Defeating the Panzer-Stuka Menace
Defeating the Panzer-Stuka Menace
British Spigot Weapons of the Second World War
David Lister
With contributions from Thomas Anderson and illustrations by Andrei Kirushkin
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
FRONTLINE BOOKS
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire Philadelphia
Copyright David Lister, 2021
ISBN 978-1-52678-715-6
ePUB ISBN 978-1-52678-716-3
Mobi ISBN 978-1-52678-717-0
The right of David Lister to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Acknowledgements
My thanks go to:
The contributors of the ARRSE.co.uk PIAT thread
The Blacker Family
Alison Flowers, editor
Andrew Hills
Matthew J. Moss
Ridgeway Military & Aviation Research Group
Jeremy Rosenblad
And all those who have lobbed the odd document in my direction.
Introduction
In 2013, like the vast majority of historians, I considered the PIAT as a stand-alone development, which was a bit of an anomaly. I knew of the Bombard but lumped it in with the rest of the Heath Robinson contraptions of questionable usefulness that were given to the Home Guard in a hurry to face the threat of invasion. The sort of weapon seen in an episode of Dads Army .
Around July 2013, I was at The National Archives at Kew looking for information on tank guns. I found a document listed in their catalogue as simply 23-pounder, and I requested it. My initial thoughts were that I was probably about to see an early version of the 20-pounder tank gun, although the dates on the document seemed to be too early for that. Or maybe it was some other experimental weapon, perhaps similar to the 8-pounder. Skimming through the rather thick file I quickly worked out that it was related to the Bombard. As this was of no use to me at the time, I was about to return it to the archives when I spotted a small, brown envelope as the next page in the file.
In UK files, such envelopes are usually filled with photographs or plans, items that cannot be bound together like normal sheets of paper, usually due to the size of the item. I opened it, and out fell seven tiny, aged, faded photographs (three of which can be seen on pp. 301). They showed the utter devastation caused by a Bombard against a tank. This came as a shock, and devastated my preconceived notions as much as the tank had been. Reading the attached report, it confirmed what I thought I saw in the pictures, and I began to realize the importance of the Bombard. If it were not for the imprecise labelling of that document, and me opening that envelope, this book would not exist, and history would be well on its way to forgetting the importance of spigot weapons to the British war effort.
Over the intervening seven years, I have been following the trail of Britains spigot weapons, and it has had many surprising twists and turns. Facts that would have been front-page scandals if they were known about, stories that come right out of a spy novel and finally the realization that the effects of the Bombard are still being felt by the British military today.
So, please let me lead you on a trip through this odd world and a weapon that owes its life, development and effectiveness to a handful of very talented men.
Addendum
I sit here, some seven years after I started this project, and things have not gone smoothly. I write my books, then find pictures for them. The last three months have been taken up entirely by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The resulting lockdown has caused considerable problems in acquiring pictures, as many archives have, justifiably, sent their staff home. In my particular case the inability to obtain pictures relates to the Imperial War Museum.
There are a number of images that I wanted to include, but could not obtain from the IWM. The most critical of these would be of the Clarke Tree Spigot Gun. The image on p. shows a US modified Tree Spigot; the IWM picture shows the weapon in its original form.
To that end I will list the reference numbers for those images that I feel are important to the spigot story, and the pages that they are relevant to. Please follow these steps to view them:
Visit https://www.iwm.org.uk/ .
Under the Objects and History tab select Our Collections.
Enter the relevant reference number in the search bar.
Alternatively:
Search the web for IWM collections.
Use first link on Google Our Collections | Imperial War Museums.
Then enter the relevant reference number in the search bar.
Important Images
| Page | IWM Ref. | Reason for Inclusion |
| 50 | H 12300 | An oddly shaped projectile, which may be the 20/15lb practice projectile. It is rarely pictured. |
| 71 | H 21581 | The image, mentioned in the text, of a wheeled carriage for the Bombard. |
| 90 | A 30998 | The original test equipment at Whitchurch being loaded for its test firing in front of the prime minister. |
| 220 | MUN 5773 | The close-up of a British Tree Spigot Gun for comparison with the US modified weapon. |
There are a number of pictures on the IWM website which are of general interest to the reader, but, like the previous images, they are unavailable due in part to the pandemic.
