Smith Gun - Development

Development

With the end of the Battle of France and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the port of Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June 1940, a German invasion of Great Britain seemed likely. However, the British Army was not well-equipped to defend the country in such an event; in the weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation it could only field twenty-seven divisions. The Army was particularly short of anti-tank guns, 840 of which had been left behind in France and only 167 were available in Britain; ammunition was so scarce for the remaining guns that regulations forbade even a single round being used for training purposes.

Given these shortcomings, those modern weapons that were available were allocated to the British Army, and the Home Guard was forced to supplement the meagre amount of outdated anti tank weapons and ammunition they had with ad hoc weapons. One of these was the Smith Gun, which had what Mackenzie describes as an "unorthodox" origin, like many of the other weapons that were produced for use by the Home Guard during the conflict. It was invented by retired British Army Major William H. Smith, the director of a civil engineering company that produced toys, and was intended to be a cheap and easily-manufactured anti-tank weapon. The weapon design was submitted to the Ordnance Board, who were not convinced of its merits, but the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, witnessed a demonstration of the weapon in 1941 and ordered that it be put into production.