In 1944, officers gathered in a pine wood to shoot their own pistols at ammo boxes. The results—and a classified file on the despised Sten gun—exposed a lethal crisis of confidence.
"The result was a “Frankenstein” weapon: the Land Mattress. It looked absurd—a honeycomb of tubes on a trailer—but its performance was terrifying. During the crossing of the Scheldt, the Canadians unleashed the weapon. It fired a ripple of up to 30 rockets in under eight seconds, creating a “screaming” noise that shattered German morale before the warheads even impacted." Subjective response: My dad was killed Oct. 9, '44 at Hoofdplaat, south shore of the Scheldt, in this costly campaign to liberate the port of Antwerp.
Not the first time the Canadian Army has abandoned a weapon. In WWI, the infantry abandoned the Ross Rifle for the Lee-Enfield with great enthusiasm, Among many other failures, you could strip it for cleaning and accidentally reassemble it incorrectly which would allow you to fire it and then the bolt, instead of being locked in place, would fly back (equal and opposite reaction) and strike you in your face, possibly fatally.
An interesting read, Hansard. It is unfortunate that field testing of the pistol and the Sten occurred during war and in the theatre of operations. Not a firearms expert, I would have guessed such testing would have occurred during the weapons’ development.
"The result was a “Frankenstein” weapon: the Land Mattress. It looked absurd—a honeycomb of tubes on a trailer—but its performance was terrifying. During the crossing of the Scheldt, the Canadians unleashed the weapon. It fired a ripple of up to 30 rockets in under eight seconds, creating a “screaming” noise that shattered German morale before the warheads even impacted." Subjective response: My dad was killed Oct. 9, '44 at Hoofdplaat, south shore of the Scheldt, in this costly campaign to liberate the port of Antwerp.
Your father was certainly one of the heroes who sacrificed their lives in the Scheldt and the Netherlands.
Not the first time the Canadian Army has abandoned a weapon. In WWI, the infantry abandoned the Ross Rifle for the Lee-Enfield with great enthusiasm, Among many other failures, you could strip it for cleaning and accidentally reassemble it incorrectly which would allow you to fire it and then the bolt, instead of being locked in place, would fly back (equal and opposite reaction) and strike you in your face, possibly fatally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_rifle
An interesting read, Hansard. It is unfortunate that field testing of the pistol and the Sten occurred during war and in the theatre of operations. Not a firearms expert, I would have guessed such testing would have occurred during the weapons’ development.