Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Morphy
Auction House hiding behind a couple of the anti-tank rifles
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming April of 2019 firearms auction.
We've taken a look at the Boys anti-tank rifle before,
but I thought this would be a really cool opportunity to
have both a Mark 1 and a Mark 1* in the same place at the same
time and show you what the differences are between them.
So just a little bit of background. This was developed in the 1930s. The British military decided,
or realised, that they needed some sort of weapon with which infantry could actually
have some sort of fighting chance against light armoured vehicles and tanks.
And in the mid 1930s anti-tank rifles like this were actually quite effective against
the tanks that were out there.
In fact, these would remain effective against German tanks for the first couple years of the war.
The Panzer I, Panzer II, and Panzer III were all substantially vulnerable to guns like the Boys anti-tank rifle.
So at the beginning of the war, the early ammunition for these could penetrate something like 23mm
of vertical armor at 100 yards. That's not trivial, it may be small by late war tank standards,
by heavy tank standards. But a lot of what was out there, if you look at the early German Blitzkrieg,
it was a lot of armoured cars, there was a lot of Panzer Is and Panzer IIs, and those are very much,
you know, mid 1930s style light and medium tanks, so.
(Light tanks specifically, anyway.)
This was ultimately adopted in 1937 and it had been developed by Captain H.C. Boys, hence the name.
Although during its development it was actually called Project Stanchion, a good stout British name.
Boys, however, died just a few days before its formal adoption and so in
memorial to him they renamed it the Boys anti-tank rifle. That's where the name comes from.
They would go on to produce...
These would be made both by BSA, and by the John Inglis Company in Canada once the war got going.
And it was in fact the Inglis company whose engineers went through and made the changes that became the Mark 1*.
So this is our Mark 1 original gun. This is actually a 1939 production gun, which is pretty cool,
it's a nice early one. This is a 1943 production Mark 1* with all of the improvements and updates.
And let's dig right into exactly what those are.
We'll go from front to back here. Which means we're going to start with the muzzle brake.
(There were only a couple of changes that were made to these guns.)
So the early guns had a rather complicated muzzle brake. It has three ports on it, including one
that vents straight downward which would kick up dirt or dust in a dry environment.
... You can see the screws here on the front, this had to be disassembled and cleaned
as part of the maintenance procedure for the gun, which was kind of, you know, annoying.
And it was an expensive part to make, so this was a prime candidate for improvement.
And the Inglis engineers came up with a brake modelled, apparently modelled, after the Lahti
L-39 anti-tank gun, a harmonica style brake. It was much simpler and cheaper to manufacture,
it didn't have to be disassembled, didn't have to go through any special cleaning process,
and was just more effective overall. Didn't kick up dirt, did actually cut recoil impulse slightly better.
Next up we have the rear sight. The original Mark 1 Boys had a two-position rear sight,
so that's for 500 metres [yards]. That's for 300. Not the most expensive thing to work with,
however, your chances of getting a proper sight picture on an armoured vehicle,
especially a moving armoured vehicle, at 500 metres with open sights like this were relatively slim.
I suspect there were some problems of confusion over, you know,
"Oops, I had it set to the wrong setting and missed."
And just really not a necessary element. A fixed sight at 300 would have been just fine.
And so that's exactly what Inglis did. On the Mark 1* they have gotten rid of the adjustment lever,
they've simplified the whole rear sight bracket, and you can see this is now basically just pinned in place
and it is a fixed 300 metre zero for the rifle.
And then last, and probably most significant, certainly most substantial, was the change in the bipod.
So the original Mark 1 guns had this rather unorthodox sort of two-foot monopod design.
And this thing is set up in such a way that you can lock it up in this position for transit.
But really the problem with this thing
(you can also elevate it by rotating this, which is kind of nice),
the problem, I think, was primarily that these feet are relatively close together
and it's a relatively tall bipod, and this was not as stable as people would have liked.
And so Inglis's solution was this much more orthodox style of bipod.
You'll notice that the feet are spread wider, that makes the whole gun more stable,
and it's a cheaper part to make. Instead of having the more complicated machining operations
the bipod length is now fixed, you don't have to have the screw cams built in.
And this does still allow a bit of side-to-side yaw, and you can pivot this.
In fact both of these bipods pivot a full 360 degrees around.
I realise that I'm skipping over a lot of kind of basic fundamental material on the Boys rifle,
however, I do have a previous video on all that basic how it works, how it's put together.
So if you're curious, I would recommend checking out that video at the end of this one.
And then, if you look very closely, you can actually make out the 1939 proof marks on the top of the barrel there.
Our Mark 1* gun has a few more things going on. First off, they didn't actually mark it with a star,
they normally did, this one just for whatever reason doesn't have that.
You'll notice it is also marked with its manufacturer, Inglis, and year of production, 1943.
This is the serial number, which has been added onto the receiver because this is a registered destructive
device in the United States. That's why it's electro-pencilled on there, that was required by law.
You'll also notice it says US government property.
Well the US, yes, did buy some Boys anti-tank rifles, but not very many and didn't generally use them.
The reason that that marking is on there is because, in order to legally be eligible for the lend-lease program
coming out of Canada, the gun had to actually be marked and considered American property
so that we could then lend-lease it to other people. So that's why you'll find those marks,
it does not actually necessarily mean that the US government used them.
The original actual serial number is up here on the rear end of the barrel.
And Inglis made their date stamps a bit more obvious, right there, 1943 production for this example.
So I recognise I've left out a lot of the basic information, but that's because
I actually already have a video on the basic overview of the Boys anti-tank rifle.
So if you're curious about more, I would highly recommend checking out that video.
In total, production of the Boys rifle would be just over 114,000
by the end of 1943, at which point they stopped producing them.
The Boys anti-tank rifle was supplanted by the PIAT,
the Projector Infantry Anti-Tank, which used a hollow charge explosive
instead of a velocity dependent, you know, inert kinetic projectile.
So, you know, that was the point where the heavier tanks were becoming basically mostly invulnerable
to these anti-tank rifles and they had to replace them with something more effective.
Still, quite a lot of them in service.
We don't often think about it perhaps, but these were also used by the British in Southeast Asia.
In fighting against Japanese tanks ... they remained effective throughout the entire war.
As opposed to the Germans, the Japanese of course weren't doing a lot of
tank development and improvement during the war.
US Marine Corps units did use a few of these, also in the Pacific Theatre.
Some of them were sent to Finland, sold to Finland,
6,000 or 7,000 of them were shipped to China as as part of the...
(those were all John Inglis guns, kind of like their Bren guns and their Hi-Powers).
So these got out and around.
There was a Mark 2 version that was developed for airborne use that was shorter and lighter
(which had to have been super fun to shoot), however, it was never adopted.
The PIAT was adopted in its place and just as well,
that Mark 2 gun would have been difficult to use in combat I suspect.
So, hopefully you enjoyed the video, enjoyed getting a chance to
take a look at these side-by-side and see what the differences are.
If you would like either one of them, they are both coming up for sale here at Morphy's.
If you check the description text below the video, you'll find a link to Forgotten Weapons,
and from there you can click over to the catalogue pages for both of these two guns.
They are both registered destructive devices under the NFA
because they are greater than .50 calibre, they're .55 calibre.
So as long as you're willing to go through the tax stamp process, one or both can be yours.
Thanks for watching.