Skynea History
Published 13 Nov 2025The Royal Canadian Navy is probably not the first one you think about for naval aviation. You’re more likely to think of lighter ships, like Haida.
However, the Canadians would operate three aircraft carriers during the Cold War. The short-lived (well, short-lived in Canadian service) Warrior. The more famous Bonaventure, that I’ve covered before. And, the topic of this video, HMCS Magnificent.
The middle child and probably the least famous of the three. But the one that is, largely, responsible for building Canadian carrier doctrine. It was Magnificent that built up the Canadian naval air arm. Magnificent trained the pilots that would go on to serve with Bonaventure.
And Magnificent is often overlooked for being the middle child. Hence why I chose to cover her today.
Further Reading:
https://forposterityssake.ca/Navy/HMC…
https://naval-museum.mb.ca/rcnships/c…
April 19, 2026
HMCS Magnificent – Canada’s Forgotten Carrier
April 18, 2026
The First M60 Prototype: FG42 + MG42 = T44
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Dec 2025The FG-42 caught the attention of a lot of countries at the end of World War Two. The British and Swiss both used it as the starting point for some developments. The US went one step simpler, and simply cut up a captured FG-42 to make into the T44, the first prototype of what would become the M60 machine gun.
This project was done in 1946 by the Bridge Tool & Die Company, who spent about six months reinforcing an FG42 and adding an MG42 feed system to it to create an unholy hybrid kludge of a gun. It was, however, successful enough to justify continuing the project. Only this one example was made before moving on to much more practical models built from the ground up instead of hacking up captured German guns.
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April 15, 2026
The Korean War Week 95: TWO THIRDS of POWs Refuse Repatriation – April 14, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 14 Apr 2026US Marines begin to make contact with their Communist Chinese adversaries in their new position in the west of Korea, but a more insidious issue is beginning to threaten the UN war effort: dwindling stockpiles of ammunition. In fact, two-thirds of the US army’s procurement budget is going exclusively to ammunition, but production lag — the time between paying for something and actually getting it — is putting Eighth Army operations at risk. Elsewhere, POW screening begins, with results that might throw a wrench into the painstakingly negotiated armistice terms back at Panmunjom.
00:00 Hook
00:59 Recap
01:51 POW Screening
05:49 Ammunition
10:46 Marine Operations
14:07 Summary
14:57 Conclusion
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Origins of the Legendary CZ-75: Short Rail and Pre-B Models
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Nov 2025The CZ-75 began development in the late 1960s as a commercial project. It was not intended for Czechoslovak military use, but instead for export sales to bring foreign currency into Czechoslovakia. It was designed by František Koucký with some elements from other pistols (like frame rails and camming lug from the SIG P210 and a magazine based on the Browning High Power) and a healthy dose of original creativity (including the trigger mechanism). The design was finalized in 1973, approved for production in 1976, and the first production models were ready in June 1977.
The first model of the pistol is quite distinctive, with frame rails much shorter than what we see on examples today. This is called the Short Rail or Slab Side model, and it comprised just the first 16,000 guns produced, with the last ones made very early in 1980. This frame design proved prone to cracking, and in 1980 a longer frame replaced it. A half-cock notch was also added to the hammer in 1980. A few additional points in the production timeline include:
1984: Heavy black enamel paint replaces bluing as the standard finish
1986: Slightly enlarged trigger guard, grip panel design changes
1987: Magazines cease being marked with serial numbers
1988: Serial numbering changes to from 6 digits to 1 letter and 4 digits
1989: Ring hammer replaces spot
1993: CZ-75B introduced with a firing pin block in the slideIn 1992 the communist government in Czechoslovakia fell, and the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. CZ became a privately owned company, and a slew of new options on the CZ-75 were rapidly introduced — so we will leave those for a separate video.
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April 12, 2026
TKIV-85: Finland’s Ultimate Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Nov 2025Finland’s final iteration of Mosin Nagant sniper was adopted in the 1980s to replace a mix-and-match assortment of m/39-43, m/27-66, and m/28-76 rifles. The two options were a Mosin system using a new bedding block (developed by Border Guard officer E. Toro) or a purpose-made new rifle made by Valmet (the Model 86). The Valmet was clearly the better rifle, but the Mosin option was acceptably good and much cheaper — so that’s what was adopted. The parts for the conversions were made by Valmet and assembled at Asevarikko 1.
Two different models were made. One was a military specific type, and the other was a dual-use rifle for competition shooting as well as potential military use. The competition rifles had a lighter barrel profile to meet the international competition weight limit and were fitted with competition aperture sights in addition to mounts for scopes.
Thanks to Frozen Trigger in Finland for giving me access to these examples to film for you!
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April 8, 2026
Ian McCollum’s Perfect Car: Driving His Citroen 2CV
Jimports
Published 22 Nov 2025This isn’t Forgotten Weapons, this is James Reeves here for Jimports with my close personal friend Ian McCollum, and today we are looking at what might be the most on-brand car on all of YouTube, Ian’s Citroen 2CV. This is a late production 1988 car, but it traces its roots back to the 1930s as a French farmer’s replacement for a horse and cart, and Ian walks us through how it survived World War II, why it shares DNA with cars like the VW Beetle and Fiat 500, and how a two cylinder, 26 horsepower French tin can can still cruise at 60 miles per hour and somehow feel great. We talk about the bizarre but clever suspension, inboard front disc brakes, the “French bolt action” shifter, the fold up windows, roll back roof, and all of the little details that make the 2CV weird, practical, and weirdly desirable. If you know Ian from Forgotten Weapons you already know how deep he goes on history and engineering, and this is that same energy pointed at one of the coolest European classics ever made. Check out Forgotten Weapons and Deep Dive With Ian if you have not already, and if you are new here, subscribe to Jimports so I can justify buying more dumb cars like this.
April 7, 2026
NATO’s sudden-onset existential crisis
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Konrad explains that the sudden crisis facing the European NATO allies has been building un-noticed for decades:
NATO is in far bigger danger than anyone realizes. And the reason has nothing to do with defense budgets.
The real danger is psychological. It’s cultural.
Europeans didn’t just free-ride on American security for 80 years. They built an entire identity around the idea that they evolved past the Americans protecting them.
That identity is now the single biggest obstacle to Western survival. And the darkest irony is: we helped build it. After World War II, Europe wasn’t just economically shattered. Its culture was in ruins. The cities, the universities, the concert halls, the museums. Rubble.
The Marshall Plan rebuilt the economy. But culture wasn’t a priority. Not at first. Then the Iron Curtain dropped. And suddenly culture became a weapon.
American diplomats, academics, artists & scholars flooded Western Europe. We funded their universities. Supported their orchestras. Rebuilt their museums. Promoted their intellectual life.
Not because European culture needed saving for its own sake.Because Eastern Europeans were struggling for Maslow’s mist basic needs.
We needed the view from the other side of that Wall to be intoxicating.
So America built Western Europe into a showcase of self-actualization. Art. Philosophy. Cafe culture. Long vacations. Universities where people studied literature instead of surviving. We were manufacturing jealousy.
And it worked. The Wall came down.
But here’s what no one accounted for.
When you give a society self-actualization on someone else’s tab long enough, they forget it was a gift. They start believing it was organically theirs.
And when they look at the country that funded it all, a country busy building aircraft carriers and semiconductor fabs and shale fields instead of reaching the Maslow’s pinnacle.
An overweight American in a ball cap who can’t tell Monet from Pissarro. Who eats fast food. Who drives a truck. Who builds strip malls instead of piazzas.
And to a culture trained in aesthetics but stripped of strategic awareness, that American looks uncivilized.
So the arrogance takes root. And once a culture decides another is beneath them, they stop listening.
Americans say wars are sometimes necessary: crude.
Oil is the backbone of prosperity: unsophisticated.
Kids build companies in garages that reshape the planet: crass.
Wall Street finances the global economy: vulgar.
Europe has no world-class technology sector. No military capable of strong defense. No energy independence. No AI capacity.
What Europe has is culture. The culture we paid for at the expense of us reaching Maslow’s pinnacle.
For decades that was fine. We funded the museums, protected the sea lanes, and tolerated the sneering because the arrangement worked.
Then Europeans stopped keeping the contempt private. They started saying it to our faces. In their media. In their parliaments. At every international forum. “Americans are stupid. Americans are violent. Americans are a threat to democracy.”
We could have moved the Louvre to NY. We could have built a Venice here. We could have stolen your best artists, designers, philosophers and more … like your conquering armies did for centuries.
Instead we funded them. And all we asked for in return was to let us visit.
You don’t have the military to defend your borders. You don’t have the technology to compete. You don’t have the energy to heat your homes without begging dictators.
What you have is an 80-year superiority complex FUNDED BY AMERICANS, protected by American soldiers, and built on the false belief that self-actualization is civilization.
It isn’t. Civilization is the ability to sustain itself. By that measure, Europe isn’t a civilization at all. It’s a dependency with better wine.
That’s not a threat. It’s a weather report.
Build a Navy. Or don’t. But stop lecturing the people who made you “better than us”
Our “crudeness” our “stunted liberal education” our “ugly strip malls” are because we sacrificed our culture to support yours.
From the comments on that post:
Larry Correia chimes in:
Update, 8 April: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
April 6, 2026
T20 Family: Springfield Makes the Garand a Grenade Launching Sniper Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Nov 2025Late in 1944 the Ordnance Committee recommended adoption of a magazine-fed, select-fire version of the M1 Garand as a new standard US infantry rifle. Both Springfield and Remington developed rifles to meet the requirement, with Springfield’s being the T20 and Remington’s the T22.
The Springfield design went through several iterations from the original T20 to the T20E1 and T20E2, with the capability to launch rifle grenades, mount optical sights, and fire in either semiautomatic or full auto. The first examples of the final T20E2 design were ready in June 1945, but the program lost momentum in August when Japan surrendered. It did continue slowly until 1949, providing some of the basis for the eventual M14 rifle.
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April 2, 2026
QotD: Growing up behind the Iron Curtain
Ever met someone who grew up behind the Iron Curtain? You’d expect a mouse, right? You know, with the secret police and all? But they’re the exact opposite of that. People who grew up under the KGB’s iron heel are fucking obnoxious, because they’re utterly shameless. It’s not “give ’em and inch and they’ll take a mile”; it’s “they’ll start by grabbing a mile, then demand ten more”.
Which makes sense if you think about it. When everybody’s snitching on everybody else, shameless is the only way to live. Everybody’s guilty of something, so own it — being, of course, perpetually prepared to snitch anyone and everyone else at a moment’s notice if someone drops the dime on you. Also, if you have to stand in line six hours to maybe get a few potatoes, damn it, you’re gonna get those potatoes. It doesn’t matter if you like potatoes, or have any possible use for potatoes at the present time. You’re going to take every single spud you can get your hands on, plus steal anything that isn’t nailed down, because you never know when you’ll get another chance.
As it turns out, overabundance creates the same conditions. When you’ve been standing in line for six hours with 1,000 of your new best friends just to get some tampons — and you’re a guy, you don’t need tampons, but you can always barter them for something — you’re not going to scruple to do anything and everything to get them. Indeed you want people to know Ivan’s got some tampons, because that’s how the black market works …
… anyway, as I say, we’re not in line for six hours, but we are perpetually at least under the threat of surveillance. And not from the Feds — just as Ivan’s not worried about the KGB, but rather his neighbors, so we don’t have to worry about the Feebs monitoring us. Instead, it’s that Basic College Girl with the iPhone. She’s not filming you, of course, she’s filming herself, but there you are anyway, in the background, doing whatever. Under those conditions — and when everyone’s volunteering the most intimate details of their lives on Fakebook and Twatter — shameless is the only way to live.
In other words, thanks to constant social media “surveillance”, it has gone in the blink of an eye from “It didn’t happen unless someone caught it on film” to “It’s all on film anyway, so fuck it, I’m gonna get mine”. I used to see this all the time in class. Basic College Girls will lie straight to your face, for any reason or no reason. They’ll do it on spec, just to see if you bite. More importantly, they’ll tell you such obvious, easily disproven whoppers that you start wondering if they’re having a schizoid break. You have to know I know you’re lying, right? That Dead Grandma Story is very sad, but you have pictures of yourself all over Twitter drunk at the sorority formal, when you told me you were at Nana’s funeral.
It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t care. Because somehow I’m the asshole for not believing them, despite the evidence of my own lying eyes.
Severian, “Friday Male Bag”, Founding Questions, 2022-06-03.
April 1, 2026
Generation Jones and the Temple of Boom(ers)
Wee Nips
Published 19 Sept 2025Generation Jones and the Temple of Boom(ers) explores the fascinating differences — and surprising overlaps — between Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the often-overlooked Generation Jones.
Were you too young for Woodstock but too old for grunge? Stuck between disco and Nirvana? You might just be a Joneser.
In this video, we’ll compare:
🎵 The cultural touchstones of Boomers, Gen X, and Jonesers
📉 The low points in history that shaped each generation’s outlook
💰 The economic conditions that defined their opportunities
🧠 The attitudes and stereotypes that still stick today
Generation Jones isn’t just a footnote — they’re the missing link between the optimism of the Boomers and the skepticism of Gen X.
0:00 Introduction
1:38 Definitions
2:42 Cultural Touchstones
3:38 Low Points in History
4:53 Economic Conditions
5:42 Social and Attitude Differences
6:38 Humorous Stereotypes
7:09 Overlaps and Connections
8:02 Closing
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March 25, 2026
The Korean War Week 92: Operation Mixmaster! – March 24, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 24 Mar 2026The UN forces begin a huge operation to move the US 1st Marine Division to new defensive positions far to the west of the former ones, but this involves moving some 200,000 men back and forth along the lines. Behind the lines, the ROK continues building up force trying to turn itself into a well equipped and trained modern army, and above the lines the tech war marches on as the UN premieres a new night fighter.
00:55 Recap
01:40 The ROK Economy
06:40 Operation Mixmaster
07:39 Rotation Settled
10:31 Ridgway’s Recommendations
14:01 Overt or Covert POW Screening
15:54 Notes
16:22 Summary
16:34 Conclusion
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March 22, 2026
The Original AR-15: Serial Number 6 in Original Configuration
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Nov 2025The very first AR15 rifles submitted to US government trials were extremely lightweight, with an assortment of interesting features that did not last long. They had top-mounted charging handles, one-piece hand guards, very thin barrels with plain muzzles, and a different safety selector configuration than became normal later one. Updates and modifications were made to virtually all of the original rifles, but today we have a chance to look at serial number 6 in the Springfield Armory collection — which is still in completely original configuration.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this truly unique specimen from their reference collection to film for you! Don’t miss the chance to visit the museum there if you have a day free in Springfield, Massachusetts: https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm
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March 21, 2026
The Complete Chieftain Tank
The Tank Museum
Published 20 Mar 2026Chieftain. The world’s first main battle tank. An icon of the Cold War, it served the British Army for more than 30 years. Yet, it had something of a Jekyll and Hyde reputation. It was prized for having the best gun in the world but, for the British, it never fired a shot in anger. Loved by gunners. Loathed by mechanics. The Chieftain was often referred to as the best tank in the world as long as it broke down in the right place.
But was the gun truly as good as the stats make it out to be? And was the engine really that bad? It’s time to take a dive into the heart of the Iron Triangle to find out.
00:00 | Introduction
00:36 | Gun
03:44 | Engine
06:19 | Armour
11:07 | Just Deserts
13:53 | A Tragic HeroIn this film, join James Donaldson as he delves into the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of the Chieftain tank. With a great gun, revolutionary armour, and a misunderstood engine, Chieftain’s service with the British ensured the Cold War never turned hot. And hear from Chieftain veterans, Bob and Steve, as they share their experiences with this iconic tank.
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March 16, 2026
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan 1979
Real Time History
Published 24 Oct 2025Christmas 1979. Soviet armor pours across the Afghan border towards Kabul as helicopters secure the mountain passes through the Hindu Kush mountains. In Moscow, the Politburo has decided to save Afghanistan’s communist government from collapse. Afghan rebels have taken up arms against the unpopular regime and control most of the countryside. But the Red Army leadership doubts it can pacify the country – so why did the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan?
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March 7, 2026
ASh-78: Albania Makes the Worst AK
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Oct 2025Albanian AKs are both pretty scarce to find outside Albania, and also a bit unusual in the AK field. Where most countries followed Russian AK development, Albania instead patterned theirs on the Chinese Type 56. China had Russian assistance in producing the original milled-receiver AK, but the milled AKM came after the Sino-Soviet split and so China had to create their own stamped receiver design independently. We see those features in the Albanian ASh-78, in elements like the offset front trunnion rivet, gas vent holes, stock and grip style, single trigger guard rivets, and lack of a rate reducing mechanism in the FCG.
In 1960 China began providing military aid to Albania. The first rifle production there was a version of the SKS, which are made into the early 1970s. In 1974 the Albanian state arsenal began setting up AK production with Chinese help as well. Relations between the two countries broke down shortly thereafter, and by the time production began in 1978 the Albanians were working entirely independently. They added an underfolding model (the ASh-82) in 1982, and production continued past the end of the Cold War. Total production numbers are not known, as military information was pretty tightly controlled.
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