{"id":4488,"date":"2018-01-13T18:40:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T23:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=4488"},"modified":"2018-01-13T18:55:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T23:55:24","slug":"historic-moment-with-american-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/historic-moment-with-american-guns\/","title":{"rendered":"HISTORIC MOMENT WITH AMERICAN GUNS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve recently been reading \u201cChurchill\u2019s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare<\/a>\u201d by Giles Milton, the story of the brain trust the British prime minister put together to develop improved weapons for\u00a0\"\"both conventional and unconventional combat against the Hitler juggernaut.\u00a0 There are chapters on the crippling of the Nazi heavy water plant in Norway that allowed America\u2019s Manhattan Project to beat Germany to the atomic bomb, and on the recruitment of Eric Sykes and William Fairbairn to teach commandoes silent killing of enemy sentries with and without knives, and assorted other armed and unarmed combat skills.\u00a0 Sykes and Fairbairn in turn taught Rex Applegate, who was with OSS, the US Office of Strategic Services that would eventually morph into today\u2019s CIA.<\/p>\n

I knew about that stuff, but among other things I didn\u2019t know was a factoid involving a famous American pistol.\u00a0 It seems that when Czech patriots assassinated one of the most evil Nazis, Reinhard \u201cThe Butcher of Prague\u201d Heydrich, they were armed with American handguns. Heydrich, remember, was the man in charge of the monstrous \u201cFinal Solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The year was 1942. The designated hit men, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, had been trained by the British group Hinton writes about, the Special Operations Executive. Milton relates, \u201cGabcik and Kubis were to be disguised as street cleaners and \u2018were to begin sweeping the road at a selected corner. Their explosives and arms were to be concealed in their dustman\u2019s barrow.\u2019 If (their) grenade failed to kill Heydrich, they were to shoot him \u2018at close quarters with their Colt .38 Super\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 They also had a British Sten 9mm submachine gun.<\/p>\n

When Heydrich\u2019s chauffeured vehicle passed them at close range, Gabcik whipped up the Sten and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened: the submachine gun had \u201cjammed.\u201d An enraged Heydrich drew his own pistol and ordered his driver to halt, just as Kubis lobbed a grenade. Specially built by Churchill\u2019s pet scientists for maximum power, the grenade hit by a rear tire but still exploded with enough power to mortally wound Nazi Germany\u2019s chief mass murderer. Milton narrates what happened next:<\/p>\n

\u201cKubis had been hit by the flying shrapnel and blood was streaming into his eyes. Through a veil of blood, he saw (Heydrich\u2019s chauffeur) Klein jump from the car and run towards him, pistol drawn. Gabcik had managed to avoid the shrapnel, but he was horrified to see Heydrich drag himself from the vehicle and level his gun. He was lurching forward, shouting wildly as he prepared to fire. Gabcik ditched his jammed Sten and drew his Colt, taking pot-shots at Heydrich from behind a telegraph pole.<\/p>\n

\u201cKubis wiped the blood from his eyes, dodged Klein\u2019s bullets and jumped on to his bicycle. Klein took aim once again and tried to bring down the fleeing Kubis with a hail of bullets. But his gun also jammed, enabling Kubis to get away\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation was more desperate for Gabcik. He was caught in a shootout with Heydrich and risked being either shot or captured. But as he was ducking the bullets \u2013 suddenly \u2013 the unexpected happened. Heydrich staggered to the side of the road and collapsed in agony.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both of the Czech patriots escaped the scene. Heydrich died a few days later from sepsis due to shrapnel wounds from the powerful grenade created by Cecil Clarke, one of the scientists in Churchill\u2019s elite unit.\u00a0 While the Nazis inflicted severe reprisals on the Czech citizenry, many historians believe that overall, Heydrich\u2019s death saved more innocent lives than it cost.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Why a Colt Super .38? Developed in 1929 and somewhat popular among American police and Federal agents, it launched a deep-penetrating 130 grain full-jacketed bullet at over 1200 feet per second. In the time of motorized bandits like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, American cops liked it because it would punch through auto bodies.\u00a0 John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, unfortunately, liked it for the same reason.\u00a0 It would have been something Sykes and Fairbairn, both big fans of semiautomatic Colt pistols, would have recommended for killing a monster in a motor vehicle. Interestingly, Colt advertised it more as an outdoorsman\u2019s pistol capable of piercing deeply into dangerous critters like big bears.<\/p>\n

Check out \u201cChurchill\u2019s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a helluva good read, with lots more info. For a decent movie on the topic, check out \u201cAnthropoid<\/a>,\u201d titled for the code name of the Heydrich assassination mission. In the movie, the role of the Colt Super .38s appeared to be played by Colt 1903 Pocket Model pistols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve recently been reading \u201cChurchill\u2019s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare\u201d by Giles Milton, the story of the brain trust the British prime minister put together to develop improved weapons for\u00a0both conventional and unconventional combat against the Hitler juggernaut.\u00a0 There are chapters on the crippling of the Nazi heavy water plant in Norway that allowed America\u2019s Manhattan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4488"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4492,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions\/4492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}