40 JAYANDEN DESIGN

Research notes

This is an unprimed empty of the Jayanden Design case. In 1941 Sir Dennis Burney, a senior executive with Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (ICI) approached the Ministry of Supply with ideas for improving the efficiency and ballistics of the .303 cartridge but the details of this study are unclear, but in all probability it revolved around a study of recoilless cartridge research and it also applied to anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. There is however a Kynoch drawing BK167/235 dated June 1941 and found in a file on the trials of the Burney recoilless rifle. This shows a straight .303 cartridge case pierced with holes and called the “Jayanden” design. No other record of Jayanden has been found up to now. This was the precursor to the 7mm Broadway Trust.

No further work appears to have been done until later in the war, but the 1944 provisional manual includes an experimental single shot 20mm shoulder fired RCL rifle. This weighed 59lbs and had a claimed muzzle velocity of 3,500 fps. Burney claimed that the gun fitted with an automatic feed would weigh 75 lbs (compared with 143 lbs for the Oerlikon) and a single shot anti-tank weapon could be produced with an MV of 2,850 fps and weigh 35 lbs