Guns of the Elite Forces

Preface and Acknowledgements

The replacement of the traditional means of making war with terrorism – not, of course, a modern concept – has brought the activities of security services into ever-sharper focus. The successes and failures of police and military anti-terrorist operations have been scrutinised, and interest in their equipment has undoubtedly grown correspondingly in a climate of increasing (if sometimes irrational) fear. Consequently, where once there were comparatively few books on firearms, there are now rows of books and videos dealing specifically with the arms and equipment of Special Forces.

Even though the primary goal remains the same as it was when I started work in the mid-1980s – to provide an accessible and authoritative overview of the firearms used by Special Forces throughout the world – it is now almost two decades since the original Guns of the Elite was published and technological development makes wholesale changes essential. I hope that the present book, like many of the latest guns, combines the strengths of its predecessor with the improvements suggested by experience.

Though I take full responsibility for my opinions, and for errors that may have escaped scrutiny, I am keen to acknowledge a debt to the many people who have contributed to the project. The principal manufacturers have always been keen to supply details, which was particularly valuable in the days before websites could be accessed at will and digital cameras eased the task of obtaining illustrations. I have always enjoyed an excellent relationship with Pietro Beretta SpA of Gardone Val Trompia, Italy, in particular; but Heckler & Koch of Oberndorf, Germany; FN Herstal SA of Herstal-lèz-Liège in Belgium; Carl Walther GmbH of Ulm/Donau, Germany; and SIG of Neuhausen/Rheinfalls, Switzerland, have always provided support. Glock GmbH of Deutsch-Wagram, Austria; Oy Sako Ab and Sako-Valmet of Jyväskylä, Finland; Luigi Franchi SpA of Fornaci/Brescia, Italy; Accuracy International of Portsmouth, UK; Steyr-Mannlicher GmbH of Steyr/Oberdonau, Austria; and PGM-Précision of Les Chavannes have also responded when asked. In North America, Colt in its many guises; Kahr Arms; Para-Ordnance, Inc.; Smith & Wesson; the Savage Arms Company; and Springfield Armory (now Springfield, Inc.) were among the first to provide help. Chartered Industries of Singapore, now Singapore Technologies, also contributed invaluable details of its products. The British Ministry of Defence and the US Department of the Army provided photographs and information, and the assistance of David Penn, Keeper, Department of Exhibits, Imperial War Museum, is gratefully acknowledged.

I have also valued the help given by individuals, ranging from friends of long-standing to ‘one off’ correspondents who, perhaps unknowingly, provided vital parts of the jigsaw. I greatly miss the co-operation of Ian Hogg, who died in 2002, soon after supplying me a wealth of information, and only now realise how much I had depended on his cheerful assistance when the original book was being prepared. I must also belatedly acknowledge contributions made to the earlier editions by Herbert Woodend MBE, Custodian of the Pattern Room Collection (first in Enfield, then in Nottingham and now part of the Royal Armouries in Leeds) who died in 2003.

I must thank Terry Gander, editor of Jane’s Infantry Weapons, for eliminating errors at the draft stage and ensuring that my opinions did not always run unchecked, and Lionel Leventhal of Greenhill Books – not only for proposing the original book back in 1985, but also for keeping faith with the project for twenty years.

John Walter

Hove, England, 2005

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

In the summer of 1940, facing up to the invasion threat posed by German troops in the Pas de Calais and haunted by bittersweet memories of the Dunkirk evacuation – ‘victory snatched from the jaws of defeat’ – the British people badly needed a morale-booster. Though penned in the home islands, the British were keen to find ways of retaliating. Finding better ways to defend the British coast was vital, if defensive, but many of Britain’s leaders (especially Prime Minister Winston Churchill) placed greater faith in the maxim that attack is the best form of defence.

While the RAF was battling the Luftwaffe in the skies of southern England, therefore, the first true ‘Special Forces’ units were formed.

There was nothing particularly revolutionary about the concept. While walking home from the War Office in Whitehall, Lieutenant-Colonel Dudley Clarke, mindful of historical lessons, considered the value of controlled aggressive action by small well-trained bands acting independently of centralised command. Searching for a name for his irregulars, he seized on ‘commando’, after the military units used by the Boers that had plagued the British Army forty years earlier in the South African War. Dudley Clarke’s superior was Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who could realistically have been expected to oppose the idea of an ‘army within the army’, but Dill was also worried by rock-bottom army morale after the withdrawal from Dunkirk and understood the need for achievement. He explained the matter to Churchill, and within a day the Commandos were born.

Their role was to disrupt the communications, efficiency and nerve of the Wehrmacht in ‘shoot and scoot’ missions, seeking to cause as much trouble in the shortest time possible, then retire in the confusion. If the defenders reinforced the position, the next strike could be made in the area from which the reinforcements had been drawn. And so operations continued throughout occupied Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Aegean, the Commandos in time spawning a dozen or more offshoots such as the US Rangers and the ANZAC Independent Companies.

Many early raids were fiascos, confirming the worst fears of some in the military hierarchy, but morale improved once Admiral Sir Roger Keyes (hero of the legendary Zeebrugge Raid in the First World War) was appointed to direct the Commando operations. By October 1940, some 2,000 men had been recruited into the ‘Special Service Brigade’ and divided into commandos numbered 1–12. Unbelievably rigorous training programmes began in the surf and on the beaches of the Western Highlands.

The Combined Training Centre in Achnacarry trained not only the British Commandos, but also US Rangers and the Royal Marine Commando detachment formed in 1942. Training was often very dangerous, often undertaken with live ammunition – forty men were killed at Achnacarry during the war. In terms of the successes achieved by the Commandos, the price was small. But the deaths, and mock gravestones in the camp, punched the message home: brains as well as brawn were required for Special Service.

After the initial reverses, the Commandos’ fortunes improved on the strength of spectacularly successful raids on the Lofoten Islands, in March 1941, and Vågsøy and Måløy in December, by which time Keyes had been replaced by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. The best was yet to come. A suspicious building had been spotted during a routine sweep over the village of Bruneval, near Le Havre, and a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire ultimately brought back one of the classic air-reconnaissance photographs of the war, a perfect oblique view of a cliff-top villa and the dish antenna of a German Würzburg radar. In a daunting, unbelievably ambitious raid in February 1942 the Commandos not only silenced the defences, but also stole the entire radar dish – an exploit matched in its daring only in 1969, when Israeli NAHAL parachute troops seized a Russian-made radar station from Ras Gharib.

Large-scale clandestine activities are never guaranteed successes, as was proved by the loss of 600 highly trained Commandos covering the British withdrawal from Crete in May 1941. By the end of the year, something was needed to restore flagging spirits and a spectacular coup was planned: the assassination of Erwin Rommel, officer commanding the Afrika Korps, in his headquarters at Beda Littoria in Libya.

Proposed by Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Keyes, son of the former Director of Combined Operations, its chances of success were adjudged to be practically nil. Keyes persisted, however, and the scheme was eventually approved for the night of 17 November 1941 – the day before a British offensive seeking to relieve Tobruk was to begin.

A small party was detached from the main force on the perimeter of Beda Littoria to cut communications between the headquarters and Cyrene, while the remaining twenty-two men, their faces blacked, proceeded stealthily into the deserted market place a mere hundred yards from a large house which, they were told, served as Rommel’s headquarters. The building would be stormed by six men led by Keyes, while the remainder were to guard the approaches to the building.

Keyes led his party around the building to begin the assault at the main door. Then the problems started. The German sentry seized the muzzle of Keyes’s Colt revolver, trying to wrest it away, and retreated against a wall using Keyes as a shield before being shot. A burst from a Thompson submachine-gun discouraged a soldier about to descend the stairs. Keyes pointed to light shining under the guardroom door, which opened to reveal eleven dumbstruck German soldiers. Captain Campbell lobbed a No. 36 grenade into the centre of the room as Keyes opened the door for a second time. A rake of submachine-gun fire prevented most of the Germans replying, but a single shot felled Keyes as the British soldiers closed the door. After the grenade had done its job, and a fruitless search of the house had been made, Campbell forgetfully emerged from the back door and was promptly shot by one of the Commando sentries. And there had been no sign of Rommel at all. He was elsewhere.

The Beda Littoria raid, a heroic failure, gained Keyes a posthumous Victoria Cross but achieved little else. Yet its lightning attack with grenades, light firearms and explosives was typical of the many independent operations carried out during the Second World War.

Initially, the British Special Forces had to make do with standard firearms and grenades. This was not in itself disastrous, because the basic small-arms, if somewhat unadventurous, were reasonably effective. Though the bolt-action SMLE was not ideal in a firefight, it could be operated quickly and carried twice as many cartridges as most rival designs. The Bren Gun was portable, extremely accurate and well liked, and could be used to pick off key targets with single shots while providing appreciable extra firepower when required. Handguns varied; the standard 0.38in Enfield (Webley) revolver, the 0.38/200 Smith & Wesson and various Colts including the US Government M1911A1 pistol all saw use early in the war. However, none of the small-arms initially provided what the Special Forces sought most: the ideal combination of handiness and firepower which, though it had not necessarily defeated inventors prior to 1939, had certainly failed to persuade military authorities (and their government paymasters) that investment would be justified by the returns.

An early favourite was the Thompson submachine-gun, made by Colt for the Auto-Ordnance Corporation and revered by police and mobsters alike during the Roaring Twenties. The Thompson fired the 0.45in ACP pistol cartridge, widely recognised as a good man-stopper, but was particularly cumbersome – with its loaded 50-round magazine, it weighed 15lb (6.8kg) – and many doubted the efficiency of its locking mechanism. Ordinarily quite reliable, the Thompson was prone to jamming when poorly lubricated … and this predictably proved to be a liability in North Africa.

Supplies of the improved blowback Thompson M1, with a 30-round box magazine, appeared in 1942. The M1 was greatly appreciated by the British Commandos and the US Rangers, who preferred it to the later M3 ‘Grease Gun’. But the basic Thompson design remained too complicated and too expensive to produce in great quantity. The British developed the Lanchester instead, simply by copying the German MR 28 (Bergmann), but then graduated to the Sten Gun.

Credited to Major Richard Shepherd and Harold Turpin, pilot models of the Sten were made in 1941. A whole new BSA factory was erected at Tyseley, on the outskirts of Birmingham, and volume production began that summer. As the Lanchester production line had also been completed, supplies of this otherwise obsolescent design were diverted to the Royal Navy and the RAF so that the Stens could be supplied to the Army.

By the end of the war, millions of Stens had been made in a variety of Marks. The unbelievably basic ‘Woolworth Wonder’ or ‘Stench Gun’ eventually cost no more than 7s 6d (37½p) for what were reputedly its main components – a pipe and a bedspring. Yet the Sten Gun worked surprisingly well. Lubrication was practically unnecessary and, as accuracy was not prerequisite in an essentially short-range weapon, bullets could be sprayed far and wide with impunity.

The Sten supplemented the Thompson in the hands of the Special Forces, its dreadful finish coming as something of a shock after the good manufacturing quality of its predecessor. Efforts were eventually made to improve the Sten, and a special compact gun was developed experimentally in 1943–4 for commando and paratroop units. The final Mk 5, with a wood butt, a handgrip and a bayonet lug, was developed in time for Operation ‘Market Garden’ – the ill-fated airborne operation at Arnhem in September 1944. The Sten Mk 2S had a special Maxim-pattern silencer surrounding the barrel, giving it a peculiarly bulky appearance compared with the standard gun; but it was very effective as long as only single shots were fired, and inspired the current L34A1 silenced Sterling.

A particularly interesting copy of the Mk 2 Sten was the Gerät Potsdam, made in Germany towards the end of the Second World War and complete down to the last detail of its markings. These guns were designed for clandestine pro-German resistance elements operating behind Allied lines, which would be betrayed immediately by the presence of too many examples of the MP. 40.

During 1941, the Commandos had been joined by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a mobile reconnaissance group drawing inspiration from the Arab nomads living in the trackless sands of the North African desert, and David Stirling’s L Detachment that was effectively the precursor of the Special Air Service (SAS). Tony Geraghty, in Who Dares Wins, explained that:

Stirling drafted a long memorandum … wherein he argued that strategic raids – that is, deep penetration behind enemy lines – did not require the ponderous naval back-up of full-blown Commando assaults … Instead, Stirling proposed using parachutist saboteurs to inflict a level of damage on enemy airfields equivalent to that of a Commando force twenty times greater.

Stirling had been injured in a parachuting accident and was confined to a hospital bed. He realised that his submission would not get past the junior officers at Army headquarters in Cairo, and decided upon action in keeping not only with his ideas but also with the subsequent exploits of the Special Air Service. Said Geraghty:

A high wire fence surrounded the headquarters area … Leaving his crutches outside the fence, Stirling hauled himself painfully over, and dropped into the compound. He then walked gingerly into the main administrative block, bumping into various offices and their occupants, before discovering that Auchinleck was out. By now, the internal security staff had been alerted to his presence. Stirling found the Deputy C-in-C, Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie, just before they found him … Ritchie scanned the paper and subsequently recalled Stirling for a discussion of the scheme with Auchinleck. Soon afterwards, in his new rank of captain, Stirling was given permission to recruit 66 men from the remains of Layforce Commando.

The SAS was largely confined to North Africa during this period, successfully sabotaging Axis airfields at comparatively little cost. Success bred success; the Commandos, the LRDG and SAS were soon joined by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment, the Combined Operation Pilotage Parties (COPPs, specialising in beach reconnaissance) and a host of other special-purpose forces.

As the war ran its course, more units appeared. Popski’s Private Army was formed by a Belgian businessman of Russian origin, Vladimir Peniakoff, whose company-size reconnaissance and raiding force was active in North Africa and later in Italy. Merrill’s Marauders, officially the 5037th Composite Unit of the US Army, was organized in October 1943 under Brigadier General Frank Merrill and trained specifically in jungle fighting for service in Burma. The Chindits, alias the Long-Range Penetration Group or 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, were raised by Orde Wingate in the summer of 1942 and successfully harried the Japanese for two years.

The Encyclopedia of World War Two (1978, ed. Thomas Parrish) aptly summed up a popular opinion of these units by saying of the Chindits, ‘[they] were as controversial as their tactics. Many staff officers regarded them as eccentric and undependable. But despite their detractors’ claims, they played an important role …’ in the conduct of the Second World War.

The Germans were less interested in creating Special Forces, though their paramilitary units, particularly the SS, ran efficient assassination squads. A covert-operations unit known as the Brandenburgers specialised in infiltration, but ultimately fell foul of politics and served largely to pave the way for Otto Skorzeny and his commando unit. Skorzeny’s men achieved some remarkable successes, including the rescue of the deposed Italian leader Benito Mussolini in seemingly impossible circumstances, but their choice of weaponry was largely conventional. However, specialist equipment often had to be acquired outside Germany … sometimes with the aid of forged British banknotes. Thesemay have been printed inside a sealed compound within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. *

During the Winter War against the Finns, in 1939/40, the Russians had learned from bitter experience the value of well-trained snipers. One thorn in their flesh was Simo Hähyä, a farmer who had won many pre-war marksmanship trophies. Attached to a unit on the Karelia Front, Häyhä, firing an open-sighted Model 1928 Mosin-Nagant rifle, was claimed to have killed more than 500 Russian soldiers in fifteen weeks. As a result of experience in Finland, the Russians selected the most accurate of their Tokarev SNT40 rifles for snipers’ use, fitting them with telescope sights, but the SNT40 proved appreciably less reliable than the bolt-action 1891/30-type Mosin-Nagant. The latter was ordered back into production in 1942 and remained the standard Eastern Bloc sniping rifle until 1963.

The best of the Russian snipers preferred the 1891/30 to the semi-automatic for reasons that are as relevant today as in 1941: the manually operated rifle was more reliable, less prone to structural failure and had no mechanical noise in the action. This was particularly important when silence was essential – the ejection/reloading cycle of the SNT was accompanied by considerable clatter. Vasiliy Zaitsev, one of the best-known Soviet snipers, almost always fired Mosin-Nagants, and left handers, such as Lyuba Makarova, found that the SNT ejected fired cases too close to their faces for comfort.

Despite the troubles originating from the disruption of manufacture after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Tokarev was by no means a failure. Poor equipment would not have been tolerated by the Soviet snipers, who were rightly respected by their opponents and exacted a terrible price for the German invasion. Provided it was kept reasonably clean – a stricture still applying to automatic weapons – the Tokarev functioned satisfactorily enough in the hands of good-quality troops such as the Russian marines.

The Russians backed out of their trench. Anxious to put the German sniper in a maximum amount of blinding sunlight, they followed the irregularly curving front line until they found a spot where the afternoon sun would be at their backs … Aware that the sun would reflect on their scopes, they waited patiently for it to go down behind them. By late afternoon, now wrapped in shade, they had Konings at a disadvantage. Zaitsev focused his telescopic sight on the German’s hiding-place. A piece of glass suddenly glinted at the edge of the sheet. Zaitsev motioned to Kulikov, who slowly raised his helmet over the top of the parapet. Konings fired once and Kulikov rose, screaming convincingly. Sensing triumph, the German lifted his head slightly to see his victim. Vassiliy Zaitsev shot him between the eyes …*

Snipers also made their presence felt in the Pacific, where the Japanese not only became past masters in the art of concealment, but also had a degree of fanaticism sufficient to persist long after most Western marksmen would have prudently ‘withdrawn’. The lessons were not lost on the Americans, while, even at Arnhem, the Germans feared British snipers largely because the latter were taught to aim at the head (and thus be more likely to kill) whenever circumstances permitted.

The successful German paratroop invasion of Crete in 1941 was accompanied by such an excessive casualty rate that the Wehrmacht never again undertook airborne attacks on such a large scale. Many survivors of the drop believed that the Schmeisser submachine-gun and Mauser bolt-action rifle could not provide sufficient firepower to overcome tenacious defenders, and also that the standard light-support weapon, the MG. 34, performed much better on its complicated buffered quadrupedal mount (an unnecessary encumbrance for paratroops) than on its bipod.

This conflict between the need for adequate fire-support and the penalties of weight and size led to the development of the Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 or FG. 42, which, as its name ‘paratroop rifle’ suggests, was produced specifically to provide German airborne forces with a portable selective-fire weapon firing the standard full-power rifle cartridge to maximize effective range.

Prototypes were submitted by Krieghoff, Mauser and Rheinmetall, the successful design being credited to Rheinmetall engineer Louis Stange, but most guns were made by Krieghoff (code ‘fzs’). The earliest guns were just 37in (940mm) long and weighed 9.93lb (4.5kg) empty. The FG. 42 had an integral bipod, a detachable 20-round box magazine protruding laterally from the left side of the receiver, and a ‘spike’-type bayonet in a tube beneath the muzzle. The gun locked with a rotary bolt and had a straight-line layout to minimize climb in automatic fire, though this required sights raised well above the gun. Many stampings and pressings were used in an attempt to simplify production, but very few rifles were made because of production problems and the restriction of manganese steel to more vital projects.

Despite being used by Otto Skorzeny’s men during the highly successful release of the deposed Italian leader Benito Mussolini (September 1943), the early version of the FG. 42 was insufficiently robust; the later variant was longer and heavier, with a laminated wood butt and the bipod moved to the muzzle from around the gas-port assembly. It also had a different muzzle brake, an adjustable four-position regulator and various detail differences. FG. 42s were allegedly used with great success at Monte Cassino (finally taken by British and Polish units on 18 May 1944), impressing Hitler so greatly that he decreed that they be distributed to the elite troops of the Wehrmacht to replace the ageing bolt-action Karabiner 98k. Unfortunately, production never matched demand – by no means an unusual event in German small-arms circles.*

Hindsight is a wonderful, if retrospective tool. Consequently, it is easy to see why some guns failed to find the niche that is so clearly obvious to today’s observer. One of the best examples of this process is the US 0.30in-calibre M1 Carbine, which deserves to be considered as a landmark in military weaponry, even though its true value passed largely unnoticed at the time simply because it had been created to arm non-combatants and units that were serving in largely administrative roles or away from the front lines.

Its origins are traceable to an experimental Winchester rifle unsuccessfully tested by the US Marine Corps in 1940, competing against the Garand and the Johnson. The Winchester was prematurely adjudged a failure; but it embodied an excellent short-stroke gas piston system, designed by David M. ‘Carbine’ Williams, and could have been developed to rival the Garand had it not appeared at