Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Feb 2015The Cobray Terminator is an unusual — and unusually impractical — single-shot 12 gauge shotgun. It uses a sort of open bolt system in which the barrel is under spring pressure, and slams backwards into a fixed firing pin when the trigger is pulled. Only about 1500 of these were made before they were discontinued due to poor sales (not because of ATF intervention, as some people believe).
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May 20, 2023
Cobray Terminator 12ga Shotgun
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May 16, 2023
See inside Little Willie | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 3 Feb 2023In this episode of Tank Chats Reloaded, David Willey revisits the iconic Little Willie, the world’s first tank. David delves into the historical significance of this revolutionary invention, and we also get an exclusive look inside what’s left of Little Willie.
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May 11, 2023
Bechowiec: Polish Teenager Makes a Resistance SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Jan 2023The Bechowiec (or Beha) is a fascinating SMG produced in small numbers in southern Poland under German occupation during World War Two. It was made for use by the Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasant Battalions) by a young man named Henryk Strąpoć.
Henryk built his first (quite illegal) gun at the age of 15 in 1937, and was promptly arrested for it. He avoided prison only on account of being a minor, and promised not to do it again. Well, at least he promised not to get caught again — he built three more guns (two semiauto pistols and a revolver) by the time Germany invaded Poland in 1939. During the occupation he joined the the resistance and set to work doing what he must have fantasized about; building clandestine small arms.
Being more or less familiar with pistols but having never handled a submachine gun, he made some creative design choices. His SMG is basically a scaled-up Ruby-type action — chambered for 9x19mm with a simple blowback slide, it is hammer fired from a closed bolt. He designed a complex but effective selective-fire trigger system, complete with a correct auto sear. The first gun was ready in the spring of 1943, and he had a makeshift production going by early 1944. A total of 11 of the guns were made by July 1944, some in 9mm (using bored-out WW1 Mauser barrels) and some in 7.62x25mm Tokarev (using Mosin Nagant barrels).
Only one example survives today, and it is housed in the Polish Army Museum (and sadly, deactivated). Many thanks to the Museum for giving me access to film it for you! Check them out at: http://www.muzeumwp.pl/?language=EN
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May 8, 2023
Inkunzi Strike 20mm Grenade MG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Jan 2023Tony Neophytou developed this for Denel Land Systems, which has completely fallen apart as a company and left it now as his own independent design, with no manufacturer. I filmed this video in 2018, to show the prototype version of the Strike, which has since been improved and further developed. Perhaps some day it can find a manufacturer?
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May 7, 2023
Tank Chats Reloaded | S-Tank | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 27 Jan 2023In this episode of Tank Chats Reloaded, we are delighted to be joined by Stefan Karlsson, the director and curator of The Swedish Tank Museum. He shares his remarkable journey with the S-Tank, from his first experience driving it at the age of nine, to his later service in the Swedish Army. Stefan’s passion for the S-Tank is evident, and his story is sure to captivate and inspire.
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May 6, 2023
History Summarized: Chicago’s Tribune Tower
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Jan 2023It’s not a Dome, but it’s still pretty darn good.
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April 27, 2023
M1908 Mondragon Semiauto Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Nov 2014The M1908 Mondragon is widely acknowledged to have been the first self-loading rifle adopted as a standard infantry arm by a national military force. There are a couple of earlier designs used by military forces, but the Mondragon was the first really mass-produced example and deserves its place in firearms history.
Designed by Mexican general Manuel Mondragon (who had a number of other arms development successes under his belt by this time), the rifles were manufactured by SIG in Switzerland. They are very high quality guns, if a bit clunky in their handling.
The design used a long-action gas piston and a rotating bolt to lock. Interestingly, the bolt had two full sets of locking lugs; one at the front and one at the rear as well as two set of cams for the operating rod and bolt handle to rotate the bolt with. The standard rifle used a 10-round internal magazine fed by stripper clips, but they were also adapted for larger detachable magazines and drums.
Unfortunately, the rifle required relatively high-quality ammunition to function reliably, and Mexico’s domestic production was not up to par. This led to the rifles having many problems in Mexican service, and Mexico refused to pay for them after the first thousand of their 4,000-unit order arrived. The remaining guns were kept by SIG, and ultimately sold to Germany for use as aircraft observer weapons.
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April 26, 2023
Tanks Chats #169 | Scimitar Mark 1 & Scimitar Mark 2 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 20 Jan 2023In this week’s video, David Willey continues David Fletcher’s CVRT Tank Chats series, delving into the fascinating history of the Scimitar Mark 1 & Scimitar Mark 2. David provides an in-depth look at the development of these two iconic tracked vehicles, exploring their unique features and capabilities. He also examines how they have evolved over the years, and been used in various military operations.
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April 24, 2023
Pedersen Selfloading Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Nov 2014When the US military decided to seriously look at replacing the 1903 Springfield with a semiautomatic service rifle, two designers showed themselves to have the potential to design an effective and practical rifle. One was John Garand, and the other was John Pedersen. Pedersen was an experienced and well-respected gun designer, with previous work including the WWI “Pedersen Device” that converted a 1903 into a pistol-caliber semiauto carbine and the Remington Model 51 pistol, among others.
Pedersen’s rifle concept used a toggle locking mechanism similar in concept to the Borchardt and Luger pistols, but designed to handle the much higher pressure of a rifle cartridge. Specifically, the .276 Pedersen cartridge, which pushed a 125 grain bullet at about 2700 fps. Both Pedersen’s rifle and the contemporary prototypes of the Garand rifle used 10-round en bloc clips of this ammunition.
Ultimately, Pedersen lost out to Garand. Among the major reasons why was that his toggle action was really a delayed blowback mechanism, and required lubricated cartridges to operate reliably. Pedersen developed a hard, thin wax coating process for his cartridge cases which worked well and was not prone to the problems of other oil-based cartridge lubricating systems, but Ordnance officers still disliked the requirement. This combined with other factors led to the adoption of the Garand rifle.
After losing out in US military trials, Pedersen still had significant world-wide interest in his rifle, and the Vickers company in England tooled up to produce them in hopes of garnering contracts with one or more other military forces. About 250 rifles were made by Vickers, but they failed to win any contracts and production ceased — making them extremely rare weapons today.
Pedersen lived until 1951, and was well regarded for his sporting arms development with Remington — none other than John Moses Browning described him as “the greatest gun designer in the world”.
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April 17, 2023
Tank Chats Reloaded | Panzer IV | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 30 Dec 2022Let’s go inside Panzer IV with another episode of Tank Chats Reloaded. Chris Copson takes a detailed look inside the tank which was considered the backbone of the Wehrmacht‘s Panzer force, uncovering the reality of what it might’ve been like to serve as a Panzer crew member in WW2.
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April 15, 2023
Type 68 North Korean Tokarev/High Power Hybrid
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 May 2020The Type 68 is a North Korean hybrid of the Tokarev and the High Power, used as a military service pistol until replaced by the Beak-Du-San copy of the CZ75. The general outline of the gun is a copy of the Tokarev, with a modular removable fire control group, lack of manual safety, and tall thin sights. It is chambered for 7.62x25mm, and uses a magazine identical to the standard Tokarev except for not having a magazine catch cut, as the Type 68 has a heel magazine release.
Internally, the High Power elements include a detent-retained barrel pin, use of a solid barrel cam instead of a 1911/Tokarev swinging link, and a fixed barrel bushing. Two patterns of markings exist, one with a date and North Korean marking, and one (like this example) with only a serial number.
North Korean guns of all types are very rare in the United States. A very small number of Type 68s have come into the US, generally through Central America (probably via Cuba) and South Africa (via Rhodesia/Zimbabwe).
Update: It appears that the original design work for these was done by an independent engineering firm in Yugoslavia. The design (a TT33 with High Power type locking and angled slide serrations) was not completed in time for the trials that would lead to adoption of the Yugoslav M57, and the drawings were transferred to “another country” — probably North Korea.
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April 11, 2023
LeMat Centerfire Pistol and Carbine
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Nov 2014Colonel LeMat is best known for his 9-shot muzzleloading .42 caliber revolver with its 20 gauge shot barrel acting as cylinder axis pin — several thousand of these revolvers were imported and used in the field by Confederate officers during the US Civil War (and modern reproductions are available as well). What are less well-known are the pinfire and centerfire versions of LeMat’s revolver, and the carbine variants as well.
In this video I’m taking a look at a centerfire LeMat revolver and a centerfire LeMat carbine, both extremely rare guns. They use the same basic principles as the early muzzleloading guns, but look quite different. In these guns, the shotgun remains 20 gauge but uses a self-contained shell loaded from the rear, and the 9 rifles shots are designed for an 11mm (.44 caliber) cartridge very similar to that used in the French 1873 service revolver.
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April 8, 2023
Błyskawica: The Polish Home Army’s Clandestine SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Dec 2022The Błyskawica (“Lightning”) is an SMG developed in occupied Poland to be issued out to Home Army units during Operation Tempest: the liberation uprisings planned for the advance of the Red Army into Poland.
The gun was developed starting in September 1942 by two engineers, Wacław Zawrotny and Seweryn Wielanier. Both were smart and talented, but neither had previous experience in arms design. The design they created is both innovative in some areas and inferior in others as a result, with major inspiration coming from the Sten and the MP40. Production was undertaken in the harshest conditions of occupied Warsaw, where just possession of cutting tools required German military permission.* It is a credit to the skill and dedication of the Home Army team that some 750 Błyskawica guns were made; the largest mass production of any underground weapon that I am aware of.
Ultimately, Operation Tempest did not come to full fruition, as the NKVD’s treatment of Polish fighters as collaborators destroyed Home Army interest in cooperation. The Błyskawica guns were never issued as planned, with only the few dozen last made being used in the Warsaw Uprising. The remaining 700-odd examples have never been found — perhaps they remain in long-forgotten caches still to this day?
For the full story of the Błyskawica, see Leszek Erenfeicht’s excellent article:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/subm…Many thanks to the Polish Army Museum for giving me access to film this exceptionally rare item for you! Check them out at: http://www.muzeumwp.pl/?language=EN
* This created some interesting situations in which a shop might take a contract to make material for the Wehrmacht as a way to get access to the tools needed for Błyskawica component production. To those who did not know the whole story, such a shop was collaborationist.
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April 5, 2023
PTRS 41: The Soviet Semiauto Antitank Rifle (aka an SKS on Steroids)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Dec 2022Prior to World War Two, the Soviet Union had a rather lackluster interest in antitank rifles — a series of guns were developed, but slowly and without all that much success. The Barbarossa invasion gave a very immediate need for just this sort of weapon, however, to give Soviet infantry units an organic anti-armor capability. Two star Soviet designers were tasked with designing AT rifles, Degtyarev and Simonov. The cartridge they were to use was the new 14.5x114mm, a high-velocity monster using a tungsten carbine cored projectile.
After a shockingly fast development period, the guns from both design bureaus were accepted. The Degtyarev became the PTRD-41, a single-shot auto-ejecting design that was extremely cheap and fast to produce. The Simonov design became the PTRS-41, a 5-shot semiauto offering more firepower but also taking longer to produce. The Degtyarev entered service first, with the first substantial deliveries of PTRS rifles arriving in 1942.
Both designs would serve through the war, with hundreds of thousands being made. Many were put into storage in 1945, and they are still seen today in Ukraine periodically. The PTRS would go on to be the basis for Simonov’s 7.62x39mm infantry rifle, adopted as the SKS.
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April 4, 2023
Tank Chats Reloaded | Challenger 1 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 16 Dec 2022In the first episode of Tank Chats Reloaded we hear from Major General Patrick Cordingley who both commanded Challenger 1 during the First Gulf War and was involved in its design. Also introducing our new presenter Chris Copson, host of the new Tank Chats Reloaded series — where we’ll be revisiting old favourites from Tank Chats.
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