[ Why No Hammer Spur on the Enfield No2 MkI*? ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today I want to talk about why
the Enfield Number 2 revolver lost its hammer spur.
Now I did a video about ... the Albion, the Scottish production Number 2s,
a little while ago in which I said the exact wrong thing.
I explained this as being a change to accommodate the British Tank Corps.
That's not correct. So first off, thanks to viewer Thomas
for pointing out to me that that was in fact not correct
and sending me the resources that he had come across to prove it.
And that I think is the interesting second half of today's video,
I want to talk about how this sort of mistake happens.
How this sort of ... mistaken information becomes entrenched
in the historical community, and what can be done to fix it.
So let's start off with the facts of the matter.
And that would be the Number 2 revolver when it starts off
it is a single-action/double-action revolver with a nice big hammer spur here,
so that you can cock the thing and fire it with a nice light single-action trigger press.
However, in 1938 that design is replaced
with a double-action only version that has no hammer spur any longer.
Now what I told you in my Albion Number 2 video
was that this was done to accommodate the British Tank Corps.
That they had problems with the hammer spur catching
on the hatches of vehicles when they were trying to get out.
There are a couple of things that I could have done to recognise
that this was not true and I didn't, we'll get to those in a moment.
The reality of the matter is the change to an ... essentially hammerless double-action only gun
was made ... basically to simplify training.
So I have here ... this is from June 22nd 1938,
it is a report on the testing of the hammerless double-action only model.
And it specifically includes four reasons
why these changes were felt to be an improvement on the gun.
So I'm going to paraphrase here. Number one, it is easy to fire
and with every shot, whether the first or subsequent shot,
requires the same manipulation to fire it.
So on a double-action/single-action version you may cock the hammer for the first shot.
That gives you a very nice light, crisp first shot,
and then a very heavy double-action second shot.
This is very similar to a training conundrum we see in modern
semi-automatic pistols, although reversed.
In a modern semi-auto the idea is you would carry a DA/SA gun with the hammer down.
Your first shot has a very long, heavy trigger pull that is more difficult to shoot accurately.
Then the action cycles itself as soon as it fires
and all the subsequent shots have nice light, crisp ... single-action trigger pulls.
The question is: is it worth trying to train around that extra-heavy first shot?
Well, the British had the opposite issue, their question was is it worth trying
to train around an extra-light first shot and heavy subsequent shots?
And taking the ... hammer spur and the [single-action] out eliminated those problems.
Number two, the pistol gives ... the firer greater confidence in handling.
It is less likely to go off and is particularly preferred when firing from
a vehicle through a loophole, a horse, or possibly a motor bicycle.
We don't really have motor bicycles anymore. But the idea is there's just less to mess with.
And you don't have the hammer potentially catching on
well, vehicle loopholes, the pistol firing ports that you would find in some vehicles.
So here we see the beginnings of one of the kernels of truth
behind the idea that this conversion was done specifically for the Armoured Corps.
And again, we'll get to the other kernels of truth in a moment.
Number three, only in the case of the first shot
is it slightly less accurate in the hands of a trained man.
For subsequent shots it is more accurate, particularly if fired at a high rate.
So being able to cock the revolver gives you a better first shot, if you're decently trained,
but after that it all kind of comes out in the wash.
And ... the utilisation of the pistol wasn't such that they were really concerned about
giving the best trained guys a little bit more accuracy with only their first shot.
And number four, training would be simplified.
If you don't have to go through half the steps of shooting the gun.
If there is no issue of what if you cock the thing manually.
If it's just: "is revolver, pull trigger, revolver fire" that makes things a lot simpler.
And again, we're not trying to train a marksmanship team here.
This is the backup defensive weapon for a bunch of guys
who are never supposed to have to use the thing in the first place.
So if you can simplify the training on this,
and thus have more time available to train them on their real jobs,
be they artillery, or engineering, or the vehicle that they're supposed to be driving
and fighting with, so much the better. So that's the reality.
This is by the way, from the British List of Changes, this document.
It is numbered B2289, dated June 22nd 1938.
And ... I have 3 separate pages from this overall report,
I don't have the whole thing and that's part of the problem.
Now when I went to do my video, I'll be honest,
I did find this explanation a little bit dubious. ...
I am not a huge subject matter expert in the Number 2.
I was relying on other resources, primarily the one published book on the subject,
which is ".380 Enfield No. 2 Revolver" by Ian Skennerton and Mark Stamps.
This is considered an authoritative book, it's really the only book
on the subject, and it really is a very good book.
However, like many books, it is both a period of its time and it is susceptible to mistakes.
So this particular book was written in ... 1989, published in [1993].
And while I have reached out to Mark Stamps, I haven't been able to hear back from him.
But he did make a comment that I found online that was revealing.
And that was when he was ... co-writing the book,
he actually reached out to Herb Woodend, who was at the time the curator of the Pattern Room.
This is the British Royal Armouries collection today.
And it is the definitive collection of British military small arms.
And Woodend actually confirmed to him that, yes,
this conversion from hammer to no hammer was done for the Armoured Corps.
Now this brings up some relevant issues.
First off, curators can be extremely knowledgeable people,
but it is basically impossible for them to be experts on every item under their care.
Especially in a collection as absolutely massive
as the Pattern Room was, as the Royal Armouries now is.
And so it is understandable that an author would take a curator's word for a fact like this.
But it's also something you still have to kind of take with a grain of salt.
No offence to curators out there, but they don't always know all the details.
And here's where the problem came from,
in I believe in 1936, although I don't have that document to specifically reference from,
the Armoured Corps actually made the complaint that the hammers on the pistols were an issue.
I can't tell you with 100% certainty exactly why they thought they were an issue,
but they thought they were, and they requested a hammerless version of the pistol.
That is almost certainly the document that Woodend was thinking of
and was referencing when he told Stamps about the reason for this change.
In reality that ... request from the Armoured Corps
was not what led to the actual adoption of the hammerless version of the gun.
It would be a couple of years later, trials would be done,
and ultimately it would be a training issue primarily
that did also see some benefit to the gun in using through shooting ports in vehicles.
Now, ... why did this information become fixed?
Well part of it is the fact that it was printed in a book.
One of the problems with books is once it's printed
... you can't change it, unless you actually do a reprinting.
And I know this first hand, there are a number of
small mistakes in my book "Chassepot to FAMAS" up there.
We printed an errata sheet on our website, and in subsequent reprints we fixed those things.
But if there's only one printing of a book ... well, there is no way to fix those issues.
Often the printing of a book will lead to more interest in a subject,
which will lead to more research and will lead to improved information,
which then the book doesn't have in it.
This is also very much a pre-internet book.
So research was more difficult, communication, especially with
collectors and museum creators around the world was more difficult.
And ... a lot of pre-internet books have problems like this.
Which should not be taken as a mark against the books in general.
Authors do absolutely the best they can, but it's hard to expect absolute perfection.
So first off, Woodend probably should have known better.
For my part, ... one of the things that I used because I did find this a little questionable,
but then I took a look at the tanker's holsters.
So, and I mentioned this in my video, the standard holster
for the Number 2 revolver was a full flap holster. Covers over the hammer,
and that would prevent any problems with the hammer catching on anything.
But this is one of the tanker holsters, and it's open at the top.
And I looked at this and I went , "Oh, well OK, it becomes plausible
that the hammer's sticking out and it's going to catch on things.
Between that and the fact that we have a good reference book that says this, I'll go with it."
What could have fixed this problem for me would be if I had actually put the gun in the holster,
and recognised that in fact it's an open top holster,
but it's deep enough that it fully covers the hammer.
And so that problem is no longer a plausible one.
Like if you're a tanker there's no way that this is going to be any different
for you in getting out of the tank than this thing.
One of the other things that is kind of specific to British firearms in a case like this
is that this document is actually a little bit hard to get.
This is from the British List of Changes, which is their formal documentation
of basically all the changes that are made to small arms.
From the absolute little tiniest change in designation of part marks.
The difference in Enfield rifle rear sights
... through three or four or five different marks and variations.
All of that stuff up through the really big stuff like
when they actually adopted guns, the trials reports for guns.
That stuff is published in the List of Changes, however the List of Changes is copyrighted.
This is subject to Crown copyright, and thus it is not something that you can legally republish.
Now that hasn't stopped a lot of people
from taking little snippets like this and putting them out there.
But it does make it substantially more difficult for researchers
to get widespread easy access to the information.
In a lot of other places this sort of information ... while it may at one point be classified,
it's not copyrighted, and so it can be published
and it tends to be much more easily accessible.
With these things, like you really pretty much have to go to the British archives
and dig this stuff out of the physical archives.
Because until they get around to digitising all of it, it's just not available.
And ... I'm not using that as an excuse, but it makes in particular British subject matter
a little bit more difficult for people to readily access.
So that is ... the story of why this thing was actually developed.
It's because ... revolver use wasn't that important.
And anything that saves training time and simplifies the handling of the gun
is seen as more important than something that may increase the tactical utility of the gun
by just a little bit by just a small number of the people who are using them.
And then also, where these stories tend to come from.
This is in fact a case of a nugget of truth,
that being that the Tank Corps did request a hammerless version of the gun,
being expanded into a wider explanation than it really is.
Namely this wasn't done because the Tank Corps asked for it.
So hopefully you guys found this a bit enlightening and a bit interesting.
Thanks for watching.