Sunday night TV as we know it came to a crashing end just after the credits to Doctor Who this week. The Boffin The Builder and The Bombardier were back and for the first time ever have managed to crush AWB's ego by not giving your blog host anything to moan about.
This week our power trio left the 20th century and jumped back to the 1860s to play with the Spencer Carbine. Armed with some stereotypes of good old boys (whatever they actually are), a few lines from both the Battle Hymn and Dixie and some butternut pumpkin jokes that were probably way too subtle for even most history buffs, our heroes give us viewers a brief overview of the US Civil War to give us an understanding of the then current weapons and tactics before introducing us to the rather advanced Spencer Rifle.
The Spencer was of course a level action rifle firing rim fire cartridges from a tubular magazine in the stock at a time when the vast majority of troops were issued with percussion fired muzzle loading rifles. In order to show the massive increase in firepower our gang organises a 60 second shoot off between two of them with rifled muskets and one with a Spencer Carbine.
All good fun, especially with the add of visually pleasing water filled barrels as targets, before closing off with the claim that it wasn't so much the firepower weapons like the Spencer gave the North that lead to their victory, but the fact that the industrialised North had the production ability to make such equipment in the first place.
Roll credits and roll the AWB jaw off the floor for suddenly realising there is nothing much to whinge about in the next blog update.
Curse you TBCubed!!
AWB, being the quality and well loved blog that it is, will stand up regardless and find something to moan about. The Spencer was never shown to be reloaded, which is someone of a pity. Being a tubular magazine, pre loaded tubes from a Blakeslee Cartridge Box could be simply tipped straight into the weapon, an ability that complimented the relatively fast lever action. A comparison of effective range may have been of interest, although since the team clearly seemed to only have access to the Carbine instead of the longer Spencer Rifle, any test may have been an apples to oranges conclusion. Some discussion into the relative costs between the two weapons and hence the ability to actually raise units equipped with these weapons may have also been useful.
And... ummm.. as you can see, AWB is struggling a little to find faults. (Curse you AGAIN TBCubed!). All up this was a tidy little episode. Unlike previous eps, they avoided actually making claims that they were going to 'prove' something and instead settled for just showing the people at home the difference between the older and newer weapons. Having finished, with nothing actually being proved, there was no danger of coming up with the sort of broad and sweeping statement that has given AWB so much writing pleasure over the last month. Of slight disappointment was the insistence of showing the Confederate soldier as some sort of inbreed hick with bad teeth and the cringe worthy accents the three tried to put on while 'in character' but by and large a very tidy 10 minutes of TV entertainment.
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