if so, this would now be coming straight from heaven!
Is it different?
Reply in comments.
Probably not. Ah well...
Behold... Mouse-Hammer, Scourge of Rodentia!
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Mouse-hammer here, the trap not the mouse, is a serious piece of business. It may look like just any old, garden-variety, Victor mouse-trap (patent here) which it is indeed but, this guy's got it goin' on.
You're looking at mouse number ten! MH caught one after the photo.
Eleven mice with one trap; you say. So what?
With THE SAME PIECE OF CHEESE!
You'd have thought the bloodstains would have tipped them off but...
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My rave-fave anorak site, Great War Forum has only brief mention of this oddity:
At this time I was in Sergeant S_____'s team, and our machine gun emplacement was in Pelissier Trench. Here, in addition to manning the machine-gun, we had control of a "rifle battery" on a road immediately behind the trench. This rifle battery always struck me as being rather comic. It was trained on some cross roads just behind the enemy's lines, where their supply wagons used to leave the rations. Six rifles set in a wooden frame and you fired them all at once, at stated times, by the simple process of pulling a cord.
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These were serious items. The drawing above is of a standardized design produced by the Second Army Workshops at Armentieres.
It could hold from one to six rifles the elevation of which was adjustable by one hand-wheel while another wheel could traverse.
Designed by one Capt. Henry Newton, at far left in the photo - the one whose hands are cold - and produced in prototype by a blacksmith attached to Newton's home unit the 5th Sherwood Foresters.
It so impressed Maj. General Furse, II Corps commander that he ordered Newton to set up the very workshop that produced this, as well as other items for the Second Army, with the title of Chief Engineer.
It's not a dumb idea at all. As the quote above mentions, one could have six rifles, all zeroed in on a pre-designated target. Rifles that could be fired simultaneously with no need to call for the lads who may have been napping or were toasted from pilfered rum and whose aim may or may not have been good.
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Work the six bolts (These were Enfields so - no giant amount of time lost) and another six rounds are off.
I don't know what could possibly have worked better in the dark.
And it wasn't as if you had to buddy up with Capt. Newton to get one of these wonderful machines. They were butt-simple.
Initially, they consisted of rifles propped up with sandbags.
The final photo is of a down-and-dirty French example. Two wooden wedges at the rear control elevation while, I guess any traverse would be by shifting the whole unit one way or the other.
Far from rocket science.
2 comments:
Yea I've worn out more than a few
of those too. Kill one and 12 comes to the funeral. Try one of these homemade "farmerized" units
Best I've ever used hands down.
20++ in one night.
http://www.farmshow.com/issues/27/06/270605.asp
Love the pic of the USS Michigan firing broadside. That is all ; )
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