Historigraph
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One interesting thing about tank evolution that never gets mentioned in America is just how good the Soviets were at making tanks. The Germans are always assumed to have been the great tank builders, followed by the Americans, but it was the Russians who dominated the field in the tank game. Russian tanks were fast, powerful and easy to operate by their crews. Most important, they were reliable in all weather. The Russians assumed they would be fighting in horrible conditions and built a tank for it.
The Germans, in contrast, made one error after another when it came to tank design and tank building. They were obsessed with coming up with the biggest, most powerful tank, rather than making lots of good enough tanks. The result was lots of innovative designs, but most were failures and there was never enough of them. The Panzer IV was a very good tank with a platform that was flexible, but the Germans kept trying to come up with a super tank, rather than make lots of these. That was a costly error.
The American tank, which was used by the British, was not a great tank, but they were cheap and reliable, which meant there were loads of them. It was also a flexible platform for all sorts of other uses. The Sherman tank was about using the two advantages the Americans had over the Germans. One was more industry and the other was more soldiers. The plan was to beat the Germans with volume. While it would take five Sherman tanks to take out a German tank, that was math that worked in favor of the Americans.
This conflict between the perfect and the good enough showed up in many places during the war. The Germans seemed to look at the whole thing as an engineering project. The first step was to accept the restraints and then solve for the variables. The Russian and American view was always to limit the constraints and thereby increase the number of possible right answers. The Germans had much better human capital, but their opponents always had many more choices. They also had numbers, which counts for a lot.
The Z Man, “Tanking It”, The Z Blog, 2019-03-01.
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Aug 2017The UZI Submachine Gun: Examined is a newly published book this year by David Gaboury — long time owner and operator of the uzitalk.com forum. Until now there has not really been any substantive written reference material on the Uzi, but Gaboury has certainly changed that!
The Uzi has not really seen many major variations in its design beyond the Uzi/Mini Uzi/Micro Uzi scaling (and the semiauto and full auto variations of each), but it has lived two rather distinct lives. One is the Uzi as a global military arm, and the other is the Uzi as an American commercial product — and this book covers both in excellent detail.
On the military side, the book begins with a substantial chapter on the initial development of the Uzi and Israeli submachine gun trials. A remarkably wide variety of guns were considered by the Israeli armed forces, and the trial ultimately came down to two domestic designs. The influence of the Czech ZK-476 and SA vz 23/4/5/6 designs are well explained, and much of the mythology about where the design came from is dispelled. Gaboury makes good use of both original documentary sources and firsthand conversation with those who were involved at the time to tell this story.
With the gun accepted, in production, and becoming very popular with Israeli troops, international sales become a possibility. Gaboury covers the adoption of the gun by the Dutch armed forces, followed by the German and South African militaries — as well as the licensed production by FN. He also examines other copies and adaptations, including Croatian, Japanese, and Chinese.
The second half of the Uzi story is that of its sale in the United States (including the use by US security organizations including the Secret Service). This is a story every bit as complex and detailed as the international military use of the gun, as US legal changes in 1968, 1986, 1989, 1994, and 2004 all play a major role in dictating changes that must be made to the guns for import and sale. In particular, Gaboury has detailed chapters on the major sellers of Uzis in the US — Action Arms, Group Industries, and Vector Arms (as well as many other smaller players).
While there may not be many major variations of the Uzi, there are a multitude of smaller changes to individual parts in both design and production technique, and Gaboury covers these in remarkable detail. If there is a flaw to the book, it is not in lack of detail, but perhaps in a bit of dryness to the writing. The information is clearly presented, but not particularly engaging to the reader who is only mildly interested in the subject. This is a minor criticism, however, and the book is an outstanding reference for anyone who has, well, really any questions at all about the Uzi.
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Polyus Studios
Published 7 Jul 2020Full documentary is still in development, enjoy the teaser!
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Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 May 2017The MAS-38 was France’s first officially adopted submachine gun, rushed into service in 1940. It was basically too late to help with the defense of France, with less than a thousand delivered by June 1940. The Germans kept the gun in production, making 20-30 thousand under the designation MP722(f). French production picked up immediately after the war, and 203,000 were made by the end of 1951. The gun would see service mostly in Indochina.
Mechanically, the MAS 38 is a simple blowback SMG, although it has a few unusual features. One is the approximately 6 degree angle between the barrel and receiver, which was done in order to drop the stock and allow a sight picture with shorter iron sights. As a result, the bolt face is also cut at about a 6 degree angle off perpendicular. The safety is the trigger itself, which folds up and forward to engage, locking the bolt in place. The weapon is chambered for the 7.65 French Long cartridge, which was also used in the 1935A and 1935S pistols. It is lighter than most other military submachine gun rounds, roughly on par with 9x18mm Makarov. That reduced ballistic peer does make for a very comfortable and controllable weapon, however.
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The Tank Museum
Published 3 Dec 2021Tune in to our weekly YouTube content today with David Fletcher as he details the AEC Armoured Car!
00:00 – Intro
00:25 – History of the AEC
04:46 – Key FeaturesSupport the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
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Forgotten Weapons
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The kp/31 Suomi submachine gun in Finnish service was an outstanding weapon, but it was slow and expensive to manufacture. When Finnish forces began capturing Soviet PPS-42 and PPS-43 submachine guns from the Soviets in the Continuation War, it was very quickly decided that Finland should copy the design. This was a far simpler, far cheaper stamped sheet-metal design that was not as refined as the Suomi, but much more efficient to make.
The Sudayev design was changed only minimally; primarily to fit the Finnish cartridge (9x19mm Parabellum) and magazines. The guns were originally designed to use the 50-round quad-stack boxes and 71/72 round drums of the Suomi, but also used the Swedish Carl Gustaf m/45 magazine that was adopted by Finland after WW2.
Two companies were approached to produce the M44; Tikkakoski and Ammus Oy. Ammus was unable to source raw materials for the project, and only Tikka put the guns into production. Marshal Mannerheim initially wanted 50,000, but the order was reduced to 20,000 — of which only 10,000 were actually made, due to limited material availability before the end of the war led to production ending. Another 400 were assembled from remaining parts after the war.
In the 1950s, a plan was begun to resume M44 production in order to completely replace the Suomi in Finnish inventory. However, this plan was interrupted when Sam Cummings of InterArms made a deal to trade Finland about 75,000 surplus Sten guns for Finland’s supply of 7.35mm Carcano rifle (received as aid from Italy during the war) along with a melange of old machine guns. This was a sufficient quantity of Stens to handle the duties of the Suomi, and so the Sten went into Finnish service and M44 production was never resumed.
Those Carcano rifles were in turn imported into the United States, and this is why the majority of 7.35mm Carcano here bear Finnish “SA” property stamps. The same is true for the significant number of Chauchat automatic rifles in the US with Finnish property marks, which were also part of the deal.
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Forgotten Weapons
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Forgotten Weapons
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The Beretta Model 38A was one of the very best submachine guns of World War Two. Designed by veteran Beretta engineer Tullio Marengoni (who designed most of Beretta’s pistols as well as the Beretta M1918 SMG and 1918/30 carbine), it was the first Italian weapon to use a cartridge equivalent to 9x19mm Parabellum instead of 9mm Glisenti. Development began in 1935, and the final version entered production in January 1938.
The change from the Model 38 to 38A is unclear, but seem most likely to be the change from the top ejection of the prototypes to the left-side ejection of the production model. The 38A was formally adopted by the Italian Army in July 1938, but issue was delayed until 1940/41 because Beretta first produced a 20,000-unit order for the Romanian military.
By 1941, the basic design had been significantly simplified, and the Model 38/42 would significantly reduce production cost by removing the magazine well cover, barrel shroud, and removable firing pin. Simplified 38/42, 38/43, and 38/44 models would enter production, but original 38As were also manufactured until 1944 (this particular example is dated 1943). The gun was very popular with both Italian and German troops, and production continued under German occupation late in the war. Total numbers are unavailable, but are probably in excess of 500,000. The gun was so popular that Beretta was able to restart production after the war and continue selling them until the early 1960s.
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Germany has announced that they will be purchasing US F-35 stealth fighters as part of their re-armament program. My favourite headline on this was over at Blazing Cat Fur: “Germany To Buy 35 Lockheed F-35 Fighter Jets From U.S. Amid Ukraine Crisis … Canada Will Buy Cool ‘Fighter Jet Stickers’ With Eco-Friendly Adhesive”
On a more serious tone — but with sadly the same basic message — Mitch Heimpel looks at the multi-generational rolling catastrophe that is Canadian military procurement since the unification of the forces in 1968:
Browning High Power 9mm, the standard side-arm of the Canadian army since WW2. When I was in the reserves, we were told this was due for replacement in a few years. I was in the reserves from 1976-1980. It still hasn’t been replaced.
To say we have a checkered history with military procurement, fails to capture exactly how bad it is. Our political leadership has failed us continually over the course of half a century. No party has done it well. Some have done it better than others. But no one can claim any kind of bragging rights.
Fighter jet procurement in this country is so fraught it once caused the birth of a new political party. Trying to buy helicopters helped bring down a government. We only successfully bought those helicopters after they [the old helicopters] became a greater danger to the personnel manning them than they were to any potential adversary. We have been running a procurement for the next generation of fighter jets for an entire generation. Even Yes, Minister writers would have given up on something that absurd.
Our submarine fleet seems to be almost permanently in dry dock. Our most recent ship procurement resulted in the absolutely monstrous prosecution of one of the country’s most accomplished military leaders.
And we just issued a revised bid to finally replace our Second World War-era pistols … last week.
Just cataloguing that level of incompetence is exhausting. No leader or party looks good. The civil service, as the one constant through all these cartoonish blunders, surely has to wear some of this, too. The fact that we seem to repeat the same mistakes can, at least in part, be attributed to a significant institutional memory failure on the part of the people trusted with having the institutional memory.
Now, it is worth noting in fairness that no nation has an easy time with large scale military procurement. Ask the Americans about the development of the V-22 sometime. But, still, no nation has mastered the ability to step on every bloody rake quite as well as Canada.
I’m not a hardware expert. I can’t tell you which pistol we should buy. There’s also genuine policy questions here that need to be settled — I don’t know whether we should focus on the navy because we’re an Arctic nation, or the air force because it allows us to participate more readily in allied force projection exercises — like, say, no-fly zones? The necessary mix for Canada is no doubt some of both, and it’s fine to have disagreements between parties on what the right mix is.
But setting that aside, I want to talk about what it would take politically, to get us to start taking procurement seriously — just a few basic rules that any government would need to follow to procure anything that they chose was important for Canada to have.
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Nov 2021http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The FNC (Fabrique Nationale Carabine) was FN’s followup to the unsuccessful CAL rifle. Chambered for the newly-adopted 5.56mm NATO cartridge, the FNC uses a long stroke gas piston system very reminiscent of the AK, combined with a stamped upper and milled aluminum lower. After about 5 years of development, the FNC was put on the market in 1980, and was quickly purchased by Indonesia, along with a license for domestic production as the Pindad SS-1. It would also be adopted by Sweden as the AK-5 (minus the 3-round burst functionality) and Belgium. About 6,000 semiautomatic sporting models were imported into the US. A number of those, including this one, were legally registered as transferrable machine guns before 1986.
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Forgotten Weapons
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Forgotten Weapons
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Portugal first tested the Luger pistol in 1901, and its commission on self-loading pistols recommended the design for adoption in 1904. No money was available at the time, but a second commission again recommended the Luger in 1907, and it was formally adopted and purchased in 1908. The initial batch was 5,000 pistols chambered for the 7.65mm Parabellum cartridge with 120mm (4.75″) barrels and “M2” crests for then-king Manuel II. They were designated m/908, and numbered from 1 to 5000.
These pistol would satisfy Portuguese Army needs until 1935, then the Guarda National Republicana ordered another 564 pistols in the same configuration. These came from Mauser at this point, and had “GNR” crests. These were taken from Mauser commercial production, and have serial numbers between 1900v and 2500v.
The final purchase of Portuguese Army Lugers came in 1943, another 4,578 guns from Mauser. Of course, Germany was deep into the Second World War by this time, and there was no option for Portugal to order its specific configuration. Instead, the Portuguese m/943 pattern was identical to the German standard P08, with the Portuguese guns coming right off the same production line — Waffenamt markings and all. They are numbered between 150m and 5330m.
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The Tank Museum
Published 26 Nov 2021Our Patreons have already enjoyed Early Access and AD free viewing of our weekly YouTube video! Consider becoming a Patreon Supporter today: https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Join Archive and Supporting Collections Manager Stuart Wheeler with his next instalment of Anti-Tank Chats on the “Boys Anti-tank Rifle”. It was a British anti-tank rifle in use during the Second World War.
0:00 – Intro
0:23 – Creation of the Boys Anti-Tank Rifle
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Mark Felton Productions
Published 25 Nov 2021After the wounded and dead had been removed from a battlefield, what happened to all the military vehicles and weapons left lying around? Find out here.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers Zero Night and Castle of the Eagles, both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fe…
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https://www.patreon.com/markfeltonpro…Disclaimer: All opinions and comments expressed in the ‘Comments’ section do not reflect the opinions of Mark Felton Productions. All opinions and comments should contribute to the dialogue. Mark Felton Productions does not condone written attacks, insults, racism, sexism, extremism, violence or otherwise questionable comments or material in the ‘Comments’ section, and reserves the right to delete any comment violating this rule or to block any poster from the channel.
Credits: US National Archives; Library of Congress
Thumbnail colorisation (left image) by Paul Reynolds
Forgotten Weapons
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There are a fairly wide variety of silenced Sten guns that were made during World War Two, because many were needed for small Special Operations Executive missions. However, the British Army did also formally develop and adopt such a weapon. It was initially requested in 1942, with the first trials in November of that year. After two years of tinkering and deliberating, a pattern was finally put into production in February 1944. This was a Sten MkII with an integrally suppressed barrel. The barrel was just 3.75 inches long, with six vent holes drilled just in front of the chamber to reduce muzzle velocity below the speed of sound. The silencer itself was about 12 inches long, with an initial expansion chamber and 18 baffles.
Since the vented barrel reduced recoil energy of the cartridge, the bolt was reduced in weight by about 15% and the recoil spring shortened just slightly as well, to ensure proper cycling. The result was formally designated the Sten MkII(S). It retained the selective fire capability of the Sten, but was not to be used in automatic mode, as doing so could compress the baffles together and damage them. In total, 5,776 of these silent submachine guns were made. The design was followed by a more sophisticated Sten Mk6 (essentially a silenced Mk5), but remained in active use with the British military into the early 1970s.
Finding completely original and intact examples of the MkII(S) is extremely difficult today, and this one is a rare privilege to examine!
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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
Forgotten Weapons
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Note: When I say the double magazine pouch is unique for this model, I was not thinking about those issued with LP-08 Artillery Lugers.
While the Dutch Army dithered over new pistol adoption, the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) took more decisive action and adopted the Luger as the M11 in 1911 after a few years of testing. They ordered the first batch of 4,181 from DWM in the years before World War One. After the Treaty of Versailles, German companies were barred from military production, and so the KNIL bought a batch of 6,000 Lugers from the Vickers company in the UK. These were still insufficient for the force, and in 1928 they ordered one final batch of guns.
This final batch was made by DWM. The Allied Control Commission ceased operation in 1927 and left Germany, and DWM almost immediately resumer Luger production. This final batch consisted of 3,828 more M11 pattern pistols. All three batches were in a single serial number range, starting at 1 and running to 14020. They were chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge, with 4 inch (100mm) barrels. Unit marks were engraved originally on the back of the frame, but in 1919 this was replaced with the use of a small brass plaque on the trigger guard. A plaque on the left side of the frame was introduced for unit marks in 1939, as seen on this example.
We also have an original KNIL M11 holster and double magazine pouch to take a look at — accessories that are extremely rare today.
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Forgotten Weapons
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