priceless collection of engineering drawings. Boys and Lee-Enfield produc- tion stopped; the flow ofBrownings, so vital to the RAF's defense of British airspace, was seriously im- paired. Though some machine tools remained intact, and others were retrieved from the ruins in service- able condition, the November 19th raid had de- stroyed many machines that had only recently been delivered to replace those destroyed on 26/27 Au- gust. Rebuilding the Browning production line was ac- corded priority, whereupon factories in Smethwick and Tyseley were adapted to house the. thousands of existing parts. The production machinery was rapid- ly dispersed to feeder factories near and far. The Lee- WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKEnfield reappeared in February, 1941, after super- human efforts had been made to replace wrecked machinery, and the Boys followed in April after the production line had been dispersed in Mansfield. As things Were going badly for Britain at this time, simplified guns were wisely readied for produc- tion to guard against destruction of the main arms- making factories. Pr~eminent among these was the Sten submachine-gun, popularly known as the "Woolworth Wonder" owing to its crude construc- tion. BSA received production drawings in July, 1941, as many guns as possible to be made at the Shirley factory....:._then being readied for production of the No. 4 Mk 1-while a new factory was erected in Tyseley. Stens were easy to make, but smooth pro- duction often depended on sub-contract work. The first BSA-made parts were ready on schedule, but no bolt-head catches had been delivered and assembly was impossible. Within 8 days, the Shirley factory had made the relevant tools and 300 catches! The first 25 Mk 1 Stens were assembled at Shirley in Au- gust, 1941, but the production equipment was thlim moved to Tyseley. The first Stens were made by tra- ditional gunsmithing methods, but were subse- quently greatly simplified to accelerate produc- tion-which climbed rapidly with the advent of the unbelievably crude Sten Mk 2. By November, 1941, a year after the terrible air raid on Small Heath-1,250 Lee-Enfield No. 1 Mk 3 rifles were being made per week; 1942, by contrast, was uneventful. The threat of German invasion had been replaced by consolidation, and BSA's task be- came simply to rea'ch ever-increasing production tar- gets. By April, the ineffectual Boys anti-tank rifle was being produced at 2,000 per month; in May, the last machine was delivered to the No. 4 Mk 1 produc- tion line at the Shirley factory, and the prototype Le- kon aircraft ca_nnon-a simplified Oerlikon-had also been made. Efforts to·perfect the Besal (or Faul- kener) light machine-gun were beginning, the Min- istry of Armaments having realized-a little belat- edly-that a direct hit on Enfield would destroy the only source of B;ren Guns. The 100,000th Sten gun left Tyseley in July, 1942, while the "small Besa" production line attained peak outp-qt in October. By December, output of Stens reached 25,000 per month, and even Brownings were leaving the factories at a monthly rate of 16,400. By 1943, the tide of war was turning and Birming- ham was reasonably secure from air-raids. The Be- sal passed an extensive test at Pendine Sands in Feb- ruary, 1943, and received official approval; however, the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield had es- caped large-scale damage and stocks of Brens were so great that no ~esals were ever needed. Production of the Welrod Silent Pistol, designed by the Special Operations Executive design section at Welwyn, Hertfordshire (hence the 'Wel-' prefixed name), was also undertaken at Small Heath, the first guns being delivered within 6 weeks of receipt ofthe order. Production of the obsolescent Boys anti-tank rifle ceased at the end of August, 1943, after the rather surprising total of 69,000 had been made, while the No. 1 Mk 3 Lee-Enfield was discontinued at Small Heath in November. Productiorr of No. 4 rifles had , exceeded expectations, so the older No. 1 was no longer needed in quantity. The last 2 years of the war were tame by compari- son with the 1939/40 period, and the BSA design staff had ample time to consider new projects. The best known a:re the .sub-machine guns: the Vesely (V-42 and V-43), the Welgun (designed by the SOE) and BSA's own design, which later became the "Model 1949." The BSA design w~s intended to re- The BSA Model49 sub-machine gun was submitted to ex- tensive trials at the beginning of the 1950s. Despite its good features, it was found to be too complicated, insuffi- ciently reliable in marginal operating conditions, and too expensive to make; the Patchett won, and became the Ster.ling. (Courtesy of lan Hogg.) i The BSA 28P 280 caliber rifle was another unsuccessful candidate for British adoption, losing out to the FN FAL. The BSA was found to be inaccurate:--particularly in auto- matic fire-and failed the "super-power" proof test. (Cour- tesy of lan Hogg.) WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKNext >