Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 18, 2023Many of the special forces groups that operated during the Vietnam War found their standard issue weapons a bit unwieldy for use in confined jungle environments. They also found a need for something that could deliver an immediate large volume of fire to break contact during an ambush (or deliver an ambush of their own). The Australians were no exception, and with the typical Special Forces attitude towards customization a few guys made some improvements to what they were issued …
What we have today is a recreation (by Mark Graham of ARS, build on a DSA semiauto receiver) of an Australian L1A1 with its flash hider cut down and a second pistol grip mounted to the barrel. The real examples of these often had rather shorter barrels, and ones that began life as semiauto L1A1 rifles were typically converted to fully automatic (some began as L2A1 automatic rifles and did not require this extra step). Fitted with a large LMG magazine, they could deliver a lot of firepower in a very short time; just the ticket for a small jungle patrol.
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March 30, 2024
Extra Firepower for Vietnam: the Aussie “B!tch”
March 27, 2024
Weirdest of the French Trials SMGs: the EROP 1954
Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 15, 2023“EROP” was a small company based in Paris, which produced about 18 submachine gun prototypes between 1954 and 1956. These were submitted to French military trials in several different configurations first in 1954 and later in 1956, and none of them were given any further consideration after that.
Mechanically, the EROP guns are closed-bolt and striker-fired, using modified MP40 magazines (and chambered for 9mm Parabellum). They use a small square-profile tubular receiver, and several (including this particular one) have a very perplexing buttstock system that I really can’t figure out.
Many thanks to the IRCGN (Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale) for allowing me access to film this unique SMG for you!
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March 24, 2024
Gahendra: the Nepalese Not-A-Martini
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jul 8, 2018(This video has been updated from its original form to fix translation issues and to clarify that Nepal was not, in fact, a British colony. Originally published January 10, 2017.)
Long a mysterious unknown member of the Martini family, the Nepalese Gahendra rifles finally became available in the US and Europe after IMA purchased Nepal’s cache of historic arms. The Gahendra is a uniquely Nepalese design built to sidestep British reluctance to supply military arms to the country. Developed by a General Gahendra (who is also responsible for the Bira copy of the Gardner Gun), the rifle is not actually a Martini at all. Instead, it shares its mechanical features mostly with the earlier Peabody falling block rifles, using a hammer and flat mainspring (the Martini improvement replaces there with a striker and coil spring).
Gahendras are chambered for the standard British .577/.450 Martini cartridge, although their bore diameters vary substantially, and one should absolutely slug a specific rifle before loading ammunition for it. In fact, unless you are capable of proficiently assessing the safety of the Gahendra, it is wiser not to shoot them at all. These rifles were individually handmade well over a hundred years ago using steels of questionable metallurgy and hardening.
That said, the guns were actually much better made than most people assume, considering their non-interchangeable parts. Craftsmen built each rifle part by part, giving the factory an output of just four rifles per day. Production began in the 1880s, and according to the Nepalese government ended prior to 1899. Dates on the rifles, however, are commonly found as late as 1911. These dates are generally assumed to be inventory or refurbishment dates.
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March 21, 2024
French NATO Standardization: the MAS 49-56 in 7.62mm
Forgotten Weapons
Published May 27, 2019In the late 1950s, France was still part of the NATO integrated military structure. When the 7.62x51mm cartridge was adopted as standard for the alliance, France looked to be in a good position to simply convert their MAS 49-56 rifles to use it. After all, the 7.5mm cartridge the rifle was designed for was very similar to the new NATO round. After several years of trials, however, the project was dropped as impractical. It turned out that the much different pressure curve of the 7.62mm round would require significant redesign of the MAS rifles. They suffered from poor extraction, broken parts from high bolt velocity, and other issues (not coincidentally, the exact same problems reported with the 308 MAS 49-56 rifles imported by Century …). The St Etienne factory only made a total of 150 of them in 7.62x51mm before the project ended.
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March 18, 2024
Moore’s Patent Revolver (Swing-Out Cylinder)
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 13, 2015Manufactured in Brooklyn from 1861 until 1863, Moore’s revolver was a 7-shot single-action piece firing .32 rimfire cartridges. What makes it unique is its swing-out cylinder design — the first commercial revolver in the US to use this mechanism. A latch on the back of the frame released the entire barrel and cylinder assembly, allowing it to tip over to the right, exposing the chambers for loading and unloading. The ejector rod is stored under the barrel, but must be removed and used by hand when needed. Moore’s revolvers were popular with New Yorkers heading off to the Civil War and almost 8000 were made, but production was halted when Rollin White successfully sued for patent infringement (over his patent on the bored-though cylinder).
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March 15, 2024
Starr DA & SA Revolvers
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 4, 2015Starr revolvers are one of the less recognized designs used in the US Civil War, although tens of thousands of them were made and issued. Indeed, in many ways they were superior to the much more common Colt and Remington revolvers of the period. One of the interesting facts about the Starr is that the double action design came first, and was only replaced with the more typical single action design several years into the war (due to problems with price and complexity). Today we’re taking a look at a pair of Starrs, one single action and one double action. Ultimately the company shut down after the end of the war, and Colt would go on to dominate the revolver market in the United States.
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March 12, 2024
Vektor CP-1: Recalled to the Mother Ship
Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 8, 2023The Vektor CP-1 was developed by Lyttleton Engineering Works (who owned the Vektor brand) in 1995 for a South African Police contract. They lost that contract to the Republic Arms RAP-401, but decided to put the CP-1 onto the civilian market instead. It was a pretty decent seller for them, and after a couple years they started importing it into the US. Things went bad when it turned out the the gun wasn’t quite drop-safe, and in late 2000 they were recalled for a repair. Some were repaired and returned to owners, but a great many were simply repurchased by Vektor instead. In light of the recall and potential future problems with the US legal outlook, Vektor USA was dissolved circa 2001.
Mechanically, the CP1 is a gas-delayed blowback pistol in 9mm Parabellum. It came with 12- and 13-round magazines (10 rounds in the US, because of the Assault Weapons Ban). It was hammer fired, and used a polymer frame (the first such made in South Africa). Its futuristic design lines are very deliberate, and its biggest shortcoming is a fairly heavy trigger, for being single action only. It has a somewhat unorthodox trigger safety, and also a Garand-style manual safety in the front of the trigger guard.
In today’s video, we will take a look at both an original configuration example and also one rebuilt after the recall, with a new firing pin block mechanism.
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March 9, 2024
1871 Spencer Rifle Conversion
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 12, 2014The Spencer repeating rifle was a major leap forward in infantry firepower, and more than one hundred thousand of them were purchased by the US military during the Civil War. The Spencer offered a 7-round magazine of rimfire .56 caliber cartridges in an era when the single-shot muzzle-loading rifle was still predominant. This particular Spencer is a long rifle which was one of roughly 1100 rebuilt from damaged carbines in 1871 at Springfield Arsenal.
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March 6, 2024
Venezuelan FN49: The First FN49 Contract
Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 1, 2023Venezuela was the first nation to purchase the FN-49 rifle, before even the Belgian military. In fact, the Venezuelan contract was signed in 1948, before the “FN-49” designation was even in place. Venezuela bought a total of 8,012 rifles in two batches — 4,000 rifles plus 12 cutaway training examples delivered in 1949 and a further 4,000 more rifles delivered in June 1951. All of them included the integral muzzle brake and scope mounting cuts, although no scopes were ever procured. They were all semiautomatic models.
Some of the rifles were issued and used, but some appear to have remained in depots their entire life. Venezuela was also an early adopter of the FAL, and the FN-49 was only used for a short time. In 1966, all of them (or virtually all) were sold as surplus to InterArms, and brought onto the US collector market.
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March 3, 2024
Argentine Brass Maxim: A Machine Gun of the Steampunk Age
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 29, 2023The Maxim Gun was the first successful true machine gun, and it became extremely popular worldwide. Maxim sent his first two working models to Enfield for testing in 1887, and by 1889 he had what he termed the “World Standard” model. No two contracts were quite identical, as the gun was constantly being tweaked and improved, but the 200 guns sold to Argentina in 1895 (50), 1898 (130) and 1902 (20) are a great time capsule into the configuration of the early Maxim guns in military service.
The Argentine Maxims had gorgeous brass jackets, along with ball grips, triggers, feed blocks, and fusee spring covers. The have the early 1889 pattern lock, complete with a walnut roller to assist belt feeding into the action. These guns were in Argentine military service until 1929 (which included a retrofit at DWM in 1909 to use the new Spitzer 7.65mm Mauser cartridge). They then passed into police use until 1956, and 91 were sold to Sam Cummings of InterArms in 1960. Of those, 8 were exported out of the US, 28 went to government agencies and museums, and the remaining 55 were sold onto the US collector market. They are the single largest group of early Maxims in the country today, and make fantastic collectors’ pieces.
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February 29, 2024
Hotchkiss Portative: Clunky But Durable
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 27, 2023The Portative was an attempt by the Hotchkiss company to make a light machine gun companion to their heavy model (which had found significant commercial success). The Portative used the same feed strips, albeit loaded upside down, and the same gas piston operation, but a very different locking system. Instead of a tilting locking block the Portative had a “fermeture nut” that rotated to lock onto the bolt with three sets of interrupted thread locking lugs. In addition, many of the traditionally internal parts were mounted externally on the Portative, and it was quite the awkward gun to use.
The Portative was adopted by the American Army as the Model 1909 Benet-Mercié, and by the British early in World War One as a cavalry and tank-mounted gun. The remainder of Portative contracts were relatively small from second-tier military forces, including several South American countries.
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February 26, 2024
FN Model 30: The First Belgian BAR
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 22, 2023FN played a role in the production of Polish wz.28 BARs, and in the process obtained a copy of the technical package for the weapon, and converted it to metric measurements. Under the supervision of Dieudonne Saive, this was used as the basis for FN’s own BAR production, called the Modelé 30. Production was done with a license from Colt, who owned the rights to Browning’s patents on the BAR.
The Model 30 was basically a Colt R75 (Model 1925), but incorporated a few improvements. Most significantly, the male and female parts of the gas system were swapped, which prevented carbon from building up and eventually jamming the gas piston. In addition, the bolt removal latch was improved from the US pattern, and the Polish wz.28-style rear sight was used. Lastly, a rate-reduction mechanism on the fire control group gave the gun “slow” and “fast” settings, of roughly 350rpm and 600rpm instead of the traditional semi and full auto settings.
Production began in 7.65mm, and the Belgian Army adopted the weapon, taking deliveries from 1930 until occupation in 1940. The Model 30 was also made in 8mm Mauser, and exported to China and Ethiopia. The design was fairly quickly supplanted in 1932 by the FN Modelé D, which added a quick-change barrel mechanism to the design, and this pattern sold more widely.
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February 23, 2024
The Gun Science Says Can’t Work – Madsen LMG Mechanics
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Nov 2023The Madsen LMG is generally considered an extremely complex and confusing system — but is it really? Today we are taking one apart to see just how it actually works. Because in fact, it’s a very unusual system, but not really any more complicated than any other easy self-loading action.
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February 20, 2024
Belt-fed Madsen LMG: When the Weird Get Weirder
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 15, 2023First produced in 1902, the Madsen was one of the first practical light machine guns, and it remained in production for nearly 5 decades. The Madsen system is a rather unusual recoil-operated mechanism with a tilting bolt and a remarkably short receiver. The most unusual variation on the system was the belt-fed, high rate-of-fire pattern developed for aircraft use. This program was initiated by the Danish Air Force in the mid 1920s, and several different patterns were built by the time World War Two erupted.
The model here was actually a pattern that was under production for Hungary when German forces occupied Denmark. Taking over the factory, they continued the production and the guns went to the Luftwaffe for airfield defensive use.
In order to use disintegrating links instead of box magazines, some very odd modifications had to be made to the Madsen. One set of feed packs are actually built into the belt box itself, and the gun cannot function without the box attached. The only feasible path for empty link ejection is directly upwards, and so a horseshoe-shaped link chute was attached to the top cover, guiding links up over the gun and dropping them out the right side of the receiver. Very weird!
While several thousand of these were made under German occupation, very few survive today and they are extremely rare on the US registry.
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February 17, 2024
Breda 37: Italy’s Forgotten Heavy Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 11, 2023The Breda Model 37 was Italy’s standard heavy machine gun (which meant a rifle-caliber gun fired only from a tripod) during World War Two. It was chambered for the 8x59mm cartridge, as Italy used a two-cartridge system at the time, with 6.5mm for rifles and the heavier 8mm for machine guns to exploit their longer effective range. Production began in 1937 and continued until the end of the war, with a batch being made for German use after the Italian armistice in 1943. Pre-war it was also sold to Portugal as the m/938. It remained in Italian use after the war as well, eventually replaced by the MG42/59.
The Breda 37 is a durable, reliable, and overall very good design. It uses 20-round feed strips, with the quite unusual feature of placing fired cases back into the strips rather than ejecting them out of the gun. It is a relatively unknown gun today, but this is not because of any inferiority on its part.
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