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Friday, 23 March 2012
An unfortunate flaw
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During WW2, SOE had a belt rig that mounted a Colt M1903 .32 automatic horizontally in a metal bracket, on the wearer's right side under his coat, muzzle pointed straight ahead. A photographer's cable release was anchored to the bracket, with its plunger attached to the trigger. It went up the wearer's side and down his coat sleeve.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't have to raise your arms to set it off, just push the cable release button concealed in your sleeve.
As for the Germans, they responded with a metal belt buckle nearly identical to the standard Wehrmacht item, complete to the eagle ornament. Except that this one had a pivoted four-barrel cluster like the old Reform pocket pistol (barrels in a vertical "stack"), in .25 ACP.
There were four little "keys" on one side of the buckle; when they were pressed, a mousetrap-type spring behind the pivoted barrels snapped them out, popping the buckle open on a concealed hinge, and firing however many of the barrels whose keys had been tripped. (A two-barreled model also is known.)
The former gadget was used by both SOE and OSS in occupied Europe; while it worked, getting caught with it was usually a one-way ticket to local Gestapo HQ. As for the latter, it was made only in prototype form, apparently for high-ranking officers.
Its revelation in Allied intel briefs probably explains why, toward the end of the war (as a couple of my uncles who were with Patton related), any German officer who, while being taken into custody, made the mistake of casually hooking his thumb over his belt buckle usually became a problem for Graves Registration in about two seconds flat.
As W.H.B. Smith observed re the "OSS Glove Pistol" (actually a Navy SeaBee gadget), "such inane devices crop up in any wartime period". Even purely "civil" ones.
cheers
eon