AN OVS MARTINI 

The impressive power of the huge .577/.450 cartridge resulted in one unique feature, found only on Martinis. On the top right rear of the receiver there is a chequered oval depression, 25mm long by 12mm wide. Placing the tip of the thumb of one’s right hand in this depression, instead of grasping the front of the butt with the thumb held in the more traditional horizontal position, will save the firer from the Martini equivalent of the notorious Chauchat “gifle” or “slap”. In the case of the Martini, if the rifling is fouled from repeated firing, on pulling the trigger the joint of the thumb would impact on the nose with the kick of the 85 grains of black powder behind the 480 grain paper-patched lead bullet. A broken nose can be the result. Placing the thumb in the oval saves the nose and considerable embarrassment.

The smaller and lighter Martini carbine chambered the same cartridge but downloaded to a 410 grain bullet and “only” 70 grains of powder in consideration of the recoil, and to avoid wasting unburned powder in the shorter barrel.

Re-enactors of the 24th Regiment at Isandlwana.

At Isandlwana, modern research blames the catastrophe which overcame the garrison of the camp not on the ammunition supply but because the Imperial troops were seriously over-extended in the face of overwhelming numbers of their fast-moving Zulu opponents. 

The defeat was redeemed the same day at Rorke’s Drift and avenged at Ulundi. 

The belated attempt to save Gordon in Khartoum led to desperate fighting in the Sudan, especially at the battle of Tamai where the square was broken, and bayonets bent. 

Fighting on the North-West Frontier of India was practically continuous throughout the period, and the last great battle involving the Martini took place at Omdurman in 1898, where Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Army crushed the forces of the Khalifa and avenged the murder of Gordon. On that day, the 1st Sudanese Regiment under Smith-Dorien were armed with the Martini, and had a close brush with disaster when they were suddenly ambushed by 20,000 brave and ferocious Dervishes in the open desert. Smith-Dorien must have reflected on history repeating itself, as he had been one of the very few survivors of Isandlwana. The Sudanese were fixing bayonets to receive the rush of the Dervishes when an English Regiment, despatched by Kitchener’s staff at the last moment, rushed to their rescue.

The 1st Sudanese were still armed with the Martini, because following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and right up to the Great War, native troops were usually armed with the previous model of rifle, the more modern rifles being supplied only to the British troops. Thus when the Martini was issued to Imperial troops, the native levies were handed down the Snider. Similarly, when the Magazine Lee-Metford was introduced, native troops received the single-shot .455 Martini-Henry, and later the Martini-Metford in .303 calibre, but still single shot.

Imperial Martinis went through four different Marks: The Mark I first issued in 1874 featured a safety, a polished breechblock top surface, and a chequered buttplate. The Mark II sealed for service in 1877 had a revised trigger, no safety, a blued breechblock top surface and plain buttplate. The Mark III of 1879 had a larger diameter firing pin, a smaller cocking indicator and a different method of fastening the forestock. The long-lever “humped-back” Mark IV first appeared in 1888 as the “Enfield-Martini .402 calibre”, introducing a new smaller-bore round which was never widely adopted. When the Army moved over to the even smaller-diameter .303 round, all Mark IVs were re-barrelled to the old standard 577/450 calibre. The Mark IV was also intended to use a quick-loading device which attached to the left-hand wall of the receiver, but these were never used in action.

British Army Martinis have one puzzling feature. The breechblock pivots on what appears from the left-hand side of the receiver to be a screw. However, inserting a screwdriver blade and turning this “screw” does not result in its removal. It is in fact the open end of a split pin, which has to be drifted out of the receiver, not unscrewed. The later Francotte modification, by moving the cocking indicator lever inside the receiver, allows the entire action to be withdrawn from below, this time by actually removing one screw with the rim of a cartridge case.

Sporters and lookalikes

The Martini was very popular with hunters in Africa and India, as the .577/.450 round could deal with the largest and most dangerous wild game. With the adoption of the .303 round in 1888, many Martini rifles and carbines were re-barrelled to become, firstly Martini-Metfords and then Martini-Enfields. Thousands were sold out of service, and many of these appeared, after a hundred years, from the famous cache in Nepal. Small-calibre Martini action rifles trained generations of shooters, including the author, in either .22 rimfire or .310 Cadet centrefire.

Commercial manufacturers produced thousands of Martinis, and the last variation to appear was the Francotte action made in Liège, Belgium, in which the cocking indicator flips up inside the receiver alongside the breechblock.

Military Martini lookalikes were also manufactured by the Government of Nepal, but internally they are completely different, with an action based not on that of Peabody and von Martini, but on the mechanism of the Westley Richards N° 5 Express rifle.

Genuine and lookalike Martinis were extremely popular in the Middle East, and the so-called “Khyber Specials” were – and still are – a stock item in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first examples were hand-crafted by local artisans, and were usually betrayed by the misspellings on the receiver side, typically the ‘R’ in the ‘VR’ or the ‘N’ in ‘ENFIELD’ are reversed, and often the date when the artisan made his rifle would lead one to think that Queen Victoria reigned for many years from beyond the grave – as in the photo above. Many unsuspecting US servicemen brought home one of these copies, and to cater to this lucrative market the unscrupulous locals later churned out thousands of factory-made replicas with the spellings corrected and even with fake “rusting” added. Testing by enthusiasts in the USA has revealed that, sooner or later, these crude modern fakes will actually blow up if fired.

Boer rifles

A modern Boer re-enactor firing a Martini.

The last classic military Martinis were made for the Boer Republics of South Africa, just before the turn of the Twentieth Century. Alarmed by the failed Jameson Raid, the Boer Oranje Vrij Staat and the Zuid Africaans Republik desperately shopped around for as many firearms as they could find, to stave off the impending British invasion which became the Second Boer War.

The ZAR purchased new Martinis from Belgium in the later Francotte configuration, as well as buying up Martinis from other sources. They were even grateful to find on the shelf at Steyr the old single-shot Guedes rifles which Portugal had rejected years earlier.

The Free Staters opted for a batch of 3,500 Martinis made in 1897 in Liège for Westley Richards in the classic British Army Mark III configuration.

OVS N° 3295 is from this batch. They were sold on to farmers in the Free State for the sum of four Pounds, from which they are known to collectors as the “Four Pound Rifle”. Compared with the more modern Mauser and Krag magazine repeater rifles used by the ZAR, the Martinis must have appeared a strange choice to an outsider, even when one takes into account the desperation of the small and vulnerable Republics. However, the Martini is strong, simple and very effective. The hardy Voortrekkers would be familiar with it, and of course they knew how much their traditional foes, the Zulus, hated and feared the Martini. Even at the turn of the Century, there would be many native survivors of the battles of the Zulu War who still bore visible evidence of the terrible effects of being struck by the .450 bullet.

OVS rifle N° 3295 in detail

It even has a bayonet bar, although the Boers never ordered any bayonets, planning to fight from long range. In this respect it has a slightly heavier barrel than the British Army model. 

Internally the barrel has nine grooves instead of the seven in British Army Martinis, although it is still of classic Henry design, as shown by the “HENRY RIFLING” stamped into the top surface of the barrel.

Of note are the Liège inspection and proof marks. The date of manufacture, “1897”, is stamped within a large triangle on top of the nocks form.

The rear sight is marked up to “1300”, which must be “yards”, as it is stamped with the broad arrow and therefore appears to have come from a British military rifle. The rear sight may have been fitted as a repair when this Martini was later used in the UK as a target rifle, or it may indicate that second-hand military parts, as evidenced by the bayonet bar, may have been used to fabricate these rifles.

Performance

The OVS Martini shoots very well at 500 yards, and the author had no trouble hitting the centre of the target at Bisley at this range. One notable characteristic is the effect that fitting a bayonet has. Without the bayonet, at 50 metres the rifle shoots consistently 7 inches (200mm) high and 5 inches (127mm) to the right. Fixing a huge yataghan bayonet (as would have been carried by the British Army sergeants) corrects the point of impact to the point of aim. This can apply at up to 100 yards range, so when onrushing Zulus or Dervishes were at some point between 200 and 100 yards away, a commanding officer would have had to quickly make the decision to order “Fix bayonets”, and his troops would have had to be mighty smartish about it. Definitely not the moment to fumble, or even drop your bayonet. With this rifle the author easily won the single-shot class at the HBSA Fixed Bayonet Shoot at Bisley many years ago, in the process even beating the score of several shooters with magazine Mausers. A very efficient weapon system with and without the bayonet.

Parting shots

Apart from the virtually still-born Enfield-Martini quick-loader, only the Norwegians succeeded in turning the single-shot Peabody design into a magazine repeater, with their Krag-Peterson Model 1876. However, the concept of the pivoting block was taken one step further by Danish Lieutenant Schouboue when he designed the famous Madsen light machinegun. The entire barrel and breechblock assembly of the Madsen reciprocates back and forth under the impetus of recoil and muzzle gas, plus the return spring, but inside the moving receiver is a rear-hinged pivoting block. In this case, however, it not only has down and horizontal positions (to load and lock respectively), as in the Peabody / Martini, but it rises to eject the spent case. In this way Schouboue made a repeating pivoting block, and rendered it full auto.

Further reading

The Martini-Henry rifle is a very wide subject. For further information I can do no better than recommend the following sources:

BESTER, Ron, Boer Rifles and Carbines of the Anglo-Boer War

TEMPLE, B.A. and SKENNERTON, Ian, A Treatise on the British Military Martini

SKENNERTON, Ian, Small Arms Identification Series N° 15

Jason ATKINS’ Website at www.martinihenry.com

The Martini-Henry Forum on www.Gunboards.com

Keith DOYON’s www.militaryrifles.com

The works of Rudyard KIPLING.

Acknowledgements

Photographs of OVS N° 3295 are by the author, and the shots of the 24th Regiment, the 60th Regiment and the Boer re-enactors are courtesy of Tim ROSE of the Diehards. The author is grateful for the helpful advice provided by George GEEAR of Chapel Bay Fort, Angle, and Jeremy TENNISWOOD.

© Roger Branfill-Cook, May 2008 and October 2015

Arguments

Brought up on wartime propaganda, over many years of reading I have become a confirmed iconoclast. Share your views with me!

Submarine Designer Lost and Found

Sir Arthur W Johns, a lost British genius rediscovered.

Sir Arthur W. Johns, K.C.B., C.B.E. (1873-1937), was the Royal Navy’s Sixth DNC (Director of Naval Construction). He was responsible for the majority of Royal Navy submarine classes in the Great War, and the designer of the giant submarine cruiser X.1 (the subject of one of my books).

Born in 1873 at Torpoint, Cornwall, Arthur William Johns entered Devonport Dockyard as a Shipwright Apprentice at the age of 14. After heading the list of all apprentices in his examination year, he moved to Greenwich Royal Naval College as a probationary Assistant Constructor.  In 1895 he qualified with the coveted First Class Professional Certificate.

After several minor assignments, he worked on the design of Captain Scott's Antarctic research vessel, the Discovery, as well as the King Edward VII Class pre-dreadnoughts and the Royal Yacht Alexandra.

Promoted to the rank of Constructor in 1911, in the following year he began his long association with Royal Navy submarine design, becoming responsible for the later 'E' Class vessels, and the succeeding 'F', 'G', 'H', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M' and 'R' Classes.

In 1916 he was asked to investigating rigid airship construction, and designed the successful R 33 and R 34, the latter airship being the first machine to make a two-way air crossing of the Atlantic (in July 1919).

In November 1920 A W Johns was confirmed as Assistant Director of Naval Construction, and it was in this capacity that he was responsible for the design of X.1.

Made a C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) in 1920 as a reward for his War service, he was made a C.B. (Companion of the Bath) in 1929, and in 1933 he was created a K.C.B (Knight Commander of the Bath).  A lifelong scholar, Sir Arthur became a member of the Institute of Naval Architects in 1904, presenting many thought-provoking papers to that august body, and was elected a Vice President of the Institute in 1931.

Promoted to Director of Naval Construction in January 1930, the last major vessel for which Sir Arthur was responsible was the new aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.  Her first Captain was full of praise for her aircraft handling arrangements, stating that in the first 400 hours' flying, not one single airman had been injured taking off and landing.  In the same period, he sagely concluded, if the same young men had been ashore driving their motorcars and riding their motorbikes, quite a few of them would have ended up in hospital.

Sadly, early in 1936 illness forced Sir Arthur to retire, and he died on January 13th 1937.

With such an illustrious career, one might think that Sir Arthur would feature in at least one of the UK’s naval archives, or perhaps even the National Portrait Gallery in London?  

When I began my research into the submarine cruiser X.1, I was fascinated by the gifted and famous individuals concerned with her specifications, design, construction and working up.  But of her designer, Sir Arthur, I could find no biographical details at all, not even a photograph.

He had been lost to history, a sad fate for such a multi-skilled engineering genius.

Then one Monday afternoon I called at the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport, and met the volunteer librarian, Alan Ferris, who only worked in the library on Monday afternoons.  I asked Alan if he had come across any details of Sir Arthur, and he sadly shook his head.  Then as I turned to leave, he called out, “But yesterday afternoon I was at a boot sale in the local park, and a man sold me a cardboard box containing books he said covered naval subjects.”

Alan disappeared and shortly returned carrying a large box, filled with books.  “I’ve not had time to go through them yet” he said.

I picked up the first book in the box, and opened the first page.

And there, staring out at me, was a photograph of Sir Arthur W Johns, followed by his obituary, from which I have taken the above details of his career!

And if you ever think that there is no such thing in life as a “coincidence”, just read page 25 of explorer Tim Severin’s book “The Brendan Voyage”.

Admiral James Somerville

MOMENT OF DESTINY

From beyond the grave?

Life is stranger than fiction…

What was my link with the life of Admiral James Somerville?

Clue: Look up my birth date

Having set the scene, I wondered how Admiral Somerville might have found an alternative way out of the dilemma he faced at Mers el-Kébir. I knew that after he had ordered his men to fire on our late allies in the French fleet, Somerville had written to his Wife, and to his fellow admirals, bitterly regretting that he had allowed himself to be bullied by Churchill into taking such a disastrous course of action. To his dying day, Somerville must have gone over and over in his mind what he should have done.

After all, if Somerville never had any viable alternative, there would be no alternative history narrative for me to pursue.

Then one day the obvious answer came to me, the alternative course of action Somerville could have taken, which might have altered the course of the history of the whole world.

So I typed it out, just as if I had always known it. And all the blocked alternative courses of action were suddenly opened up, for both Axis and Allies to follow.

Real life is far stranger than fiction. In a world full of startling coincidences, here is one more to ponder on.

After I had finished the book, I was astounded to discover that Admiral James Somerville died the very same day I was born………

Perhaps now, Admiral James Somerville, your ghost can rest in peace.

So, how can you explain this startling “coincidence”?

Battleship Bismarck

Bismarck, the Fatally Flawed Battleship

All too often, one reads or hears the description of the Bismarck as “the most powerful battleship in the world”.

This assessment by the uninitiated must refer to the encounter in the Denmark Strait, when HMS Hood, herself a badly flawed design, blew up and sank early in the action, presumably following a hit by a single shell from Bismarck.  On that basis Derfflinger, which sank HMS Queen Mary at Jutland with a well-placed shell, would also qualify as “the most powerful capital ship in the world”!

For the Bismarck herself was far from “the most powerful battleship”.  For one thing, this statement completely ignores the existence of her sister ship, the Tirpitz, which therefore must also have been “the most powerful battleship in the world”.  And Tirpitz even had torpedo tubes, which Bismarck lacked.

Enough of this superlative over-description.

Bismarck was a large, well-armoured and powerful ship, but she suffered from several major flaws, some of which actually threatened her survivability in a capital ship action.

Firstly, as an updated version of the old Baden Class of the Great War, she carried her main armament of 15-inch guns in four twin turrets, a major waste of tonnage and an unnecessary elongation of the ship’s structure and armour protection, compared with two quadruple turrets of her major rivals, the French Richelieu Class ships.

This waste of tonnage was compounded by fitting a single purpose secondary armament, which in turn required a tertiary anti-aircraft armament, all wasteful in space and tonnage compared to contemporary dual-purpose secondary armament being fitted by the Royal Navy and the US Navy.

Finally, the fitting of two twin turrets forward and two twin turrets aft meant that to deploy her full main armament she would have to turn broadside on, thus exposing her full hull length as a target, when facing ships armed with quadruple turrets forward, which would engage her head-on, with a much reduced silhouette.

Because the Kriegsmarine designers had not been able to profit from post-war live firing experiences, such as the British had used against the captured Baden, they had not taken on two crucial lessons:

- firstly, it was essential to provide one single main armour deck of considerable thickness, in place of the previous multiple layer of thin decks;

- secondly, it was paramount to ensure that all control and power lines ran below and were thus protected by the thick main armour deck.  On Bismarck too many of these crucial control systems ran above the main armour deck and were thus susceptible to being knocked out by medium-calibre shell hits.

Finally, the Bismarck shared one common design weakness with contemporary German armoured ships of the Kriegsmarine: the weak stern section.  On 11th April 1940 the submarine Spearfish hit the pocket battleship / panzerschiffe Lutzow with a torpedo which caused the stern to practically break away from the ship.  On 23rd February 1942 the submarine Trident hit the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen with a torpedo which so severely damaged the stern that it had to be completely removed in order to enable the ship to return to Germany for repairs.  The single hit by an 18-inch aerial torpedo which crippled Bismarck’s steering gear was probably also the cause of the complete damaged stern breaking away from the ship as she capsized.

Bir Hakeim 1942

Bir Hakeim, the Debt the Free World Owes to the Free French

Bir Hakeim, the Well of the Sage, where Koenig and his men saved Egypt, and India, and a lot more besides…

Between 26th May and 11th June 1942, a handful of Free French drawn from all over the French Empire resisted ferocious attacks by the Afrika Corps led by Rommel.

Their aim, to hold the fortified position of Bir Hakeim long enough to allow the defeated British Eighth Army to withdraw to the ridge at El Alamein, the very last defensive position before Egypt and the Suez Canal.

For his part, Rommel tried to destroy the French defenders in order to allow his armoured divisions to sweep around to the North and cut off the fugitives’ escape route.

Koenig did all that was asked of him, and more.  The Eighth Army pulled back to El Alamein where it first repulsed Rommel’s attacks and then went over to the offensive, in the operation that would lead to the liberation of North Africa.

If Koenig and his men had failed, if Rommel had captured virtually all of the retreating Eighth Army, the history of the Second World War could have taken a dramatic turn.

Rommel the conqueror of Egypt, astride the Suez Canal, able to turn northward into Syria and Iraq to cut off the Allies’ oil supplies, and go on to attack the underbelly of the Soviet Union.

Rommel continuing to the East, welcomed in Afghanistan as the new Alexander, Panzer Divisions debouching from the Khyber Pass, falling on the rear of British India while the Japanese pressed in from the East.

These are uncomfortable scenarios, but Koenig’s Free French Brigade stopped Rommel in his tracks, and helped save the Free World from many more months of painful conflict, and perhaps a complete disaster.

U-Boat Warfare

Given Winston Churchill’s fear that the U-Boat menace was the one threat which he feared the most during the Second World War, his allowing “Bomber” Harris to divert Bomber Command into sending thousand bomber raids over Germany instead of first concentrating on winning the Battle of the Atlantic is incomprehensible.

One of the stalwarts of Coastal Command, the Short Sunderland four-engined long-range flying boat, was itself a victim of this kind of muddled thinking and misallocation of resources.

Inspired by the commercial Short flying boats which linked the far-flung parts of the British Empire, the Sunderland was originally designed to carry a powerful 37mm calibre automatic cannon in the nose, for an anti-shipping role.  Using armour-piercing or semi-armour-piercing rounds this cannon, the C.O.W. Gun, so named after its originators, the Coventry Ordnance Works, could have been a devastating weapon against surfaced U-Boats.

When the Air Ministry, in its wisdom, decided to drop the C.O.W. Gun and instead install a powered tail turret with four short-range .303 Browning machine guns, the design characteristics of the Sunderland were completely upset.

To maintain the correct centre of gravity, the wings had to be set back in a swept configuration.  As a quick fix the original motor mounts were left unchanged, meaning that each motor exerted its thrust at a slight angle to the line of flight, thereby wasting a fraction of its power.

Even worse, the forward-firing armament was reduced to just a single .303 calibre Vickers K Gas-Operated machine gun in a nose turret.  This puny armament was supposed to clear the decks of a surfaced U-Boat firing back with 20mm and later 37mm automatic cannon, which far outranged the small calibre .303 round.

As for the 37mm C.O.W. Gun, the design was purchased by Vickers, who continued to produce it as the Vickers ‘S’ in 40mm calibre, used during the Second World War as an anti-tank weapon fitted under the wings of Hawker Hurricane Mk IID aircraft in North Africa, with mixed success, then later in Burma..

Ironically, the best anti-submarine gun turned out to be the automatic 6-pounder (57mm) Molins Gun, fitted in only a handful of Mosquitos.  Its use in Sunderlands was never considered.

Finally, the heroic Sunderland crews, flying 12-hour patrols over the sea, were expected to come home on the power of second-hand motors, which had already seen action in Bomber Command aircraft over Germany.  After reconditioning, the Bristol motors were passed as fit for future service, but many parts must have been subject to metal fatigue.  Again, being an earlier design of motor, their propeller feathering system contained not enough oil to correctly carry out this function, leading sometimes to the loss of an entire motor or at best a non-feathered dead prop causing extra drag on an aircraft hundreds of miles out at sea.