The Queen used a Tommy gun sent by Churchill to practise shooting Nazis.
A Channel 4 documentary tonight reveals how the then Princess Elizabeth was trained to fire the weapon in Buckingham Palace Gardens at the height of the Second World War.
It tells how her dad George VI refused MI6’s plea to be evacuated to Canada in 1940.
Warwick University’s Prof Richard Aldrich adds: “He says everybody is going to stay and going to fight. He says, ‘I want to get my German. I want to at least kill one of the invaders and we will all fight to the last.’
“When Churchill hears of this he says, ‘You need to be able to kill more than one German.’”
So he sent the King a Tommy gun and the Queen Mum, Elizabeth, 14, and Margaret, ten, also learned to use it.
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Describing the wartime scenes Prof Aldrich says: “The royal family and equerries are all practising with pistols, rifles and Churchill’s Tommy gun. The Queen Mother enjoys taking pot-shots at rats in Buckingham Palace’s gardens.
“The King and Queen and the whole royal family are practising with firearms in the gardens of the Palace and at Windsor.
“The King expects German paratroopers to turn up at any moment. He never goes anywhere in his car without a rifle and a pistol.
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“It is symbolic. The King is showing this off to Cabinet ministers and visiting diplomats. He is sending out the message that we’re not going to run.”
It is also revealed that in 1944 the King visited military bases nationwide to confuse Hitler into thinking the Allies’ D-Day invasion target might not be Normandy.
At RAF Tempsford, near Bedford, he and the Queen see MI6 weapons. Prof Aldrich reveals: “She calls the King over and says, ‘Amazing. Exploding horse manure.’”
- D-Day: The King Who Fooled Hitler, Channel 4 at 8 Sunday.
