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William Godfray De Lisle began with a personal project: a rifle built to fire quietly. That experiment developed into the De Lisle carbine, a British commando weapon designed around an integrated suppressor. It was unusually quiet, but the available sources do not establish it as the quietest firearm ever made.
Who was William Godfray De Lisle?
De Lisle was an engineer whose private suppressed-rifle project became the basis for a military carbine. Hackaday reports that he worked at the Air Ministry and first built a .22-calibre carbine as a personal project, adapting a short-magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III. The suppressor was integrated into the design rather than attached as an afterthought, and Hackaday says De Lisle used the prototype for small-game hunting. These details come from that secondary account, rather than the museum records.
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Hackaday also recounts an informal demonstration from the Adelphi Building toward the Thames: passersby reportedly showed no reaction to the shots. It is a vivid story, not a controlled acoustic test. Hackaday’s account presents it alongside the project’s development.
How did the De Lisle carbine work?
A suppressor built into the weapon
The central engineering choice was to make suppression part of the carbine’s overall arrangement. De Lisle’s patent, GB 579,168, describes firearm-silencing means using a tubular casing, an expansion chamber and spaced baffles. Its stated aim was “improved silencing means” in a robust, compact form. The application dates recorded on the specification are in 1943, and the complete specification was accepted on July 25, 1946. The patent explains the silencing concept; it does not by itself establish every detail of the later production weapon. The patent specification names William Godfray De Lisle as inventor.
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From experimental cartridges to .45 ACP
Hackaday says De Lisle followed the initial .22 design with a 9 mm version that performed poorly, in part because its ammunition was supersonic. He then pursued .45 ACP. The National Army Museum’s catalogue independently identifies its carbine as .45-inch ACP, confirming the calibre of its surviving example without corroborating every step in the prototype story.
A hybrid of familiar firearm components
The National Army Museum describes its circa-1943 example as a bolt-action carbine converted from a Mk III* Lee-Enfield, with a modified bolt and barrel. The War Heritage Institute gives a more component-specific description: a Lee-Enfield butt and bolt action, a Thompson barrel, and a Colt 1911 magazine. Its collection record dates the weapon to 1943 and names Ford Dagenham Company as maker. These institutional descriptions establish the carbine’s mixed lineage; they do not mean every example necessarily had identical component details.
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The National Army Museum catalogue entry and the War Heritage Institute collection record provide the respective descriptions.
Why was it considered unusually quiet?
The carbine combined an integrated suppressor with a cartridge choice suited to keeping the shot quiet. Hackaday says the failed 9 mm attempt involved supersonic ammunition; the .45 ACP design became the better-known military version. The National Army Museum describes its suppressor as “very effective” and says it made the weapon “very quiet to use.” That is quiet, not silent: the sources do not claim that every sound from firing was eliminated.
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Hackaday reports sound figures of 85.5 dB for the De Lisle, 89.5 dB for a silenced Sten, and 125 dB for a Sten. It does not supply test conditions in the material cited here, so the figures should be treated as reported comparisons, not as a standardized acoustic ranking. They support the weapon’s reputation for quietness, but cannot prove an all-time “quietest” title.
The War Heritage Institute’s collection manager for Portable Firearms, Arthur Van Rossem, calls it “one of the ‘quietest’ military firearms in history.” That phrasing is a comparative judgment, not a claim that a controlled study has ranked every military firearm. The institute’s entry attributes the description to Van Rossem.
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What range and production figures are documented?
The range figures describe different things and come from different sources. The National Army Museum says its example was accurate at ranges up to 250 metres. Hackaday reports an effective range of approximately 200 metres. Accuracy at a stated distance and effective range are not interchangeable measures, so the numbers should not be collapsed into one specification.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Hackaday reports that a 500-unit contract resulted in 130 De Lisle carbines being produced. Those quantities are secondary-source figures; the museum and patent records cited here do not independently confirm them. The same caution applies to Hackaday’s acoustic and effective-range numbers.
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Where did the De Lisle see service?
The National Army Museum records use by British Special Forces during the Second World War and the Malayan Emergency (1948–1957). Hackaday also mentions use in Burma, Korea and Vietnam, but those additional theaters are not independently confirmed by the museum record cited here. The securely corroborated service picture is therefore the wartime Special Forces role and the museum’s Malayan Emergency entry.
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