Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWapons.com.
Today we are looking at some really cool archival footage of the EM-2 during British testing.
So this is some footage that Jonathan Ferguson figured might be out there,
and was looking for as part of the research for his book Thorneycroft to SA80, A History of British Bullpup Rifles.
And it was actually Royal Armouries archivist Philip Abbott who found this in the archives,
and provided us a copy, which is really cool.
So let's dig in and take a look at a variety of different tests that they have on camera.
Now first up we have just kind of a side view of the action, and this rifle is just barely cycling.
So if you watch, you'll see the extractor goes just about to the back end of the ejection port.
Now these rounds are all coming out OK, but we'll get to one that doesn't.
I do also want to point out if you look at the very top of the bolt you can see
the locking wedge and firing pin actually going forward, right there, immediately before the gun fires.
Now here's the round that doesn't quite come far enough back.
It doesn't make it out of the extractor claw and the empty case gets re-chambered. That's a classic sort of malfunction.
Now here we have a gun that they have made some modifications to,
and we can see there that the bolt is now travelling much farther back.
So I suspect they've opened up the gas port or done something similar.
Unfortunately we don't have the exact details on which number gun each of these is,
or exactly what ... changes they were testing.
But you can see the bolt's going significantly farther back now, and the cases are clearing much more positively.
You can still see the firing pin closing on the top of the bolt there with each shot, ... that's a neat little detail
Right there goes it forward and then the gun fires.
The magazine is a little too deep in this to be able to see the rounds chambering up.
Here we have basically the same sort of test,
except they've filmed it from a top angle looking down on the gun so you can see where the ejection goes.
Kind of cool. This is high-speed photography from like 1951 or 1952, which is on its own rather neat.
So in this angle you can actually see the cartridges being pushed up out of the magazine,
Alternating left and right. I think ... you can see the right-hand one, but not the left.
At any rate, not a whole lot else going on in this one. The gun is once again cycling ... perfectly well.
And it's kicking cases forward which would be nice if you have to try and shoulder this thing
on your left shoulder and, you know, you can hold your chin back and not take a case to the face.
Now this one ... is an interesting example of a gun modified specifically for a high speed test.
This lug that you see in the bottom right, that is the locking flap
on the right side of the bolt, now gone, here it comes back.
And they have cut a hole out, they've made this a cutaway part.
They've also cut away the very front of the ejection port so that you can see the firing pin inside the bolt.
So this is the sort of thing that you do with high-speed footage when you're testing a firearm,
you want to see exactly what the internal parts are doing.
And usually you'll do this ... investigating a specific function of a specific part.
So well, it's coming up here in just a moment
we will see, there it is, the firing pin goes forward
and then the action opens.
And in order to give you that view they had to go through and
actually cut away parts of the mechanical functioning of the gun.
One other thing I'll point out here, that sort of weird feature
you see at the bottom in the middle of the screen,
that is actually the front end of the ejection port cover.
So that kind of also gives you a hint that they've cut away a little bit of the front of the ejection port here,
so that you can actually get a view inside it with the high-speed camera.
This is from ... high-speed photography that was very limited in terms of frame rate and field of view.
And so you'd get very specific bits of footage.
Now here's a really cool one, this is a high speed drop test of the EM-2. And you can see it kind of wobbling around.
Note that the barrel bounces around inside the handguard because the handguard
does not clamp down tight to the muzzle end of the barrel. So let them drop it one more time.
This looks like the gun's made out of rubber, but this is actually
fairly typical for what you would see if you looked at a real drop test on high-speed video.
You don't get to see the the scope impacting there.
We do also however have a swing test, and I believe both of these fell into the category of what they called rough usage.
So in this case they want to see if they are gonna damage the gas tube by
cranking it into a big chunk of wood, or concrete, or something there.
Now this is an interesting series of clips, these guys are test-firing rifle grenades and the recoil is substantial.
Note that the bolt actually locked open there despite there being no magazine, and it'll do it again with this guy.
There is no gas port setting on the EM-2 to turn the gas system off,
And so you get a lot of force coming back on the bolt carrier there.
This particular testing they clearly were having some issues, and of course rifle grenades have a ton of recoil.
Now here's what the gun actually looks like in firing, and this is an extremely cool piece of footage
because the gentleman that we are watching here is Stefan Janson.
He is the man who is actually primarily responsible for designing and producing the EM-2.
And this is him actually doing some rapid fire magazine dumps with the rifle of his own creation.
So I'm gonna go ahead and replay that clip just because it's really cool. So this is the same clip again.
One other thing to note here, ... if you watch he actually uses his firing hand to change magazines.
Part of that might be because he's resting the gun on his sandbags there,
but this was at the time considered to be the fastest reload ... procedure.
Note also that the bolt automatically closes when he inserts a new magazine.
... To me that's the coolest clip of the whole thing.
So, a big thanks to Jonathan for looking for this footage and to Philip Abbot for finding it.
If you're interested, check out Thorneycroft to SA80, which is currently available for pre-sale on Kickstarter.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]