Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Nov 2022The Auto Ordnance company made a couple of different types of cases for the Thompson SMG, and today we are going to look at two of the most common and one exceptionally cool type. The two most typically found are the Police and FBI cases. Both of these hold the gun along with the detached stock, one drum, and four box magazines. The Police type has the drum and box mags separated for balance and was lined with purple velvet; the FBI case was generally blue velvet and had all the magazines on the left (making it balance poorly).
The other case we have today is one fabricated by the Secret Service for one of its protective details. This is a flat-lying wooden case, which holds the gun, stock, and four box magazines — no drums for the Service.
(more…)
March 4, 2023
Thompson SMG Cases: Police, FBI, and Secret Service
March 1, 2023
Mauser WW1 Flyer’s Rifle: the Flieger Selbstlader Karabiner 1916
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Nov 2022Paul Mauser dedicated much of his life to the development of a practical semiauto military rifle, and did manage to have a design that was used in combat by Germany in World War One. It began with the model 06/08, a short-recoil, flap-locked design made in both rifle and pistol form. The short recoil idea was disliked by the military for a shoulder rifle, and so Mauser redesigned it to be inertially locked with a fixed barrel. This was sold in small numbers as a sporting rifle, and tested by the military a few years before the war. Once war began, Mauser once again submitted the design for use in an infantry configuration, but the system was too delicate for infantry combat. A second pattern was made for use by fliers, and this was accepted and used in service for that brief period between the introduction of military aviation and the adoption of aerial machine guns.
Designated the FSK-16 (FliegerSelbstladeKarabiner 1916), it was used primarily by balloon and Zeppelin crews. With a large magazine and self-loading action, it was much better for use in aircraft than the typical bolt action infantry rifles — and there was no mud to get into the action while airborne.
(more…)
February 26, 2023
Ortgies Automatic Pistols: Not as Boring as You Think!
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Jun 2016The Ortgies is a pistol whose interesting aspects are often overlooked on the assumption that it is just another identical .32 ACP blowback pistol. Well, it is that — but it is also more.
Mechanically, the Ortgies has a rather unusual grip safety mechanism that is quite different from what we expect to see today. It is also interesting in that the .32 and .380 versions differ only in the easily-interchanged barrel — even the magazines are marked for both calibers.
However, the most interesting part of the Ortgies story (in my opinion) is its production. In less than 5 full years (1919-1923), close to a half million of these guns were made, primarily by an industrial subsidiary of the German government. The guns were in large part a work program, creating export goods which could bring desperately needed hard currency into Germany to counteract the economic devastation of the Versailles treaty.
Have a look at the video and you may come away with a newfound appreciation for the humble Ortgies, like I did!
(more…)
February 23, 2023
Type 99 Arisaka Sniper Rifles
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Nov 2016The Japanese Army made significant use of snipers (or in today’s terminology, designated marksmen) as part of its infantry combined arms doctrine, and produced about 22,000 Type 97 sniper rifles for use in WWII and the Sino-Japanese War. In 1941, shortly after the adoption of the new 7.7mm rifle cartridge, it was decided that a sniper rifle variant of the Type 99 should be made in addition to the Type 97 (which was basically a scoped Type 38).
Testing through 1941 determined that there was almost no practical difference in accuracy between scoped examples of the Type 99 long and short rifles, and so the short rifle was chosen to be the basis for the Type 99 sniper (the Type 99 long rifles would drop from production altogether pretty quickly anyway). About 1,000 of the scoped 99s were manufactured by the Kokura Arsenal using the same 2.5x scope as on the Type 97 sniper, while the Nagoya Arsenal instead used a 4x scope, offering more magnification at the expense of a narrower field of view. Nagoya would produce approximately 10,000 of these rifles, with 4x scopes except for a period between serial numbers 5,000 and 7,000 with 2.5x scopes (most likely the remainder stored at Kokura when that plant ceased production). The rifles made into snipers were given no special selection criteria; simply taken at random from normal production. The utility of the weapon in Japanese practice came not from it being mechanically more accurate than any other issue rifle, but rather from the optical sight allowing better exploitation of that standard rifle’s inherent accuracy.
(more…)
February 17, 2023
Vektor CR21: South Africa’s Futuristic Bullpup
Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Apr 2018The CR-21 was a private effort to create a new rifle for the South African military in the 1990s. Bullpup designs were all the rage at the time (Austria has the AUG, France had the FAMAS, the UK had the SA80, etc), and so a company called Lyttelton Engineering Works (now part of Denel Land Systems) created a bullpup conversion design for the South African R4 (Galil). It was given a very fluid, futuristic look, and equipped with a fiber optic optic without any iron sights. The action and magazines remained original R4/Galil, however.
The weapon was promoted to the South African military as an economical upgrade package for the R4 rifles already in service, but was met with little interest. Further efforts to sell the weapon to South African police and international military or security customers similarly met with no success. In total, only 200 complete rifles were made, plus parts for another 200. They achieved some notoriety in fictional media because of their looks, including use in the film District 9. As often happens, however, becoming popular in film or video games does not equate to commercial success.
Many thanks to the anonymous collector who let me take a look at this piece and bring you a video on it!
(more…)
February 13, 2023
Reising M55 Submachine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Sept 2015When the US entered WWII, submachine guns were in short supply and high demand. Much of the production of Thompson guns was being purchased by the UK, and what guns were available to the US military went first to the Army. In accordance with long tradition, the Marine Corps were secondary to the Army in receiving new weapons. However, the formation of a Marine paratroop unit in particular necessitated the Corps finding some sort of suitable submachine gun.
What was available at the time were Eugene Reising’s M50 and M55 guns, being manufactured by Harrington & Richardson. The guns were chambered for the standard .45ACP cartridge and used a delayed blowback action which allowed them to be significantly lighter than the Thompson. The M50 had a full-length traditional stock, while the M55 used a pistol grip and wire folding stock. Mechanically, the two variants were identical. The M55, which is what we have today, wound up being specifically issued to tank crews and paratroops, where its compactness was a significant advantage.
The Reising developed a quite bad reputation in the Pacific for a couple of reasons. Its parts were not always interchangeable between guns (a deliberate choice to speed up manufacture, which troops were not necessarily aware of), its mechanism was more susceptible to fouling than other military small arms, and its disassembly procedure was far too complex for military service. However, these issues did not prevent it from being quite successful and well-liked as a law enforcement weapon in civilian police use after the war. Thanks to that negative wartime reputation, Reisings are some of the least expensive military machine guns available on the market today in the US.
(more…)
February 10, 2023
Water-Cooled .50s: The US Navy Mk22 Pedestal Mount
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Oct 2022In 1942, the US Navy adopted the Mk22 Pedestal mount, which fitted a pair of water-cooled Browning M2 machine guns (one left-hand feed and one right-hand). It was used for antiaircraft use primarily, and was also adopted by the Army as the M46 in 1943. The mount was an update to the previous single-gun MK21.
The gunner was protected by a 3/8″ (9.5mm) hardened steel shield, and the mount could rotate a full 360 degrees, with elevation from -10 degrees to 80 degrees. They were produced by the Heintz Manufacturing company (no relation to the Heinz company that makes ketchup) of Pittsburgh from 1942 until 1945.
(more…)
February 7, 2023
The Soviet Union Adopts an SMG: Degtyarev’s PPD-34/38
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Oct 2022The Soviet Union adopted its first submachine gun in 1935 after trials of some 14 different design in 1932/33. The winner of the trials was Vasily Degtyarev, once of the Soviet Union’s most prolific firearms designers. His model 1934 was a simple blowback gun reminiscent of the MP-28,II albeit with different trigger and magazine systems. The PPD34 used a 25-round box magazine, chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev. It was put into slow production, with just 3,300 or so produced by the end of 1938. During that time, Degtyarev made a number of small improvements to the gun, smoothing out the teething problems that are always found in new production systems. This improved version was designated the PPD34-38.
During the time, the submachine gun was not considered a priority by the Red Army. The leading generals did not see the value in the class of arms, and actually pulled all the PPDs from service in 1939 and had them put into storage. Only a few months later, the Red Army would be given a grim demonstration of SMG effectiveness when they closed the border into Finland and encountered determined Finnish resistance with kp/31 Suomi SMGs.
Some Suomis were captured by Soviet troops, and were very well liked — for obvious reasons. The inevitable inquiry into why the Red Army did not have such a weapon led to a frantic re-issuing of PPDs and production of as many as possible. At Stalin’s direction, the Suomi drum magazine was copied and adapted to the PPD34-38 as well. This required the addition of a short feed tower to fit the magazine well initially deigned for a standard box magazine. While PPD34-38 production continued, the PPD40 was quickly designed and put into production alongside the older model. Eventually, both were replaced in service by the PPSh-41, which was truly designed for mass industrial production.
(more…)
February 2, 2023
MAC Model 1947 Prototype SMGs
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Oct 2022Immediately upon the liberation of France in 1944, the French military began a process of developing a whole new suite of small arms. As it applied to SMGs, the desire was for a design in 9mm Parabellum (no more 7.65mm French Long), with an emphasis on something light, handy, and foldable. All three of the French state arsenals (MAC, MAS, and MAT) developed designs to meet the requirement, and today we are looking at the first pair of offerings from Chatellerault (MAC). These are the 1947 pattern, a very light lever-delayed system with (frankly) terrible ergonomics.
Many thanks to the French IRCGN (Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie) for generously giving me access to film these unique specimens for you!
Today’s video — and many others — have been made possible in part by my friend Shéhérazade (Shazzi) Samimi-Hoflack. She is a real estate agent in Paris who specializes in working with English-speakers, and she has helped me arrange places to stay while I’m filming in France. I know that exchange rates make this a good time for Americans to invest in Europe, and if you are interested in Parisian real estate I would highly recommend her. She can be reached at: samimiconsulting@gmail.com
(Note: she did not pay for this endorsement)
(more…)
January 29, 2023
France’s Ultimate WW1 Selfloading Rifle: The RSC-1918
Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Sept 2017The French RSC-1917 semiauto rifle was a major step forward in arms technology during World War One, offering a reliable and effective self-loading rifle for issue to squad leaders, expert marksmen, and other particularly experienced and effective troops. No other military was able to field a semiauto combat shoulder rifle during this was in anything but very limited numbers. However, the RSC-1917 definitely had some shortcomings:
– It was just too long, at the same size as the Lebel
– The specialized clip was a logistical problem
– The gas system was fragile and difficult to clean or disassemble
– The magazine cover was easily damagedThese issues were all addressed in the Model 1918 upgrade of the rifle, although it was too late to see active service in the Great War. The new pattern was substantially shorter (both the stock and barrel), it used the standard Berthier 5-round clip, it had a substantially strengthened magazine cover, and a much improved gas system.
Today, we will compare the various features of the 1917 and 1918 rifles, and disassemble the 1918 gas system to show how it worked.
(more…)
January 24, 2023
What Would Browning Do: FN’s New High Power
Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Sept 2022It seems like everyone is making a copy of the Browning High Power these days, and FN themselves have jumped into the arena as well. What FN is making isn’t just a clone of the original pistol, though — they have built something largely new, taking inspiration and design cues from the original BHP to create a gun more suited to 2022 than 1935.
While the original High Power (or Hi Power, depending on what era you are looking at) is lovingly romanticized by many — and I totally understand why — it has a number of significant shortcomings by today’s standards. It doesn’t feed hollow points well. The triggers are often bad, in part because of the magazine safety. The sights are tiny. The capacity is underwhelming. And most significantly to me, they tend to have bloody hammer bite, forcing you to take a low grip or just suffer through.
The new FN High Power looks to have fixed all of that. It’s a bigger pistol, but it offers a much more comfortable grip, modern style sights, a very nice single action trigger, and 17 round capacity (it does not interchange magazines with the original BHP). Let’s take a closer look at what FN did, and why …
(more…)
January 21, 2023
Ask Ian: Liberators or Cobray Terminators for the Elbonian Resistance?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Sept 2022From Jon on Patreon:
“Elbonia has been occupied by an enemy force. Do you sabotage their resistance by airdropping them Liberator pistols or Cobray Terminators?”To my mind, the Liberator is a substantially more useful resistance weapons, so I would supply Elbonia with lots of crates of Cobray Terminators. Why?
First, the Liberator is concealable. Historically, lots of resistance action requires hiding a small weapons. It’s not all forest encampments and ambushes.
Second, the Liberator is more effective. It uses a .45ACP pistol cartridge. The smooth barrel and atrocious sights certainly limit its utility, but if you actually hit someone with it, it will do the job. Most of the shotgun ammunition available to a resistance organization will be the most common sort of sporting ammunition, which is birdshot. Birdshot is very ineffective against people at anything but absolutely point-blank range.
Third, it is much simpler to fabricate a single-shot shotgun than a compact pistol. The Elbonian Resistance wouldn’t have much trouble making something like a Richardson Guerrilla Gun, so supplying them with Terminators doesn’t actually give them much that they couldn’t get already.
(more…)
January 18, 2023
Ask Ian: Why No German WW2 50-Cal Machine Guns? (feat. Nick Moran)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Sep 2022From Nathaniel on Patreon:
“Why didn’t Germany or Axis powers have a machine gun similar to the American M2?”Basically, because everyone faced the choice of a .50 caliber machine gun or 20mm (or larger) cannons for anti-aircraft use, and most people chose the cannons — including Germany. There were some .50 caliber machine guns adopted by Axis powers, most notably the Hotchkiss 1930, a magazine-fed 13.2mm gun that was used by both Italy and Japan (among others). However, the use of the .50 caliber M2 by the US was really a logistical holdover form the interwar period. The M2 remained in production because it was adopted by US Coastal Artillery as a water-cooled anti-aircraft gun, and commercial sales by Colt were slim but sufficient to keep the gun in development through the 20s and 30s. It was used as a main armament in early American armor, but obsolete in this role when the war broke out.
However, with the gun in production and no obvious domestic 20mm design, the US chose to simply make an astounding number of M2s and just dump them everywhere, from Jeeps to trucks to halftracks to tanks to self-propelled guns. And that’s not considering the 75% of production that went to coaxial and aircraft versions …
Anyway, back to the question. The German choice for antiaircraft use was the 20mm and 37mm Flak systems, and not a .50 MG on every tank turret. And so, there was really no motive to develop such a gun. The Soviets did choose to go the US route, though, and developed the DShK-38 for the same role as the US M2 — although it was made in only a tiny fraction of the quantity of the M2.
(more…)
January 14, 2023
Star Megastar: Spain’s Massive 10mm Autopistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Sep 2022In the late 1980s, the Spanish gun maker Star decided to join the new hot trend of 10mm semiauto pistols. The cartridge was getting a lot of press, and Star saw this as an opportunity to ride the wave and also the get a pistol on the market that would attract IPSC competitors. Unlike some companies adapting existing .45ACP designs to 10mm, Star decided to start from scratch to build a pistol that was massive and durable; able to handle the power of the cartridge without any worries.
Star engineer Eduardo Zamacola (who had previously designed the M38/30/31 series for Star) had the first prototypes ready in 1990, in both 10mm Auto and .45 ACP. The design took cues from the Petter designs of France and SIG, with full-length internal slide rails and a removable modular fire control system. It offered 12 round capacity in .45 and 14 rounds in 10mm.
The pistol was quite massive and heavy (1.4kg / 3.1 lb), and failed to sell well from the start. The 10mm craze flared out rather quickly — it remains a niche cartridge to this day, despite periodic releases of new 10mm pistols (the SIG 320 in 10mm being the most recent). What really killed the Megastar, though, was the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban in the US. This prohibited new magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and the whole point of the bulk of the Megastar was to allow larger double-stack magazines. With those no longer available, there was really not much reason to get a Megastar instead of something like a 1911. In total, just 978 were made in 10mm and 5,424 in .45ACP, with production ending in 1995.
(more…)
January 11, 2023
Repurposing Obsolete Rifles: The Lebel R35 Carbine
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Dec 2017The French military had investigated the possibility of a Lebel carbine in the 1880s, but by the 1930s a different set of priorities was in place. In an effort to make some use of the vast stockpiles of obsolete Lebel rifles France had, a plan was put in place to shorten then into carbines for auxiliary troops like artillery crews and engineers. These men needed some sort of rifle or carbine, but they did not need the best and newest weapons. By giving them shortened Lebel carbines, it would free up more modern rifles like the M34 Berthiers in 7.5mm and the new MAS-36 rifles to go to the front line infantry who needed them most.
The R35 conversion was developed by the Tulle arsenal and adopted in January of 1936. The French government ordered 100,000 to be made, and deliveries began in April of 1937. Production would accelerate and continue right up to the spring of 1940, with a total of about 45,000 being actually delivered before the armistice with Germany. The conversions were all assembled at Tulle, but four other factories manufactured barrels for them: Chatellerault (MAC), St Etienne (MAS), Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques (SACM), and Manufacture d’Armes de Paris (MAP). These barrels were 450mm long (17.7 inches), and with the similarly shortened magazine tube, the R35 carbines held just 3 rounds. Production would not continue after the liberation of France in 1944.
(more…)
