Besa

[Ed Storey]

As Bruce stated in an earlier post, the mounting for a BESA would have to be improvised and the weapon used 7.92mm ammunition which is probably why you don't see these guns festuned on Universal Carriers. Looking at the Canadain Army, not every regiment would have access to BESA MGs, mostly the Reconnaissance Regiments using British BESA armed armed cars; so they would not have been that plentiful when compared to M1919A4s or even M2 MGs. And as we have already seen in another post, people did not just go and willy-nilly adding MGs to their carriers, the amount and types of weapons employed by military units, even during a war, was controlled - so scrounging BESAs by just anyone who found one to slap on a Universal Carrier is a bit of 'wives tale'.

Another 'wives tale' is the myth that captured enemy ammunition could have been used to feed the BESA, well there were also regulations against using captured enemy ammunition. Enemy ammunition was to be gathered up and handled by the Ordnance Corps were it would be inspected and tested for 'potential' reallocation through the approapriate supply chain.

M1919A4 and M2 MGs were already in widespread use in the Canadian Army so it is only natural that you would see these guns mounted to Universal Carriers and not a BESA. You also have to remember that units authorized to hold M1919A4 and M2 MGs would also have been allotted the ammunition to go with them. Something that would not happen if an unauthorized BESA MG were mounted on a Carrier.