"Stop that Tank!" Canada (ca.1942) 1/3

3 videos running time 00:21:00

The Boys anti-tank rifle was sometimes referred to as "Charlie the Bastard" due to its recoil.
A comic, arrogant Hitler is shown riding a tank, confidently ridiculing his adversaries, but Canadian soldiers, using anti-tank rifles, firing from trees, haystacks, barnyards, and even a latrine, rout the Nazi tank corps and literally blow Hitler to Hell. He tumbles into the fiery inferno and begins spouting German gibberish to a comic devil, who informs the audience- "Adolph says it isn't fair. He's being oppressed. He says it's an outrage. Der Fuehrer says against your anti-tank rifles, he simply can't win."

The rest of the film is a detailed animated instructional film on the care and firing of the rifles.
The Rifle, Anti-Tank, .55in, Boys commonly known as the "Boys (or, often and incorrectly,"Boyes") Anti-tank Rifle" was a British anti-tank rifle. There were two main types, an early model (MK I) which had a circular muzzle brake and T shaped bipod, and a later model (Mk II) that had a square muzzle brake and a V shaped bipod. There were also different cartridges, with a later one offering better penetration.
He eponymous creator of this firearm was Captain Boys (the Assistant Superintendent of Design) who was a member of the British Small Arms Committee and a designer at the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield. It was initially called Stanchion but was renamed after H.C. Boys as a mark of respect when he died a few days before the rifle was approved for service in November 1937.
A bolt action rifle fed from a five-shot magazine, the weapon was large and heavy with a bipod at the front and a separate grip below the padded butt. In order to combat the recoil caused by the large 0.55 inch (13.9 mm) round, the barrel was mounted on a slide, and a shock absorber was fitted to the bipod along with a muzzle brake on the barrel.

The weapon was effective to about 300 yards (280 m) as an anti-tank and anti-vehicle weapon. There were two main service loads used during the Second World War, the W Mark 1 (60 g AP at 747 m/s) and the W Mark 2 ammunition (47.6 g AP projectile at 884 m/s). Later in the conflict, but too late for service use, a much more effective high velocity round was developed, this fired a tungsten cored Armor-Piercing, Composite Rigid (APCR) design at 945 m/s. The W Mark 2 projectile was able to penetrate up to 3/4 inch (20 mm) of armor at 100 yards (~91 m). The armor plate inclined at 70° from the horizontal i.e. 20 degrees from the direct line angle of fire - the effective thickness being ~21.5 mm. Its effective range against unarmored targets (e.g. infantry), was much further. Although useful against the early tanks, the increases in vehicle armor during WW2 left it largely ineffective for anti-tank duties and it was replaced in service by the PIAT anti-tank weapon. It still saw some use against bunkers, machine gun nests, and lighter vehicles. In the Western Desert the large bullet could throw up splinters from rocks to cause casualties and it continued to be used in the Pacific theatre against Japanese tanks; the Japanese did not replace their older lightly armored tanks, spread out across the Pacific and South East Asia, with newer ones until later in the war. The weapon had been designed with these lighter tanks in mind.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Second
• World
• War
• WorldWarII
• tank
• armor
• rifle
• armored
• Hitler
• Canadian
• German
• anti-tank
• Nazi
• Royal
• Infantry
• WW2

[shotfirer1972]

The aussie army used charlie the bastard in the jungles of burma and new guinea. mainly on infantry of the jap imperial army. effective weapon.

[2bn442RCT]

Yes what great name. Sounds so aussie!!!

[PrisonnerofToday]

Good thing that one fellow was firing from an outhouse. He's going to need to use it when that little bullet bounces off the front armor of a Panther.

I've read the Boys could punch through the armor of some of the earlier Panzers, but I'm sure everyone was relieved when the Piat and the Bazooka were invented.

[2bn442RCT]

Yeah maybe knock off a tread at best. This round could penetrate 15mm of armor. The PIAT was nasty when it hit.

[RebelSince1776]

The PIAT was great against armor for the time, but it had little range, and was a pain to load

[2bn442RCT]

Yes I didn't mean is was the best thing out at all. Very innaccurate. I hate to mention a movie scene, but in A bridge too Far you can see how wild these things are

[LBJohn15]

LOL for some reason this is kinda like tom and jerry

[DieUMuslim]

I love the old propaganda cartoons.

[edithegodfather]

@Slovflyer thnx :)

[Jetman123]

@CaptHawkeye Certainly better than nothing, yes. At least with this you could annoy them slightly, knock off treads and hopefully get your AT guns into position while they're stuck.

[CaptHawkeye]

@comrade44 Yes. For obvious reasons you can't make a tank a giant moving block of armor. It will have exposed parts and sights etc because a tank is a vehicle not a pillbox. A tank's armor is designed to protect for more or less random shot placement at ranges where it's difficult to even hit the target at all. Once you get close enough to where you can start shooting at parts of the tank, some surprisingly light weapons can wreak havoc on even very heavy tanks.

[comrade44]

@CaptHawkeye like petrol in a glass bottle!

AT rifle operators just had to hit those joints and slots.

[CaptHawkeye]

@Jetman123 Well at the time it was basically this or nothing. No one expected infantry to be able to repel a seriously concentrated assault from armour though. Not without their own tanks or dug in anti tank guns. During the war if an infantry position lacked either of those things their only choice 90% of the time was to just give up and fall back in the event of an attack from armor.

[CaptHawkeye]

@comrade44 The Panther actually only had like 40mm of side armour, so it was actually vulnerable to AT rifles at close range. Actually all tanks were "vulnerable" in one way or another to these weapons throughout the war. Russian PTRD crews often did things like shoot out vision slits and even crack drive wheels and treads. It just goes to show that even the heaviest tanks can be more or less neutralized by surprisingly light weapons.

[comrade44]

@CaptHawkeye well, the AT rifle could penetrate the majority of german armour up to 1942 when the tiger was developed and the Panzer IV was up armoured. The Panzer 1 to 3 were very lightly armoured tanks and these were used much less by 1942 and onwards.

The Panther tank was not in service by this time either, there were few tigers and mostly P II, III and IV tanks to battle. Along with many Skdf armoured cars and Pumas. This rifle was very effective against halftracks and armoured cars.

[Slovflyer]

@edithegodfather Definitely. One more thing I gotta point out, which I forgot to mention. Often when it came to realistic animation, back in the day they would trace the outlines out from an actual model. For example when animating the old Superman cartoons from the 30's, I forget the technical term but they would have a live actor perform the actions, and then take that film and trace out the outlines of the person each frame for the cartoon version. Voila! Realistic animated Superman. :)

[edithegodfather]

@Slovflyer i gotta admit, that's pretty hardcore :)

[Slovflyer]

@CommanderCooper Most probably hadn't ever used a rifle, especially toward the mid-to late war period. Many US Sherman tank crews later into the campaign for example had barely received ANY training in a tank when they were shipped off to the front lines, because there were so many fatalities that they couldn't train enough in time.