Quote Originally Posted by Geezer View Post
Thought it was something like that.

And, yes, JB designed the Firebird and the Spitfire.

I’m guessing that if you were BSA in 19-not much and had tooled up to produce the LJ, and demonstrated it with approval at Bisley to King Edward VII or whoever, and told everyone it was a Tesla to everyone else’s Morris Minor that your inclination to change then would be about zero?

But, yes, pity that it took them about a decade or two from the first direct-breech guns to try one of their own.
hahaha yes the King Edward effect is strong.

The Anschutz slidy breech thing was out in the late 50s so they had time to think about direct-breech... I can see inertia stopping it, but the design could be made cheaper I am sure than the fiddly tap things. They could have made more money with fewer machining operations and time and cheaper labour. Maybe it is the idea of a compression chamber INSIDE another tube that looks like a compression chamber but isn't got them confused.

'So, you want me to make a small compression chamber and put it inside another one and it slides back and forth, and that gets rid of our famous loading tap, is that right? Get away with you, 'tis foolhardy and blasphemy and may the spirit of Lincoln Jefferies look down on you with a frown. Gaffer, get the scrubbing brush and the paraffin, here is another needs his brains scrubbed clean of nonsense. '

God knows what they would have made of the Anschutz 380 which had a whole rifle sliding inside a fake rifle 'skin' just like the lizard people who are running the world.