Mau Mau gun.

[Tim Simmons]

This is cool. The bolt action is an old brass? gate bolt. sorry the pics are huge but hard to see otherwise.

[katana]

Hi Tim,
interesting that a 'fake' gun would have been used in the uprising.....adds more weight to the idea that your 'rifle sword' was made with the same idea....to fool the enemy. At least yours had an added practical use.

Regards David

[VANDOO]

IT IS INDEED A STRANGE LOOKING CONTRAPTION BUT MAY HAVE ACTUALLY WORKED. I HAVE SEEN STRANGER THINGS IN THE PAST AND IN MY TEEN AGE YEARS WE MADE SOME ZIP GUNS OUT OF JUNK THAT WERE AS DANGEROUS TO THE USER AS TO THE TARGET USUALLY OURS WERE SINGLE SHOT AND USED 22 BULLETS. ONE OF MY FAVORITES SHOT BICYCLE SPOKES IT WAS A SMALLER VERSION OF A PRINCIPLE USED IN OLD MEDEVIL PROJECTLE THROWERS WHERE A FLEXIBLE PIECE OF METAL WAS PULLED BACK (COCKED) THE SPOKE WAS PLACED IN POSITION AND WHEN THE TRIGGER WAS RELEASED IT STRUCK THE BACK OF THE SPOKE AND SENT IT OUT WITH QUITE A LOT OF FORCE. SOME OF THE CONTRAPTIONS BUILT IN PRISONS ARE ALSO REMARKABLY CRUDE , SOMETIMES THEY WORK AND SOMETIMES THEY DON'T BUT THEY ALWAYS NEED A CLOSE TARGET AS THEY ARE NOT ACCURATE AND MAY INJURE THE SHOOTER AND NOT THE TARGET. I WONDER IF THE PRISONS STILL HAVE THEIR OLD COLLECTIONS OF SUCH WEAPONS AS I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY IN QUITE A WHILE.

[David]

Originally Posted by katana

Hi Tim,
interesting that a 'fake' gun would have been used in the uprising.....adds more weight to the idea that your 'rifle sword' was made with the same idea....to fool the enemy. At least yours had an added practical use.

Regards David

Yeah, i don't think this is a "fake" gun. I'll bet it worked once.

[Norman McCormick]

Hi Guys,
I don't think this is a 'fake' gun. If you extract the bolt, insert a cartridge, reinsert the bolt, stretch elastic round the bolt and attach said elastic to the nails on either side of the gun then pull back the bolt manually and release, as long as you file down the bolt face to leave a small protrusion or insert a steel pin into the bolt face = a firing pin, it will fire a centrefire, .303 most likely, cartridge no problem. The Zip gun I believe operates on a similar principle. Totally inaccurate and probably just as dangerous to the firer as the target but deadly at very short range.
Regards,
Norman.

[BBJW]

These were made to just fire once and then hopefully enable the terrorist to pick up a real gun from the victim. These were much cruder, but the same principle was used during WW2 with the "Liberator" single shot .45acp pistols that were dropped to the French resistance fighters who then would capture German weapons.

bbjw

[Atlantia]

Originally Posted by Norman McCormick

Hi Guys,
I don't think this is a 'fake' gun. If you extract the bolt, insert a cartridge, reinsert the bolt, stretch elastic round the bolt and attach said elastic to the nails on either side of the gun then pull back the bolt manually and release, as long as you file down the bolt face to leave a small protrusion or insert a steel pin into the bolt face = a firing pin, it will fire a centrefire, .303 most likely, cartridge no problem. The Zip gun I believe operates on a similar principle. Totally inaccurate and probably just as dangerous to the firer as the target but deadly at very short range.
Regards,
Norman.

LOL, funny you should mention them! My first thought was 'Zip gun'
I also think this was made to fire, although it looks like it would be possibly as dangerous to the shooter as the target.

[katana]

I suppose 'fake' was too inaccurate a description....but there are several reasons I used the term.

The barrel is made from water pipe which is likely 1/2" diameter....and is almost certainly 'seamed' .....and as such is likely to 'burst' on firing ....

The section of 'pipe' which the 'bolt' slides looks to be a section of half pipe (held by the nails ?) which looks decidedly fragile when you consider the force of the 'blow back' gasses from firing a bullet.

To aim....albeit inaccurately....would require 'sighting' down the barrel ....would you put your eyes anywhere near the bolt mechanism on this ?

I am not so certain that this has been fired....there are no scorch marks evident. I also find it hard to believe that the Mau Mau would risk serious injury or death just to fire one inaccurate round at the British I think it would be better used to give the impression that you had a rifle than to fire this.
Perhaps, if shot gun cartridges ....with some of the 'charge' removed...were used this may have been 'more' functional

Regards David

[colin henshaw]

These Mau Mau home-made guns were definitely made to be fired and used. There is another one on display in the Canterbury Museum and no doubt the National Museum in Nairobi will have some.

The Mau Mau were very short of firearms and tried hard to capture real guns from the Security Forces and European civilians, who almost all carried firearms at the time.

[David]

Here's some references:
http://books.google.com/books?id=AKS...esult#PPA18,M1

http://books.google.com/books?id=evI...um=3&ct=result

http://sajun.org/index.php/Mau_Mau

[katana]

Thanks David for the link

Text from the first link ...pretty well explains everything...


Regards David

[ausjulius]

if you fired a .303 in this you would be deader than a door nail in a second,
it is proably a .22 or a 38 caliber pistol round or maybe at the most a 9mm,
ive owned some of these in the past. some pistols with very long barrels , about 45cm or longer, useless junk they were 9mm guns with a sprung pin you pulled back and a simple trigger..

there barrels were made from 9mm seamless tubing,
it seems the mau mau had little or no skill making guns, and these things were sad... poor contraptions that showed no understand of how a firearms would be used or how it should work..

rely none had a practical range of more than 5 or 6 meters.. as they were firing from an unsized 9mm tube...a and they also were firing normal rounds and not a round ball .. so they just tumbled out ...
dangerous things,, and yes i fired some .. not holding them!, as im not insane..
i aquired a bundle of them from a gun collector who had relatives who had been in kenya in the 40s and 50s..

he told me these type of guns never accounted for much and that sabotage seemed to have been the made cause of trouble.. i can see a spear or a machete being more effective than these bits of junk..
but i guess the instinctive human fear of a gun no matter how poor is more effective than a machete or spear..

if you want to see good quality functional homemade guns that are effectivly used in combat the guns from new guinea and from boganville are some good exsamples..
many look like copies of harrington and richard single barrel shotguns, but on closer inspection they are made from pipes and hunks for steel and such,,

most are 12 gauge , ive seen some smaller 410's too, these are mostly strong enough to be used for hunting and such as well..

what is surprising is that there homemade guns are mostly made in the tribal areas of which most are still in a semi stoneage exsistance.. so these people many times are using wood and stone tools still in areas they cant get steel tools for

guns are cheap in PNG , so anyone living near a town can buy a shotgun for next to nothing and a ak47 or SLR for a fair price.. so there isnt any need to make them..

in west papua the bush guns mut make up half the guns the natives use to fignt the indonesian ocupation with.. same with in boganville..

[Tim Simmons]

Very interesting. A picture of the PNG guns would be great? I too only imagine this Mau Mau example working with a 9mm round. Bang at six metres from under a coat or jacket and you might be dead if not you are very unlikely to start jumping around fighting back. I would think it not hard for the house maid or other servants to secure the odd 9mm round from thier masters home. I have heard that they say in counter terroism, "shoot the women first" .

[Norman McCormick]

I think it would be much easier, mechanically, to use a rimmed round, .380 or .303, rather than a rimless, 9mm, one and possibly easier to source as, if I remember correctly, the only British weapon at that time to use a 9mm round was the Sten/Sterling. The European farmers etc. would have used a more eclectic range of calibres but I would think 9mm would still be less evident than some others. In the end the insurgents would have used whatever they could get a hold of.
Regards,
Norman.

[Tim Simmons]

Good point Norman. It is a one shot mission.

[Gavin Nugent]

My two cents worth.

I have seen a good many images over the years from PNG on these weapons. Most often the captions that I remember stated them as home made shot guns made by "rebels"... my two cents.

Gav

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by Norman McCormick

I think it would be much easier, mechanically, to use a rimmed round, .380 or .303, rather than a rimless, 9mm, one and possibly easier to source as, if I remember correctly, the only British weapon at that time to use a 9mm round was the Sten/Sterling. The European farmers etc. would have used a more eclectic range of calibres but I would think 9mm would still be less evident than some others. In the end the insurgents would have used whatever they could get a hold of.
Regards,
Norman.

yes i would think so to,, but ive seen many that are chambered fro 9mm ammo!!! remember the sten gun was a most common police gun as were the bronwing pistols and also other 9mm hand guns being in common ownership,
ive seen many in .380 revolver ammunition also, just the 2 i had were 9mm as there was no place for a rim and they worked with a slamming bolt!
and to be honest the way the 9mm round works is by slam fire on some of these arms is alarming to say the least. ofcorse, now that i think of it ,, it being a slam fire,

ahhhh..maybe i am wrong, it was along time ago, .the guy i got it from said they were shooting stengun ammunition throught them they had stolen, i got 2 if the pistols from a gun collector who have been in kenya in the 50s..
it was proably also firing the .380 ammo as the firing pin was fixed it wouldnt matter if there was a rim or not.. i never tryed to fire one of these guns, ..


here you can seeing PNG the home made gund from the highlanders, sorry i didnt have time to find pictures, some are loaded by moving the hole barrel others are break open guns like normal shotguns,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-zEQgVkQZg

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by freebooter

My two cents worth.

I have seen a good many images over the years from PNG on these weapons. Most often the captions that I remember stated them as home made shot guns made by "rebels"... my two cents.

Gav

i dont know if one could call them rebels, mostly in PNG these guns are used in tribal disputes and hunting..
in boganville they were used in the revolution but now modern guns are common ,

[fearn]

Just pitching in my two kina...

Biologists from Alfred Russel Wallace to Jared Diamond have worked with the Papuans when doing biological surveys.

What's interesting is that they report that the Papuans are more intelligent, on average, than the Malays they worked with (or most of the whites). They were observant, creative, inventive, and had great memories. Diamond uses this observation as the cornerstone of his Guns, Germs, and Steel. A PNG native inspired the book, because he asked Diamond, basically, why the white men had all this neat technology, when they were all so stupid, whereas his people were stuck with Stone Age kit. (Diamond's thesis, if you haven't read it, is that PNG is small, isolated, and quite hostile to civilized life, and that our ancestors had it easy, because of the large number of people trading across Europe and Asia for millenia. Even though the Papuans were smarter, they were limited by low numbers, limited resources, and by all the work they had to do just to survive.).

That said, I'm not surprised that the highlanders are making working guns out of whatever they can get their hands on. Good for them.

Best,

F

[colin henshaw]

Hi

I was looking through some old papers the other day, and found this in a 1980s magazine...a picture of Mau Mau "pistols" including a double-barrelled variety !