The Blacker Bombard,After the evacuation Dunkirk in World War II, the British were woefully short of
The Blacker Bombard,After the evacuation Dunkirk in World War II, the British were woefully short of heavy equipment, most of which had been abandoned on French shores. One dire shortage was of anti-tank guns. After Dunkirk, the British Army only possessed 167 modern anti-tank guns in Britain, and had so little ammo that units were forbidden from conducting target practice. Due to a shortage of conventional guns, the British Army sought a cheap and easy to mass produce alternative. The Blacker Bombard was a spigot mortar developed by Lt. Col. Stewart Blacker. Unlike a conventional mortar, a spigot mortar does not possess a barrel, and instead there is a steel rod known as a ‘spigot’ fixed to a baseplate; the bomb itself has a propellant charge inside its tail. When the mortar was to be fired, the bomb was pushed down onto the spigot, which exploded the propellant charge and blew the bomb into the air. The Blacker Bombard was a 112 lb spigot mortar specially developed as an anti-tank weapon. Manned by a crew of 3-5, it could fire bombs at a rate of 6-12 a minutes, and came equipped with either a 29mm caliber 20 lb anti tank bomb or a 14 lb high explosive anti personnel bomb. Optimum range was around 75-100 meters.At first the British Army was reluctant to adopt the Black Bombard, mostly due to it’s poor ability to actually penetrate the armor of a tank, and its limited range. However, Winston Churchill was impressed by the mortar after attending a demonstration of the weapon. Around 22,000 were produced and were issued to both regular units and the Home Guard (British civilian defense militias) starting in early 1941. Some saw limited action with the British Army in North Africa. Once the British Army was fully equipped with conventional weaponry, all were transferred to the Home Guard for use. Throughout Britain a number of concrete pedestals were produced on which to mounted the Bombard on. 351 survive today. -- source link
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