The Machine Gunners

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Find sources: "Machine gun"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( July 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) HyperWar: The Machine Gun (Vol. /Part )". Ibiblio.org. Archived from the original on 25 December 2017 . Retrieved 23 December 2017. The two halves of Chas's world are further divided into conflicting groups. Westall pits adults against young people, heroes against cowards, safety against terror, life against death, sanity against insanity, peace against war, and friends against enemies. But none of these conflicts are clearcut. Chas and his friends become confused as to who the enemy really is, wondering, in the conclusion, whether it would be worse to have the Germans or their own parents invading the fortress. The turmoil these conflicts create permeates the novel, heightening the tension Chas feels and symbolizing his internal conflict over the lure of the comfortable dependency of childhood and the counter-lure of the independent state of maturity.

Emmott, N.W. "The Devil's Watering Pot" United States Naval Institute Proceedings September 1972 p. 72 I have finished reading The Machine gunners finally! it was a really good book, it was very interesting, especially when they found the machine gun. I mean if you found a machine gun you would go mental, haha. Overall this book was a great read, i read it in 3 days of the holidays. i would definitly read another book from Robert Westall, The Machine Gunners is unflinchingly realistic in its approach to the unpleasantries of war. When a bomb hits the grocery store, the clerk is found later—half of her in one location, and half in another. When Chas discovers a downed plane, he also discovers, by scent, a dead pilot whose missing eye is covered by a teeming mass of angry flies feasting on the decay. When Rudi speculates on his possible fate, he envisions himself blown full of holes, like a colander dripping blood. The novel treats this rather cynically, however, by the sheer fact that Chas was outnumbered by a gang of bigger boys who would have beaten Chas to a pulp had Chas not used his weapon, and the self-righteousness of the adults is undercut with an element of hypocrisy in that there are rather a lot of British boys fighting a war with guns (i.e. weapons) at that very moment.Machine Guns and Machine Gun Gunnery" (PDF). US Marine Corps. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 February 2018 . Retrieved 23 December 2017. The novel begins the morning after an air-raid. Before school starts, Chas (Charles) McGill, 14, goes off to collect souvenirs, things like bits of shrapnel or incendiary bomb fins from the raid. Chas has the second best collection in school, so when he stumbles upon the engines of a German plane, he thinks he has hit pay dirt, until he discovers that one has been claimed by a boy and the other engine is being guarded by the Constable Fatty Hardy, who starts chasing him. In France, in 1831, a mechanic from the Vosges department invented a lever-operated cannon that could fire 100 shots a minute. [55]

Finished the book now, Its great and can be rather interesting, as I have overall given this book a rating of 4 out of 5. I would like to see other books by Robert Westall's and look at them. They might be really interesting as I enjoy reading historical books. e.g war In 1655, a way of loading, aiming and shooting up to 6 wall muskets 60 times in a minute for a total rate of fire of 360 shots per minute was mentioned in The Century of Inventions by Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester, though, like all the inventions mentioned in the book, it is uncertain if it was ever built. [11] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Just Plane Wrong: The 1983 TV adaptation changed the downed German bomber from a Heinkel He 111 to a Junkers Ju 52. Shame that the Ju 52 was only used as a bomber during the 1939 invasion of Poland and was being exclusively used as a transport plane by 1941.The adventures start in Garmouth, a town in England, when Chas finds a machine gun from a dead German bomber. The story is excitingly fast and fun, but more than that, it can teach you a lot.

The Machine Gunners was adapted by the BBC for television in 1983 and again for radio in 2002. A stage play by Westall also exists and had a run at the Polka Theatre in London, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum. The book won the Carnegie Medal in 1975 and was voted in 2007 as one of the ten most important children's novels of the last seven decades by the Carnegie Medal panel. It is interesting because the language layout is old and quite hard to understand, but you get it if you say it aloud, thats why it's interesting.Westall creates a cast of characters you love and care about - apart from the ones you're meant to hate – and occasional unnecessary descriptive aside (the size of the woman pushing the push chair is totally immaterial), a world you almost wish you were living in.

At some point something reminded me of The Machine Gunners, a book I read when I was about 10 and - if my failing memory is to be trusted - thoroughly enjoyed.In 1805, a British inventor from Northampton designed a cannon that would prime, load and fire itself 10 times a minute. [47] The interwar years also produced the first widely used and successful general-purpose machine gun, the German MG 34. While this machine gun was equally able in the light and medium roles, it proved difficult to manufacture in quantity, and experts on industrial metalworking were called in to redesign the weapon for modern tooling, creating the MG 42. This weapon was simpler, cheaper to produce, fired faster, and replaced the MG 34 in every application except vehicle mounts since the MG 42's barrel changing system could not be operated when it was mounted. The Machine-Gunners was dramatised as a BBC television serial in 1983, with scripts written by William Corlett. [4] It was further adapted as a ten-episode drama for BBC Radio 4 by the writer Ivan Jones in 2002. Also in 1775, a breech-loading volley gun, similar to the later mitrailleuse, was invented by a Frenchman called Du Perron which was worked by 3 or 4 men and capable of discharging 24 barrels 10 times a minute for a total rate of fire of 240 shots per minute. [34]