Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 14, 2024The Patchett Machine Carbine Mk I is the predecessor to the Sterling SMG. It was developed by George William Patchett, who was an employee of the Sterling company. At the beginning of the wear, Sterling was making Lanchester SMGs, and Patchett began in 1942 working on a new design that was intended to be simpler, cheaper, and lighter than the Lanchester. He used the receiver tube dimensions from the Sten and the magazine well and barrel shroud from the Lanchester. His first prototypes were ready in 1943, but it wasn’t until early 1944 that the British government actually issued a requirement for a new submachine gun to replace the Stens in service.
The initial Patchett guns worked very well in early 1944 testing, which continued into 1945. It ultimately came out the winner of the trials, but they didn’t conclude until World War Two was over — and nothing was adopted because of the much-reduced need for small arms. Patchett continued to work on the gun, and by 1953 he was able to win adoption of it in the later Sterling form — which is a story for a separate video.
The Patchett was not used in any significant quantity in World War Two. At most, a few of them may have been taken on the parachute drops on Arnhem — there are specifically three trials guns which appear referenced in British documents before Arnhem, but are never mentioned afterwards (numbers 67, 70, and 72). Were they taken into the field? We really don’t know.
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May 21, 2024
Patchett Machine Carbine Mk I: Sten Becomes Sterling
May 15, 2024
Fiji in World War Two: the Momi Bay Gun Battery
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 3, 2024When the clouds of World War Two began to loom in the 1930s, Britain decided to begin securing some of its more distant colonial outposts — places that might be of strategic importance in a future conflict. Fiji was once of these outposts — a vital point on the seagoing supply line from Europe and the Americas to Australia and Asia. Construction of coastal defense batteries began in the late 1930s, mostly using 6 inch MkVII naval guns. These batteries were constructed around the capital of Suva and the airfield at Nadi on the west side of the island.
Today we are at the Momi Bay Battery, just south of Nadi. This emplacement has been restored and is maintained as a public museum site by the Fijian government today. It houses two 6 inch guns (the King’s Gun and the Queen’s Gun, colloquially), and originally also included an optical rangefinder and various command and control buildings. It had a range of about 8 miles, and controlled one of the few natural approaches to western Fiji.
The guns here were only fired in anger once, and that was actually at an unidentified sonar contact in the Bay. No evidence of an enemy vessel was ever found, and it ended up just being a brief reconnaissance by fire, so to speak. By later in the war, the threat of Japanese invasion had passed, but Fiji remained an active part of the war effort, as a transportation hub and a site for soldiers to get some R&R outside of combat duties. This led to the creation of the successful tourist economy which remains vibrant today on the island.
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May 12, 2024
Whitneyville Rolling Block for the Montreal Riot Squad
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 2, 2024In 1875 the Montreal City Police decided that they wanted to equip a riot squad in case of public disturbance. They initially requested funds for 50 revolvers, but this changed to 60 carbines instead, and these were purchased via broker in 1876 from the Whitneyville Armory. Whitneyville was a factory that made a variety of independently patented designs, and their rolling block design was actually protected by a different patent (the Whitney-Laidley) than Remington’s, despite the very similar appearances of the two guns.
The Montreal Rolling Blocks were carbines, fitted with long bayonets and chambered for a .43 caliber black powder cartridge. They were engraved “Montreal Police” on the barrels, and were actually never fired in anger, nor even deployed. They remained in government possession until the 1960s, when they were finally sold off. This example is here for me to film courtesy of Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage Magazine.
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May 8, 2024
Walther Volkspistole
Forgotten Weapons
Published Mar 11, 2015As the Second World War started to really take a toll on German industrial production, several companies started to work on alternatives to the P38 handgun in an effort to reduce production cost and time. This is one such example made by Walther, with a normal type of milled slide and an experimental frame made from stamped sheet steel. It uses a rotating barrel mechanism taken from Nickl (and the Steyr-Hahn before him), and uses standard P38 magazines. None of these designs actually made it into production before the end of the war.
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May 5, 2024
M98kF1 ZF41: Norway Recycles Germany’s Worst Sniper Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 29, 2024When Germany capitulated at the end of World War Two, several hundred thousand German soldiers were stuck in Norway (thanks to the efforts of the Norwegian Resistance preventing them from moving south to reinforce against Allied landings in Normandy). These solders’ arms were surrendered to the Norwegians, and they formed the basis of Norwegian Army and Home Guard armaments for many years. With hundreds of thousands of K98k rifles to choose from, the Norwegians were able to pick out plenty in good condition. This included 400 ZF41 DMR/sniper rifles that were kept intact and taken into Norwegian service. Three different branches used the rifles, and they are marked on the chamber with either HAER (Army), FLY (Air Force), or K.ART (Naval Artillery).
In 1950, Norway began to get US military aid in .30-06, and they decided to rebarrel these Mausers to that cartridge. The process began in 1952 and they were all converted by the end of 1956. The new barrels are marked “KAL 7.62”, for 7.62x63mm. There was only a small amount of experimental further conversion to 7.62mm NATO. The ZF-41 models like this one were also given a new serial number tag riveted onto the scope mount with the rifle’s serial number (150001 through 150400).
Converted Mausers served in the Home Guard until the early 1970s, when they were replaced by the AG3 (HK91).
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April 29, 2024
Battle Rifles of World War Two: Overview
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 26, 2024Today we are going to take a look at the three main battle rifles of World War Two — the M1 Garand, the SVT-40, and the Gewehr 43. We will also consider the SVT-38, Gewehr 41(W), and Gewehr 41(M). The United States, Soviet Union, and Germany were the three countries that fielded large numbers of semiautomatic full-power rifles in combat in WW2; how did they differ in their approaches to infantry firepower?
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April 26, 2024
Guns for the Pope’s Police: Mazzocchi Pinfire Revolver
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 22, 2024The revolver we are looking at today is a 9mm pinfire revolver adopted for the Papal Gendarmerie in 1868. At that time, the Papal States controlled roughly the same amount of territory as Switzerland today, and had its own armed forced for internal security — the Papal Gendarmerie. The Papal States had previously adopted a 12mm Lefaucheux revolver for its army, but this was deemed too bulky for the Gendarmes. So in 1867, they went looking for a smaller new pistol. The Mazzocchi brothers in Rome had been official armorers to the Vatican for three generations (their shop was actually located in Castel St Angelo until 1850!), and they won the contract for the Gendarmerie with this revolver model. A total of 2500 were made in 1868 and 1869, at 50 Papal Lira each.
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April 23, 2024
The 1950 Marketing Contest to Name the S&W Chiefs Special
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 19, 2024Today we’re taking a look at a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, but not just any Chiefs Special. This is serial number 29, factory engraved and gifted to Chief Edward Boyko of Passaic New Jersey in 1950. When S&W introduced the new revolver to compete with Colt’s Detective Special, they simply called it the “Model J” (it was the first of the J-frame S&W revolvers). They released it at the 1950 annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and ran a contest among to attendees to name the new gun.
Chief Edward Boyko’s suggestion of “Chiefs Special” was (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the audience) voted winner, and S&W gave him a personally engraved example as a prize. He would carry that gun for another 10 years as Passaic Chief of Police before retiring in 1960.
The Chiefs Special was essentially a slightly scaled-up I-frame revolver, strengthened to handle the .38 Special cartridge instead of the previous .38 S&W option. This extremely early example has a number of features not present on standard production guns, including the small trigger guard, large cylinder release latch, and semi-circular front sight.
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April 20, 2024
Cape Esperance and the Japanese Evacuation of Guadalcanal
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 12, 2024Today we return to Guadalcanal, to the site of the last actions of the campaign. For the Japanese, the defeat at Edson’s Ridge (aka Bloody Ridge) forced a disastrous and uncoordinated retreat into the jungle. With their supply lines destroyed, Japanese troops largely moved west on the island, away from American positions and in search of food. This would eventually bring them to Cape Esperance, where a rearguard force was landed, and some 10,652 Japanese soldiers were successfully evacuated on fast-moving destroyers over the course of several nights in early February, 1943.
On the American side, Army troops landed to relieve the Marines. In January and into early February they ran what was considered a mopping-up campaign west, including landings on the far west end of the island beyond Esperance. The intention was to encircle the remaining Japanese forces, under the assumption that the destroyer activity was landing fresh troops. Instead, when the American forces joined up at Cape Esperance it was an anticlimactic end to the fighting, as all they found were remnants of equipment that had been left on the beaches.
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April 17, 2024
French M14 Conversion – the Gras in 8mm Lebel
Forgotten Weapons
Published May 16, 2016The French adopted the Gras as their first mass-issued metallic cartridge rifle in 1874, replacing the needlefire 1866 Chassepot. Quite a lot of Gras rifles were manufactured, and they became a second-line rifle when the 1886 Lebel was introduced with brand-new smokeless powder and its smallbore 8mm projectile. When it became clear that the quick and decisive war against Germany was truly turning into the Great War, France began looking for ways to increase the number of modern Lebel rifles it could supply to the front.
One option that was used was to take Gras rifles from inventory and rebarrel them for the 8mm Lebel cartridge (which was based on the Gras casehead anyway). These could be issued to troops who didn’t really need a top-of-the-line rifle (like artillery crews, train and prison guards, etc). Then the Lebel rifles from those troops could be redirected to the front.
The rebarreling process was done by a number of contractors, using Lebel barrels already in mass production. The 11mm barrel from the Gras would be removed, and only the front 6 inches (150mm) or so kept. A Lebel barrel and rear sight would be mounted on the Gras receiver, and that front 6 inches of Gras barrel bored out to fit tightly over the muzzle of the new 8mm barrel. This allowed the original stock and nosecap to be used (the 8mm barrel being substantially smaller in diameter, and not fitting the stock and hardware by itself). It also allowed the original Gras bayonet to be fitted without modification, since the bayonet lug was also on that retained section of barrel. In addition, a short wooden handguard was fitted. This was designated the modification of 1914, and an “M14” was stamped on the receivers to note it.
These guns are of dubious safety to shoot, since the retain the single locking lug of the Gras, designed for only black powder pressures. However, this was deemed safe enough for the small amount of actual shooting they were expected to do.
April 14, 2024
Elmer Keith’s Revolver Number 5
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 28, 2015Elmer Keith’s No.5 Single Action Army is arguably the most famous custom revolver ever made. Keith had it built in 1928 after developing a friendship with Harold Croft, another revolver enthusiast. Croft had shown Keith his own custom revolvers, which he had numbered 1 through 4. Croft had been trying to make an ideal pocket gun, and Keith used several of his ideas along with some of Keith’s own to put together a revolver for general-purpose field use. In recognition of Croft’s work, Keith called his gun Number 5. It featured an extended flat top with windage-adjustable sights, an improved mainspring, redesigned cylinder pin, custom hammer spur, and modified Bisley grip. It was chambered for the .44 Special/.44 Russian cartridges (the Russian being a slightly shorter version of the Special), and it was Keith’s favorite shooting piece until the .44 Magnum cartridge was introduced in the late 1950s. He described this gun in detail in a 1929 American Rifleman article entitled “The Last Word”.
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April 11, 2024
SVT-40: The Soviet Standard Semiauto from WW2
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 10, 2024The Red Army was interested in developing a semiautomatic rifle clear back to the mid 1920s, and they spent about 15 years running trials and development programs to find one. First in 1930 a Degtyarev design was adopted, followed by the Simonov AVS-36, and then Tokarev won out in 1938 with the SVT-38. Combat experience in the Winter War led to an upgrade program to reduce the weight of the rifle, and that created the SVT-40. Between April 1940 and mid 1942, about 1.4 million SVT-40s were produced in three different factories. They were supposed to be the new standard infantry rifle and also the sniper’s rifle — although they ultimately failed to really be either.
In 1942, production shifted to the AVT-40, identical to the SVT-40 but with a trigger group capable of fully automatic fire. Another roughly 500,000 of these were produced by the end of the war, but the focus of small arms issue had changed to Mosins and submachine guns — options that were a lot cheaper to produce.
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April 8, 2024
Beecher’s Bible: A Sharps 1853 from John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 8, 2024On October 16, 1859 John Brown and 19 men left the Kennedy farmhouse and made their way a few miles south to the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. They planned to seize the Arsenal and use its arms — along with 200 Sharps 1853 carbines and 1,000 pikes they had previously purchased — to ignite and arm a slave revolt. Brown was a true fanatic for the abolitionist cause, perfectly willing to spill blood for a just cause. His assault on the Arsenal lasted three days, but failed to incite a rebellion. Instead of attracting local slaves to his banner, he attracted local militia and the US Marines. His force was besieged in the arsenal firehouse, and when the Marines broke through the doors they captured five surviving members of the Brown party, including Brown himself. All five were quickly tried and found guilty of murder, treason, and inciting negroes to riot. They were sentenced to death, and hanged on December 2, 1859.
Most of Brown’s 200 Sharps carbines were left in the farmhouse hideout, to be distributed when the insurrection took hold. These were found by local militia, among them the Independent Greys, and some were kept as souvenirs — including this example.
There is an intriguing historical question as to whether Brown’s raid was ultimately good for the country or not. It was extremely divisive at the time, and it can be argued that the raid was a major factor leading to Lincoln’s election and the Civil War. Could slavery have been abolished without the need for a cataclysmic war if John Brown had not fractured the Democratic Party? To what extent is killing for a cause justifiable? Do the ends always justify the means? John Brown had no doubts about his answers to these questions … but maybe he should have.
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April 5, 2024
Ero: The Croatian Uzi (With Israeli Help?)
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 3, 2024The best of the submachine guns made in Croatia during the Homeland War was the Ero, made by a company called Arma. The Ero is a basically perfect, parts-interchangeable copy of the Israeli Uzi that was developed in 1992 and adopted into Croatian Army service in 1993. The only really distinguishable difference between the Ero and Uzi is the Ero’s use of Croatian-language selector markings (and receiver markings). Between 15,000 and 20,000 were produced, and they remained in service long after Croatian independence was secured. They were issued to vehicle crews, military police, special forces, and reconnaissance units.
Arma was a subsidiary of a major Croatian engineering firm, and after the Ero production it developed the APS-95 Croatian AK (which is a story for another video). They were a very competent company, but the details and quality of the Ero are so good that I believe it must have been made with tacit or explicit assistance from Israel. Croatia does have a strong Jewish community, and there were rumors during the war that the technical data package for the Uzi did find its way into Croatia. There is no official acknowledgement of this happening, but it would certainly not be hard to believe. But however the development happened, the result was a very high quality submachine gun.
A big thanks to the Croatian Police Museum (Muzej Policije) in Zagreb for giving me access to film this cool piece for you! Check them out at: https://muzej-policije.gov.hr
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April 2, 2024
Gear-Ratio-Accelerated? Yep, It’s a Thing: French MAT 1955 Prototype
Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 20, 2023EDIT: Shoot, I managed to get the gear ratio backwards. Sorry! The recoil action provides the necessary delay, and then the gear ratio provides acceleration to ensure the bolt can open reliably, akin to the accelerator in a Browning M1917 or 1919 machine gun, or a Lahti L35 pistol. Please excuse the error …
In the search for an improvement to the MAS 1949 rifle for the French military, all the French arsenals proposed new designs. MAS supplied an updated version that was ultimately adopted as the MAS 49/56, but the Tulle Arsenal (MAT) had a wacky idea of its own. In 1955, they presented a short-recoil, tilting bolt, gear-ratio-delayed system. It was an open bolt firing rifle chambered for the 7.5x54mm cartridge, using detachable 20-round magazines. Today we have one of the first models to look at, and there was a second iteration in 1956, which lightened the rifle by replacing some steel parts with aluminum. Neither was successful, much to the relief of the French Army …
Many thanks to the IRCGN (Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale) for allowing me access to film this unique rifle for you!
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