Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Jan 2026In the 1980s, the Mauser company was completely adrift, without any real plans or goals or good leadership. They had been trying to get by on relaunched old designs, and not been very successful. By the late 80s they move on to just buying guns from other companies (like Renato Gamba) and relabelling them as Mauser. One of these partnerships was with FEG in Hungary.
In 1990, Mauser contracted with FEG to buy Browning High Power copies. FEG had actually licensed the high Power design from FN back in the 1970s, and was already tooled up for production, so they just added a Mauser roll mark and called the gun the M80. It was a straight copy of the High Power, except for the omission of the magazine safety. Production ran from 1990 until 1995, with only 3,200 made. The gun did not sell well, which should [not] be very surprising — this was a very outdated design by the 1990s and the Mauser name just wasn’t worth much as a value-add.
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June 14, 2026
Mauser M80SA: Actually a High Power and Actually Hungarian
June 8, 2026
How Red Dot Sights Work (What is a Collimator?)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Jan 2026A whole lot of people have used red dot sights, but how many actually understand how they work? Let’s see if we can fix that today …
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June 5, 2026
The First Ever British SLR: Serial Number One L1A1 Explained
Royal Armouries
Published Jan 14, 2026The L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle is one of the most iconic service rifles in British military history and on this week’s episode we have the very first one ever produced.
Next week: an original Royal Small Arms Factory archive film found by our archive team showing how the L1A1 was made.
0:00 Intro
0:46 Serial Number One Explained (UE57 Alpha 1)
1:40 Factory Plaque, Proof Marks & Enfield Details
4:26 Condition, Finish & Standard Configuration
5:17 Distinctive British L1A1 Features
7:08 Controls, Ergonomics & Fire Selector Choices
10:35 Why the L1A1 Won & Closing ThoughtsThis week’s object’s collections online page: https://royalarmouries.org/collection…
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June 2, 2026
Rare & Unique Sightings From 100 French FR-F2 Sniper Rifles
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 12, 2026Today I had a chance to dig through no less than one hundred FR-F2 snipers brought in by Navy Arms. I found a number of interesting and unusual things in the process, including a number of three-digit serial numbered very early production examples and some renumbered guns. We’ll also be looking at the Scrome J8, the modern picatinny scope mounts for the FR-F2, and things like depot refurbishment markings.
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May 30, 2026
Buying W.W. Greener: Tales from the Golden Age of Surplus
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Jan 2026I am joined today by Val Forgett III of Navy Arms for the first in a series of videos telling some of his stories form growing up in the golden age of surplus, with a father who was one of the largest arms dealers in the US. Today, we are talking about how his father ended up owning the W.W. Greener company for five days, and taking a look at a sniper rifle from the Greener museum collection — a .280 Ross fitted with a Zeiss optic used by Greener’s nephew to significant effect in the First World War.
Minor correction: The guns Val still has were duplicates for Edward VII, not Edward VI.
In addition, Mr Bailey’s story has a happy ending. Val’s father gave him the machine tools from the Greener shop and prepaid for six months lease on a nearby building for him to start his own business. He eventually partnered with a former Greener employee named Leonard Onions and they formed Bailons Gunmakers Ltd, which was in business for many years.
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May 29, 2026
QotD: What is volley fire and what is it for?
We want to start by understanding what volley fire is and what it is for. Put simply, “volley fire” is the tactic of having a whole bunch of soldiers with ranged weapons (typically guns) fire in coordinated groups: sometimes with the entire unit all firing at once or with specific sub-components of the unit firing in coordinated fashion, as with the “counter-march”. In both cases, the problem that volley fire is trying to overcome is slow weapon reload times: this is a solution for slow-firing but powerful ranged weapons. That has generally meant firearms, historically, but we do actually see volley fire drill with crossbows in China from a very early period as well (but, interestingly, there’s no evidence I am aware of that volley fire was ever done with crossbows in Europe – when Europeans decide to do volley fire with firearms, it seems to have been an entirely new idea).1
Volley fire can cover for the slow reload rate of guns or crossbows in two ways. The first are volley fire drills designed to ensure a continuous curtain of fire; the most famous of these is the “counter-march”, a drill where arquebuses or muskets are deployed several ranks deep (as many as six). The front rank fires a volley (that is, they all fire together) and then rush to the back of their file to begin reloading, allowing the next rank to fire, and so on. By the time the last rank has fired, the whole formation has moved backwards slightly (thus “counter” march) and the first rank has finished reloading and is ready to fire. The problem this is solving is the danger of an enemy, especially cavalry, crossing the entire effective range of the weapon in the long gap between shots. This, by the by, was the volley fire tactic that was being used in China with crossbows before gunpowder; I don’t know that anyone ever did volley-and-charge with crossbows, which lack the lethality of muskets.
The other classic use is volley-and-charge. Because firearms are very lethal but slow to reload, it could be very effective to march in close order right up to an enemy, dump a single volley by the entire unit into them to cause mass casualties and confusion and then immediately charge with pikes or bayonets to try to capitalize on the enemy being demoralized and confused. You can see variations on this tactic in things like the 17th century Highland Charge or the contemporary Swedish Gå–På (“go on”). By charging rather than waiting to reload, the attacker could take advantage of the high lethality of firearms without suffering the drawback of long reload times.
Crucially, note that volley-and-charge works because it compresses a lot of lethality into a very short time, which I suspect is why we don’t see it with bows or crossbows (but do see it with javelins, which may have shorter range and far fewer projectiles, but seem to have had higher lethality per projectile). As we’re going to see in a moment, the lethality of bows or crossbows against armored, shielded infantry – even in close order – was pretty low at any given moment and needed to add up over an extended period of shooting. By contrast, muskets were powerful enough to defeat most armor and thus to disable or kill basically anyone they hit, limited of course by reload time: with a reload time of as much as 30 seconds for earlier matchlocks, a line of musketeers might only be able to fire a few times at an advancing infantry unit (which might take two or three minutes to walk through effective range) and given the limited accuracy of smoothbore muskets, only the last shots would hit at a high level. By contrast, a unit doing volley-and-charge is compressing probably close to 50% of the lethality of sustained shooting, devastating moment and then immediately charging.
Putting that much lethality into a singular instant was valuable from a morale perspective and of course it enabled a unit to quick march through the enemy’s effective range, stopping only briefly to fire and charge, limiting losses from steady enemy fire. But as we’re going to see, the lethality of bows (and, to a significant extent, crossbows) was much lower and so couldn’t be effectively compressed into that single, devastating, confusing moment.2
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Why Archers Didn’t Volley Fire”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2005-05-02.
- On drill and in particular, counter-march volley fire with crossbows, see Andrade, The Gunpowder Age (2016), 149-160.
- It also didn’t generate a smokescreen to help with the final rushing charge, whereas a musket-and-bayonet unit might benefit significantly from firing and then charging through and out of its own obscuring smoke into a terrified and confused enemy.
May 27, 2026
The Real T26 “Tanker” M1 Garand
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Jan 2026The name “tanker” has been applied to shortened M1 Garand rifles for a long time and today we are looking at one of the rifles that was the genesis of that concept. It actually has nothing to do with tanks; the idea for a shortened M1 came from the Pacific Warfare Board of the US Army, looking for a handier weapon for jungle fighting. During 1944 when this idea was proposed, Springfield Arsenal was already independently working on the M1E5, a very similar paratrooper version of the M1. The PWB ordered the 6th Infantry Division in the Philippines to make 150 samples for testing, of which two were sent back to Springfield for testing.
In testing, the T26 showed the same problems as the M1E5 — excessive recoil, noise, and concussion. Despite this, 15,000 were recommended for production in the summer of 1945, but the war ended before any production actually took place. The name “tanker” came later, when companies started making cut-down Garands for commercial sale and thought that marketing them as specialized tanker weapons would help them sell.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this truly unique specimen from their reference collection to film for you! Don’t miss the chance to visit the museum there if you have a day free in Springfield, Massachusetts: https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm
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May 23, 2026
Beretta M1918: Italy’s Semiauto 9mm Carbine from WWI
Forgotten Weapons
Published 31 Dec 2025Italy adopted the Villar Perosa in 1915, a gun that is sometimes considered the first submachine gun. Despite being fully automatic and chambered for pistol ammo (9mm Glisenti/Parabellum), it was actually not a submachine gun in practice. It was actually a twin gun, fired usually from a bipod using spade grips. It had some very specific applications, but was generally not very useful, and Italy set about looking for alternative uses for them. The solution they found was to split the guns into single receivers and fit them with buttstocks and traditional triggers. This led to the first true Italian submachine gun — the OVP-1918 — and also the Beretta 1918, which was originally a semiauto-only carbine.
The Beretta was made using Villar Perosa magazines, magazine latches, receivers, and bolt assemblies. The stocks came from Vetterli rifles and the bayonets from Carcano carbines. Only a few parts like the trigger assembly and ejection port housing were made from scratch. Beretta was given a contract late in the war to convert 5,000 Villar Perosas into these carbines, but was unable to complete the work before the war ended and the contract was cancelled. Of the guns that were completed, many were later converted into Beretta M1918/30 carbines and others were sold as surplus. A bunch of them went to Ethiopia, where some were ironically recaptured by Italian forces in the 1930s and put back into service in World War Two in North Africa. This example is one of a few recently found intact in Ethiopia.
Villar Perosa: • M1915 Villar Perosa
Shooting the Villar Perosa: • WW1 Villar Perosa SMG at the Range
OVP-1918: • OVP 1918: Italy’s first WW1 Submachine Gun
Beretta M1918/30: • Beretta Model 1918/30
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May 20, 2026
LMG-25: The Swiss Toggle-Locked Light Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Dec 2025The LMG-25 was designed by Adolph Furrer at Waffenfabrik Bern in the 1920s. Furrer was a devoted fan of the toggle locking system, and also designed a toggle-locked submachine gun that Switzerland (unwisely) adopted in 1941. The LMG-25 was first produced in 1924, adopted in 1925, and remained in production until 1946 with a total of 23,045 standard models and 1,742 optics-equipped fortress models made.
It is chambered for the standard 7.5x55mm Swiss cartridge with a 30-round side-mounted magazine (interchangeable with the later Stgw 57 magazine, incidentally). It is an effective design, if expensive to produce, and served Switzerland well for several decades.
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May 16, 2026
Indonesian M95/51 Mannlicher Carbine & Short Rifle Converted to .303 British
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Dec 2025When Indonesia won its independence in 1949, its military had a real mess of different equipment. The SMLE was adopted as the first standard rifle, but these were in short supply and a lot of Arisakas and Dutch Mannlichers were also in the country’s possession. Looking for a weapon for rural police using the now-standard .303 British cartridge, the Indonesian government decided to revisit a program to convert 6.5mm M95 rifles and carbines to .303 — something initially done with Australian help in 1941.
With Australian advisors from Lithgow, the Indonesian PSM factory gear conversions in 1951, and continued them into early 1955. In total, 13,999 M95/51 conversions were made, 9,904 of them carbines and 4,905 short rifles. They were made by reboring the original 6.5mm barrels to .303 and reaming the chambers out (although this does result in a slight double shoulder to fired cases). The carbines (with 19″ barrels) were fitted with a variety of muzzle brakes, and made for an as-yet unidentified pattern of bayonet. The short rifles (with 26″ barrels) were given new 2-position rear notch sights, but left using standard Dutch M95 bayonets.
The guns were used in police and possibly military training roles until removed from service in 1961. A batch was sold as surplus in 1962 to InterArms, and another batch was found in the late 1970s and sold to Odin in the early 1980s. The InterArms guns tend to be in better condition, and have intact Indonesian markings, where the Odin guns are generally rougher and have the government property marks ground off.
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May 13, 2026
Between SMG and PDW: Sweden’s CBJ-MS
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Dec 2025The CBJ-MS is a submachine gun designed by Swedish arms developed Carl Bertil Johansson, perhaps better known for his remarkable armor-piercing 6.5x25mm CBJ cartridge. He developed the gun at about the same time as the cartridge, on his own time while working at the Carl Gustafs factory in Eskilstuna. While it bears a lot of visual similarities to the Uzi, and it is an open-bolt simple blowback action, it has a unique and clever fire control system — and several other creative features as well.
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May 9, 2026
M1E5 Experimental Paratrooper Garand
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Dec 2025In January 1944 men of the 93rd Infantry Division field-modified an M1 to give it a shorter (18″) barrel, and the rifle was sent back to the US and tested by the Infantry Board. The idea was that a rifle like this might be of use to paratroopers, being more powerful than the M1A1 Carbine they were already using. The job of exploring the idea was given to John Garand at Springfield Armory, and he began work that same month.
One example was made in the spring of 1944, using an underfolding stock designed by Garand (for which he received a patent in 1949). It was 5″ shorts and 1.2 pounds lighter than a standard M1, but exhibited excessive blast and concussion. The initial design used the folding stock with a traditional grip, and this was found uncomfortable (no surprise there). The rifle was refitted with a rather odd steel pistol grip, but this was also not a great solution. By this time testing found the whole thing undesirable and it went no farther.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this truly unique specimen from their reference collection to film for you! Don’t miss the chance to visit the museum there if you have a day free in Springfield, Massachusetts: https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm
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May 6, 2026
PSS: Russia’s Silent Captive-Piston Handgun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Dec 2025The PSS is a semiautomatic pistol using captive piston ammunition to achieve a comparable level of sound suppression to a .22 pistol with a good normal suppressor. It was developed to replace a couple multi-barrel derringer style captive piston pistols in Soviet use, with the semiautomatic action and (6-round) detachable magazines making it suitable for a wider variety of missions than the previous guns.
It was given the GRU catalog designation 6P28 and entered service in 1983. It fires a cylindrical steel projectile weighing 155 grains at about 620 fps, with a noise of 122 dB (1m left of the muzzle) as measured by silencer legend Phil Dater. Mechanically, the design takes its fire control system from the Makarov but uses a floating chamber system to cycle reliably with the unique ammunition. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the pistols were available for commercial export by Russian state-run export companies, although that ended in 2018. In Russian service, the PSS was replaced with the much improved PSS-2 in 2011.
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May 3, 2026
The Extremely Rare Folding Stock Beretta 38/43
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Dec 2025The Beretta Model 38 SMG was a very successful design, and a folding-stocked version of it was a natural development. Beretta first made a prototype of such a thing in 1941, but it never went into production — possibly because Italy ceased to have an effective paratrooper corps after El Alamein. However, many of the design elements from this experiment saw use in the simplified 38/42 and 38/44 models of the Beretta SMG. Late in the war, a small batch of folding-stocked guns were actually produced (one source says about 200) specifically for the RSI. This was the puppet government Germany operated in northern Italy after the country surrendered to Allied forces.
This particular example came out of the Balkans, and managed to acquire a Yugoslav national crest along the way — although I don’t know the details of how. Thanks to Limex for giving me access to this extremely rare piece to film for you guys!
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April 29, 2026
T31: Garand’s Bizarre Bullpup
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Dec 2025The T31 was John Garand’s last project during his employment at Springfield Armory. It was proposed in 1948 as a bullpup configuration rifle to minimize muzzle blast and flash. It was a select-fire rifle with a 20-round detachable box magazine and basically every aspect of the design was unorthodox. The original gas system was more pneumatic than anything else, with the whole handguard tube filling with gas when it cycled. The recoil spring is a clockwork type in the buttstock, and the bolt uses a tilting wedge to lock.
At initial testing it ran into reliability problems after 2300 rounds. Upon disassembly, the found nearly an entire pound of powder fouling in the gas tube. This led to the gun being rebuilt with a tappet type gas system, and that’s the gun we have today to look at. Only two examples were made before Garand retired in 1953, and nobody took over the project when he left.
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