Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Mar 2018Sold for $4,888.
In the world of converted semiautomatic “machine guns,” the Browning 1919 is a happy example of one of the most iconic and historically important US machine guns and also one of the cheapest semiautomatic belt fed guns available. This stems from two factors, primarily. One is that the Browning 1919, being developed from the water-cooled M1917 Browning, is a closed bolt system. Open bolt semiautomatic designs are not allowed by ATF, and so most semiauto machine gun conversions require substantial alteration to convert from open bolt to closed bolt — which the M1919 does not need. Second, the IDF used the Browning M1919 for many years and in large numbers, and surplussed many of them in the late 1990s. These guns came into the United States as parts kits in large numbers. This meant a glut of cheap guns, easily built as semi autos, and in an easily shootable caliber — 7.62mm NATO (as converted by Israel from their original .30-06 chambering).
Today, we are looking at an example of a semiautomatic converted M1919, and specifically at the various changes made by Israel to both improve the design and convert it successfully to the NATO cartridge.
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February 2, 2020
Israeli M1919 Brownings and the US Semiauto Market
February 1, 2020
The Greco-Turkish War & The Turkish War Of Independence I THE GREAT WAR 1920
The Great War
Published 31 Jan 2020Sign up for Curiosity Stream and Nebula: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
The Ottoman Empire was among the losing powers of World War 1 and left a power vacuum after the armistice of Mudros. The Great Powers had already made plans for the territory beforehand and now Greece had ambitions to take over the parts of Turkey where Greeks lived.
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Criss, Nur Bilge: “Occupation during and after the War (Ottoman Empire)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-08-05 https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…Leonhard, Jörn. Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918-1923 (CH Beck, 2018).
Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).
Karsh, Efraim and Inari Karsh. Empires of the Sand (London: Harvard UP, 1999).
Llewllyn Smith, Michael. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor (London: Hurst, 2016 (1973))
Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Avon, 1989)
McMeekin, Sean. The Ottoman Endgame (Penguin, 2015)
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History Summarized: Byzantine Empire — The Golden Age
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 31 Jan 2020What do you do when life takes away half of your empire? Well, if you’re the Medieval Byzantines, you make comprehensive structural reforms to better manage a changing geopolitical landscape — And then you make an absolute crapload of mosaics.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
This video was edited in part by Sophia Ricciardi, AKA “Indigo”.
FURTHER SOURCES: A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich.
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January 31, 2020
“Wehrmacht” – The German Army 1935-1945 – Sabaton History 052 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 30 Jan 2020From 1935 onwards, the German Wehrmacht was expanding rapidly. Millions of men joined the army, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s visions for the 3rd Reich.
Highly motorized Panzergrenadiers, elite parachute- and resilient mountain-infantry troops were trained and and led with the utmost combat-efficiency in mind, supported by state of the art Panzers and aircraft. If it came to war, they would break the enemy and break them fast, achieving fast victories in a series of devastating hits. However, succumbing to the ideological influence of National-Socialism, the Wehrmacht found itself soon to be both culprit and accomplice to a self-reinforcing cycle of violence and atrocities.
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Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
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Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Bundesarchiv
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Why The US Military Made GPS Free-To-Use
Real Engineering
Published 16 Jun 2017Get your Real Engineering shirts at: https://store.dftba.com/collections/r…
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Once again thank you to Maeson for his amazing music. Check out his soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/maeson-1/tracks
January 30, 2020
Upgrading NORAD’s capabilities with AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar (aka “Aegis Ashore”)
Ted Campbell on the need to upgrade NORAD radar installations as part of a general refurbishment of the alliance’s capabilities:

Lockheed Martin’s Solid State Radar has been designated as AN/SPY-7(V)1 by the US government.
Image from Lockheed Martin/PRNewsfoto.
One of the elements which might be considered in modernizing and enhancing the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) surveillance, warning and control system is a new radar and some people have suggested that the AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar, sometimes called Aegis Ashore, might be a useful (and proven, it is in use, on land, in Japan, and will be fitted on Canada’s new Type 26 (destroyer-frigate) combat ships) solution. This radar is eminently suitable to be part of an enhanced (conventional) NORAD and of a CANUS continental ballistic missile defence system.
There are many technical (and logistical) advantages to using that radar on both our, Canadian, warships and in a land-based role, too.
The AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar produces a lot more information than do the current AN/FPS-117 and AN/FPS-124 radars which are used in the NORAD role, today, and were built in the 1980s using 1960s and ’70s technology.
(Please don’t worry about the AN/*** designations. They are part of a very sensible American system which was designed to make it simpler to identify both Army and Navy systems (hence the AN/ at the beginning). The three letters following the AN/ describe the system:
- The first letter describes the installation. F means Fixed, on the ground (land) and S means on a ship;
- The second letter means the type of equipment, and P means radar; and
- The third letter means purpose. S means search (detection and locating) and Y surveillance and control.
Thus the SPY-7 is a shipborne surveillance radar and the FPS-117 is fixed (land-based) search radar. The numbers just differentiate one system from another.)
If Canada chooses an advanced radar, like the SPY-7, two engineering problems will need to be addressed:
- First, these things use a lot more power than do the existing radars; and
- Second, they produce much, much more information which needs to be “transported” instantly, to control centres in places like Canadian Forces Base North Bay, where all the data from all the radars is analyzed and used to effect NORAD’s mission. If the radar sites are located below (about) 72°N, as would be the case for coastal radars in BC, NS and NL, this is not a huge problem because the station is within the “footprint” of the big, high bandwidth satellites in geostationary orbit. But if the radar site is too far North then a terrestrial (possibly microwave, maybe tropospheric scatter) network (in which each station needs electrical power, too) will have to be installed to move the data to a satellite ground station. (Or a non-geostationary, high bandwidth, satellite system will have to be deployed.)
January 29, 2020
The Roman Triumph
Historia Civilis
Published 5 Dec 2018Patreon | http://patreon.com/HistoriaCivilis
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The Jewish War, by Josephus: https://amzn.to/2Ub8JRq
Parallel Lives: The Life of Pompey, by Plutarch: https://amzn.to/2BP6vjq
Parallel Lives: The Life of Julius Caesar, by Plutarch: https://amzn.to/2BP6vjq
Letters to Atticus, Book 13, by Cicero: https://amzn.to/2Qa9SKv
The History of Rome, Book 1, by Livy: https://amzn.to/2PbCkX7
Natural History, Book 3, by Pliny the Elder: https://amzn.to/2PhX3Za
Roman History, Book 43, by Cassius Dio: https://amzn.to/2PgJ99C
Roman History, Book 44, by Cassius Dio: https://amzn.to/2PgJ99C
Roman History, Book 53, by Cassius Dio: https://amzn.to/2Pgdq8Q
Roman History, Book 54, by Cassius Dio: https://amzn.to/2Pgdq8Q
Roman History, Book 55, by Cassius Dio: https://amzn.to/2Pgdq8Q
The Life of Julius Caesar, by Suetonius: https://amzn.to/2QuwULE
The Fasti Triumphales http://www.attalus.org/translate/fast…
The Roman Triumph, by Mary Beard: https://amzn.to/2UafiDD
Rubicon, by Tom Holland: https://amzn.to/2E0x5HX
Cicero, by Anthony Everitt: https://amzn.to/2PgJJnO
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Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy: https://amzn.to/2Q9rtlO
The Rise of Rome, by Anthony Everitt: https://amzn.to/2PeSEGw
“Circum Metas Fertur: An Alternative Reading of the Triumphal Route,” by Ida Östenberg. From Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, vol. 59, no. 3: https://bit.ly/2SpsjHJMusic:
“Honey,” by Nctrnm
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Patton | Based on a True Story
The Cynical Historian
Published 30 Aug 2018It’s finally time to review Patton! I have a lot to say about it, as you can tell by the time stamp. Way back when I started the Based on a True Story series, the second episode was a bit about what I considered to be the best ones — and this movie was at the top. I love this film, but for more reasons than most of you could know — so this is going to be a deep dive into the film and its subject matter. It’s ambiguous, narrowed in subject, and just a perfect examination of the man. As the New Yorker said during the movie’s release, “[Patton] appears to be deliberately planned as a Rorschach test.”
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references:
Brian Sobel and George S. Patton IV, The Fighting Pattons (Westport: Praeger Publishing, 1997). https://amzn.to/2u2WI57MacMillan Compendium, America at War (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1994), 726-727. https://amzn.to/2m6o4mx
John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft, Who’s Who in Military History: from 1453 to the Present Day, (London: Routledge, 1996), 231-232. https://amzn.to/2KWv53M
Paul Fussell, “Patton”, in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark Carnes (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996). https://amzn.to/2J5iGc7
Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies, (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2005), 269-272. https://amzn.to/2m2sSZQ
Frank Sanello, Reel v. Real: How Hollywood Turns Fact into Fiction (Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003), 177-181. https://amzn.to/2N072BB
http://www.historynet.com/patton-film…
https://dailyhistory.org/How_accurate…
http://jbell2ja.umwblogs.org/history-…
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008…
https://www.moviemistakes.com/film960
Special thanks to my mom, dad, and uncle for making sure this was accurate and providing media for the end bit, especially my father (Mark Hall-Patton), who proofread the script as well.
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Wiki:
Patton is a 1970 American epic biographical DeLuxe Color war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, who based their screenplay on the biography Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and Omar Bradley’s memoir A Soldier’s Story. The film was shot in 65 mm Dimension 150 by cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp and has a music score by Jerry Goldsmith.Patton won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Scott won Best Actor for his portrayal of General Patton, but declined to accept the award. The opening monologue, delivered by George C. Scott as General Patton with an enormous American flag behind him, remains an iconic and often quoted image in film. The film was successful, and in 2003, Patton was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. The Academy Film Archive preserved Patton in 2003.
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#History #Patton #Review #Accuracy #GeneralPatton
M20A1B1 Super Bazooka – It’s a Super Bazooka. Need I Say More?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Oct 2017Sold for $1,380 (deactivated).
The US was one of the few major military powers that went into World War II without a substantial infantry antitank weapon. Most countries had an antitank rifle of some sort, but the US just had some marginal antitank rifle grenades. That was rectified in late 1942 when the M1 Rocket Launcher — aka the Bazooka — was introduced. Using a 2.36″ shaped charge warhead, it was able to penetrate about 4.7 inches of armor, which was effective through most of the war. A larger version went into development in 1943 though, because it was clear that the M1 would soon become obsolete.
The 3.5″ M20 Super Bazooka was adopted in late 1945 and put into production in 1948, with its first combat use coming in the Korean War. It was much more powerful, capable of penetrating 11 inches of armor plate. The launcher itself weighed just 13 pounds, with each rocket adding another 8.9 pounds. This, and the updated M20A1, would serve as the main US infantry antitank weapon until replaced by the 90mm recoilless rifle in the 1960s.
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From the comments:
WeirdHarold49
2 years agoSince Ian forgot and Wikipedia knows:
Origin of the “bazooka” name
Shortly after the first prototype launcher and rockets had been tested by firing into the Potomac River, Skinner and Uhl took the new system to a competitive trial of various types of spigot mortar (at that time seen as the most promising way to deliver a shaped charge), which was held at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in May 1942. The new rocket launcher scored several hits on a moving tank while the five different mortars achieved none; this was a considerable achievement since the launcher’s sights had been fabricated that morning from a wire coat hanger. The trial was being watched by various senior officers, among them the Chief of Research and Engineering in the Ordnance Department, Major General Gladeon M. Barnes. Barnes was delighted by the performance of the system and fired it himself, but commented: “It sure looks like Bob Burns’ bazooka”. Bob Burns was a popular radio comedian, who used a novelty musical instrument which he had devised himself and called a “bazooka”.
January 28, 2020
Classics Summarized: The Iliad
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 23 Jan 2015I’m baaaaaaaack!
This one took me a while. The reason why should be pretty obvious. Enjoy your adorable murderfest.
Troy may be a good movie (though I have my doubts) but it sure as hell isn’t the Iliad.
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January 27, 2020
Tank Chats #60 Valentine Bridgelayer | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 23 Nov 2018The Valentine Bridgelayer, on a Valentine Mark I hull, was developed in 1943 during the Second World War. They were largely superseded by Churchill Bridgelayer, although some Valentine Bridgelayers were used in north-west Europe from 1944 to 1945, because the supply of Churchill Bridgelayers could not meet demand.
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January 26, 2020
When Anti-Semites Infight, Jews Still Die – Pogroms in Romania – WW2 – 074 – January 25, 1941
World War Two
Published 25 Jan 2020The British offensive in East-Africa takes off with some rapid advances. Meanwhile in Eastern-Europe, Romania is the stage of fierce anti-semitism, but also infighting between two of the groups causing the anti-semitism.
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Daniel WeissSources:
IWM (B 10600)
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
freemason by Kyle Tezak from the Noun Project
Letter by Mochammad Kafi from the Noun Project
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Wehrli, Leo / Dia_247-08618
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From the comments:
World War Two
2 days ago
Thank you all so much for reaching 400.000 subscribers! Thanks to all of your support and enthusiasm, more and more people get to see more and better content. In fact, from mid-February onwards, we are going to publish three WW2 videos a week, including Out of the Foxholes, Biographies, Special Episodes, War Against Humanity and a new series on the Homefronts. Not only that, we are also going to start a new series on the TimeGhost History Channel (http://www.youtube.com/c/timeghost). Our Patreons get to vote on what we’ll do next! So don’t miss out and change history here -> https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-timeghost-33300161
Cheers, Joram
January 25, 2020
Swedish K: The Carl Gustav m/45B and the Port Said
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Jan 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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During the 1930s, Sweden acquired an assortment of different submachine guns, including Bergmanns, Thompsons, and Suomis. As World War Two progressed, they decided that they really needed to standardize on a single caliber and model of gun, and requested designs from both the Carl Gustav factory and Husqvarna. The Carl Gustav design won out, and was adopted as the m/45.
It was a very simple open-bolt, tube-receiver, fixed-firing-pin design chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition. The original guns were built around Finnish Suomi magazines, both 71-round drums and 50-round “coffin” mags. After the war these were replace by a new 36-round traditional box magazine, and magazine well adapters were fitted to the guns which precluded the use of the larger mags. The new magazines were much more convenient to carry, less expensive, and more reliable.
The name “Swedish K” comes form the full designation: Kulsprutepistol m/45. The guns were used by American special operations forces in Vietnam until the Swedish government stopped export sales to the US, at which point the Navy commissioned Smith & Wesson to produce the Model 76 submachine gun (essentially a copy of the m/45). The design was also licensed by Egypt, which also licensed the AG-42 Ljungman rifle at the same time. The Egyptian copy was called the Port Said, and shows the features fo the original Swedish m/45 pattern, where the guns in Swedish service were mostly updated to the m/45B pattern.
Photo of m/45C with bayonet from: http://www.gotavapen.se/index_eng2g.htm
Check them out for a ton of information on Swedish small arms!
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January 24, 2020
From a Canadian perspective, “NORAD … is more important than NATO”
The American government has once again expressed a strong desire to update the 1957 North American Air Defence Commmand arrangement between the US and Canada for defence of the North American continent. It’s a Cold War relic to some (particularly some in the Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet), but it has a very real value to Canada, as Ted Campbell explains:
In 1957 Canada and the USA agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command. It is a “combined” command, American and Canadian people, civilian and military, work together, in combined headquarters, to conduct an active aerospace defence effort over the continent we share. Americans and Canadians work side-by-side managing the airspace, detecting intruders and identifying and intercepting them and so on.
NORAD, I would argue, is more important than NATO.
First, it is about defending our own homeland.
Second, it is about defending the US strategic deterrent, which has, arguably, done more to keep global peace than all the efforts of the United Nations, combined.
NORAD modernization and expansion should be at the top of Canada’s defence policy agenda. Specifically:
- First, billions of dollars, likely tens of billions of dollars are going to be needed to upgrade the surveillance and warning system. We need new radars, terrestrial and space-based, and upgraded control systems to do the job properly;
- Second, Canada needs to buy enough (85+ is just the very barest of bare minimums) of the right new fighter jet; and
- Third, Canada needs to join the American ballistic missile defence system.
I believe that this issue: the shared defence of our, shared, continent and, therefore, the defence of the American heartland and of America’s strategic deterrent is a key, perhaps even the key element in our most important foreign relationship. […] The knowledge that Canada is doing a full and fair share of defending our shared continent, of defending America, is not lost on admirals and generals, diplomats and senior civil servants, representatives and senators in the US Congress, pundits and political leaders in waiting in the think-tanks and senior staff in the White House, even if Donald J Trump is not impressed … IF we are doing a full and fair share.
Right now, we are not.


















