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Today’s website post is a little different as it does not relate to either World War One or World War Two but it is an item we have in the Museum store that we found interesting. The item in question is a Britain’s First Decimal Coins set which explains the changeover to decimal currency and what date it will be happening, it also includes five of the new coins which were being introduced.
The five coins which it includes are the Half penny, one pence, two pence, 5 pence and the ten pence. The day the United Kingdom changed to decimal currency was called Decimal Day and was on Monday 15th February 1971 and was nicknamed D-Day. These coins include designs which were made by Christopher Ironside who won the competition to have his designs on the new decimal coins.
Inside the booklet includes a list of information about how and when the new coins will be introduced into circulation and what the new system means with 100 pennies making up the new pound. Although the new coins were released from 1968 onwards the planning of the decimal coins started in 1961 when a special committee was set up by the Government to think about whether Britain should introduce a decimal currency. The committee decided in favour of decimalisation. So, on 1 March 1966 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, announced that pounds, shilling and pence would be replaced by a decimal currency, with a hundred units in a pound.
In the Museums store we have many different kinds of medals and badges from different regiments and wars. These three badges and medals are all from WW1. These include a badge from The Royal Scots, a WW1 Allied Victory Medal and the 1914-15 Star.
The Royal Scots (The Royal Regiment), once known as the Regiment of Foot, was the oldest and most senior infantry regiment of the line of the British Army, having been raised in 1633 during the reign of Charles 1 of Scotland. The regiment existed continuously until 2006, when it amalgamated with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers to become the Royal Scots Borderers, which merged with the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret’s Own Glasgow and Ayrshire Regiment), the Black Watch, the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons) and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland.
The WW1 Allied Victory Medal as awarded to all those who received the 1914 Star or the 1914-15 Star, and to most of those who were awarded the British War Medal. It was not awarded singly. To qualify, recipients need to have served in the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom or the British Empire, or with certain recognised voluntary organisations, and to have entered any theatre of war between 5 August 1915 and 11 November 1918. While home service did not count, United Kingdom based members of the RAF who were actively engaged in the air against the enemy did qualify, as did those who flew planes to France. Women qualified for this and other First World War campaign medals while serving in nursing and auxiliary forces in a theatre of war. It was also awarded for mine clearance in the North Sea between 11 November 1918 and 30 November 1919 and for participation in the Allied intervention of the Russian Civil War up to 1st July 1920.
The 1914-15 Star is a campaign medal of the British Empire which was awarded to officers and men of British and Imperial forces who served in any theatre of the First World War against the Central European Powers during 1914 and 1915. The medal was never awarded singly and recipients also received the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. The 1914-15 Star was instituted in December 1918 and was awarded to officers and men who served between 5 August 1914 and 31 December 1915, provided they had not already received the 1914 star. The period of eligibility was prior to the Military Service Act 1916, which introduced conscription in Britain.
Caudron G4
The Caudron G4 came into service during the spring of 1915 as a bombing reconnaissance airplane with a good useful load of about 220lbs, an extraordinary rate of climb and even equipped with a wireless set. G4s were assigned to 38 escadrilles of the French Air force and used extensively throughout the war. At first they operated on reconnaissance duties then, in November 1915, they undertook daytime bombing sorties attacking targets beyond the Rhine. By the autumn of 1916 they were withdrawn from this duty because of the greatly improved German fighter defences. The RNAS used the Caudron G4. 43 were imported from France and 12 were built in the British Caudron plant. They were used to raid the German Zeppelin, submarine and seaplane bases along the Belgian coast. The G4 was also built in Italy and used by the Italian Air Force while 10, acquired by the American Army Air Force, were used as training aircraft.
Vickers F.B 5
Vickers Ltd were one of the first companies to design fighter aircraft. Their Type 18 ‘Destroyer’ was featured at the 1913 Aero show at Olympia armed with a belt-fed Maxim gun. The production aircraft, the FB 5, was bought by the RFC armed with a drum-fed Lewis Gun. No.11 Squadron RFC was the first specialised fighter Squadron to be formed with FB 5s in February 1915 and was soon in action with its ‘Gunbus’ used as a fighter, ground-strafer and sometimes a bomber. On 7th November 1915, 2nd Lieutenant G.S.M. Insall of No.11 Squadron RFC won the Victoria Cross for an action in a Vickers FB 5. This slow airplane, with a meagre performance, remained in service until July 1916, by then being no match at all for the German Fokker monoplanes.
This WW2 Red Cross Medic Satchel is being kept in the Museums store, this would have been used by medics during the Second World War to heal soldiers wounds during battle. This satchel would usually only contain dressings to cover soldiers wounds and stop them from bleeding.
We thought that we would do some more research and find out what other equipment WW2 Medics had to carry around to try and save as many men as possible. This satchel would usually contain 12 dressings. Other items which a medic may carry include, A water bottle most likely used to clean the wounds or hydrate injured soldiers, a box of 5 morphine syrette’s which used to be injected into soldiers to reduce the pain they were suffering after receiving a wound, this would then be pinned to their collar to inform others of the dose administered. They also carried around serums to counteract against things like tetanus (which would be contracted if the soldiers had an open wound while out in the muddy fields and trenches) and gas gangrene which can be fatal and can be caused by an infection deep inside your body in muscles or organs which made the serums vital to save lives.
These items along with a few others left the medics well equipped to deal with most injuries sustained on the battlefield and helped save the lives of thousands of injured soldiers.
These two objects are being kept in the Museums store so I thought I would do a bit of research on them. One of the items are .303 British shell casings from WW1 and the other is an officers side arm holster also from WW1.
The .303 British bullets were first developed in Britain as a black-powder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee-Metford rifle. In 1891 the cartridge was adapted to use smokeless powder. It was the standard British and Commonwealth military cartridge from 1889 until the 1950’s when it was replaced by the 7.62x51mm NATO. During a service life of over 70 years with the British Commonwealth armed forces the .303-inch cartridge in its ball pattern progressed through ten marks which eventually extended to a total of about 26 variations. The bolt thrust of the .303 British is relatively low compared to many other service rounds used in the early 20th Century. During World War One British factories alone produced 7 billion rounds of .303 ammunition. Factories in other countries greatly added to this total.
The other item is a leather WW1 British Officers sidearm holster which we believe used to hold a Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver which was used by British Army officers as their side arm. The Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver was designed in 1895 and was produced from 1901-1924, the revolver is easily recognisable by the zig-zag grooves on the cylinder. Though Webley viewed this weapon as an ideal sidearm for cavalry troops, the Webley-Fosbery was never adopted as an official government sidearm. Several models of the Webley-Fosbery revolvers were produced, and the type saw limited action in the Boer Wars as well as World War One, where some privately purchased examples were carried by British Officers in the .455 service bearing. Reports from the field suggested that the Webley-Fosbery, with its precisely machined recoil surfaces, was more susceptible to jamming in wartime conditions of mud and rain than comparable sidearms of the period.
This Nepalese Gurkha Kukri is being kept in the Museums store cupboard so we thought that we would do some research about it to find out what it really was and discover the history of it.
The Kukri is a type of machete originating from the Indian subcontinent, associated with the Nepali speaking Gurkhas of Nepal and India. The knife can be easily identified as it has a distinct recurve in the blade. It is used as both a tool and a weapon in the Indian Subcontinent. Traditionally, it was, and in many cases still is, the basic utility knife of the Gurkha. It is a characteristic of the Nepalese Army, the Royal Gurkha Rifles of the British Army, the Assam Rifles, the Kumaon Regiment, the Garhwal Rifles, the Gorkha Regiments of the Indian Army, and of all Gurkha regiments throughout the world, so much so that some English-speakers refer to the weapon as the “Gurkha blade” or the “Gurkha Knife”.
While the Kukri is most famed for its use in the Military it is most commonly used as a multipurpose tool for utility in fields and homes in Nepal. Its use has varied from building, clearing, chopping firewood, digging, slaughtering animals for food, cutting meat and vegetables, and opening cans. Its use as a general farm and household tool disproves the often stated “taboo” that the weapon cannot be sheathed “until it has drawn blood”.
The Kukri was first produced in 1810 and while we don’t know which time period the one we have is from they were used through multiple wars all the way up to the Falklands.
Lloyd C1
The Lloyd C1 produced by the Ungarishe Lloyd Flugzueg and Motorenfabrik immediately before the outbreak of the Great War achieved instant fame by reaching an altitude of 20,243 feet at Aspern near Vienna. The aeroplane was already in service when the war started and between four and five hundred of the Lloyd C1, C2, C3, C4 and C5 were built and used extensively by the Austro-Hungarian Air Services during the first half of the war. No armament was first carried but the observer later had a schwarzlose machine gun. Some we fitted with a second machine gun mounted on the top wing. With its good rate of climb the Lloyd was a popular aircraft in the mountainous Italian front. It was stable and easy to fly even in the roughest weather. It then served well as a trainer after its operational life had ended.
Morane-Saulnier L
The Morane-Saulnier L was developed from the Type G which appeared together with three other excellent Morane designs at the Salon Aeronautique in Paris in 1911. The Type L, powered with either a Gnome or Le Rhone rotary was ordered in large numbers at the outbreak of war as a reconnaissance machine but, as it was found to be appreciably faster than German two-seaters, pilots were encouraged to arm their aircraft with pistols, cavalry carbines and other small arms. Nearly 600 Type L’s were built and used by Escadrilles MS3, 12 and 23 whose pilots and observers were successful in brining down many German aircraft during the first half of 1915. It was also used by No.3 Squadron RAF and No.1 Wing RNAS which accounted for the destruction of Zeppelin LZ37 on 7th June 1915. In the reconnaissance role it was operated by 8 French escadrilles and the Russians.
This First World War bayonet was recently brought into the Museum by one of our volunteers and is an American M1917 bayonet which was used in World War One, World War Two, Korean War and in the Vietnam War.
It was first used by American soldiers in WW1 on the Western Front. A sword bayonet design, the M1917 bayonet design was based on the British pattern 1913 bayonet. While designed specifically for the M1917 rifle, the bayonet was fitted for use on all the ‘trench’ shotguns at the time. The US continued to use the WW1-made M1917 bayonets during World War Two because of large stockpiles left over. The new trench guns being procured and issued were still designed to use the old M1917 bayonet.
The bayonet was then called upon again during the Korean war for issue due to the various trench guns still being in use. In 1966 procurement orders were let for brand new production M1917 bayonets. Stockpiles had finally run out, and new Winchester 1200 trench shotguns were being issued. These were issued in limited quantities during the Vietnam War. It was not until towards the end of the Vietnam War that new military shotguns were designed to use the newer knife bayonets.
M1917 bayonets were still used by the US Army as late as the early 2000’s for use with the M1200 shotgun.
Voisin LA
The Steel-framed Voisin pusher biplane was in service with the French Army at the outbreak of war. A batch of the Voisin LA (Type 3) with 120hp Canton Unne (Salmson) engines was even waiting to be delivered to Russia. Escadrilles VB1, 2 and 3 with 18 Voisins formed the first French Groupe de Bombardment in November 1914 and carried out some very successful raids until September 1915 when day-bombing was stopped because of the superior German fighter aircraft, and Voisins changed to night-bombing. 37 Voisin LAs with 200hp Hispano-Suiza engines were obtained by the RNAS and used in the Aegean, Africa and Mesopotamia. British and French built Voisins were used on the Western front by Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7 and 16 Squadrons RFC and in Italy, this machine formed the operational establishment of five squadriglia.
Nieuport 10
The Nieuport 10 two-seater biplane was the earliest line of the famous French fighter aircraft which came to be used by France, Britain and Italy. It was operated by the RNAS in the Dardenelles where some of the Mk. 10s were converted to single seaters armed with a Lewis Gun. It was replaced by a larger and stronger Nieuport 12 which was used by Nos. 1, 4, 5, and 46 Squadrons RFC and by Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10 Squadrons RNAS.
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