Silent De Lizla Carabiner
For Britain, the Second World War began very badly. As a result of operations carried out swiftly by the German troops, the Lady of the Seas was completely extruded from the continental part of Europe in the 1940 year. As a result, for a long period of time, the only way to act on enemy communications for the British was special operations, during which reconnaissance of the territories occupied by the Nazis and sabotage were carried out. Conducting at least such operations became possible after, under the personal order of Winston Churchill, a special unit was created in England, called Commandos. The main task for the new unit was the transfer of hostilities to the territory of the enemy, sabotage in his rear.
The appearance of such a specific unit required the creation of appropriate weapons for it. In particular, besides small arms, the commandos were to receive special equipment. For example, a weapon with unique features. Naturally, such a weapon also included a weapon that allows you to conduct silent shooting. With it, the soldiers could silently "shoot" sentries or shoot guard dogs. One of the samples of such weapons was the carbine designed by William De Lisla.
Silent carbine De Lisle Commando Carbin was the first model of small arms with a multi-chamber integrated silencer, which was produced commercially. Its creator, an Englishman of South African descent, William Godfrey De Lizl, began to be interested in the problem of silencing the sound of a shot while he was still at school. In the 1920-s at the age of 16, William collected a number of silencers, which were meant for small-caliber rifles, with which his classmates went to hunt rabbits. During his work at the British Ministry of Aviation Industry, in 1942, De Lisle independently designed and then assembled a self-loading carbine caliber 5,6 mm. The carbine was equipped with an integrated silencer. Its development was based on the FN Browning .22 Semi-automatic carbine design.
Taking into account the low slaughter and penetration effects of the small-caliber cartridge at ranges of the carbine, DeLisl after some time returned to experiments with the 9-mm Parabellum pistol cartridge, but he managed to achieve the best result using the American 45 ASR cartridge (11.43xXNNXX). With a mass of 23 g, his bullet had an initial velocity of 14,9 m / s (significantly lower than the speed of sound) and a transverse load of 260 g / cm14,5. Such a set of characteristics allowed the bullet to maintain lethal force even at a sufficiently long range. As a result, a new 2-mm magazine carbine was born, which interested the British Department of Special Operations.
Quite quickly, Major Malcolm Campbell showed an interest in the carbine, serving in the Joint Operational Headquarters. He made a proposal to test new items, which ended successfully. William De Lisle successfully designed and personally assembled a prototype of his new carbine. At the same time, he widely used parts belonging to the Lee-Enfield SMLE No.1 rifle. After the tests of this prototype were completed, Major Campbell issued an order to the Ford Dagenham plant, located in London, to make a trial batch of silent carbines, which were called De Lisle Commando carbine.
From a technical point of view, the silent carabiner created by De Lisle was a short magazine rifle with a sliding bolt and an integrated shot silencer. As the base for the carbine, the bolt group and the receiver of the British En-rifle Lee Enfield MMLO No. XXUM were used. At the same time for the manufacture of carbines used defective, or retired rifles, which were produced in different factories. Alteration was made by removing from the rifle-donor forearm and barrel. After that, thanks to the rear arrangement of the lugs, it was possible to easily shorten the bolt, after which a new mirror was made on it, designed for the cartridge sleeves of the .1 ACP.
The design of De Lisle Commando Carbin was a combination of the bolt, butt and trigger of a standard Lee Enfield Mk III rifle, a shortened barrel from a Thompson submachine gun, a Colt M1911 pistol and a silencer of De Lisle’s original design. The butterfly valve linked to the receiver with two projections, it had a flat-notched trigger and a convenient handle that was tilted down. The fuse was installed on the receiver. The barrel was attached to the receiver with a thread. The tube (casing) of the integrated silencer, the longitudinal axis of which was located below the axis of the bore of the weapon, was also fastened to the front ledge of the receiver. The “asymmetrical” position of the muffler casing allowed to “squeeze” the weapon into small dimensions and not to unnecessarily raise its aiming devices over the butt.
Inside, the De Lisla silencer was divided into two parts - in the first of them there was a separator, the rear part surrounding the trunk formed a single expansion chamber. Expansion of powder gases occurred as if in several stages. A special coupling was screwed on the muzzle of the barrel. In this case, gases were removed from the barrel through the 4 series of holes that were made along the bottom of the rifling, first into the space between the barrel and the coupling, and only then into the rear muffler chamber. Directly in front of the muzzle of the barrel, the coupling formed a socket, which served to expand most of the gases, both leading the bullet and those following it and not retracted through the holes in the barrel walls. These gases then entered the separator, which consisted of a number of cut washers made of copper. They were worn on the longitudinal rod 2, forming a series of cameras.
The washers were cut at the top, while the edges of the cut were bent in different directions. Such a decision not only opened the way for the bullet, but also contributed to the "twisting" of gases, their deceleration and diversion to the periphery of the chambers. The separator could be removed from the muffler for cleaning or full replacement. Although the replacement of the pucks could hardly be needed during the service - they could withstand shots up to 4500, which is more than enough for a weapon designed for silent shooting as part of special operations. Such an indicator provided the carbine with a noticeable advantage over silencers equipped with rubber washers. The scheme used made the silencer quite effective. According to the English, the sound of the shot was difficult to distinguish even at night at a distance of 50 yards (approximately 46 meters). At the same time, the effective range of the carbine was 200-275 yards (183-251 meters). The performance of the silencer was excellent. According to the British, the loudest source of sound when firing was a striker strike on the cartridge's cap.
True, the very sound of parts in the process of reloading the weapon was as loud as that of a conventional rifle. Therefore, the shooter had to rely on the fact that he could hit the target with the first shot. At the same time, the descent with a “warning”, a comfortable butt and a relatively long barrel for this cartridge ensured very good shooting accuracy. In order not to make noise during the preparation of the shot, the shooter could wear the carbine itself with cartridges in the chamber and the fuse turned on. Immediately before the shot, the fuse was turned off, and the shutter trigger was pulled back manually, cocking the firing pin. The bottom window of the receiver was overlapped with a special lid with an insert, the store's latch was also redone, it was necessary to install a pistol magazine. A store designed for 11 cartridges was also created, but it turned out to be almost 2 times longer than the standard pistol, so it never went into the series.
Below to the silencer were fastened the front swivel and wooden fore-end, and from above - the block of the sector sight and the base of the front sight. On the sight bar there were notches with numbers from “1” to “6”. The replaceable front sight was attached at the bottom on a “dovetail”, and its rear section prevented glare in the direction of the sight, and also provided a clear view of the front sight in almost any direction of illumination.
De Lisla's silent carbines performed well during the Second World War. They were used in combat by fighters of British special forces in Europe and in the Pacific theater of operations. A number of carbines were used against the Japanese in Burma. Also, these weapons were actively used during the Korean War (1950-1953), as well as during the war in Malaya 1948-1960. In addition, the carbines were actively used by the Special Aviation Service (SAS) fighters during the conflict that occurred in Northern Ireland.
De Lisle Commando Carbin performance characteristics:
Caliber - 11,43 mm, chuck .45 ACP.
Length - 954 mm.
Barrel length - 190 mm.
The initial speed of the bullet - 253 m / s.
Mass of weapons without ammunition - 3,74 kg.
Magazine capacity - 7 cartridges.
Aiming range - 183-251 m.
Information sources:
http://www.armoury-online.ru/articles/bar/gb/delisle
https://orujie.mirtesen.ru/blog/43458589660/Besshumnyiy-karabin-DeLizl-(De-Lizl)-Kommando
http://www.guns.yfa1.ru/besshumnyj-karabin-dilisle.html
http://world.guns.ru/rifle/repeating-rifle/brit/de-lisle-r.html
Information