Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Jan 2023It’s not a Dome, but it’s still pretty darn good.
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May 6, 2023
History Summarized: Chicago’s Tribune Tower
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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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April 2, 2023
Vektor Mini-SS: South Africa’s Answer to the FN Minimi
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Dec 2022While under international embargo and at war in the late 1970s, South Africa needed a new 7.62mm GPMG. The answer was Vektor’s SS77, a design which would replace the FN MAG in South African service in the 1980s. The gun had really substantial problems for many years, and took a lot of work to revise and improve until it was finally fit for service. However, that work did result in a really excellent gun. With the US adoption of the FN Minimi as a Squad Automatic Weapon, interest developed in a 5.56mm version of the SS77.
Named the Mini-SS, this was initially envisioned as a conversion of the SS77, but that never actually came to pass. Instead, the Mini-SS was built from the ground up as a 5.56mm SAW, with a number of changes to reduce its weight (like a simple fixed polymer stock, fixed gas port, and the removal of tripod attachment points). Coming into service in the early 1990s, the Mini-SS has developed an excellent reputation.
Mechanically, both of the Vektor designs are unusual for the use of an asymmetric side-tilting bolt (like the ZH-29 and only a few other production guns). It is a very simply gun to disassemble, and has a lot of quite clever design features.
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March 29, 2023
Anti-Tank Chats #7 | Panzerschreck | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 2 Dec 2022Join Historian Stuart Wheeler as he details another anti-tank weapon, the Panzerschreck.
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March 27, 2023
Frommer Pistolen-MG Model 1917: A Crazy Villar Perosa Copy
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Nov 2022After encountering Italian Villar Perosa machine pistols in the field, Austro-Hungarian troops requested a similar weapon. The project was given to FÉG to work on, and the result was the Pistolen-MG Model 1917: a pair of Frommer Stop pistols with long barrels and 25-round magazines, redesigned to fire from the open bolt, mounted to an adorably tiny tripod and spade grips.
Only a few dozen of these were made for testing, and they were not accepted for military service. Many thanks to Joschi Schuy for giving me access to film that fantastic surviving example for you!
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March 21, 2023
Born in the Heart of Besieged Leningrad: the PPS-42
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Nov 2022One would think that the Shpagin PPSh-41 was as simple as a submachine gun could get, but that wasn’t the case in World War Two USSR. Barely had the PPSh gotten into real production than the Army was looking for something even simpler. An answer came from young designer Aleksey Sudaev with a completely-stamped gun that used about half the raw material and a third the machine time to produce as the PPSh. After winning the competitive trials, Factory 828 in Moscow was chosen as the lead production facility. They produced a series of drawings and preproduction guns in the summer of 1942.
Sudaev took those drawings into besieged Leningrad with orders to et up production in three factories within the city. The main one was Factory 209, and after fixing a few minor design flaws, the gun went into production in the spring of 1943. Sudaev PPS-42 SMGs pretty much went out the doors of the factory and right into combat trying to break the siege of the city. In total, about 46,000 would be produced before that siege was finally broken.
Meanwhile, Factory 828 in Moscow put a higher priority on policing the design than on immediate production. They implemented a substantial number of improvements, although the lack of communication into Leningrad prevented them from being used in the production going on there. Instead, the improvements culminated in the PPS-43 design, of which more than a million were made by the end of the war.
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March 14, 2023
German Troop Trials “Push-Button” Gewehr 41(W)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Nov 2022When the German army wanted a new semiauto service rifle in 1941, it received submissions from two companies; Walther and Mauser. Walther’s design didn’t strictly meet the criteria set forth, but it was clearly the better rifle and would eventually win the competition. This involved conducting troop trials, and Walther got an initial contract for 5,000 rifles for those trials. That first batch of rifles differed in several ways from the version that was ultimately put into mass production. Most substantially, the first version of the G41(W) had a push-button bolt release on the left side of the stock. After loading two stripper clips, one would push the button to close the bolt. Of course, one could also simply pull the bolt handle back slightly and release to do the same thing — and so the bolt release button was removed to simplify production. In addition, the bolt guide rail on the receiver would be lengthened on production, optics mounting rails were added (although never really used), and the serrations on the spring guide rod were dropped.
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