The 'Hidden' British Gun That Let SOE Agents Kill In A Handshake

The 'Hidden' British Gun That Let SOE Agents Kill In A Handshake

The Welwand was Britain's most secret assassination weapon of World War 2, a suppressed single-shot pistol designed to hide inside an agent's coat sleeve and fire without a sound. Developed at SOE Station IX by Major Hugh Reeves, the same engineer behind the legendary Welrod, this weapon could slide into an operative's hand, deliver a fatal .32 ACP round at contact distance, and retract back up the sleeve in under a second. No visible gun. No spent casing on the ground. No noise. The perfect tool for the Special Operations Executive's covert war behind enemy lines.

In this video, British Small Arms investigates the full story of the Welwand sleeve gun, from the engineering problem it was built to solve, through its development at The Frythe mansion near Welwyn, to the reason only 150 were ever manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms Company. We compare British covert weapon design against every rival, including the American OSS Stinger pen gun, the Sedgley Glove Gun, and the SOE's own Welrod suppressed pistol, revealing why British engineers created the most concealable assassination weapon of the Second World War.

We also examine the famous "handshake kill" legend, separating verified fact from myth using Imperial War Museum records, Royal Armouries research, and the 2022 peer-reviewed paper by Mark Murray-Flutter in Arms and Armour journal that most popular sources have never referenced.
TOPICS COVERED IN THIS VIDEO

The tactical problem facing SOE agents in occupied Europe and why conventional firearms meant certain death

How Major Hugh Reeves designed the Welwand at Station IX, The Frythe, stripping the Welrod down to a featureless steel tube with no grip, no trigger guard, and no sights

Full technical breakdown of the sleeve gun mechanism including the knurled thumbswitch firing system, integral suppressor with rubber baffles, elastic cord retraction system, and sanitised construction

The critical naming confusion between the .32 calibre Sleeve Gun and the .22 calibre Welwand that most sources get wrong, revealed in Murray-Flutter's 2022 academic paper

Comparative analysis against the American OSS Stinger pen gun, Sedgley Glove Gun, SOE Welrod, Fairbairn-Sykes sleeve dagger, and German covert weapons doctrine

The Douglas Everett bar test at Station IX, the closest thing to a field demonstration on record

Why only 150 units were manufactured and how late 1944 production timing sealed the weapon's fate

Where the three confirmed surviving examples are held today

The tragic irony of Major Reeves's death in 1955
MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES

Imperial War Museum Collections, Sleeve Gun Mk 2, catalogue numbers FIR 11545

Royal Armouries National Firearms Centre, Leeds, Jonathan Ferguson Keeper of Firearms and Artillery

Murray-Flutter, Mark. "The Welrod .32 Silent Pistol." Arms and Armour, Vol 19, No 1, 2022. Taylor and Francis

Boyce and Everett. SOE The Scientific Secrets. Sutton Publishing, 2003

SOE Descriptive Catalogue of Special Devices and Supplies, 1945, item N254

National Archives Kew, files HS 7/27, HS 8/969, HS 9/1241/5
FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

Jonathan Ferguson's Royal Armouries Welwand presentation, June 2022

Anders Thygesen's SOE weapons research at timelapse.dk

Bergenhus Fortress Museum, Bergen, Norway, Sleeve Gun Serial No 8 on display
Subscribe to British Small Arms for weekly deep dives into the weapons, equipment, and engineering that defined British military history. Every video is built on verified specifications, original sources, and comparative analysis.

#Welwand #SOE #SleeveGun #BritishWeapons #WW2Weapons #SpecialOperationsExecutive #CovertWeapons #BritishEngineering #Welrod #StationIX #SecretWeapons #AssassinationWeapons #BritishSmallArms #MilitaryHistory #WorldWar2

Видео The 'Hidden' British Gun That Let SOE Agents Kill In A Handshake канала British Small Arms