Over the past 15 years, many people have wondered who it was that was responsible for bringing their SAR to them every thirty days, just like clockwork. We’re not a big magazine, but we work hard to keep the integrity of the information we bring you, and to have a bit of fun in the process. Moose Lake Publishing LLC (MLPLLC) has been the publisher since the beginning, and that company is comprised of a number of Members who are long timers in the Class 3 community. We all hope that we’ve brought you a lot of enjoyment and filled in a lot of blanks for collectors and end users alike. Here are some pictures from our scrapbooks. (Richard “Stretch” Kennedy, Member of MLPLLC and great friend to the firearms community, has always politely declined having his photo put in the magazine.)

Jeff W. Zimba is a Member of MLPLLC, is an accomplished firearms writer and has done the layout of SAR for 15 years. Jeff has hammered out a new issue every 30 days, come hell or high water. Jeff’s new business ventures include Alpha Group, LLC which is an advanced firearms training center and licensed contract security company, and his discreet job that involves silencers and night vision in protecting rural and urban communities helps fill his freezer. In this picture, Jeff has just taken a Maine Black Bear with a .450 Bushmaster (Photo by Bob Howe, Pine Grove Lodge)

Technical consultant and noted author Dolf Goldsmith (standing) and SAR Senior Editor Robert Segel at the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, England, (on their own dime) with Sir Hiram Maxim’s “Forerunner.” Behind and around them are many prototypes, one-of-a-kinds, and issue weapons from the Great War and earlier. They were working on their collaborative effort that will produce the definitive book on the early machine gun designs. Noted early machine gun collector Robert Segel has been a contributor to SAR since the very beginning and for over half of the life of this magazine has been our Senior Editor, leading and guiding us along with gentle nudges to ensure we keep SAR’s dual focus on historical firearms intertwined with our modern weapons coverage. (Photo by Dan Shea courtesy the National Firearms Centre)

Deborah Shea is a Member of MLPLLC, who has sacrificed for 15 years as Business Manager to make Small Arms Review a viable business entity and to keep it running no matter what. Here she stands on Mount Nebo in Jordan, looking out from the spot where Moses looked on at the Promised Land over the Dead Sea. Debbie is well known around the world in the small arms community, having traveled “on her own dime” to over 30 countries. (Photo by Dan Shea)

In 1996 At the Yuma Proving Grounds on the Cibola Dust Range, MLPLLC General Manager and Member Dan Shea (in his Long Mountain “Murphy’s Law” Tee shirt) stands with “The Germans” from HK Oberndorf as they test the early GMG Grenade Machine Gun in 40x53mm. The Yuma tests were a tradition for any new-to-the-planet Secret Squirrel guns that HK would need environmental testing on every year, and Dan was usually there. Standing to the front is the late Volker Kurtz, a great friend to SAR. Dan has traveled to over 70 countries exploring small arms history and technology, “on his own dime.” (Photo by either Jim Schatz or Wayne Weber, none of us can remember who took it)

MLPLLC Member Kyle Shea with five-barreled Gardner Gun at the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, England. Kyle has been a member of countless SAR Expeditionary Force trips around the UK, Europe and Asia, “on his own dime.” Kyle’s interests lean towards uniforms, swords and early weapons like the Ferguson Rifle, which Major Peter Laidler was kind enough to let him photograph at Warminster. Kyle has been packing and shipping for MLPLLC since he was very young, as well as assisting the authors and photographers on their expeditions. (Photo by Dan Shea)

The “Angels with Charlie” picture from the “MG Angels” issue. Mike Dillon was talking with Dan Shea and Dr. Philip Dater and the idea of a “Machine Gun Angels” cover with girls who were actually in the Class 3 industry came up. Mike graciously offered to set up a “glamour shoot” at his facility with the Dillon team. Left to right: Megan (Shea) Sidon, Member of MLPLLC and longtime personality around the Class 3 community, who has been to many countries “on her own dime,” “Charlie” Dr. Philip H. Dater, Member of MLPLLC; Mary Jean Huebner – firearms attorney who specialized in the Class 3 community; Julie Dater, Gemtech employee and daughter of Phil and Jane Dater, who has graced the cover of SAR numerous times as well as appearing in many Gemtech ads. (Photo by Mike Smith & Nyle Leatham, Courtesy Dillon Aero)

Dr. Philip H. & Jane Dater on top of a Ferris Wheel in Thun, Switzerland. Phil and Jane are Members of MLPLLC, and they can frequently be seen traveling with the SAR crew around the world – “on their own dime” – to explore with us. Dr. Dater is one of the prime movers in Gemtech, and his company Antares Technologies consults all through the arms industry. The Daters were in Thun as part of a vacation in Europe and a visit to Brugger & Thomet, the Swiss suppressor manufacturer. Karl Brugger had kindly hosted us all for a visit to their facility, and some nice dinners at Interlaken. You can read The Interview with Dr. Dater in your back issues of SAR Volume 8 Numbers 9 & 10 for some insight into his amazing journey in our community and his effect on the suppressor community in particular. (Photo by Dan Shea)

P. Burke Fountain is a Member of MLPLLC, and an extremely devoted student of small arms. Burke has spent a significant amount of time between his interests in early machine guns, Lugers, and unit insignia from the Great War, and has traveled with the SAR Expeditionary Forces “on his own dime.” In this photo, Burke can be seen in his natural environment, surrounded by a forest of Brass Maxims, including the incredibly elusive Parapet mounts for trench or wall warfare. (Photo by Dan Shea)

Bill and Peggy Vallerand were MLPLLC Members, and after Bill passed away, their son John joined Peggy as owners of their MLPLLC shares. Bill would frequently travel the U.S. and to the UK “on his own dime” to do research into his favorite subjects – weapons from the Zulu time up to World War II. Bill mentored many people in the small arms community, and was a regular fixture at Knob Creek, The North Country Shoot, and the Hiram Maxim shoots, helping anyone who asked on fixing their old machine guns. Bill and his good friends Dolf Goldsmith, Larry Smith, and Bill Morrison, were involved in many of the legendary machine gun deals of the last 5 decades. (Dan- “This is one of my favorite pictures of Bill Vallerand, at the old MOD Pattern Room in Nottingham England. Bill would spend days wandering in what we called the “Field of Dreams” and occasionally come up for air and regale the rest of us with his discoveries amongst these bipod mounted treasures.”) We all miss Bill very much, and his contributions to our community will last forever. If you want to know more about Alphonse William “Bill” Vallerand, read The Interview with this Korean War veteran in SAR Volume 11, Number 1. (Photo by Dan Shea, Courtesy the old MOD Pattern Room, Nottingham, England)

In the fall of the year 2000, the rumor was that the old MOD Pattern Room Collection, which had started in the 1600s, was to be destroyed. Thankfully, the 13,000 plus pieces in the collection were only to be mothballed for several years while a new home was found. Numerous luminaries of the small arms community, who had spent decades around this collection, were all in Nottingham to do research and we gathered for a photo in the old upstairs. Richard Jones scattered out of the area immediately so he wouldn’t be on film (we suspect his reflection might not be captured), and camera-shy Herbie Woodend volunteered to take the picture. Left to right: Warren Wheatfield, Dr. Philip H. Dater, E. Daniel Shea, Bill Vallerand, Dolf Goldsmith, P. Burke Fountain, and Ian Skennerton. (Photo by the late Herbert J. Woodend, MBE)

By Dan Shea

Longtime readers of Small Arms Review are aware of what was formerly the MOD Pattern Room Collection in Nottingham and its history, as well as the fact that it was packed up and shipped to various facilities around the UK in preparation for its new home. After a number of years where the rumors were of a frightening potential destruction of many of these unique artifacts, thankfully, a solution was found. The MOD Pattern Room ceased to exist on 1 September 2005, as it was finally gifted into its new home at the Royal Armouries at Leeds. The former MOD Pattern Room Collection was formed into the base of the new National Firearms Centre.

It took Herculean efforts on the part of the staff to carefully supervise and pack-up the collection at Nottingham, run the needed MOD service with much reduced resources in Leeds for 3.5 years, and get the collection unpacked and displayed as well as deal with the incorporation of another 1,000+ examples to add to the collection in that period. SAR readers are familiar with our contributors Mr. Richard Jones and Mr. John Henshaw on whom much of this responsibility fell. They are now blended into the new National Firearms Centre hierarchy, with the addition of new staff and much modern instrumentation as well as a test firing range. As part of the Royal Armouries, the National Firearms Centre will be a boon to the forensic community.

The Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) Integrated Project Team leader, Roger Colebrook said, “As well as being a remarkable historic artifact, the Pattern Room provides a major resource to security and police bodies (including, where permissible, those from across the globe). It helps them with forensic enquiries, weapon safety and handling, and other technical aspects of small arms. This collection of small arms is regarded by many as the best of its type in the world. With the recent parliamentary agreement to transfer the Pattern Room to the Royal Armouries, the future of this important asset is assured long-term. We have had many discussions with the museum and I know they are keen to develop the service. We wish them every success.” Commenting on the significance of the development, Guy Wilson, then Master of the Armouries, said: “Two pivotal parts of the national collection that have been developing separately since the mid 19th century are now being brought together. Quite simply this means that the Royal Armouries now contains the best assemblage of military small arms in the world, and those inspired to study of the evolution of firearms will travel to the Royal Armouries, Leeds to pursue their interest.”

More information can be found on the Armouries website: http://www.royalarmouries.com/.

Ministry of Defence Pattern Room and Small Arms Technical Information Centre to be Gifted to the Royal Armouries Museum

The MoD Pattern Room is the world’s largest working reference collection of military small arms from 1850 to current experimental, prototype and issue examples. Due to a combination of factors the collection, formerly housed at the Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield and latterly BAe Systems Royal Ordnance factory Nottingham, needed a new home.

After careful research into a number of options, the Royal Armouries, with its own superb collection of small arms from all ages, was chosen as the best option. Not only was this a cost effective solution, it also took into account that this would be both beneficial to and enhance services provided to users and those undertaking academic research. The combination of these two collections will form the National Firearms Centre at the Royal Armouries. The collection is not open to the general public; however bonafide researchers will be able to request access to the Centre once it is reopened in the Autumn of 2005.

The Royal Armouries and the Pattern Room to form the National Firearms Centre

The new arrangement means that the Royal Armouries will become the world’s leading repository of historic and current firearms, and an international centre of excellence without equal. This will become the National Firearms Centre. The Royal Armouries looks forward to building on the Pattern Room’s exceptional work in serving its world-wide clientele and re-establishing the historic link between the two organisations which existed in the Tower of London in the early 19th century. Now the two major collections of British military sealed pattern weapons are being brought together so that the full story of the British serviceman’s small arms can be told in one institution. Work on the new site to house the collection started in early 2005 and is due for completion this year. The gifting of the MoD Pattern Room is scheduled for September of the same year. The new National Firearms Centre should become operational in the Autumn of 2005.

(Editor’s Note: SAR has covered the MOD Pattern Room several times in the past: Volume 1 Number 6 by Virginia Ezell and Volume 7 Number 4 by Dan Shea, which covers the closing of the MOD Pattern Room, the history, photos of days at Enfield Lock and the Nottingham facilities. We also gave tribute to the passing of Herbert H. J. Woodend, who had retired and passed on after thirty years of building up the Pattern Room collection. This article is subtitled “They paved paradise, and put in a parking lot” with apologies to Joni Mitchell, due to the leveling of the old facility and the installation of the new Sainsbury’s Superstore and parking lot on the site. This article is available for viewing on-line at http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/jan04.pdf.)

The Royal Armouries’ official statement.

The Royal Armouries is Britain’s oldest national museum, and one of the oldest museums in the world.

It began life as the main royal and national arsenal housed in the Tower of London. Indeed, the Royal Armouries has occupied buildings within the Tower for making and storing arms, armour and military equipment for as long as the Tower itself has been in existence.

Although distinguished foreign visitors had been allowed to visit the Tower to inspect the Royal Armouries from the 15th century at least, at first they did so in the way a visiting statesman today might be taken to a military base in order to impress him with the power of the country. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, less exalted foreign and domestic visitors were allowed to view the collections, which then consisted almost entirely of relatively recent arms and armour from the arsenal of King Henry VIII. To make room for the modern equipment required by a great Renaissance monarch Henry had cleared the Tower stores of the collections of his medieval predecessors.

The Tower and its Armouries were not regularly opened to the paying public until King Charles II returned from exile in 1660. Visitors then came to see not only the Crown Jewels but also the ‘Line of Kings’, an exhibition of some of the grander armours, mounted on horses made by such sculptors as Grinling Gibbons, and representing the ‘good’ Kings of England, and the ‘Spanish Armoury’, containing weapons and instruments of torture said to have been taken from the ‘Invincible Armada’ of 1588. The Royal Armouries had become, in effect, what it has remained ever since, the national museum of arms and armour.

During the great age of Empire-building which followed, the collections grew steadily. Until its abolition in 1855, the Board of Ordnance, with its headquarters in the Tower, designed and tested prototypes, and organised the production of huge quantities of regulation arms of many sorts for the British armed forces. Considerable quantities of this material remain in the collections today, and some can be seen on the walls of the Hall of Steel.

Also, throughout this period trophy weapons of all sorts continued to be sent to the Tower and displayed as proof of Britain’s continuing military successes.

Early in the 19th century the nature and purpose of the museum began to change radically. Displays were gradually altered from exhibitions of curiosities to historically ‘accurate’ and logically organised displays designed to improve the visitor by illuminating the past. As part of this change items began to be added to the collection in new ways, by gift and purchase, and this increased rate of acquisition has continued to this day.

In this way the collection has developed enormously, the ‘old Tower’ material being joined in the last 150 years by the world-wide material which now makes the Royal Armouries one of the greatest collections of its type in the world.

As the museums’ collections continued to expand, the Tower became too small to house it all properly. In 1988, the Royal Armouries took a lease on Fort Nelson, a large 19th-century artillery fort near Portsmouth. This is now open to the public and displays the collection of artillery.

In 1990, after two years of preliminary research and deliberation, the decision was taken to establish a new Royal Armouries in the north of England in which to house the bulk of the collection of world-wide arms and armour, thus allowing the Royal Armouries in the Tower to concentrate upon the display and interpretation of those parts of the collection which directly relate to the Tower of London. The concept of the Royal Armouries in Leeds had been born.

The new museum has been developed specifically to show the collections of the Royal Armouries in the best possible way. We began with the question ‘How do we want to display our collections?’, and the answer to that has dictated the sort of building which has been designed and built.

The Royal Armouries Museum has been built for the 21st century using the best of traditional museum design and it has been developed quite consciously to show its collections in relation to the real world in which we live. The displays seek to make the historical stories relevant by bringing them up to the present day. The building has, quite literally, been designed around the collections of the museum. The displays are intended to entertain and stimulate a desire to learn, and our intention has been to create a multi-layered experience to cater for the many different interests and interest levels of our visitors.

The use of violence by humankind for supremacy or survival, or its sublimation into sport or play always has been, and probably always will be, one of the main forces for historical change. This is the underlying theme of the new Royal Armouries. It is a fascinating and often disturbing story of great importance to us and our children.

Royal Armouries and Forensic Alliance Ltd. Form Partnership at National Firearms Centre

The Royal Armouries, the UK’s national museum of arms and armour, has entered into an innovative partnership with Forensic Alliance Ltd. (FAL). The private sector organisation is developing a state-of-the-art facility for the forensic and ballistic examination of firearms at the Leeds-based museum. The new facility is part of the Royal Armouries’ planned National Firearms Centre. It includes a purpose-built 25m indoor firing range.

FAL, which is based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, currently provides comprehensive examination and analysis services to the majority of British police forces, including the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, as well as coroners and other organisations. The Royal Armouries’ Museum Director, Peter Armstrong, said he was delighted that FAL would be part of the new National Firearms Centre. “The National Firearms Centre will include the historic Pattern Room collection, which has been gifted to the Royal Armouries, and a 27,000 sq ft open display area – the largest of its kind in the UK. The NFC will be a unique research facility, to which FAL will be an exciting and invaluable addition.” John Barrand, Head of Planning and Services at FAL, added, “As well as being able to do ballistics tests on firearms suspected of being used in crimes, our scientists will also be able to examine the weapons for fingerprints, DNA evidence and tool marks. We are very excited about our new partnership with the Royal Armouries, which will give us access to the NFC’s library and reference collection of weapons that is unrivalled in the world. The very strong synergy between our two organisations will help us to take our service to a new level. It also offers a potential collection point for local police forces.”

For further information, please contact: Royal Armouries, Peter Armstrong, Museum Director, Tel: 0113 220 1903; Simon Mountford, Simon Mountford Communications, Tel: 01347 844844; Forensic Alliance, John Barrand, Head of Planning & Services Tel: 01235 551800; Helen Newman, Tel: 07887780495.