Disassembling the E.M. 2 Rifle with Jonathan Ferguson

[@ALovelyBunchOfDragonballz]

I never get tired of hearing "Keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds"

[@headstamppublishing]

We're all a little envious.

[@jchance4d4]

If you'll forgive a rather frivolous comment--the EM2 really has the look of the more serious sort of 1950s science fiction, and this makes it a very appealing design.

[@nesquick84]

Headstamp Publishing has got to be my favorite publisher. Before Headstamp, my favorite publisher was Collector Grade Publications, but with them going out of business a little over a year ago, I think Headstamp fills the market void nicely. I know the focuses of the different publishers are a bit different, but Headstamp's quality is unmatched and even though it focuses less on collecting specific firearms, there's enough detailed information and photographs for them to be quite useful to the collector as well as the historian.

[@headstamppublishing]

Thank you for the kind words! And yes, we set out to make the books useful for collectors, historians, and enthusiasts alike.

[@StephenPowers1]

Nice to have a dedicated channel for Headstamp Publishing! The extra interviews with authors and the added info om Forgotten Weapons are a plus and now with this channel

[@ALovelyBunchOfDragonballz]

Can confirm, the book is very, very good 😁

[@headstamppublishing]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@robertmansfield7656]

The em2 is a sexy gun. Are their any more images of the em3 hall rifle. I know that development continues until 1947 but we have such limited into available especially in Australia. The major Hall's concept has strong roots to Robinson and his series of rifles. I heard they made a wooden mock up. Is that floating about the armories?

[@headstamppublishing]

Unfortunately, there is very little that has been discovered to date.

[@robertmansfield7656]

@@headstamppublishing all I could find reference to was; Hall ,Self loading Rifle, RSAF D3 SA 2911, Basic scheme, sights, clocking handle, rifle automatic EM3 , RSAF D7 D5(E). 6158/sk/224 and a few others, one which mentioned the. 280 in December of 47. Oh this is it, basic scheme for self loading providing short overall length "Personal Infantry Weapon" .280 em3 RSAF D7 D5(E) 6137/SK/244. And file called Personal infantry weapon mock up RSAF D7 D5(E)4818/26. I think that was mentioned by Toney Edward in a lecture on post WW2 British weapons development.

[@gertjevanpoppel7270]

Maybe complicated... but a very beautiful rifle 👍. And complicated is in the eye of the beholder 😂😂

[@chrisbray-o7b]

Where is this????? because the ammunition is 7.62 not the designed cartridge .280 Jonathan i have your book plus I own the book by Mr Dugelby with original newspaper cuttings about the adoption by Australian Military, please reply

[@SafetyProMalta]

Great stuff! I always wonder what direction UK military small arms would have gone if this had stayed "in-service"

[@timrobinson513]

I wonder how the Falklands war would have gone. Both sides used the same rifle and therefore ammunition. British troops would replenish their own magazines from captured Argentine supplies in the field. If we had different weapons then this couldn’t have happened and maybe the campaign would have gone a different way?

[@calumknight9178]

@@timrobinson513 at the same time .280 was way more controllable than 7.62 used in falklands, and pretty sure you could carry more of it than you could 7.62. Actually come to think of it if .280 had been chosen as the standard then those fals the argentines had would also be chambered for .280 since that is what the fal was designed for originally...

[@SG550-xo1oo]

Í think the shorter version of the EM-2 would have probably been a truly GREAT universal rifle. And, of course several small improvements after adopted. I recall calculating the muzzle energy of the ORIGINAL 7mm round. The muzzle energy was only 10% higher than in 7.62x39 Kalashnikov round! And just think if the multicoated Swarowsky 1.5 power scope had been available then! The same scope as the one used in Steyr AUG. With more advanced reticle..

[@zoiders]

The terminal ballistics were much better though as the longer slimmer projectile retained accuracy velocity and lethality at much greater ranges.

[@zoiders]

Was there ever any serious attempt to convert Brens to .280 and EM2 magazines? Because I couldn't see the Ministry Of War dumping tens of thousands of perfectly good LMGs.