Four-Wheelin' InThe ice-Age

And of course you all remember that beasties evolving in cold climates tend to get bigger to retain heat, even to the point of the ice-age megafauna; and megafauna is what this thing resembles.

This is the Austro-Daimler M17 artillery tractor.
Those steel wheels are just under five feet tall but she needed to be big. She was designed to tow the Skoda, 30.5 cm siege mortar when said artillery piece took to the road.

We mentioned the Skoda a few years back in connection with Dicke Berta. The Skodas doing a big chunk of the Belgian-fortress-destroyin' while they waited for the Big Girl to show up.

These guys got to that party in Belgium in 1914 by means of the conveyance pictured next.
This is an earlier photo and shows the gun being towed by an M12 tractor.
Note that the tube gets its own wagon.
And those guys hanging around? They're the gun crew, fifteen to seventeen of them. They ride in the tractor for added ballast - and 'cause it's easier and faster - and 'cause it wouldn't du for the crew to arrive after the gun.
Being that the M12 was rated for twelve tons but the Skoda weighs ten tons more than that, it must have made for slow going and the smaller front wheels couldn't have gone far off-road

Enter the M17 in 1916.
She could pull twenty-four tons and had four-wheel-drive. No cab though. Those Zugwagen-eers must have been a hardy bunch.
A four-cylinder engine blasting out 80 horse-power (!) must have sent this thing sailing.

But with twenty-two tons of Skoda in tow, the crew in the back along with eleven shells (Around two hours quick firing for a Skoda) at either 630 or 850 pounds each, it was still faster than draft animals.
What's more, it took up far less road space than the livestock needed to tug the big girls would have needed.
And you must admit, the boys looks awfully smart up there.
Another plus: The cranking handle was about chest high so one could get one's jaw broken without having to bend over.

A Retrograde Step

Happy French cannon-cockers, in transit with their ordnance in late 1914.
I first liked this pic for the truck, tractor actually - or prime-mover.
I guessing it's some flavor of Latil but I don't know which.
In any case, it's a mean-looking rig.
When Georges Latil patented his system of "broken transmission" as a means of powering an axle also used for steering, it's open to debate whether he invented front-wheel-drive or four-wheel.The year being 1897, it was probably one or the other.
They made agricultural tractors, forestry tractors (Euro-skidders) and arty tractors.
The above is almost certainly a 4X4 and check out the winch in the front. The one you seem to see the most is the TAR (Tracteur d'Artillerie Roulante Duh) 4 which has a hood and a dash-mount radiator like the Mack AC

Same gun. Different spot in the road.

The gun though - when towed by the state-of-the-art unit pictured - looks a bit dated, don't you think?
This was the 155mm cannon model 1877 and was definitely old-school.
It's not just the spoked wheels, it's got no recuperator. That's the big shock absorber you usually see above or below the barrel nowadays.
Seems that, before the unpleasantness,France was so sure of it's balls-to-the-wall doctrine of the offensive and God's most perfect field gun, the French 75, they didn't feel they'd need any of these big old museum pieces anymore.
Ooops. And they were losing the artillery they had - over half in the first sixteen months of the war. That's the retrograde step, bringing back all these municipal-park ornaments from the dawn of time and forcing them into the breach.
This rigid-frame monster needed four to five hours to set up before it could fire a shot.
First a wooden platform was assembled. I'm guessing that's what was in the wagon hitched behind the gun.
Then a hydraulic buffer - essentially a spring - was hooked between the carraige and the platform.
By the time things were ready each wheel had its chock positioned so that, between the chocks and the hydraulics the gun could only roll back to the top of the chocks but still had to relaid after each shot.

The relaxed but professional-looking crew pictured next are in the process of loading.
See the breech-block opened to the left with the rounded nose on the inner end of it.
That is the high-tech goodie this old girl brought to the party.. back in the '70's.
This was the first successful breech obturator.

That's a hell of a word innit? What it did was successfully seal the breech. No more power lost to escaping gases. nor burned gun crews resulting from same.
The secret was a fat, grease-impregnated, asbestos gasket, mounted between the round nose and the interrupted screw.
When the gun was fired, the pressure forced the rounded portion back which squeezed the asbestos out against the sides of the breech.
This was the invention of Charles Ragon de Bange and his Système de Bange was wildly popular especially for naval guns and is still in existence to this day.
So, a pointless ramble through obscure French artillery. Savor these moments.
How 'bout some de-Bange gun porn to finish up?

We can see that, when planning a park incorporating a Modele 1877 155mm cannon, one should feel free with color. Don't you agree? Oh hell. We need to see more TAR's.

Boss track-conversion.

That's a TAR 4 by the way. See the hood.

 

Latil TAR 4 

 Mack AC.

Twins separated at birth!

Lemonade

Sometimes something comes along and, against my better thinking I go along with it as a learning experience.
Case in point: Pipe tomahawk.
This is the first one I made. It was smokable (or bubble blow-able if that's your preference) and "useable" as well.
The use I intended for it was the random chop; likely taken at a tree, table, TV screen whatever; when someone, possibly having "blown some bubbles" goes: "Whoa! That is seriously badass.
I wasn't really badass. It could stand up to the tentative, experimental chop but it was really more of a novelty.
About four years ago, a fellow in Portland contacted me and wanted a pipe-hawk that you could smoke through that could also be used for work.
He'd had the idea that tomahawks were tools rather than weapons and a tool is what he was after.
I thought it sounded like fun so I gave it a shot.
He sent it back a few weeks later, broken.
I tried something else. Same story.
After we'd sent the thing up and down the I-5 corridor four times, he eventually decided that he wanted a big Bowie instead. End of story, kind of.

Of course the thing came home to me where I promptly stuck it away without opening it for two years or so. I'd had no ill feelings toward the other participant in the whole deal. I'd agreed to everything. I just didn't want to think about it.
Then I unwrapped it, looked at it, then stuck it away for another year.
I was finally ready to deal with it - and I had to deal with it. I hate waste. It's a sickness with me.

I burned off the last of my earlier efforts and confronted the whole thing again.

I bought 3' of 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/8" angle iron, cut it in half and welded the two pieces together
lengthwise.
I welded them up oriented as shown to the left which gave me a hollow rectangle 5/8 X 1/2" and 18" long.
I welded that into the head and added a little curved strut at the bottom.
Pictured above: all the fiddly bits.
At the top is the middle of the sandwich that the handle is eventually going to be. It's hickory, 1/2" thick.
While I made the long cut into the length of it, I'd left six inches or so of extra length so it wouldn't split across the grain. After all was said and done, I cut off the extra, then broke it. Hence the clamp.

The bottom two bits are of course "the bread". They're pacific yew and are two halves of the same stick, 3/8" thick each.
Next: Two thirds of the sandwich glued together making a coffin for the box/handle.
I dealt with the open eye - and the need an opening there to facilitate cleaning - by pouring it full of brass.
First I'd plugged all the little crevices with bits of wood. Lots of little bits of wood.

I poured the thing full and the brass sat there. Down below, all those wooden bits were becoming a bit restive what with the 1800 degree bath they found themselves suddenly undergoing.
The brass topped-up the eye and sat there for a second, simmering.
Then most of the pour jumped straight up four inches or so, then globbed itself back down all over the rest of the head.
Fearlessly I kept pouring and eventually it settled down.

Ah, good times. I feared the worst but it was all good.
I ground the brass flush, then drilled and tapped a hole through it. I made the plug by soldering a brass stud to a nickel. Well, we're ready for a sandwich. I should add that the unit had been extensively stress-tested while in the steel-only configuration. Uncomfortable as hell but it chopped fine.
Twenty-four hours and much epoxy paste later (Good stuff that)...
It's a giant, pangit mess with gray goop oozing everywhere. Whatever would I do?
Never fear. Hemp cord along with a coat of good old Elmer's.
I gave it to my twenty-five year-old for his birthday so I'll know if it fucks up.
I doubt it will. I got it right this time.
Maybe

The Plot

Ward Hill Lamon here.
Formerly employed in the law firm of Lincoln and Lamon of Danville, Illinois he was more than Lincoln's law partner, he was his friend, bodyguard and biographer as well.
He's played by some guy named Leo Coco in a recent flick called "Saving Lincoln" which concerns a never-quite-confirmed-or-dismissed alleged attempt on the president (elect)'s life which was supposed to occur as he was en route to his inauguration.
The proto-security contractor Alan Pinckerton had been commissioned by the railroads to provide security for Lincoln's train and his moles ultimately reported that there was a plan afoot.
One of his seventy scheduled stops was in Baltimore where, as the President's train was in the station and he was on the platform engaging in retail politics, a sort of stabby flash-mob would appear and stab honest Abe. At least one of them would be close enough presumably.
This was a big problem for the folks orchestrating this thing. Not that Lincoln will be killed. That's not going to happen now that they know about it. The big worry is how they're going to spin it.
The gentleman pictured above, Mr. Lamon said he'd supply Abe with a Bowie knife and a revolver for the stay in Baltimore but Pinkerton said: "...would not for the world have it said that Mr. Lincoln had to enter the National Capitol armed."

"Baltimoreans Pissed at Lincoln No-Show!"
by Thomas Nast

It was set up so Lincoln would arrive in Baltimore the night before his expected arrival, then his rail carriage would be surreptitiously towed through the city by horses as Baltimore didn't allow rail travel at night.
Mama Lincoln and the kids came the next day as scheduled but they got off the train a couple of blocks from the station so the good folk of Baltimore never got to see them either.
The punditry had a field day.
Lincoln was portrayed as having sneaked into Washington in disguise - in a cattle car in this cartoon, one of the best of the lot of them.
One Joe Howard Jr. a sleazeball writer for the new York Times claimed that Lincoln had worn "...a Scotch cap and long military cloak"; said reporting having been based on... nuthin'.
Hence the get-up we see in the cartoon where the cap is rendered as a Glengarry bonnet.
It's priceless. Abe looks terrified. Even the cat's pissed at him and the car has a capacity of "000" (?)
The entire crisis came to nothing and there is some doubt as to whether there even was a plot to begin with.
Lincoln felt like an idiot and regretted slipping through the city and his buddy Ward Hill Lamon later said that the Prez had never been in any danger whatsoever.
On the case, Lamon was.
When Lincoln had been elected, Lamon had been hoping for some sort of diplomatic post but, having been brought along on this junket, he took it upon himself to be a protector to the Big Fella from this time forth.
He patrolled the grounds of the White House every night and one night in 1865, having apprehended a miscreant armed with two knives and two pistols, he curled up on the floor in front of the boss' bedroom for the rest of the night.
He was with Lincoln during his ignominious trip through sleeping Baltimore and here's were we segue into my massive product roll-out and the further proof - if needed - of my shameless, if incompetent opportunism.

Pictured to the left: The first of only three listings for "brass knuckles" in the Library of Congress.
Accompanying text:
"Brass knuckles carried by Lincoln's bodyguards during his train ride through Baltimore.] Artifact in the museum collection, National Park Service, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, Washington, D.C."
So it's unclear. They could have been old Lamon's knucks or they could have belonged to one of the Pinkertons.
I'm going with Lamon and there's a tie-in to the great Emancipator regardless.
 

A quick note about the photo of Lamon: It looks to me like he's fully strapped.

Or it could be his lunch.

Steam-Punk Machine Gun...

...with an Eastern flair.
This is one of fifty examples of the last manual machine gun ever adopted by a military power.
This anachronism is called the Bira and hails from faraway Nepal, legendary home of the mythical Ghurkas.

Before we begin: A brief video romp through the workings of the gun from which the Bira was derived.The Gardner, pat.1879 and manufactured by the Hartford, CT newbies, Pratt and Whitney.
And introduced to a lukewarm reception. The US military bought some but they'd already bet on the Gatling and were happy enough with it.
Meanwhile, Pratt and Whitney started letting one of their own engineers play around with the design;  sooo... Gardner - feeling jerked-around took his ball and went to Britain.
P&W kept on building them here - their version.
Anyway, watch the vid. Sound track's nothing to shout about.
Well, William Gardner's MG was a big hit in the UK, the reason being: The Gardner was very light-weight considering.
Considering the lightest Gatling, the "Camel Model" was twenty pounds heavier.
Being light, it could be used in the fighting-tops of the ships of the Royal Nav in the ongoing fight against torpedo boats.
If you stuck with the vid long enough to see the workings of it you'll see that Gardner was no dummy.
You can see the Gardner was a seriously elegant piece of work. Joe Nobody (AKA William Gardner) designed this thing and patented it when he was thirty-one years old. Pat. 174130. Anyway, it was the Gardner of the pre-Parkhurst (P&W's engineer) period that provided the inspiration for the Bira.
Back story: 1890's; The Brits, having run up against the Ghurkas previously, were happy to give Nepal lots of weapons as a diplomatic gesture... as long as the Brits could recruit Ghurkas for their own army.
So, Nepal got thousands of Martini-Henry rifles and other stuff including ammo with the blessing of the queen - but no machine-guns.
The British logic was this: If these lovable, child-like Nepalese (If you doubt the paternalistic attitude of the colonizers, read "The White Man's Burden") got hold of just one Nordenfeld or Gardner, those clever monkeys would clone it ad infinitum and Mother England would never sleep secure again.

"Fuck that shit... We've got Tibet for a neighbor which is no fucking picnic!" said Nepal (The translation's rough so I'm paraphrasing).
The Nepalese found a Gardner somewhere - or found the drawings on Google patents - and set about adapting it under the direction of General Gehendra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana.
That name will be on the mid-term.

With the Bira, the operating system was the same as that of the Gardner but the feed system was something else again.
See next: Side view (We'll get to the chains in a bit).
First, it's got no vertical, twenty-round, single-stack magazine feeding it like the Gardner has.
It's got a rotating pan - like the Lewis gun but...
whereas the pan of the Lewis held 47 .303 rounds - and the stateside, Gardner's magazine held twenty (The P&W models mounted a double-stack mag of... wait for it... forty!) the Bira's pan carried 120 .577X450, Martini-Henry rounds.
That would be: one-hundred-and-twenty... big-as-your-thumb... bullets.

Up next, The mandala of the Biri gun.
No - wait. That's the ammo pan, seen from below.
Okay, keeping in mind the roundousity of this thing - as well as the bigger-at-one-end trait characteristic of most bullets but especially the .577X450.
They (the cartridges) fit into a circle the same was that 8mm Lebel rounds fit into the half-circle Chauchat mag.
The item pictured measured sixteen inches across and weighed around forty pounds when loaded.
Notice, the perimeter is divided into six chambers.
Likewise notice the teeth along the edge. You can count but there are sixty.
Think; each tooth represents a minute on a clock face. It also represents two rounds; one on top of each other. It's a two-layer cake.

Then, it would logically follow that each of the chambers mentioned earlier, that is 1/6th-of-the-circle, would then contain twenty rounds.
And look at the handy, seemingly ten-round bundles, ready to be untied (A bow knot!) and dumped into one of the aforesaid chambers. Then juggled about until all the pointy ends are aimed at the center of the circle.
Rinse and repeat.
Now, I'm not really sure of the mechanicals of this but; the above depicted mandala is, as stated, a view from the bottom - minus the bottom.
The bottom of the pan wasn't a permanent attachment to the gun but it did remain stationary while the rest of the pan was shoved along by a pawl every two rounds whilst the firing happened.

Pictured next: a right-hand view of the body of the gun without the ammo pan.
Also you'll seen another chain. Notice it. We'll get there. Patience.
We'll likewise deal with that big, brass gear.
First things first.
We now have this double-decker load of ammo being nudged around in a circle.

Eventually each of of these pairs of rounds (one-up, one-down) would come up to the magic door in the stationary bottom of the pan.
It's the hole shaped like a bullet - and exacly as wide as the tooth below it.
Okay, then the bullets fall down as needed, one for each barrel, the pan turns and so on.

As you can see from the two photos of the entire unit, the Birna is mounted like an artillery piece while the Gardner (Lightweight, remember) was mounted either on a tripod or deck mounting.
The benefits that accrue to machine-guns weighing only 110 pounds.
The stately Birna, with a full magazine, would tip the scales at half-a-ton, if you tossed on a bag of dog food.
She is hell-for-stout for certain. Even the screws are huge and, in many cases, only fit that particular hole.
Every one of these guns was built, by hand, one-at-a-time. Consequently, virtually no parts are interchangeable.
One of the other oddities of this gun is that the operating crank turns counter-clockwise as opposed to the opposite direction that the cranks of the Gardner and the Gatling turn.
The good General said that he'd determined that counter-clockwise was a more natural and relaxed motion.
Ooookay.
Remember that big, brass gear that I asked you to notice above.
The Gardner has no such gear. The crank drives the mechanism as fast as it's turned.
On the Bira, the crank turns a small gear which, in turn turns the larger gear - in the opposite direction...
The ratio between the two gears looks to be about one to two-and-a-half.
My first thought was: "Gehendra, you old dog!"

All those precisely mating first-world surfaces with their buttery slidiness were too much for the Bira to measure up to so needed some reduction gearing.
No biggie. We understand. Katmandu isn't Birmingham - it isn't even Hartford.
Good effort.
But then I pondered further.
Recall the political situation mentioned at the start.
Mother England, in appeasing dark-skinned rabble, would not have been giving away any of the good stuff.

This was of course an age when every idea was a new idea and every new idea was a good idea!
Consequently from 1866 on, the British cranked out "Boxer rounds" for the Martini-Henry just like it had been a solid design and so, when a better idea came along - and they were finally convinced to change over, they had lots of the expensive, stupid, transitional cartridges left over.
Regarding the performance of said cartridges...
 Maj. E. Gambier Parry, staff officer in the Sudan, regarding the actions at Suakin in 1885:

"The common fault found in them then was that the extractor failed in the performance of its proper functions, and that the rifle was often rendered momentarily useless on account of the inability to extract the cartridge-case after firing without either repeatedly working the lever or drawing the cleaning-rod and forcing the case out by pressure from the muzzle. With regard to the cartridge itself, fault was found with its construction; but we were informed that the cartridge was only experimental, and would be replaced by a better one later on. However that may be, the clumsy built-up and bottle-shaped cartridge has been in use in the army ever since, and no other cartridge has ever been supplied; and more than this, a price is given per thousand for the empty cases returned into store. Thus the cartridges are refilled and the error continued ad infinitum.
...but I see no reason why all these built-up cartridges should not be got rid of at target practice, and reloaded as often as you like, provided they are not issued to men going on active service. It not unfrequently happened that the base of the cartridge was torn right off by the jaws of the extractor, when the rifle was at once rendered utterly useless. The sand and the temperature may have had a certain amount to do with the jamming, but the fault lay principally in the extractor of the rifle and the form of the cartridge. The extractor ought certainly to be improved upon if this rifle is to continue the arm of the services; and a drawn copper cartridge-case, unlubricated, should take the place of the present one. Many men have lost their lives through these two things in our late wars; and though years ago reports, as I say, were made by those best able to judge on the defects of the weapon and the cartridge, no notice was ever taken, and thus through a love of cheese-paring economy, and a penny wise and pound foolish policy, valuable lives have been sacrificed."  


Not just for target practice.
That brain-wave of 1866 the  was also the perfect thing to spice up those crates of rifles etc. that the Nepalese were receiving.
It's a safe bet that most, if not all, the .577x450 ammo the Brits graciously donated was this.
Now, imagine that your machine gun would be expected to be fed with the potent round shown next, pictured along with partial remnants of another.
All of a sudden, the idea of slowing down the action so these fragile constructions can make their way through the action of the gun without breaking apart, makes a lot of sense.
Another benefit is that the action would be smoothed out and less jerky - I assume.
Now, the chains; remember them?
They form a sort of sling for the two barrels so that, in the event they experienced  a failure-to-extract malfunction, the barrels could be handled safely if they were hot.
The barrels were mounted in a cradle and secured by a pin (with a chain - the other chain).
Stoppage = Pull the pin, drop the barrels, poke out the offending cartridge and get back to business.
The chambers were integral with the barrels so nothing got out of alignment.
Maybe this thing was like the early M-16 and just needed to have a rod poked down its throat every now and again.
The similarities end there. The early 16 was a poorly-tested abomination while the Bira was (In my opinion) a nice solution to an odd problem: Buttloads of ammunition - but all of it crap.
The Nepalese never fired them at anyone. They built fifty of them. I assume, tested them and put them away.
But,
Good news, everyone!
They all seemed to have ended up here and - they're a purchasable item!
Check it:
$27,500 get's thing one in your cart.
Of course... it's used. And probably dirty.
And Oh-My-Fucking-God, look what it would cost to feed!
This sucks.
Being that these are an automatic (kind of) weapon, therefore it's just what the framers wanted for us...
And I want one.
There must be a better way!
Just settle down.
This one doesn't seem to be in production yet but it's in .22 mag.
Here though... a genuine knock-off of Pratt & Whitney's knock-off of the Gardner, chambered, like the P&W guns, in .45x70 govt.
$29,950.

So folks, this is the ultimate stealth machine gun.
It's classed the same as a semi-auto rifle.
Moron Labia, Obama!
Awesome.

A brief touch-down on the current haps is required: More of the dry and boring to follow.

"Modern Sporting Rifle".
This is great. Such a self-contained, hermetically-sealed nomenclature.
It's a rifle, used for "sporting"  -  and it's modern.
It's modern for Christ's sake.
Three words, six syllables (Help me out numerologists) and yet, it says absolutely nothing.
It makes an acronym though: MSR. I came of age thinking of that as "Mountain Safety Research" (The folks who, in the '70's, blew the lid off the "ice axes are only made in Austria and of Elfin steel") but now it also denotes the...
(drum roll)
EBR!!
That would be: "evil black rifle".
Things this bad-assed rate, even demand - two acronyms.
Before I begin I'd like to cite what I consider to be one of the most coherent take-downs of this particular boondoggle you're likely to run across.
You can find it here.
Mad props to said site as well for the leading illustration.
The item depicted, just five little bits of steel and aluminum, leavened with a heapin' helpin' of good-old-American, pullin'-it-out-of-your-ass know how.
Although it's not mentioned in the text, its depiction warmed the cockles of my heart.
It is, of course, the "forward assist"; that "extra-special something" America's most deadly, yet lovable, gun was blessed with at an early age.
Think of at as way in which our brave soldiers could help-out in the heat of the moment. A place they could step in... say if their - God forbid - rifle jammed - which it almost never (always) did.
It'd be like going to the aid of a buddy in trouble; "Hey little buddy, got a round stuck in your throat. Let me punch this handy button provided for the purpose...

Or you can call it - like I do:  the button-that-shows-for-time-immemorial-that-this-is-a-crap-rifle-and-that-we-couldn't-fix-it. That button.
I remember reading about this rifle when I was a kid - and reading that it was a piece of shit.
The October 1967 edition of Mechanics illustrated carried an article: "M-16: The Gun They Swear By...and at!"
That was my earliest recollection of "the 16" and I do believe that I've never heard anything about it since that was any more complimentary. Nothing at least, that wasn't sales copy.
But this sorry excuse for an over-engineered, varmint rifle is still very much a force in the market.
And check this out. Lifted from a recent "showin'-off-your-guns"  round-pound.
To be fair, rational people posted photos of real guns as well.
We The Armed. "Rifle Pictures".
This guy though, he's put his forward-assist right out there. He's proud of his rifle as well he should be. Fifty years of relentless and expensive tweaking have gotten this turd pretty well polished and, re the ...button in question, well you don't drop an idea that works.
AR 15 buyers; like your predecessors you too can participate in your rifle's operation.
Use the forward assist. Be part of the process.
You're a team, your rifle and you.
This pretend-gun is just another episode in the ongoing history of the psychosis that is defense spending in this country.
Just finished reading "The Gun" by C. J. Chivers (I think). It's a book about the AK and is an okay book in general. The first half covers machine gun history that I've read lots of other places but it has one chapter concerning the M-16 which is the keeper.
It covers our nation's measured and timely response to the threat posed by the sudden appearance of "super weapons" that just came out of nowhere but seem to be buildable by... anyone.
Of course it took the US ten years to clue up to the existence of this  oddball but butt-simple rifle but when they did, many flat-hats were shit therein and assholes were jumped-through.
The cry went out: "In going against this titan, the AK47, is there no half-finished, conceptually murky, completely untried design out there that we might hurl into the breach and thus spare our national honor.?"
I guess my point is: This is a rifle that was rushed into production and immediately showed severe problems in the field.
Some they remedied but others... think: "forward assist".
But it's tres moderne. Check out the in-line stock and pistol grip. Brandy-new, right?
Oops. I left out the plastic stock. It appeared earlier as well, on the earlier AR-10, an actual, full-size rifle, firing a real, rifle round .308.
Regarding the in-line stock and pistol grip, let's hop into the not-very-far-back-machine and digress say... ten, fifteen years.
Snubbed by the Army in the same way as its sibling, the 1941 Johnson Rifle, one is the Johnson Light Machine Gun.

That would be it next.
Pistol grip, in-line stock. It would have kicked ass on a BAR 'cept... it's not a BAR. Ergo: not by John Browning and so it sucks.
See here how the Bren pulls down the pants of the venerable BAR - along with some Johnson info. 
Truth be told, an in-line stock and pistol grip can also  be found - back in the mists of time - on the Chauchat.
My experience with "the 16"  was ambivalent. It was fun to shoot and light weight so it was easy to carry around but the reality is, I shot it once to qualify in the Navy in 1973 and for four active years never handled another one.
In the guard I was a forward observer so we wouldn't even check them out if we could get away with it.
We never needed them. All  we did was sit on the hill, look through binoculars, talk on the radio and freeze.
When we did have to drag the weapons along only the rankest boot-camper would ever, ever fire the thing - on the occasion we were issued blanks for the weekend.
I don't have any feeling for it at all. if someone gave me one, I'd thank them - then trade it for an AK or something stupid like... tires for the car.
But our mad friend, the Ogre sees it as a symbol.
Given its enshrinement as being kinda-like our current infantry rifle, makes it emblematic in the cause to which we must remain steadfast. That cause being: "You're not the boss of me! I can own any sort of gun I deem necessary in the protection of kith and kin (klassy no?)"
Anyway, you can't let the camel get its nose under the tent.
First, they'll take the angelic AR 15. Next... Grandpa's old, wheel-lock triple-barrel.
Ultimately,  they'll come for your caulking guns and thereafter wind will whistle through your house, forever.

 They're not going to outlaw anything. At least nothing a grown-up would want.
So George... breathe... if the AR goes down, just switch to an AK, the peasant's gun.
You can make one out of a shovel if you've got the skillz.

Ya' Know What A Guy Could Do...

...bout cartridges (circa 1860's)?
The little paper/fabric... reefer made up of the powder and ball, all of a piece, was brilliant but; if a guy could think up a way to make a cartridge that not only held the propellant and bullet together but also expanded to fill and therefore seal, the chamber at the appropriate instant - that would be cool.
Spoiler: We've got that now. That's what modern cartridges do but, of course things had to have started somewhere.
Some of the early entries were the rounds produced by Eley Bros. Ammunition manufacturers od Edmonton, London..
The design was the brain-wave of one Colonel Boxer of the Royal Arsenal in Woolrich.
It was called the "Boxer cartridge" and it's pictured above with two of its prettier step-sisters.
The venerable .577/450, AKA the Martini-Henry round, is what you find in the center.
To the left, the darling little turd, dressed-up-as-a-bullet-for-Halloween, that's a Zulu Wars vintage Martini-Henry; a Boxer round.
This particular artifact was obviously introduced during the feeling-your-way part, along the way toward mastering the metallic cartridge thing.

A look at the graphic next up will show you that it was most certainly a craft project.
If you can decipher the drawing shown, you could just about make the thing at home but for the primer and the projo.
First, a trapezoidal piece of brass foil is soldered-to and wound-up upon, a rimmed base-plate. One of the shorter sides is attached, then the rest of the brass winds on up in a spiral.
That makes up the body of the cartridge. Then the the smaller, rectangular piece wraps around the base.
Clumsy though the execution may have been, the concept was solid.
Prior to this, a cartridge was just a convenient way to marry projo to charge, ahead of time.
The thinking started running along the lines of "how about a cartridge that doesn't just keep everything of-a-piece but also helps to seal the breech in the bargain".
The idea that the brass expanding and sealing the chamber at the critical millisecond  is what keeps all our modren bullets heading downrange with speed and alacrity to this day.
They simply found out that drawn-brass works just as well as the elaborately coiled construction.
But, back to the wayback machine and that arts-and-crafts project, labor-intensive joke that was the Boxer.
I wouldn't even venture a guess regarding the unit cost of each round with a Boxer cartridge.
Man-hours per 1000 rounds.
Lots of work there.
But, back to our opening, the one gun that could reliably shoot these fragile, expensive and just-plain-funky-looking things was the Nordenfelt five-barrel machine gun.
Machine gun. Take note.
Though it could theoretically fire 600 rounds-per-minute, the Nordenfelt was a machine gun only in the pre-Maxim sense.
It wasn't hand-cranked like the Gatling. It was lever-operated.
Being that it sent five rounds down-range with each back-and-forth action of the lever, the 600 rounds per. is easy to visualize but aimed rounds - that was another matter.
That slowed her down to perhaps 20% of the maximum rate, down to around 120 rounds per minute.
Still formidable but that's not the point. Every one of those .577 projos headed, downrange at the rate of two per second, had burst forth from that most laughable example of Victorian "engineering" to date.
The Boxer cartridge. And the Nordenfelt was the reliable gun for these fragile, precious rounds!
Anyway, drawn-brass cartridges came into their own and the trail-blazing Boxer drifted into obscurity.
The Martini-Henry itself was due to be supplanted shortly thereafter.
Re the top photo: At the far right; the skinny, pointy bullet?  That would be the "it" girl of 1888, .303 British ("Seventy-five years of service and only fifty of obsolescence").
Makes you realize why they wondered about the .303 and thought of it as a "small" bullet back in the day.
To close: Some Nordenfelt porn.
Can't embed the vid so you'll have to click (Be strong!).
This guy is some kind of Victorian, machine-gun nut so you look at the other stuff on his site.