Forgotten Weapons
Published 22 Sept 2025The Hovea M44 was tested by the Danish and Swedish militaries in 1945, competing against the Carl Gustaf M45. It was designed and produced by Husqvarna (yes, the chainsaw company) and just 10 of them were made for testing. It was designed around the Suomi quad-stack magazine, which was also originally a Swedish design. Sweden chose the Carl Gustaf, but Denmark preferred the Hovea — but with a couple modifications. Specifically, they wanted the grip and stock from the Carl Gustaf, and that ended up becoming the Hovea M49 which was adopted into Danish service.
Hovea M49 video: • Denmark’s Post-WW2 SMG: the Hovea m/49
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February 13, 2026
Hovea M44: Husqvarna Makes a Submachine Gun
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February 9, 2026
Keeping Up with the Pattons
The Tank Museum
Published 10 Oct 2025M46, M47, M48 and M60. They saw action in Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf and held the line in the Cold War. For almost 40 years the US produced a succession of good tanks — but they never seemed to be good enough for the top brass.
Time after time, designers sought a perfection that seemed to lay out of reach until the arrival of the step-changing M1 Abrams.
Up till then, you have what can be called “The Patton” family: a series of closely related tanks that are only intended to be temporary until the next big thing arrived …
This is the story of the “Patton” family of tanks; tanks that the US tried and failed to replace time after time, yet which despite this ended up becoming the armoured backbone of the Free World during the Cold War.
In this film, Tank Museum Historian, James Donaldson, walks us through the progression of US tanks from the M26 Pershing right up to the M1 Abrams. Commonly known as The Patton Family, this group of tanks were good… but never quite good enough. Always meant to be a stopgap, the Pattons persisted where their prospective replacements failed, leading them to become the vehicles that endured the Cold War around the globe.
00:00 | Introduction
00:58 | From Pershing to Patton
03:50 | Replacing the M46
06:25 | A Third Patton
10:01 | Yet Another Stopgap
12:44 | Irreplaceable?
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February 7, 2026
S.R.E.M.: Britain’s Experimental WW2 Bullpup Sniper
Forgotten Weapons
Published 15 Sept 2025The Sniper Rifle Experimental Model (S.R.E.M.) was designed by the “Czech Section” of small arms designers who had taken refuge in the UK to escape German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The intention was to develop a scoped sniper rifle that could be fired and cycled without disturbing the shooter’s sight picture. The idea that the designers came up with was to use the pistol grip as a moving charging handle, similar to the Czech BESA machine gun already in British service.
In 1944, the Essex Engineering Works in the UK got a contract to make 22 sample S.R.E.M.s, although only 2 were actually made. Really, the whole concept was a bit of a red herring, as the recoil from 8mm Mauser (this was made in 8mm, expected the post-war the UK would be adopting it or another modern rimless round to replace the .303) would disturb the sight picture regardless of the mechanism used to cycle the action. The project was cancelled in 1945, and this example is the only known survivor today.
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January 24, 2026
Potato Digger at War: Marlin Model 1917 Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Aug 2025John Browning’s first machine gun design was a gas operated system that used a swinging lever instead of a linear piston. He presented the first prototype to Colt in 1890, and it went into production in 1895. The US Navy bought a couple hundred, but the Army opted not to adopt it (much to Colt’s surprise). It was offered for sale internationally, but didn’t become very popular until World War One broke out.
By this time, Colt had improved it a bit with a finned detachable barrel, and they started getting orders for thousands of the guns from Belgium, Russia, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere. Unable to keep up with demand, they licensed the design to the Marlin company. Marlin made a few additional improvements (pistol grip attachment, sights, and access door for clearing malfunctions) and made several thousand for allied nations as well as 2,500 fort he US Army to use as training guns in 1917. They further improved the design by changing it to a linear gas piston, and sold some 38,000 to the US military for aircraft use.
3D animation of the Colt 1895 mechanism from vbbsmyt: • Browning 1895 ‘Potato digger’
Marlin 7MG Aircraft Gun: • Marlin 7MG aka Model 1917 Aircraft Machine…
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January 21, 2026
Soviet World War Two 50mm Light Mortars (RM-39 & RM-40)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Aug 2025The Soviet Union decided to adopt a 50mm light mortar in 1937 as a company-level armament. The first such weapon they used was the RM-38, introduced in 1938. It was a complex design, with a gas venting system to adjust range (200m – 800m), a bipod specifically set to either 45 or 75 degrees, and a recoil buffering system. This was clearly too complex, and it was replaced by the RM-39 the next year. This remained a well-made mortar, but now had a freely adjustable bipod. However it quickly proved too complex and expensive and it was in turn replaced by the RM-40.
The RM-40 is a much more efficient (aka, cheap) design. It used simple stamped bipod legs and a heavy stamped baseplate. It still uses adjustable gas venting to set range and retains a simplified recoil buffer, but it is a much more quickly produced weapon. A 1941 model of completely different design did replace it though, and by 1943 the Soviet Union moved to 82mm mortars for better effectiveness.
The Soviet mortars were generally well liked by German troops who captured them, as they were significantly longer ranged than the German 50mm mortar. They were also captured in large numbers by the Finns, who used them as well but found them underpowered. In 1960 some 1,268 Soviet 50mm mortars of all models were sold by the Finnish Defense Forces to Interarms to be imported into the US. Some were registered and sold as Destructive Devices and some were deactivated and sold as dummies.
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January 20, 2026
The US Navy’s twenty years to forget
CDR Salamander takes a wincing glance back at the ship development programs the US Navy planned to implement early in the 2000s and how they all failed to meet even minimal expectations:
20 years seems like a long time, but in many ways it is not. As we look forward to what our fleet will look like at mid-century, we should look back to what we were all promised in January of 2005 that was going to transform into the Navy of the 21st century.
There were four ship classes that were going to be the surface fleet that we were promised at the time, were going to ensure America’s dominance at sea for the next half century.
(NB: most of the hypertext links below go to the tags from my OG Blog that predate my move to Substack three years ago. Those will point you towards my writing two decades ago or so on these programs at the time, if you are so interested.)
LCS. We were once supposed to get 55 of the marketing/consultancy-named Littoral Combat Ship. We’ll wind up with 25. Not suitable for combat in the littorals, but steps are being made to get some use out of them … somehow.
DDG-1000. We were once going to have 32 of these. We got three. Its main weapon, the two 155mm guns, were never made operational and are being removed. The ships are being turned into weapons demonstrators for Conventional Prompt Strike. I hear great things about the engineering plant, but they have yet to do a proper deployment, nine and a half years after the commissioning of hull-1.
Ford Class CVN. A dozen years ago, we thought it would deploy with UAVs as you can see below (pause for a moment in honor of the martyred X-47B, the greatest crime of the Obama Era Navy), but no. Hull-1 took 8 years to commission. Hull-2 will take 12. Can’t seem to have a workable CHT system.
CG(X). In 2005, we thought we would build at least 19. Complete loss of control of the program to the point it was put out of its misery. We still don’t have a proper carrier escort. Looks like the Japanese will build what we should have, and the only hope we have now is … BBG-1.
Why dig all this institutional shame and dishonor up, again? Simple, we need to be humble, and the leaders today need to hoist onboard the errors of the past.
Now, back to last week. For our fleet of the 2030s and on to face the world’s largest navy (in 2005 it was the US Navy. Now it is the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Well done everyone), there are three ships right now that we have to ponder as our future surface force.
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January 19, 2026
King Tiger V2 – Inside The World’s Oldest Tiger II
The Tank Museum
Published 26 Sept 2025King Tiger V2. It’s the oldest surviving King Tiger in the world. And it’s also the only King Tiger that survives with the unusual pre-production turret. This has, in the past, been referred to as the “Porsche Turret”. But why? And why did they change the turret on later models?
There are many misconceptions and rumours about this tank – the most common of which that the turret was built by Porsche. It wasn’t. How did it end up on this tank? Well, that’s a bit of a confusing story, but it was basically down to Krupp and Henschel working on a winning design.
The production of King Tiger would begin with three prototypes: V1, V2 and V3 – and the V stands for Versuchs, the German word for trial. V1 was a mild steel prototype that was used for demonstrations, and V3 was used as an engine test rig. V2, however, was retained for testing by Henschel and was captured by the US Army before being handed over to the British.
V2 left Germany in one piece, but by the time it reached Bovington in 1952 a number of parts had gone astray – most notably, the gearbox! King Tiger V2 is now a star of The Tank Museum’s collection, and the team have now begun to assess whether a restoration might be possible…
00:00 | Introduction
02:37 | Is it a Porsche?
06:15 | Krupp Gets Lucky
12:52 | V2: Today and Tomorrow
17:34 | V2: The Future
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January 17, 2026
Everything you need to know about art deco
Dezeen
Published 29 Apr 2025To mark the centenary of art deco’s debut, Dezeen features editor Nat Barker rounds up everything you need to know about art deco.
In this video produced by Dezeen Studio, Dezeen explores the history and context of the movement, and the most notable characteristics of the style.
Art deco was a design movement that rose to prominence in the 1920s and 30s. Its origins are often disputed, but most agree that art deco’s entrance on to the world stage took place 100 years ago, at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.
#artdeco #designhistory
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January 15, 2026
Pauly/Roux Pistols: The First Self-Contained Cartridges
Forgotten Weapons
Published 22 Aug 2025Samuel Pauly is the largely unrecognized father of the modern self-contained cartridge. In 1808 he patented a cartridge with a metal base that held a priming compound and attached to a paper or metal cartridge body holding powder and projectile. He followed this with an 1812 patent for a gun to fire the cartridges. What makes Pauly’s original system particularly interesting is that he did not use mechanical percussion (ie, hammer or striker) to ignite the primer compound, but rather a “fire pump”. A spring loaded plunger compressed air on top of the primer, heating it enough to detonate the compound in the same way that a diesel engine works. This was not a commercially successful system, though, and Pauly left Paris for London in 1814.
Pauly’s shop was taken over by Henri Roux, who continued making guns under the Pauly name while also improving the cartridges. These two pistols were made around 1820 and use a Roux cartridge with a mechanical striker hitting the primer compound in a Pauly-style cartridge case.
For more information, I recommend Georg Priestel’s free book Jean Samuel Pauly, Henri Roux, and Successors – Their Inventions From 1812 to 1882 available here:
https://aaronnewcomer.com/document/je…
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January 12, 2026
A Modern Integrally Suppressed Pistol for Everyone: The SilencerCo Maxim 9
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Aug 2025SilencerCo announced the Maxim-9 pistol in late 2015. Having gone through some huge growth of the past few years, the company wanted to expand its capabilities and thought that the time was right for a modern integrally suppressed pistol. It was a unique new design of modern semiautomatic pistol build from the ground up to be integrally suppressed. The action is a proprietary delayed blowback system with all of the moving parts in the back half of the slide. This leaves the front of the gun dedicated entirely to suppressor volume.
The guns were released at SHOT Show 2017, and were relatively slow sellers, because of the high price and the required NFA registration. The expected passage of the Hearing Protection Act around that time would have been a huge boon for sales, but did not ultimately happen. Still, production continued until tapering off in early 2021 as SilencerCo shifted priority to regular suppressor manufacture in the face of a boom in demand.
The project may not have been a massive success for SilencerCo, but it was still a worthy endeavor that they do not regret. It helped mature the company, forcing them to embrace new proficiency in things like GD&T and advanced quality control machinery. And the pistol is, in fact, very cool.
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January 5, 2026
Interdynamic MP-9 SMG: Origin of the TEC-9
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Aug 2025The story of the Tec-9 begins with a Swedish company called Interdynamic AB and their designer Göran Lars Magnus Kjellgren designing a cheap and simple submachine gun for military use. It found no interested clients, and so the company decided to market it in the United States as a semiautomatic pistol. Kjellgren moved to the US in 1979, anglicized his name to George Kellgren, and founded Interdynamic USA with a partner, Carlos Garcia.
The pair produced a few dozen MP-9 submachine guns in 1982 (they were all transferrable, as this was before 1986) as well as a semiauto open bolt version called the KG-9 (Kellgren-Garcia). About 2500 of the KG-9s were made before later in 1982 the ATF determined that it was a machine gun, and they had to redesign it as a closed bolt semiauto, which they named the KG-99. At about this point Kellgren decided to move on to other plans, and he sold his interest in the company to Garcia, who formed a new company called Intratec. Kellgren used the proceeds to start Grendel a few years later.
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January 4, 2026
December 31, 2025
Baker Pattern 1800 Rifle for Napoleonic Wars Sharpshooters
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Aug 2025The British military decided to organize their disparate small units of riflemen into a single standardized group in 1800. The 95th Regiment – the British Rifle Corps – was founded and it was equipped with a pattern of rifle designed by one Ezekiel Baker. This was a .625 caliber rifle with a 30” long barrel and a remarkably slow 1:120” rifling twist. That rifling was deliberately chosen to balance rifle accuracy with ease of loading and it worked quite well as a compromise solution. The Baker was considered effective on individual targets to 200 yards (300 with a particular skilled marksman) and area targets out to 500 yards.
The Baker was used throughout the Napoleonic Wars and only replaced in 1838 by the Brunswick rifle. This example is one of the original 1800 pattern, modified in 1815 to replace its distinctive bayonet bar (used to fit the large short sword bayonet made for the Baker) with a typical socket bayonet lug.
BritishMuzzleLoaders playlist on the Baker: • The 1800 Baker Rifle: Two (Very) Frequent…
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December 28, 2025
Colt SMG: First of the 9mm ARs
Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Aug 2025With the expansion of SWAT teams throughout law enforcement in the 1980s, Colt realized that it was leaving a lot of sales on the table by not having a submachine gun it could offer alongside M16/CAR-15 rifles and carbines. They addressed this in the early 1980s by adapting a CAR-15 to 9x19mm. It used an adapter in the magazine well to fit modified Uzi pattern magazines (they were given hold-open tabs on the followers), and retained the same handling and controls as the full size AR. The SMG was made as a closed bolt, hammer fired, simple blowback action. By adding weight to the bolt carrier and buffer, the rate of fire was kept down to around 800 rpm.
The Colt SMG never really captured wide appeal. It was reasonably successful for Colt in large part because of their ability to market it alongside rifles, but it was dogged by reliability problems. A bunch of different models were made with different fire control options, including a couple civilian semiautomatic models and the distinctive DoE “briefcase gun” and the integrally suppressed DEA model, although neither of those saw very substantial sales. Still, it remains available to this day.
Colt 633 DoE Reproduction: • PSA/H&R Clones the Department of Energy Co…
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December 24, 2025
Welcome to Bland World
Ted Gioia yearns for the return of the weirdo, the eccentric, and the non-conformist to spice up our bland, smooth, grey world:
“People are less weird than they used to be,” claims psychologist Adam Mastroianni. He describes this as “an epidemic of the mundane”.
The strangest thing, he believes, is absence of strangeness. Nobody wants to make waves — or even trickles. Conformity is the flavor of the month, and it tastes the same every month.
We live in a “smoothness society”, explains philosopher Byung-Chul Han. He points to the smooth, rounded contours of the iPhone as a symbol of society’s desire to remove friction. Our phone apps demonstrate the exact same thing. We scroll and swipe with such ease, and anything with complexity, nuance, or resistance is eliminated from consideration.
“The smooth is the signature of the present time”, he claims. Everything from the Brazilian wax job applied to human bodies to the wax coating put on fruits and vegetables aims at the same ideal.
Resistance is futile. Everything must be smooth. Paradise now really is that paved parking lot.
In a world without complexity or resistance, nothing ever changes. Most movies, music, books feel like stagnant rehashes of the same formulas. And that’s intentional.
For the first time in history, fashions don’t change. We don’t change.
Others have noticed this avoidance of anything new or different. Things are designed to blend in, not stand out. Jessica Stillman, writing in Inc., complains about a “blandness epidemic“. Brian Klaas calls it the “surefire mediocre“.
Everywhere you look, the system is serving up more of the same.
It’s not just in our imagination — the “world really is getting grayer“. A researcher recently studied photos of household items going back two centuries. An analysis of the pixels showed a scary collapse in color.
Even the Victorians — often considered as conformists — lived a more color-filled life. We have almost completely abandoned red and yellow and other bright hues in favor a boring black-and-white spectrum.
But what’s most striking is how this descent into grayness has accelerated during the last few years. The most popular color is now charcoal — and at the current rate it will soon account for half of the marketplace.
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