Book Review of
Thorneycroft to SA80 (British Bullpup Firearms 1901-2020) by Jonathan
S. Ferguson.
* * * * *
The Author is Keeper
of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries.
The original
photography for this book was by N.R. Jenzen-Jones.
It is published by
Headstamp Publishing (Nashville) 2020 and copies are available for
commercial sale internationally. This review is based on a Backer’s
Kit Edition, which does not differ in editorial content from the
commercial edition.
This book sets out
to be an authoritative history of bullpup firearms in Britain, and
starts by defining what “bullpup” means (effectively a firearm
where the barrel begins behind the trigger) and exploring the
American origins of the term, which seems to have been coined two
decades after the first British rifles meeting the definition.
The production values of the book, normally a superficial matter, are
excellent and this makes a genuine difference in a history of this
kind, because the original photographs are crisp and clear and show
exactly the things the text is seeking to convey, whilst archive
drawings and diagrams are reproduced well-enough to be clearly
readable and understandable. The author and his photographer enjoyed
access to relevant firearms in the Royal Armouries collection and to
various archive material and seem to have been mindful that not
everyone would have such access. They have made the most of it so
their readers can benefit.
The author shows
some museum-curator’s bias in letting the guns speak for themselves
rather than by paying too much attention to the oral tradition about
them, but where opinions of actual people come from material with a
provenance, they are included. The story is told largely in
chronological order, and as far as British bullpup firearms are
concerned that story starts with late Victorian inventors seeking to
create a .303” service rifle to take the place of a cavalry
carbine, which would also be capable of delivering accurate fire at
longer ranges. With the propellant technology of the time, this
demanded a longer barrel in a weapon which was not much longer than a
carbine. This is where the 20th century concept of the
military bullpup rifle came from, even if the weapons concerned never
saw service. The bullpup was the only way to have a rifle-length
barrel in a carbine-length weapon. The definition of rifle-length
barrels lost about eight inches around that time, (the “propellant
technology of the time” having already changed without the bullpup
inventors apparently noticing) and so the Short Magazine Lee Enfield
rifle was sufficient to meet the needs of both infantry and cavalry
for two world wars.
Towards the end of
the second world war the British Army knew it needed at least a
self-loading rifle, but there was no enthusiasm for adopting (as some
wanted) the American M1 Garand rifle, not least because it already
looked old-fashioned compared to some captured German weapons, such
as the FG42, the design of which suggested a bullpup without actually
being one. This cued a succession of Anglo-Polish attempts to develop
the working concepts of the FG42 into something shorter and perhaps
even lighter. As Britain began to emerge from postwar austerity and
it became obvious that the end of the Second World War had not
ushered in an era of global peace and security, the idea of adopting
some kind of bullpup multi-purpose weapon for the British Army took
hold and has never really gone away.
The two most famous
examples of this are the EM2 rifle of the 1950s and the SA80 rifle in
British service today. The stories of these are told in detail, but
also in the context of what went before and what was going on
elsewhere during their development. John Garand, for example,
designed a bullpup rifle to replace his own M1 design as the US
army’s service rifle, but retired before it could be developed for
trials, and this was not the only American bullpup design being put
forward. Other, notably successful bullpup rifles have served in
other countries -and, in Australia, they still do.
The book deals with
the problems encountered by British small arms development programmes
in some detail, but if one reads between the lines many of these come
down to the discipline of materials science being largely ignored by
those taking the decisions. This problem is actually endemic to
British defence projects in general and a cynic might say that it’s
the one way of sabotaging projects that senior officials know they
can get away with (they certainly succeeded in sabotaging the Valiant
bomber). It’s certainly not that Britain as a country lacks
materials scientists or that learning about materials science is
unpopular with the general population: J.E Gordon’s eminently
accessible materials science book “The New Science of Strong
Materials” (Or Why we Don’t Fall Through the Floor), first
published in 1968, went through several new editions throughout the
seventies. Mr Ferguson’s book details how an attempt by Cranfield
University to lighten the design of the SA80 by adopting wonder
materials such as carbon fibre and titanium saved a total of four
ounces: this may have disappointed the University of Cranfield but it
will have surprised no-one who has read Professor Gordon’s book,
which teaches the distinction between strength and stiffness. In any
case, many mechanical firearms components come with a minimum
weight, below which they will not work. This is one of several
concepts which decision-makers seem not to grasp.
This is a
well-researched book, exploiting a rich supply of factual material
and actual weapons to the full. It will, therefore, be disappointing
to those seeking to use it to promote one strongly-held opinion or
another. But as a way of understanding what actually went on, it is
perfectly fit for purpose.
Review Copyright (c)
Matthew K. Spencer 2021, all rights reserved.