I'm sure I'll sort something out today (in
the real world) for publishing tomorrow in Blog-world (it's still Monday in the
real world!) there's those Moose
moshling-things somewhere, but I'm not sure I've got Internet tomorrow either,
so when Thursday's will publish - time wise - is anyone's guess, in the
meantime I've been working on this for a while and it's satisfying to 'put it
to bed'.
There are several stories here; what it is,
where it came from and how I cleaned it up!
The story my mother tells is that it was
presented to my Grandfather sometime in or just after WWII, by one of his
ships' company's, and has always been referred to as 'the Pom-Pom gun', it was
supposedly made in the on-board engineering workshop, probably on commission
from the junior officers.
Now I'm sure all the bits of the story are
reasonably accurate, but as a whole I have problems with it, and I'm sure those
of you with equally far-fetched or legendary family myths and tales will
forgive the cynicism of the grand-kid, questioning the previous two
generations; it is in any event an interesting thing, and my cynicism will be
seen as more justifiable as we move down the post.
Now, Mum won't mind me pointing out that
she's not as young as she used to be, and the 'Pom-Pom' had become a bit lost
and forgotten among the acquired chattels of 80-years on this Earth, I decided
to sort it out, but in secret, which involved smuggling it away, doing a 'phase'
and smuggling it back, only to repeat the exercise the next time the
opportunity presented itself!
Some of the shots in the above pair of
collages were taken about a year ago, but the shoot as a whole wasn't a
success, so I took some more a while later and mixed them together. We'll look
at the cleaning first, and then study the object and look again at its
mythology.
1st phase was to just give it a clean, get
the real crud and surface build-up off it, which I did with those sealed-packet,
treated cleaning cloths, having previously noticed how they will polish-up
slightly tarnished silver; I was hoping the result would be better than it was.
I turned to silver-dip, silver-polishing wad
and that old favorite and garage-door saver - Jenolite. Like Clear
floor-cleaner, Jenolite was illegal
in the army, but we all had some - of both!
Actually that's not quite true, a lot of
blokes would persevere with elbow-grease, especially if only a rifleman, but
with a GPMG; I was a fan of Jenolite
for getting the carbon off the gas parts, when I was carrying an SLR I cheated
by having a spare gas-plug and return rod in the lining of my Bergen, which
would be snuck out at End-Ex, so I could hand my gatt in quick and bugger-off,
cleaning it's actual gas parts later in my room and slipping them back in next
time I signed the weapon out!
As to Clear
- having mentioned it - we used to use it to put a quick shine on bulled-boots,
however if it then rained on the parade (not a euphemism - real water from the
sky), all those who had used Clear
would get found out as their boots took-on the inky petrol blue-purple sheen of
ground-beetles!
Some close-ups, pre deep-clean; the steel,
being a decent engineer's grade steel, cut from blocks, hadn't rusted too
badly, but there was a surface crust and two slightly poor bits, while the
elevating mechanism had collected a thinker layer of crud due to its being
oiled in the past and collecting household dust on the quite for years.
The whole had also suffered from a few
years sited next to the gas cooker, where its guard duties included a fine
layer of cooking oils. Indeed - it wasn't easy to work out what was rust and
what was cooking-polymer 'glue'!
Phase 3 Polishing (phase 2 was the silver dip,
which I didn't photograph) - once the
silver-polishing wad comes out it all starts to get a bit messy, this is the
deck-mounting plate, which was soldered to the base of the plinth, but from
which it has become parted at some point in the last 35 years?
Still - that much mess and you know it's
doing the trick!
Shrapnel-shield fully polished, both its
little brass bolts had also been silver-plated on the ends and not only did
they clean-up in the dip, but it cleaned the worst of the black oxidation off
the threads too; bargain!
The steel parts were polished (phase 6) after
a wash with shampoo and a toothbrush - phase 5.
Polishing was done with fine steel wool
wound round ear-bud/Q-Tips, and is an equally messy job and the very fine steel
wool tends to disintegrate to powder as you go, but a powder than can work into
your fingers, like swarf if you're not careful, because it is swarf.
Three-quarter views, the heat-signal on the
barrel in the right-hand shot is just the flash reflecting off the shield, the
whole gun came-up a nice gun-metal, steel-grey.
So - back to the family story; The British
had two Pom-Pom's the 2lbr which looks like a naval gun and definitely isn't
this, and the 1lbr Vickers-Maxim,
which to be fair doesn't look much like this either! The Americans used the Maxim-Nordenfeldt (see below), which
looks nothing like this (but quite like the Vickers-Maxim's)
but did have a similar mounting.
In point of fact, this looks exactly like a
bog-standard Vickers .303 heavy
machine-gun, as used by the Army from WWI until the 1950's/into the 1960's. The
twin-handles, thumb-button trigger, cocking leaver, all tie-in, however there
was also the less known Vickers .5-inch,
sometimes known as (and used as-) a Pom-Pom, which is a scale-up - visually -
although in Naval service usually fitted with long flash eliminator - but that
weapon was an inter-war model, which could be significant to this model's
story.
However, the pedestal and shield are
similar to those used on some Pom-Pom mountings. So, what we seem to have here
is more of a field-modification utilising an MG, rather than an actual Pom-Pom per-se.
Gunner
(not seaman) Smith on the USS Vixen with his
Maxim-Nordenfelt
QF 1-pounder Pom-Pom MG - 1898
Yet there are a couple of question-marks
over this, one being the shoulder-rest, which is the sort of thing you do find
fitted to fixed-mount 1lbr Pom-Poms as seen above, these weapons were all
scaled-up, big beasts and you needed to get your shoulder 'behind it' to move
it.
The other being the position of the shelf
for the ammunition, which on Gunner Smith's is low and to the right, below the
[beautifully polished] brass feed-gates and wooden roller, while on the model
it's at the back of the pedestal, near the top but under the gun; not practical
at all.
So the first possibility is that Granddad's
model is meant to represent the 1lbr Vickers-Maxim Pom-Pom, but that the
modeller used a handy .303 or .5" to model from? This is not terribly
likely, as servicemen tend to 'know their stuff'.
Although you could then suggest that a civilian
metal-smith in India may have made that mistake, but, by the time Granddad was
head of the Indian Navy, these mounts were long-gone and forgotten; in all
their guises, replaced by quad .5", twin and octoplett 1lbr Pom-Poms and
20mm Oerlikons, so that's almost less
likely than the previous explanation.
Re. the USS Vixen shot, note the
raked-profile of a three mast clipper (or schooner?) on the horizon, and the
bloody great Dreadnaught or pocket-battle-cruiser type (I've said it before - I
don't know my ships!) just in shot to the right, also; is that tin can bottom
right the ammo-box? The wooden box seems to contain a very small steam-engine!!
The relevant links are here;
But, you see; Granddad was seconded from
the Merchant Navy into the Royal Navy in WWI where he served off-shore at the
Dardanelles (Gallipoli) as a nineteen/twenty-year-old, transferring into the
Indian Navy later; in 1929.
I suspect this is a model of a local
modification, fitted to the various landing and stores barges, hospital ships, troopers and fleet-protection vessels in use in that theatre? There was no dedicated amphibious force
then, no specialist vessels; it was all done on a wing and a prayer, with both
naval and merchant ships using their attendant boats and tenders as ad-hoc
'landing craft'.
I don't know much about the nascent Turkish
(or 'Ottoman') Air Force either, but I'm sure there were also experienced German
aircraft/pilots in the area too (if only - training Turks), and AA cover would
have been required by the fleet of ships serving the disastrous misadventure of
young Mr. Churchill?
I know a bit more now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Aviation_Squadrons
I know a bit more now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Aviation_Squadrons
A .303 Vickers
machine-gun would have had a number 2, feeding the twisty canvas belt, leaving
the shelf - as modelled - for the water-can used to cool the army version of this
weapon? Which would leave the shoulder-piece probably just missing a piece of
leather or wood, modelling the original padding at shoulder height?
That Granddad may have served-on, with a/his
original merchant vessel equipped with such a deck-gun, before being elevated
to warships, would therefore make sense of this model and that while it probably
was made in local workshops and presented to him by his comrades for some
reason (usually upon leaving, but it's too nice a piece, not the usual plaque, ashtray,
desk-lighter, tankard or whatever, so maybe he did something noteworthy, at
least in the eyes of his fellow crew?), it was in - or just after - the First
World War, not as Mum (who was still very young) thinks - the Second World War?
It's all conjecture, no answers here, but
with Wikipedia and the Vickers sites
not helping, or only helping to reinforce the question marks I had over it, I
think it's a more reasonable scenario.
Equally, it could be that the Indian navy
had such local modification later, being less well funded than the parent Navy?
I can't find any evidence of that though, they got modern ships like Achilles
- with Granddad at the helm!
Therefore; all I need to complete it, is a
piece of heavy string, finely-sewn into a piece of chamois and stained-down
(with boot-polish), glued to the shoulder piece as padding, which would make
more sense for a 'mere' .303 Vickers,
than the heavy vertical plate Gunner Smith is snuggled-up-to above?
Hopefully I might inherit it one day, but I might have to fight my brother for it as we both used to get it of the mantlepiec and play with it as kids - Action Man looked 'well sorted' - sat behind it!
Hopefully I might inherit it one day, but I might have to fight my brother for it as we both used to get it of the mantlepiec and play with it as kids - Action Man looked 'well sorted' - sat behind it!
