SPANDAU BALLET

[Lee]

I believe that the post 1900 / 100 year old "cutoff" may have been Fernando's personal "rule of thumb" in moderating the European Arsenal section of the forum. Life is better for all when members of the moderation team are allowed reasonable latitude. Personally, I'd classify a British Brown Bess, a British model 1796 cavalary saber and a model 1860 U.S. cavalry saber all as militaria. A reworking of any of these within another culture might surely create an ethnographic weapon character and discussion in the forum may also be relevant to considerations in the "evolution" of ethnographic types and the martial environment they existed in.

I started out as a militaria collector. In suburban middle America of the 1960s and 70s this is where one's opportunities were going to lie. I avoided contributing to the current "Arms Collecting and Nostalgia" thread because how my interest in European medieval arms initially arose is a bit embarrassing. Even as I focused on European medieval swords, I would occasionally find interesting and analogous metalworking techniques in edged weapons from many cultures and times and I began collecting these. Decent examples were relatively inexpensive in the 1980s and 90s.

I discovered the internet during this phase and this project began being about European medieval swords. Much of the interest in discussion groups then was very much of the "collect all of the Oakeshott types in modern mass-produced replica form." Bored during a clinical chemistry conference irrelevant to my work, my mind began to drift and that is when I wrote the paragraph quoted above in my previous post and conceived the ethnographic part of this web project. With more than a little bit of arrogance and presumptiveness I took it upon myself to suggest that aspiring collectors should focus on something that I considered worthwhile and meriting their attentions and that if they did not have the luck and resources to pursue authentic medieval European swords, then there still were ingenuously and proficiently handmade antique arms and armour from other times and places languishing at gun shows and antique shops that could be had for very reasonable prices.

From when I started going to the Baltimore show decades ago, I remembered an intriguing and detailed educational display of Philippine edged weapons. The next year I earnestly looked for it, but it was gone. On a snack break I saw someone with some Philippine items and offhandedly lamented to him that I had missed the amazing display from the previous year. He replied that it had been his, but that influential members of the gun collecting and dealing fraternity had declared it a waste of scarce display space. I heard the same sentiment from some gun and militaria dealers I knew as well. Well, if they can be narrow minded jerks, so can I.

Relatedly, a word on the absolute hostility towards commerce in our discussion forums and the tight restrictions even in the swap forums. This is probably best explained with an analogy: consider a garden where you are attempting to grow some fastidious plants, here representing the sharing of knowledge and appreciation of ethnographic arms and armour. Commerce represents weeds in that sharing of knowledge may be seen as giving up commercial advantage in the market. Against the alternative of "wheeling and dealing" and acquiring, the pursuit of knowledge will be pushed aside. Consider the annual Ethnographic Arms and Armour dinner and lectures seminar that we held each year to coincide with the Baltimore show over a decade ago. This thrived until an antique arms and armour auction came to be held in the same hotel also on Saturday evening - when the auction started, the seminar room thinned out quickly and to such an extent that the the seminar series was abandoned just a few years later. Most "antique arms collector" groups in the US are in fact, in my opinion, essentially dealer organizations. This is surely not to say that I have not known and appreciated dealers who have nurtured my connoisseurship and knowledge, but they are the best and the exceptions. My hope here has been that by rigorously combating such weeds, the forum will be and remain a place where we can all share our knowledge, insights and enthusiasm for the subject.

[Jim McDougall]

Thank you so much Lee! Wonderfully explained, and great analogies! and importantly noting that lines of demarcation such as the 1900 or 100 year marks are not necessarily written in stone. The moderation team indeed must evaluate topics and subject matter using a degree of latitude and determine how these might effect the overall contexts of discussions on our pages.

With the matter of military items, I understand exactly what you mean in noting that the Brown Bess musket, M1796 light cavalry sword etc. which of course are in that category and discussed openly in the European forum. However, as these weapons became present in colonial situations, they in fact often technically transcended into the ethnographic category as they were adopted into native use. Therefore they might be classified as BOTH European or ethnographic depending on point of view. Naturally as military weapons in the European category these have been discussed openly in that forum since inception in 2008, and remain so.

In many cases ethnographic forms copied European and vice versa, and of course we are well aware of the ubiquitous use of European blades in native edged weapons, whether via trade or other means.

One favorite notation I recall from some time ago pertains to the British cavalry in India during the Sikh wars, and the British noted the superior and deadly skills of these warriors with their tulwar sabers. What horrified them even more was when they discovered that these tulwars were equipped with old British M1796 saber blades, finely honed.

One of the most intriguing anomalies in collecting and studying native edged weapons are the many examples of for example, ethnographic swords with European blades and conversely European hilted forms with Middle Eastern blades etc.

I agree that discretion and latitude must be factored in the content of items and subjects in discussions, and these must be weighed on merit and influence on the overall character of our discussions and our forums in general.
As noted, the often insidious issue of commercialism and dealings are likely one of the most damaging effects that threaten the character and content of our pages . As I have always believed, we all learn here together, and that is the most important thing.

Again, I had not imagined this thread becoming a platform for these matters, but hope that the subject might be satisfied. The topic of the thread remains the Spandau machine gun, an evolution of the Maxim gun of late 19th c. and famously represented by the German fighter planes of WWI.

One thing I gained in the look into these guns here: I had not realized that the purpose of the much perforated shield on these was to air cool the barrel. Apparently, the guns of this type used in the field were water cooled, in what I found.

[kahnjar1]

[Jim McDougall]

I would like to thank everyone out there who is reading this, and those who have contributed, and its great knowing there is such interest in WWI aviation. This of course entails the brave men who flew these fragile machines in combat and here we have looked into the arms they relied on in those combats.

My interest in aviation has been lifelong, and in the years I was in Nashville, I was 'grounded' for over a month with medical issues. At this time in the 1990s I had been studying WWI aviation and building the tiny air force of model planes from kits. Not content with decals, I wanted to research the individual pilots as they had their individual insignia etc. so I struggled with painting these tiny images on these. The more I got into the history, the more obsessive it became.

This was how I ended up meeting Mr. Hume Parks, who lived there in Nashville, and I found he had 'some' Spandau guns from WWI. I went to visit him, and as he took me to a room, it had a huge steel door that reminded me of a vault. As he opened the door....I gasped as there were WALLS of machine guns....there were I think 28 Spandau's; and array of other types as well as walls of pistols, rifles etc.

In those days in 1996, I learned some things on these guns but naturally barely scratched the surface. A machinist, he had his own shop to fabricate necessary parts to restore many guns, and he was a gunsmith as well.

I wanted to pay tribute to this great man who did so much to preserve history. He was into cannons and field guns as well, and wrote a book on Civil War cannon.

Here is Mr. Malcolm "Hume" Parks !1913-2012) in my visit 1996, and the photos I found that led to my 'SPANDAU BALLET' theme. I had not seen these for many years, so a fun memory.

[Jim McDougall]

Here are some items from that period researching these as well as photos along with notes from Mr. Parks showing me the Spandaus.

[Jim McDougall]

As the focus was very much on the 'Red Baron' von Richthofen, these two books were key in research

"Who Killed the Red Baron" P.Carisella & J.Ryan, 1969
"The Red Knight of Germany", Floyd Gibbons , 1927

The two Spandau's shown were pointed out to me to be identical in form to those on the Red Barons plane 425/17. It was noted to be vermillion red (painted over the light blue color prior).
There were conflicting reports of the final flight and battle, some had said there was ground fire shooting at the same time the Baron was attacked by Roy Brown in his fighter. This was incorrect, and it does not seem that Brown's shots were hits.
Carisella notes "...examination of Richthofens guns found one to have a separated cartridge in the breech, which constitutes a No.3 stoppage which would be almost impossible to clear in the air, and the other gun had a broken firing pin which would only allow the guns to fire single shots so that at the time of his death he would have been out of action. "
further noted that he had come down low, exposing the whole side of his body, conducive to attempt to clear the gun stoppage.
It is noted that the jamming of one gun and the firing pin issue would have permitted only one or two rounds then stop.
The ultimate conclusion was that the Red Baron was killed by ground fire from an Australian gun position as he was low and probably either trying to resolve the issues with his guns or perhaps trying to land to do so.

The attached photo of one of the guns was found to have broken firing pin (695-1795 number). While this part remains of the gun, it is unclear what happened to the pair of guns. They were last seen night of April 22,1918 resting against the remains of the triplane. There was a wild obsession with souvenirs, machine gun belts were cut up and distributed to various Australian units there.....the propeller was sawed into at least 40 sections.

[Jim McDougall]

Here is a selection of some of the other aviation machine guns from various other plane types in combat vs. the German fighters & Spandaus. I am uncertain how many of these were there along with other Maxims and regular ground machine guns, but many!