Boys AT rifle propaganda movie by Disney

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Hello everyone,

this is a propaganda/educational video, made by Disney studio for the Canadian army in 1942. It depicts the .55 Boys AT rifle in a blend of regular footage and animation. The initial scene with Adolf Hitler is pretty funny :) But by 1942/1943, the AT rifle as a weapon has reached its limits. Despite the Russian rifles (the 14,5mm round was significantly more powerful than the original .55 Boys, penetrating cca 40mm at 100 meters, while the Boys rifle could only penetrate roughly half as much) were occasionally capable of knocking out even the dreaded Panther tanks, their mass use triggered a countermeasure development, resulting (amongst other things) in the Schurzen side armor plates, significantly reducing the German tank side armor vulnerability (no, Schurzen were NOT developed as a defense against HEAT weapons).

By 1945, the AT rifles have become all but pretty much completely obsolete. Many of the Boys rifles have been actually rebored to the US .50 caliber and used as heavy anti-materiel rifles. The original .55 Boys ammunition is in fact so rare nowadays that such a round it is considered a prized collectible.

 

39 thoughts on “Boys AT rifle propaganda movie by Disney”

  1. I never thought I’d see Adolf Hitler as a children’s cartoon style character.

    • Against anything bigger than a BT? Uh-huh. At least 20mm has enough payload the “Elephant Gun” found a new lease of life as an ersatz light infantry gun – Solothurns had seen similar use earlier in the Chaco War – and a well-aimed WP shell could be a real nuisance to tanks…

  4. While they might have been highly ineffective in 41-42, the AT rifles were quite a serious threat in 39.
    Polish-produced AT rifles were very effective against PzIs, IIs and even IIIs [also: instead of penetrating the armor, they worked more like HESH rounds].
    “At up to 400 meters it could penetrate all lightly armored vehicles. It could penetrate 15 mm of armor, sloped at 30° at 300 m distance, or 33 mm of armor at 100 m.”
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wz._35_anti-tank_rifle

  5. It just shows how awesome Disney are at animating anything especially propaganda. Just watch the opening cartoon section, it takes a real genius to make something seem oppressive and frightening yet at the same time bungling and incompetent.

  10. Not suprising.

    People in the 1930s were very racist.
    The upper classes were total bastards.
    This resulted in allot of rich and powerful people thinking that Nazism was the bee’s knees, and then using their influence to spread it to less rich and powerful people.

    Take the Daily Mail as an example.
    A British daily newspaper, who’s chairman was a Fascist supporter (so different to today…) who had personally met Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and gave headlines that supported Hitler and British Fascists (black shirts, a good one to google).

  11. It’s hilarious how poorly the animation at the beginning depicts actual combat, but how accurately depicts WoT combat. Complete with your teammates running away at the first sign of danger, and artillery taking you out behind cover.