SLR

[hardyferret]

So when did plastic furniture first come in ?

I thought about 1970?

But I know someone will shoot me down. :-D

 

Hardyferret :evil:

[ArtistsRifles]

I thought it was around '72 - '74 ??????

[Sylvester]

I would say a little earlier than that, as when I was a little Junior Bleeder at Bovy in 71-73, we had the occasional plastic butt and stock appear when we collected our weapons for the range!

Basically ..... aint got a clue when they actually came in but it seems we were trying to copy the Yanks!! :whistle:

[AlienFTM]

Being cavalry, SLR was my alternative personal weapon after Small Metal Gun. We trained on it at Catterick in 1975. TBH I have absolutely no recollection either way of whether there was a preponderance of wooden or plastic furniture.

 

I deployed to Omagh as a reinforcement in early 1976 as a section rifleman. On Day 1 I was assigned an SLR, still wrapped in greased protective stuff, and spend plenty of time cleaning it up before going out on my first VCP (the regiment was coming to the end of its tour and re-roling upon return from NI as Recce: many of the drivers were away retraining on CVR(T), so my troop could not afford me the luxury of attending the week-long in-theatre reinforcement training course for a week or two so I went straight out on the street).

 

I remember marvelling at the clean lines of this never-fired-before weapon with its delicious light-wood furniture. A couple of days later the troop headed out to a range in the wilds of Tyrone somewhere to convert live rounds into empty cases and for me to zero the thing so that I might kill someone if called upon to do so. This allowed us to use up old ammo and ensure that the ammo we'd have on the street was in tip-top condition.

 

It was only when we stood on this range in daylight that my section clocked my wood-furnished SLR and I realised that the rest of them had tacky, naff plastic furniture and the green-eyed monster was casting its evil eye on the speccy, fower-eyed, brain-box cheery boy that had just been posted in. But of course they were all very professional about it and, after all, we were only a couple of months away from returning home safely from a highly successful operational tour, so they were all demob happy and keeping their noses clean.

 

Looking back, it would seem that the wooden furniture had been almost completely replaced by the Spring of 1976, much to the chagrin of the Tom on the street and I was just lucky. I am fairly sure, though, that the odd example of wooden furniture did crop up for some years thereafter. And highly sought-after they were, too.

 

Over the following 14 years I never had such a beautiful weapon (of course for most of those years, the SMG was my personal weapon, with neither wooden nor plastic furniture.

 

I have suddenly remembered being issued on Day 1 with 40 rounds of 7.62, to load into two magazines of 20, 4 Ball, 1 Trace. Except that quite bizarrely, I was issued with the troop's incendiary round. Instead of a plain metal tip (indicating Ball) or a pink tip (Trace) this round had a yellow tip. "This round goes in the top of the magazine you will always load first. When that sucker gets downrange, the nice little POP will keep Paddy's head down, oh yes."

 

Then on the day of our hand-over to 9/12L, I was about ask what to do about the incendiary round, when the guy who'd given it me took it back, scraped off the Humbrol yellow paint and said, "It's Ball round you soft get. Incendiary! Ha ha ha."

 

As an aside, on the 4 Ball 1 Trace thing. Infantry scale of issue was 4 Ball 1 Trace so that every fifth round allowed for a check-zero. The first round (if you weren't a sucker like me) was always trace, so that upon contact, a valid target designation was "Watch my trace," fire the one round at the enemy, then give the section corrections. These days they'd probably just give a squirt of laser.

 

Some Geneva Convention precluded the use of tracer as an anti-infantry ammunition because it contained phosphorus. 4 Ball 1 Trace was permitted. In Royal Armoured Corps turrets, our GPMGs were classified as ranging weapons,

 

(edited) ... and were therefore loaded 1 Ball 1 Trace ...

 

allowing the gunner to fire short ranging bursts (2 - 3 Trace IIRC, = 3 - 7 rounds), determine the fall of shot and adjust to determine the range to the target before sending a single HESH round (in Scorpion, let's not get started on the whole range ...) downrange safe in the knowledge that the range was fairly accurate. In practice, good commander and gunner skills allowed for accurate range estimation without the need for the GPMG coax. The coax was still good for engaging targets not worthy of a HESH round though, when killing bursts of (IIRC) 8 - 10 trace were the norm.

 

Anyway. A guy who became a good mate told me how he'd been designated his section's LMG (Bren) gunner and he and his number 2 had to lug a box of (IIRC) 240 rounds of 7.62 in eight times 30-round LMG magazines, 4 Ball 1 Trace. Except that he loaded his first two mags with straight trace and his last three with 4 Ball 1 trace. The rest (bar the couple of trace left over) were straight ball ammunition.

 

His theory was that if he was engaged, he'd hosepipe the firing point with Trace, ensuring he killed the enemy while he could see where his ammo was going, then he'd empty three or four mags of Ball into the target area to make sure they stayed down, go home with two or three mags of 4 Ball 1 Trace, defy anybody to prove what order he'd fired his rounds and stuff the Geneva Convention.

[ArtistsRifles]

That was an interesting read - many thanks for sharing!!!!

 

FWIW - in my bunch the top 3 rounds were tracer and, as you say, when subjected to incoming the first man to spot the source would yell "Watch my tracer" and let the three rounds go. There was no point in the 4/1 load as most of our SLR's had the safety's "converted" to allow full auto as per the original FN design.

The Geneva Convention wasn't really so much of an issue for us as the nature of the work generally meant the other side wouldn't be too interested in abiding by it either...

 

An interesting "experiment" engaged in once - and once only -was to take a very thin file to the tip of a ball round and gently cut a small (read minute) cross in it. The results on the targets were interesting...............

[Guest Tin]

AlienFTM,

I finished my RAC trade training in March 1975. I was there during the change over from 4 RTR to 5 Inniskillings (Forskins). Would you have been there at that time. I then went on to join my regiment in Germany, The Life Guards, Household Cavalry on Chieftains. Mick

[protacman]

We always had plastic

And FN FALs with Auto

I used to swap Beer for Ammo with the Israeli's in lebanon, just to have more ammo to fire back at them

got some nice pictures of T55's