Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: Tom M on 26 July, 2018, 08:25:33 pm
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I was doing some channel surfing and came across a programme on Quest called Combat Dealers. The gist is some slightly portly cockney bloke in a suit goes around buying and selling old Army stuff. Anyway, as part of that they had a WW2 anti-tank bazooka type thing that they used to fire at an old scrap car resulting in big boom.
That got me wondering what the laws were around that sort of thing. Is that something they can actually do, or was it something mocked up to make it look like they had? Presumably there are licences around that sort of thing, but even then it seems a bit unusual to me you can have a functioning weapon like that private individuals could use.
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When I was a PSO, I helped design a rocket recovery system that went on to create a small crater in Lincolnshire[1]. The basis of the design was that nobody on the rocket team could obtain the relevant licence to use explosive bolts (rocket, for the breaking in half so the parachute could deploy), so we came up with a novel spring-loaded mechanical system to sproing the drogue chute out the back (it worked well in the lab, but we suspect didn't react well to either high G-forces, or proximity to rocket exhaust).
I forget the details, but it was a right pain. And that was pre-9/11.
(The actual solid-fuel rocket motor stuff was all handled by the grown-up rocket scientists who organised the competition, and presumably dealt with testing military stuff-wot-goes-BOOM on a regular basis.)
Mocking up a RPG-vs-car for the telly would presumably also require someone licenced to muck about with pyrotechnics, but presumably that's a bit easier to come by. You can probably tell by whether it looked like a high explosive (bang, shrapnel, bit of smoke) or the slow flamey smokey explosion that Hollywood has taught us to expect. Although if I were filming the real thing, I'd probably spice it up with a liberal distribution of petrol in unsuitable containers.
[1] I wanted to work on the electronics, but they put me with the parachute guys. Not surprising that the final-stage recovery ended up being done with a spade, and while the other team that actually made it to launch also crashed, they won by default because our telemetry didn't work.
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'Bazookas' from WWII era came in two forms. There was the panzerfaust/bazooka which used rocket propellants and the PIAT, a British invention that launched a - mostly ineffectual - armour piercing projectile using a bloody great coiled spring.
Of the two the rocket propelled was by far the most effective and the bazooka the most likely to be turned up at jumbles. Panzerfaust was (I think) a single use/throwaway weapon and IIRC quite an unstable explosive. The vast majority of the leftovers were terminated with extreme prejudice. The bazooka used a sized and heat treated tube manufactured with precision to be durable and reusable. (Random factoid: War surplus bazookas were used by car maker Dellow to make strong lightweight chassis for trials cars, many surviving to the present day)
As regards the projectiles, I can't see any of them being legal to possess except in a deactivated state. Unless in the hands of a registered arms dealer.
I'm sure there's one or two on here with true firearms legislation experience. They'll be along directly.
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It is almost impossible to imagine it was the original propellant and warhead. There is enough trouble to be had keeping modern munitions of any sort in date for safety, never mind something up to 70 years old.
Put simply I'd not test it by holding onto it, but rather from far enoug away I had to watch it on a screen.
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Found the episode on YouTube - a Panzerschreck and PIAT are purportedly fired, but in both cases, it looks very much like it's been mocked up (note the comments).
https://youtu.be/qO0A20u04Ts?t=36m29s
Firing shaped charge warheads in a scrapyard? Gimme a break... ::-)
Compare and contrast with this WW2 footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIm7nOe_Sag
EDITED TO ADD:
On other TV series where things have been blown up properly (usually by Sidney Alford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Alford)), the action's taken place in a quarry or on a military exercise/firing range, with rather more care and attention to detail.
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This goes back to a rant I have had previously.
All programs like this, it doesn't matter a) what weapon is fired or b) what the target is, there are two things guaranteed:
1) The shooter will hit first time
2) said target will explode into millions of pieces.
This gets so silly that I have seen one where a small caliber hand gun was shot at a watermelon, with predicted results (see above). However on the slomo replay you can a) see the fuse to the explosive int he watermelon and b) see that the watermelon explodes _before_ the round hits it!
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I quite like Combat Dealers. The bloke from Kent has personality. There is on eepisode where he travels to Germany and buys a flamethrower that someone has kept in their shed. He is very careful to empty out the contents and gets it refurbished. The program ends with the thing being tested.
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I was doing some channel surfing and came across a programme on Quest called Combat Dealers. The gist is some slightly portly cockney bloke in a suit goes around buying and selling old Army stuff. Anyway, as part of that they had a WW2 anti-tank bazooka type thing that they used to fire at an old scrap car resulting in big boom.
That got me wondering what the laws were around that sort of thing. Is that something they can actually do, or was it something mocked up to make it look like they had? Presumably there are licences around that sort of thing, but even then it seems a bit unusual to me you can have a functioning weapon like that private individuals could use.
Here you can do a course in making the theatrical version of big bangs: https://www.backstage-academy.co.uk/short-courses/stage-pyrotechnics/
My information is near 50 years out of date but you could get licences for explosive demolition and I guess they must be available still for knocking down chimneys, tower blocks, and the like.
In the 50's and 60's you could extract gunpowder from penny bangers and also buy little 'toy' rocket solid propellant boosters over the counter in toy shops. Enough in a confined space made a quality bang. A kid at my school lost a hand to a home made firework. Today it would have been reported as an IED.
It was also possible to buy the ingredients to make your own gunpowder by ordering through a chemist. A chap living in a S. Staffs woodland had a home made black powder gun for pigeon and rabbits and I don't expect he was the only one.
After 1965 I went on to military grade stuff and learnt respect.
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Gatlig Guns are a regular meme on US storage hunters / pawn store shows (not that I watch these things...).
It's compulsory to take it down to the range/out the back to see if it works...
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Thanks Spesh, that was indeed the episode :thumbsup: I did have my skeptics hat on for that. I can imagine you could get dummy projectile things for collecting/reenactment type purposes, but I wasn't sure even if licensed dealer types would be able to get something like that they could shoot off to blow up cars with. Even in a refurbished state I'd wonder how safe it would be to be firing high explosives off from 70/80 year old weapons.
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Thanks Spesh, that was indeed the episode :thumbsup: I did have my skeptics hat on for that. I can imagine you could get dummy projectile things for collecting/reenactment type purposes, but I wasn't sure even if licensed dealer types would be able to get something like that they could shoot off to blow up cars with. Even in a refurbished state I'd wonder how safe it would be to be firing high explosives off from 70/80 year old weapons.
THe guy in that TV show will probably have a license for a certain amount of pyrotechnics and handling of old military gear as they are in real life one of the biggest suppliers of military equipment to the TV and film industry. I think most of the trucks and tanks in Brad Pitts last WWII opus were supplied by them. I heard him moaning that stunt drivers have no clue how to drive WWII era vehicles and wrecked some of his plus directors are want to blow up your precious "last Panzer mark whatever in existence" if you don't keep an eye on them.
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My dad was an antique dealer and specialised in weapons. Once when I was a youngster he bought a boxed pair of flintlock pistols. As usual the box contained a powder flask. Unusually, this one was full so he decided he'd better get rid of the black powder. We emptied it into a small heap on a slab in the back garden and left a small trail back to a "safe place". On touching a match to the end of the trail the whole lot went up instantaneously, no slow burn along the trail like I was expecting from watching old westerns. I was unscathed but my dad lost his eyebrows.
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A friend of a friend of a friend's dad was in the demolition trade and used to give his son the odd stick of dynamite for fun. They lived on a large farm so it was possible to blow shit up fairly safely.
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lots of offshore O&G platforms have shotguns out there, and one or two people licensed to use them. After 20+ years of corrosion lots of the automagical flare ignition systems are corroded to sh!t. Flare lighting is therefore done with a shotgun and flare cartridge.
Not surprisingly the BBC had completely missed the point here and Total are giving a characteristic Gallic shrug.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-42583377 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-42583377)
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Some years ago here a bloke posted videos of a PVC-drainpipe bazooka he had built that used gas to fire spuds. He was prosecuted for possession and use of a weapon of a calibre reserved for the military.
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You can have explosives and weapons as long as you have the right paperwork and a reason to have them. I mean, you can't stack up a heap of military-grade missiles in your garage because you like the look of them. We're historical re-enactors which means we have muskets and Brown Besses etc (with a standard firearms licence) plus black powder (needs a black powder licence - different types such as "acquire" so you can have powder just for a display or "acquire and keep" so you can also store it) and the RCA (which means we can transport it). It seems easier to have a working weapon (with the right paperwork) because otherwise you've got a replica weapon and that is illegal (as far as I know ... there might be details I am glossing over!) Also black powder/gunpowder is not a "very high explosive" it's just "explosive" (and not even that, if it's raining.) You can't go out and obtain a "very high explosive" on this kind of paperwork.
There are a few gunpowder mills around you can buy this stuff from.
It makes things more fun driving on the motorway. We put the warning sign in the back of the landrover. People zoom up to us to have a tailgating session, see the sign and quickly drop back. We've even had people overtake using two lanes of distance between us and them. Like we're going to spontaneous explode or something.
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Some years ago here a bloke posted videos of a PVC-drainpipe bazooka he had built that used gas to fire spuds. He was prosecuted for possession and use of a weapon of a calibre reserved for the military.
I have the requisite knowledge to build one of those. I haven't but I know how to.
Does that mean my brain is illegal?
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Some years ago here a bloke posted videos of a PVC-drainpipe bazooka he had built that used gas to fire spuds. He was prosecuted for possession and use of a weapon of a calibre reserved for the military.
I have the requisite knowledge to build one of those. I haven't but I know how to.
Does that mean my brain is illegal?
There must be a hundred and one reasons why everyone here has an illegal brain, but that ain't one of them.
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You can have explosives and weapons as long as you have the right paperwork and a reason to have them. I mean, you can't stack up a heap of military-grade missiles in your garage because you like the look of them. We're historical re-enactors which means we have muskets and Brown Besses etc (with a standard firearms licence) plus black powder (needs a black powder licence - different types such as "acquire" so you can have powder just for a display or "acquire and keep" so you can also store it) and the RCA (which means we can transport it). It seems easier to have a working weapon (with the right paperwork) because otherwise you've got a replica weapon and that is illegal (as far as I know ... there might be details I am glossing over!) Also black powder/gunpowder is not a "very high explosive" it's just "explosive" (and not even that, if it's raining.) You can't go out and obtain a "very high explosive" on this kind of paperwork.
There are a few gunpowder mills around you can buy this stuff from.
It makes things more fun driving on the motorway. We put the warning sign in the back of the landrover. People zoom up to us to have a tailgating session, see the sign and quickly drop back. We've even had people overtake using two lanes of distance between us and them. Like we're going to spontaneous explode or something.
That wouldn't worry me, landrovers don't fly that far. I was slightly nervous following a raod tanker with 20 te of chlorine down the A180 though and got past that ASAP.
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That wouldn't worry me, landrovers don't fly that far. I was slightly nervous following a raod tanker with 20 te of chlorine down the A180 though and got past that ASAP.
Fair point, and anyway, anyone following us too closely is more in danger of bits dropping off the landrover and denting their car.
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That wouldn't worry me, landrovers don't fly that far. I was slightly nervous following a raod tanker with 20 te of chlorine down the A180 though and got past that ASAP.
Fair point, and anyway, anyone following us too closely is more in danger of bits dropping off the landrover and denting their car.
It wouldnt dent mine, it's another Landrover.
OT I followed a Defender yesterday with the plate L4 NDY
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You can have explosives and weapons as long as you have the right paperwork and a reason to have them. I mean, you can't stack up a heap of military-grade missiles in your garage because you like the look of them. We're historical re-enactors which means we have muskets and Brown Besses etc (with a standard firearms licence) plus black powder (needs a black powder licence - different types such as "acquire" so you can have powder just for a display or "acquire and keep" so you can also store it) and the RCA (which means we can transport it). It seems easier to have a working weapon (with the right paperwork) because otherwise you've got a replica weapon and that is illegal (as far as I know ... there might be details I am glossing over!) Also black powder/gunpowder is not a "very high explosive" it's just "explosive" (and not even that, if it's raining.) You can't go out and obtain a "very high explosive" on this kind of paperwork.
There are a few gunpowder mills around you can buy this stuff from.
It makes things more fun driving on the motorway. We put the warning sign in the back of the landrover. People zoom up to us to have a tailgating session, see the sign and quickly drop back. We've even had people overtake using two lanes of distance between us and them. Like we're going to spontaneous explode or something.
I remember a discussion with a Traffic Warden and a Civil War renactor ...... Their small cannon was parked on double yellow lines outside the pub and was being ticketed, the owner was arguing whether you could actually ticket a "shotgun" because that was what it was described as for licensing purposes