Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I am here today at the Royal Armouries,
the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, England. And I am
here today courtesy of ARES, Armament Research Services.
We are taking a look at some cool guns in the NFC collection,
and today we have some De Lisle silenced .45 calibre carbines.
Now, there has been a lot of interest in De Lisles of late,
and so I thought it would be really cool to look not just at these two production ones,
but the NFC also has one of the prototype De Lisles.
So the gun here was originally conceived of in 1942,
and it was a project between W.G. De Lisle and a gentleman named Sir Malcolm Campbell.
And in 1943 they proposed this design to the Ordnance Board here in the UK.
And they actually proposed three different guns all at the same time.
They had a pair of .22 rimfire carbines, which were actually semi-auto carbines,
as well as this, the .45 calibre bolt action version.
And the Ordnance Board considered them, and decided that they were interested in
developing through on the .45 calibre version.
So this is basically a Number 1 Mark III SMLE Lee-Enfield rifle
that has been heavily converted into .45 ACP.
In fact pretty much the only major component that was not modified was the buttstock.
The bolt's modified, the receiver's modified, obviously the barrel, the sights, the magazine, the trigger mechanism.
Basically everything.
And the idea here was to issue these to Commandos for basically sneaky covert operations.
A lot of people compare these to the Welrod pistols, they weren't actually really competitive guns.
The Welrod was designed for SOE for dropping to insurgent forces in occupied Europe,
where the De Lisle carbine was intended for Commando use in regular military service.
So the two were never tested against each other, ... one wasn't a replacement for the other.
In fact when these were first tested, they were actually tested against suppressed Sten guns.
The suppressed version of the Mark II Sten,
and also a Sten gun using actually an SOE Welwyn developed suppressor.
These did proved to be satisfactory, so on the basis of a couple of prototypes like this one,
there was an order placed for 500 of these guns, which was later increased to 600.
The idea was to have the first 450 of them (or then 550 of them)
of this style, with a fixed standard wood buttstock.
And then they were going to have 50 of them using a folding metal buttstock.
That folding metal stock was developed by the Sterling Company of Dagenham.
And they actually only produced one of them, it was a prototype only,
before they got to ... that point in the production [where] the whole contract was cancelled.
That actually happened in 1944.
What had happened was after the Normandy invasions of Europe the nature of British warfare kind of changed,
and there wasn't a requirement for a rifle like this anymore.
So the contract was cancelled.
In total there were a handful of prototypes that were manufactured.
And then the first 17 of the guns were manufactured by the Ford Company actually, at their plant in Dagenham.
And then the bulk of the guns, about 130, were manufactured by Sterling in Dagenham.
And it's two of the Sterling guns we have here today.
It's interesting, Sterling's records say that there were 106 produced,
but there are serial numbers well in excess of that. In fact we have serial number 129 right here.
So, it's a little more than 106.
The number generally agreed upon is about 130 of them were produced.
They stayed in service. Ultimately they were actually given out to British colonial folks in Malaysia,
... basically for self-defence.
In fact, one of the very few photos of a De Lisle in the wild
is actually hanging on the back of a Malaysian farmer.
So, an interesting end to the story of the De Lisle carbine.
So one of the really cool markings here is on ... one of the prototypes. It actually is marked
"The De Lisle Commando Carbine". And then calibre .45 ACP.
... This is number 1010, so this is actually the 10th prototype. They started at 1001,
and I believe they made 17 of these prototypes, so they went up to 1017.
Patent pending, naturally.
Now this prototype gun has kind of a sporting style of rear sight,
that would change with the production guns, but it works fine for a proof of concept.
So this prototype was built from a 1910 manufactured Short Lee-Enfield Mark III.
Or a Number 1 Mark III.
And then you can see that the bolt has been substantially shortened.
Of course on a standard Lee-Enfield the bolt goes all the way out here to the front of the receiver.
... This is part of the barrel.
The bolt face has been modified to accept a .45 ACP cartridge.
And then of course the magazine well has been modified to accept a modified 1911 magazine.
We still use the original magazine catch from the Enfield, so if I push that down I can pull out the magazine.
And in order to make these work, the 1911 magazines actually had this rib added to the back of them
with a magazine catch to use the original Enfield magazine system.
So it's a standard 7 round magazine.
There was a single 11 round extended magazine manufactured with the prototype folding stock gun,
but in general these were just used with standard magazines with the ribs added.
And of course they have a magazine well manufactured here.
Which in this case was just screwed onto the original magazine well for the .303.
The barrel on these guns is actually only 7.25 inches long. So it's only going to come to about here.
After that you have baffles and perforated sections to dramatically reduce the noise of the cartridge.
And that is of course what the De Lisle was designed to do,
is be as close to a completely silent ... firearm as was possible.
And the way that was done was by having a relatively large low pressure cartridge, the .45 Automatic,
combined with a really large volume suppressor.
So by the time gas came out the very end it was at quite low pressure and just made a minimal noise.
Now .45 ACP was in standard service with British Commandos at the time.
They did actually have a number of 1911 pistols, and so the cartridge does make sense in that historical context.
They did have access to everything necessary.
And it makes more sense than 9mm because it is a lower pressure cartridge,
and thus easier and more effective to suppress.
So we have two of the original examples here to take a look at.
They are pretty much identical, but they do differ in some minor little details.
For one thing, the finish colour on the suppressor tubes is slightly different.
We have a few differences in the nose cap, which we'll take a look at in a moment.
And then we actually have an interesting element on, I believe it is this one,
yes, it's that one. Let's take a look at that for a moment.
So there are three parts to a gunshot that make noise. You have the supersonic crack of the bullet.
You have the muzzle noise of the escaping gas pressure from the barrel.
And then you have the noise of the action of the weapon cycling, the mechanical noise that it creates.
And the De Lisle actually does a pretty good job of addressing all three of those.
Of course the supersonic noise is addressed by choosing a subsonic cartridge like .45 ACP in the first place.
The muzzle noise is addressed by having this very large and very efficient suppressor on there.
And then the mechanical noise you would think is addressed by using a manually operated action.
So there's virtually no noise going on, right?
You've got the noise of the firing pin dropping, the striker dropping, but that's it.
Well, there is also the noise from closing the bolt.
When you snap that down it does hit the metal of the receiver, and make a "clack".
And they actually did something to address that.
So if we take a look at the bolt handle here, you can see that they have actually cut out a dovetail
and slid in a piece of what's either I think wood, or in some cases Bakelite, into the bolt handle.
And this is the point that actually makes contact with the receiver.
And that is done to muffle the noise from closing the bolt.
So even though the mechanical noise from a bolt action rifle like this was pretty minimal to start with,
they did seriously look at ... reducing it even further.
Now this isn't present in all of the original guns. In fact the other original one we have here, number 97, doesn't have it.
And I believe I've read about some of them actually using rubber as well.
So, keep in mind that this was a gun that never went into quite full production.
They only made a little over a 100 of them before the whole project was shut down.
So it's reasonable to expect some variances in these guns.
So at the muzzle of the De Lisle we have a removable nose cap,
which does allow the guts of the suppressor to come out.
You'll sometimes see them like this, and you'll sometimes also see them safety wired.
This one, for example, has been safety wired.
A few of the other notable features, of course, are the sights, which are marked out to 200 yards,
50, 100, 150, and 200. And it is just a standard rear notch sight like an SMLE.
The front sight is a pretty simple blade,
but it does have a nice big set of protective wings to prevent it from being damaged.
And of course these were manufactured from scrapped SMLEs which did originally have a charger bridge for loading.
And ... one part of the conversion process was to get rid of that charger bridge.
So you'll find these with the stocks cut out for the charger bridge,
and the screw holes, both on the right
and on the left here, for that charger bridge to have originally attached.
Because of the large diameter of the suppressor on the front,
of course the original Enfield handguard would not fit.
And of course that suppressor is going to get a bit hot if you shoot a bunch through it.
So they manufactured about an 8 inch long customised handguard to fit to the bottom.
You can see it's attached there by a screw.
And that's the handguard that you got on the De Lisle.
You can see that it is actually attached here with a piece of ... sheet metal,
because there is very little thickness at the bottom, and you wouldn't want to try and make that
a one piece stock, or it would very quickly crack through.
As far as being silent weapons, the De Lisle was a very effective design,
but it did actually leave something to be desired as a functional weapon.
... The De Lisles ... have a reputation, as much as they have a reputation for anything,
for having a poor ability to eject empty cases.
The ejector in these guns just really wasn't quite good enough
to reliably deal with short, wide .45 ACP cartridge cases.
So that was an on-going issue. Of course it was an issue that was never suitably resolved,
because, well, production of these guns ended at about 130 total.
So had they actually stayed in service, they would have been developed a little bit farther,
and problems like that would have been better resolved.
So this is the only known example of the folding stock De Lisle.
And the stock on it is very similar to what would be adopted as the Patchett or Sterling,
the L2A1, A2 and A3 submachine gun.
This should not be surprising given that it was the Sterling company manufacturing most of the De Lisle carbines,
where they would have been in development of this stock at the same time anyway.
So there is a notch right here
and a latch on this section.
So that locks the stock in there.
To open it up we are going to pull this around to the back.
This opens up exactly like a Sterling submachine gun.
This comes up here, and
there we go, snaps into place.
The pistol grip is one piece, replacing the original buttstock socket.
You can see the screw, right here, which would originally hold on the entire buttstock.
Now it just holds on this folding stock.
And there's a little catch right here, push that catch in,
and this one's a little sticky.
That catch allows you to pull the stock down.
There we go. Other than that, this De Lisle is exactly the same as the standard production guns.
The serial number on this one interestingly appears to be 631.
Just completely out of sequence with any others.
Nothing else comes anywhere close to this kind of volume.
Lastly we have a set of sling swivels that have been added to the side,
since there is no longer a buttstock to put the sling swivel on.
It's been put on right there, and then there's the front one.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]