Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 May 2023It is often said that Hitler personally cancelled the Sturmgewehr development … could that really be true?
Yes! He actually nixed the program three separate times, and the German Army General Staff continued the project behind his back. They knew the rifle was what the Wehrmacht desperately needed if it was to have any hope of victory in the East, and they were determined to bring it to fruition. He did ultimately relent, and approved it to replace the Mauser K98k in early 1944 — but by that time a great deal of opportunity had been lost. Today we will delve into the details of just how the program developed as it pertains to his approval …
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August 18, 2023
Did Hitler Cancel the Sturmgewehr?
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August 17, 2023
See Inside Char B1 | French Tanks of World War Two
The Tank Museum
Published 12 May 2023Chris Copson goes inside one of his personal favourite tanks, the Second World War French Char B1, to discover the quirks and surprises hidden within. Find out why these tanks performed so badly against the German onslaught of 1940, despite being bigger and more heavily armoured than the vehicles they faced.
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August 14, 2023
The Mighty Carl Gustaf MAAWS: A King Among Weapons
Interesting Engineering
Published 3 May 2023The Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, produced by Saab Bofors Dynamics, is an adaptable and portable weapon system designed for anti-tank and anti-structure operations. Its original design was widely adopted by European armies as a primary anti-tank weapon before being replaced by the superior Carl Gustaf M2 in 1964.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. Army took an interest in the M3 model due to its lightweight design, versatility, and powerful anti-tank and anti-structure capabilities. It was initially adopted by the Army’s Special Operations Command (USASOC) and gained popularity among soldiers for its ease of use, accuracy, and effectiveness against a range of targets.
Compared to other weapons like the AT-4 and the FGM-148 Javelin, the M3 offers the advantage of reloadability thanks to its rifled metal/carbon fiber launch tube. At 22 lbs (10 kg), it is more manageable than the Javelin’s 50 lbs (22.7 kg), allowing for faster engagement compared to waiting for mortar support. It is also more cost-effective than the Javelin and artillery shells when targeting enemies in hard cover.
Overall, the Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle is a powerful and effective weapon system that has been widely adopted by militaries around the world. Its continued development and advancement in technology ensure that it will remain an important tool in modern warfare for years to come.
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August 12, 2023
Hotchkiss Universal SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Aug 2012The Hotchkiss Universal is a pretty interesting submachine gun, despite its rather clumsy appearance. The overriding design intent was to make a very compact folding carbine, and Hotchiss certainly met that objective. However, the gun ended up being too expensive and complex to achieve any real commercial success. Some wound up in Indochina, and some sales were made to Venezuela and Morocco, but that was about the extent of the Universal’s production. There are a few of these guns that were imported into the US as live semi-auto carbines, interestingly.
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August 11, 2023
The Weirdest Boats on the Great Lakes
Railroad Street
Published 5 May 2023Whalebacks were a type of ship indigenous to the Great Lakes during the late 1890s and mid 1900s. They were invented by Captain Alexander McDougall, and revolutionized the way boats on the Great Lakes handled bulk commodities. Unfortunately, their unique design was one of the many factors which led to their discontinuation.
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August 10, 2023
MOBAT, WOMBAT, CONBAT | Anti-Tank Chats
The Tank Museum
Published 5 May 2023Welcome to this episode of Anti-Tank Chats. Today, Chris will be discussing the variations of a lesser-known weapon, the British Army’s B.A.T. (Battalion Anti-Tank Gun).
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August 9, 2023
Russian 1895 Nagant Revolver
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 May 2013One of the mechanically interesting guns that is really widely available in the US for a great price (or was until very recently, it seems) is the Russian M1895 Nagant revolver. It was adopted by the Imperial Russian government in 1895 (replacing the Smith & Wesson No.3 as service revolver), and would serve all the way through World War II in the hands of the Red Army.
As with its other standard-issue arms, the Russian government intended to manufacture the M1895 revolvers domestically. However, when the Nagant was officially adopted the major Russian arsenals were already working at capacity to make the relatively new M1891 rifle, so the first 20,000 revolvers were made by Nagant in Liege, Belgium. In 1898 space had been freed up to start production at the Tula arsenal, where they would be made until 1945 (Ishevsk put the Nagant revolver into production as well during WWII).
The common version available in the US today is a 7-shot, double action revolver chambered for 7.62x38mm. That cartridge is a very long case with the bullet sunk down well below the case mouth. The cylinder of the Nagant cams forward upon firing, allowing the case mount to protrude into the barrel and seal the cylinder gap, thus increasing muzzle velocity slightly. This also allows the Nagant to be used effectively with a suppressor, unlike almost all other revolvers (in which gas leaking from the cylinder gap defeats the purpose of a suppressor).
The Nagant’s 7.62x38mm cartridge pushes a 108 grain jacketed flat-nose projectile at approximately 850 fps (I believe a lighter 85-grain load was also used by the military later, but I haven’t fired any of it), which puts it roughly between .32 ACP and .32-20 ballistics. Not a hand cannon by any stretch, but fairly typical for the era (the 8mm Nambu and 8mm French revolver cartridges were both pretty similar in performance to the 7.62mm Nagant).
As far as being a shooter, the Nagant is mediocre, but reliable. The grip and sights are acceptable (but not great), and the cylinder loads and unloads one round at a time. The low pressure round doesn’t stick in the cylinder, at least. The worst part for a recreational shooter is the trigger, which is very heavy in double action. Single action is also heavy, but very crisp. Recoil is mild, and not uncomfortable at all. The design was simple and effective, and really a good fit for the Red Army and WWII fighting conditions.
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August 6, 2023
Chaffee Reece Model 1882: A Good Idea on Paper …
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Aug 2017Patented in 1879 by Reuben Chaffee and General James Reece, the Chaffee-Reece rifle is an excellent example of how an idea that seems good on paper can easily become untenable in a fielded rifle. The main design premise of the rifle was to have a tubular magazine in the buttstock which held the cartridges out of contact with each other, as opposed to being pressed together by a magazine spring as in a conventional design. This would notionally prevent any possibility of recoil or other forces causing the bullet of our round to impact the primer of another and cause a detonation in the magazine.
In initial testing by the Army in 1882, the prototypes were appealing, and a field trial of 750 rifles was requested. Chaffee and Reece were unable to find a commercial manufacturer willing to take on the production (except Colt, which offered to make just 200, and at the cost of $150 etc), and they ultimately turned to the government-operated Springfield Arsenal to build the guns. A total of 753 rifles were made by Springfield in 1883 and 1884 (interestingly, not serial numbered) and delivered for testing.
That testing went quite badly. The magazine was a very complex system, using two sets of basically reciprocating racks to shuttle cartridges up the magazine as the bolt was cycled, without allowing them to contact each other. It proved very prone to jamming and breakage, and was both extremely difficult to keep clean and very susceptible to, as they would have called it at the time, “derangement”. It was handily beaten by the Winchester Hotchkiss 1885 pattern rifles (among others) in field trials, and that was the end of its potential for adoption. The rifles were eventually sold as surplus, and bought by the Bannerman company, where they remained in stock and available for purchase until at least 1907.
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August 3, 2023
Webley 1905
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Jun 2016William Whiting was an engineer who spent his entire adult career with the Webley company, and was responsible for all of their in-house self-loading pistol designs. This work initially focused on a behemoth of a pistol, the Model 1904 intended for military contracts. The gun proved insufficiently attractive to the British military though, leaving Webley with a large R&D outlay with nothing to show for it. The solution was to scale the system way down and look to the civilian market with a pocket automatic in .32ACP.
The first version of this commercial pocket pistol was this model 1905 design. It proved to be a popular concept, and the gun was revised to address a few shortcomings and opportunities for simplification. In its final version, the Model 1908 would prove to be Webley’s best-selling automatic pistol, and it is still a relatively easy gun to find today. However, its 1905 predecessor is far scarcer, and it is interesting to examine the changes made between the two models.
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July 31, 2023
RSC 1917: France’s WW1 Semiauto Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Nov 2015Did you know that the French Army issued more than 80,000 semiautomatic rifles during WWI? They had been experimenting with a great many semiauto designs before the war, and in 1916 finalized a design for a rotating bolt, long stroke gas piston rifle (with more than few similarities to the M1 Garand, actually) which would see field service beginning in 1917. An improved version was put into production in 1918, but too late to see any significant combat use.
The RSC 1917 was not a perfect design, but it was good enough and the only true semiauto infantry rifle fielded by anyone in significant numbers during the war.
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July 29, 2023
French 75mm of 1897
vbbsmyt
Published 30 Dec 2021The French 75 is widely regarded as the first modern artillery piece. It was the first field gun to include a hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism, which kept the gun’s trail and wheels perfectly still during the firing sequence. Since it did not need to be re-aimed after each shot, the crew could reload and fire as soon as the barrel returned to its resting position. In typical use the French 75 could deliver fifteen rounds per minute on its target, either shrapnel or high-explosive, up to about 8,500 m (5.3 mi) away. Its firing rate could even reach close to 30 rounds per minute, albeit only for a very short time and with a highly experienced crew. [wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_d…]
The concept for the gun anticipated future conflict being a war of manoeuver — with massed infantry and cavalry attacks — based on the experience of the wars of 1870-1872. Consequently the gun was designed to be able to be moved easily, set up quickly and fire antipersonnel shells (shrapnel) rapidly, and without the need to reset the carriage after each shot. Two critical components were the cased ammunition (shell and cartridge as a single unit) and a recoil system that completely absorbed the recoil forces and returned the gun to its original position without disturbing the gun’s position.
This animation shows the actions necessary to prepare the gun from its “travelling” state to operational state. The carriage has to be “locked” into a fixed position and levelled. The operation of shrapnel shells depends upon setting a time fuse to explode the shell just in front of an attacking force, to shower them with balls, and demonstrates the French Débouchoir mechanical fuse setter that allowed time fuses to be set rapidly and accurately. The liquid (oil) and air (pneumatic) recoil mechanism used a “floating piston” — on one side hydraulic oil and on the other compressed air. The design must keep these two separated while allowing the free piston to move rapidly. The French design laid great emphasis on seals made of silver – being soft enough to conform to the sleeve housing, but as reported by the US when they started manufacturing the 75mm, the key element was highly precise machining of the sleeve housing the free piston.
The French 75mm of 1897 was of less use with the introduction of trench warfare, where howitzers and mortars being the primary artillery, but the 75mm retained some value, one use being firing shrapnel shells at aircraft. A longer time fuse had to be developed to reach the altitude that some aircraft flew at.
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July 28, 2023
Merwin & Hulbert Revolvers
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Aug 2015The Merwin & Hulbert company was a short-lived firearms manufacturing partnership between designer Joseph Merwin and the Hulbert brothers as financiers. Merwin wanted to design a particularly strong and high-quality revolver, and he succeeded — his guns are arguably some of the best revolvers of the frontier era. The company made a wide variety of designs, but in this video I will be sticking to just the Frontier and Pocket Army models. Of particular note is the very clever unloading mechanism!
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July 24, 2023
Lorenzoni Repeating Flintlock Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Aug 2012Today we have one of the oldest guns we’ve looked at, a Lorenzoni repeating flintlock pistol. The system was designed by an Italian gunmaker in Florence name Michele Lorenzoni. They were made in very small numbers, and the workmanship is stunning, especially considering that they were first manufactured in the 1680s.
Instead of using a revolving cylinder pre-loaded with multiple shots, the Lorenzoni system utilizes powder and ball magazines in the frame of the gun and a rotating breechblock much like a powder throw tool used today for reloading ammunition.
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July 20, 2023
Water Bombing Workhorse That Keeps On Evolving; the story of the Canadair CL-215, 415, and 515
Polyus
Published 16 Jul 2021The Canadair CL-215 is the most successful flying boat amphibian since the second world war. Its multi-role capabilities range from aerial spraying, search and rescue, cargo service, to its most notable role, as a water bomber. It has the most outstanding performance of any aerial fire fighting platform. Starting production in the late 1960s, it continued production in several forms through ownership by Bombardier and later by Viking Air. The latter is currently developing the exciting next generation CL-515 First Responder with deliveries expected in 2024.
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July 14, 2023
MG-3: Germany Modernizes the Classic MG-42
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Apr 2023When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The MG3 included improvements to the belt feed system, added integral antiaircraft sights, and allowed a rate of fire between 700 and 1300 rpm depending on the choice in bolt, buffer and booster. It was the standard German MG until finally being replaced by the MG5 in 2012 — and it is/was in use by nearly 4 dozen other countries as well. Today we are going to compare this transferrable, C&R MG3 to an original MG42 to see the improvements that were made.
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