Quotulatiousness

December 8, 2021

SA80 History: The Pre-Production XL85 and XL86

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 May 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…

The SA80 saga continues today with the final pre-production versions of the L85A1 and L86A1, although at this point they still both carry XL designations, as they were not yet formally adopted weapons. In these weapons we can see a couple last distinctive mechanical changes, but perhaps more importantly by this time the worker morale at RSAF Enfield was thoroughly in the tank. It had become well known that the factory complex was going to be taken public or sold outright, and it was widely expected that Enfield would be shut down as a result. A new facility would be built in Nottingham, but none of the rank and file staff expected to transfer. They would be laid off, and they knew it. Not surprisingly, quality control suffered as a result.

As for the guns themselves, the first distinctive visible improvement was in the magazine well. In the XL70 weapons, the bottom half of the magazine well had been simple welded onto the bottom of the lower receiver, in order to retain the easy stamping of that element. On these guns, that have been replaced by a separate box which encompassed the magazine and was spot welded into the lower receiver. This change in construction method allow the magazine well to be much more precisely located in the receiver, and then fixed in place without the risk of warping the thin sheet metal of the lower receiver – while still retaining the simple stamping of that lower.

The other visible change was to the Light Support Weapon, and it consisted of a long “girder” support added below the barrel. This was intended to mount the bipod onto, in the hopes of resolving the long-running problem of split groups in the LSW. This was a problem in which the first round of a burst would hit substantially low and left relative to the rest of the burst. While the LSW was a quite accurate weapon in semiautomatic mode, this split group problem was a substantial detriment to its effectiveness as a proper support weapon.

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December 5, 2021

MAS 44: The French Adopt a Semiauto Rifle

Filed under: France, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 May 2019

The French Army had been planning a semiauto infantry rifle since 1921, but indecisiveness and bureaucracy delayed its development. A major trial was held in 1931, and elements of two experimental rifles were chosen to be combined into what would eventually become the MAS 1944. It was put through field trials in late 1939, and passed with flying colors — but too late to get into production before the 1940 armistice with Germany. The project was hidden from the Germans at St. Etienne, and would be revived upon the factory’s liberation in the fall of 1944. By late 1945, rifles were coming off the production line.

The MAS 44 was a direct gas impingement operating system with a tilting bolt, and was a remarkably rugged, dependable, and simple rifle. It was initially adopted by the French Navy, and only 6200 were made before a number of improvements were made and a new model was designated; the MAS 1949. When those 6200 rifles were ultimately surplussed in the 1980s, the vast majority of the surviving examples came to the United States, where their scarcity is not well appreciated.

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December 2, 2021

XM-148: Colt’s Vietnam Grenade Launcher

Filed under: Asia, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Dec 2019

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While the Special Purpose Infantry Weapon (SPIW) program failed to produce any successful rifles, it did become clear that the area-effect aspect of its requirements did have merit. This was spun off as its own program to develop a 40mm under-barrel grenade launcher for the M16 rifle. Of the initial entrants, (Philco/Ford, AAI, and Colt), Colt’s CGL-4 was the most promising. It was moved quickly through development and 10,500 were ordered in January 1966 as the XM-148. Field reports quickly turned sour, though, and in May of 1967 the XM-148 was ordered out of combat use, to be replaced with the M79 grenade launcher. The idea was sound, but the execution needed improvement — which would come in the form of the M203 launcher instead.

Many thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto for the opportunity to showcase this grenade launcher for you! Check them out on Instagram to see many of the guns in their extensive collection:

https://instagram.com/moviearmamentsg…

http://www.moviearms.com

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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
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November 28, 2021

SA80 History: XL70 Series Final Prototypes (Individual Weapon and LSW)

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 May 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…

By 1980, the scheduled deadline for adopting the L85 and L86 was rapidly approaching, and the weapons should have been in the last stages of fine-tuning before production began. This was not the case, however — testing was still uncovering critical problems in the guns.

The goal for these weapons was 8000 MRBF (Mean Rounds Between Failure) for the LSW and 2500 MRBF for the IW. As real testing began, the numbers were actually 100-300 MRBF. In many cases, the guns could not run three magazines in a row without a malfunction, and this was literally an order of magnitude below the requirements. But what truly led to the massive problems with the L85/86 was that RSAF Enfield did not fix these problems. Instead, they moved the goalposts. With so many problems, it was decided to only count malfunctions that occurred in the endurance testing (ie, when the guns were not put under any environmental stress at all) and to only count “critical” malfunctions in the tally. A “critical” failure was one which could not be resolved by the shooter, such as a split barrel. Simple feed or ejection failures were not counted, nor were malfunctions that required gun disassembly to correct. Even under this new paradigm, MRBF over 3000 could not be achieved.

In addition, the LSW was showing a problem that would become endemic; split groups. The weapon shot very good groups in semiautomatic, but in full auto fire it would produce two discreet groups. The first shot in each burst would land about 6 minutes of angle low and right compared to the remaining rounds in the group. This would be the subject of significant work, and was never fully rectified.

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November 25, 2021

Why The Most Expensive US Martial Pistol Exploded A Lot

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Aug 2021

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The Colt Model 1847 Walker is one of the most valuable of all US military handguns in the collecting community, with examples sometimes breaking seven figures. However, the Walker was in many ways a remarkable failure as a service sidearm, mostly because it tended to explode. By today’s standards, it exploded quite a lot.

Why?

Basically, a combination of several factors:

– The Walker was made of wrought iron, and not always the best quality wrought iron. Cylinders had internal flaws that became weak points and failed upon firing.
– The Walker had a huge powder capacity in its chambers, between 50 and 60 grains depending on the projectile used. This was basically rifle size, and it left the cylinder design with a very small margin of safety.
– Powder composition and grain size was less standardized in the 1840s than it is today, making overpressure loads more likely than today.
– The Walker was designed for a conical “Pickett” bullet that was tricky to load correctly (point forward). Loading it backward could increase the powder volume in a chamber.

Of nearly 400 Walkers issued for the Mexican-American War, only 191 were returned after a year’s service, and only 82 of those were serviceable. Some of those missing guns were lost and stolen, but a substantial number — generally accepted to be 20%-30% — suffered burst barrels, burst cylinders, and broken cylinder arbors. Whoops!

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6281 N. Oracle 36270
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November 21, 2021

SA80 History: XL60 Series in 4.85mm

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 May 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…

Once the basic configuration of the new British rifle was determined, the next step was to build a series of prototypes. The design that took form was basically a bullpup copy of the Armalite AR-18. The design team at Enfield were mostly senior draftsmen, with virtually no firearms experience among them. To make things worse, most of the design team was regularly rotated onto other projects, preventing them from developing any project experience on the rifle.

Several prototype batches were made (typically of a dozen guns each, both IWs and LSWs), all in the unique British 4.85x49mm cartridge, with a variety of different feature sets. Through the different patterns, configurations would change on the safety (push button vs lever) fire selector (push button vs lever), and magazine catch (straight-in side lever vs rock-in side lever vs rock-in rear paddle). At this time, plans still existed to make both left- and right-handed versions of the final gun, so prototypes of both were manufactured.

Because cost-cutting measures had not yet been forced on the project, these XL-60 series guns were generally reliable, at least in normal conditions. They are quite comfortable to fire, with a cartridge very similar to the 5.56mm NATO in practical terms. There is nothing particularly wrong with that cartridge, but it would be dropped when it lost NATO trials to the Belgian SS109 … but we will address that in the next episode of the SA80 history.

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If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

November 19, 2021

Viewing-with-alarm … from afar

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Simon Evans explains why he finds British commentary on US hot-button issues like guns and race to be frequently uninformed but remarkably certain of itself:

What many Brits believe every American carries in their pickup trucks or on their persons, probably.

As a Brit, there are few things less edifying, nor more unintentionally hilarious, than an American newspaper reporting on any very English scandal. A breach of some obscure royal protocol, perhaps, or an aspect of parliamentary procedure, often involving Black Rod, which despite the capital B, the Washington Post will have to explain, is not a racial epithet, or an ill-advised tribute act.

A personal favourite is when a provincial dietary preference has caught the New York Times‘ eye, having unexpectedly “caught on” nationwide. It is an innocent enough pleasure, watching Americans trying to distinguish black pudding from haggis, or indeed gravy from “chippy sauce”. Like watching the Dutch discuss the morality of bullfighting, or Korea debate a proposed rule change in top flight Buzkashi.

Yet put the sneaker on the other foot and watch British commentators angrily contend the moral and legal thrust of a case in which an American is on trial for using lethal force with a firearm, and we suffer something very like Gell-Mann Amnesia by proxy. We forget how important a little local knowledge might be, and our seasoned, tolerant, bemused respect for tradition and culture and specialist knowledge are gone within moments. Watching the Kyle Rittenhouse case approach a verdict, British commentators are a-froth with indignation at the palpable miscarriages of justice seemingly running unchecked only five short hours away across the globe. My God, he had a gun ! What more is there to say? And – do I have this right? – he crossed state lines ! The man’s a monster.

Not since the proroguing of parliament two years ago have so many people become acquainted so quickly with something so arcane as the crossing of state lines with intent to do mischief. Putting aside the fact that the weapon itself did not cross this fabled demarcation, what is striking is the evident lack of enthusiasm for certain other state lines, such as the one somewhat further to America’s south, or indeed the one etched around the British Isles, that currently seem to get crossed on a pretty frequent basis, with who knows what intent? Drawing attention to those lines is clearly racist.

It was GB Shaw who first made the observation that GB’s shores were separated from the US’s by an ocean of incomprehension, concealed by our sharing a common language.

Rather like urban Canadians, most British readers and viewers tend to agree with the opinions expressed in US mainstream media based largely in urban coastal areas:

So, we don’t get the full spectrum argument. Instead, we gratefully share the apparent horror and shame of the coastal elite, with their tertiary education and their teeth that meet in the middle, when confronted with their inland, inbred in-laws. We deplore the multi-decade epidemic of what seems, if you read the Washington Post and the NYT, to be the largely white, Wild West assassination culture that 2A concedes. Bullets sprayed around schools. Shopping malls, synagogues and mosques running with blood. A death toll out of all control. Murder, cold-blooded and cruel – and largely in the service of a bigotry, as often as not a racial bigotry, as old as the Appalachians hills.

This is, to put it as mildly as one can without choking, not quite the whole story. Do your own due diligence, it isn’t hard. The editors of the NYT can’t stop you acquainting yourself with the FBI crime statistics, and they put some of the more notorious outbreaks of flying lead into useful perspective.

But generally, we instead swallow like sugary cough syrup (believing it good for us, no matter how delicious it also is) the narrative that guns are largely in the hands and lovingly tended racks of homicidal white supremacists, paranoid death-spiral redneck survivalists, and a police force that is barely superior in discipline, racial enlightenment or legitimacy to a rounded-up posse of ad hoc lynch-happy vigilantes.

November 14, 2021

“Jungle Carbine” – the Lee Enfield No5 MkI Rifle

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Aug 2021

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Today I am concluding our series on the standard-issue Lee Enfield system with the No5 MkI — the “jungle carbine”. Developed in 1943 as a shorter and handier pattern of rifle than the No4, the carbine went into production in 1944 and saw use during World War Two. It featured a number of lightening cuts, as well as a shortened barrel, conical flash hider, side-mounted sling, 800-yard sights, and rubber buttpad. Unfortunately, the No5 was beset by a problem of “wandering zero”. A significant number of the rifles failed to properly hold zero when they were widely issued. The problem was never fully resolved, but appears to have been the result of receiver flex due to the lightening cuts. Efforts to fix it were essentially abandoned, as it was recognized that a new self-loading rifle was going to be adopted soon, and it would be a waste of time and money to continue development of the Lee Enfield by that point.

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6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

November 6, 2021

No4 MkII: The Lee Enfield’s Final Standard Upgrade

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Jul 2021

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The final standard pattern of the venerable Lee Enfield as a standard-issue service rifle was the No4 MkII, introduced after the end of World War Two. The new pattern was adopted to resolve problems that had come about because of wartime simplifications to the rifle. Specifically, the use of kiln-dried wood for stocks. On the original No4 design, the trigger was pinned to the trigger guard, which was in turn connected to the front handguard. The sear was pinned to the receiver. If the handguard swelled, shrank, or warped (which was much more likely on the quickly kiln-dried stocks used during the war, compared to the naturally dried pre-war wood), the trigger/sear interaction could be impacted.

To solve this, the receiver was changed slightly to include a boss for attaching the trigger. This kept both the trigger and sear pinned to the (metal) receiver, and stock shifting was no longer a problem. In addition, a change was also made to remove the boss originally intended for mounting the magazine cutoff lever, so that No4 rifles would be made using No5 receiver forgings (this change did not result in a new rifle designation).

Many existing rifles were refitted to the new standard, with upgraded MkI rifles becoming Mk I/2 and upgraded MkI* rifles becoming MkI/3.

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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

QotD: Michael Bellesisles

Filed under: Books, Education, History, Politics, Quotations, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… I offered a very limited defense of the History Biz. It’s not just that they’re rabid Leftists, I said. I mean, yeah, they are, no denying that, but outright “writing the conclusion before you even start asking the question”-type fraud, Michael Bellesisles-type fraud, is a lot rarer than you probably think.

Bellesisles, you might recall, is the guy whose revolutionary revisionist thesis was that the Founders weren’t really all that enthusiastic about guns, and didn’t own that many, and that whole 2nd Amendment thing was just an afterthought. Yeah, right. That one was written conclusion first, and since no remotely objective look at the evidence could ever possibly support it, he resorted to making lots of “evidence” up. But the reaction of the rest of the profession was interesting: They lauded Bellesisles to the skies. He won the Bancroft Prize for his work, which is the biggest one you can get in American history. Now, I’m sure you’re saying “of course they praised him, he was telling them exactly what they wanted to hear!”, and you’re right …

… but only to a point. Because eggheads are — as you might imagine — the pettiest, most envious bunch of little bitches this side of a junior high cheerleading squad, there’s no piece of research so meticulous, no conclusion so solid, that someone isn’t going to tear into it in one of the professional journals, for base personal reasons if no other. Lest you think I’m kidding, I personally know of a woman at a big league school whose husband was seduced, and her marriage ruined, by an open, obnoxious lesbian colleague, all because she, the hetero, had dared to question some of the lesbian’s work at a conference in their mutual field.

That’s the level of pettiness we’re dealing with here. And I can’t say for absolute certain that Bellesisles received no criticism whatsoever; he doesn’t work in my field, so even though I was certain that Arming America was bullshit of the purest ray serene, it wasn’t my problem, professionally speaking. But whatever, point is, in my fairly well-informed opinion, merely “telling them what they want to hear” doesn’t account for the entire profession ignoring the huge, blinking, neon red flags surrounding Arming America. Rather, I suggest it’s more of a Pauline Kael thing.

I actually kinda pity Kael — much like John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, she was a fairly big wheel back in her day, but if she’s known at all now, it’s for something entirely peripheral to her life’s work. In Kael’s case, it’s her declaration that it was impossible for Richard Nixon to have won in 1972, since “nobody I know voted for him” (it was one of the biggest blowouts in American electoral history). The Arming America thing is, I think, like that — nobody in academia owns a gun, or knows anyone who owns a gun, or knows anyone who knows anyone who owns a gun. So, yeah, they know all the scary statistics about how there are sixty gorillion more guns than people in America, but all of that iron belongs to the Dirt People, far away over the horizon. They’d never in a million years even be in the same zip code as someone who thinks Arming America was absurd on its face. Hence, it never occurred to them to question it.

It helped that Bellesisles was telling them what they wanted to hear, no doubt, but the main reason nobody challenged it was that they lacked the cognitive toolkit to even consider the possibility he might be wrong.

Severian, “Are They Trying to Lose?”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-15.

November 4, 2021

Anti-Tank Chats #2 | Panzerbüchse 39 | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 2 Jul 2021

Welcome to Anti-Tank Chats, a brand-new series on the history of infantry weapons used in Anti-Tank warfare. In the second episode, Archive and Supporting Collections Manager, Stuart Wheeler explores the Panzerbüchse 39 Anti-Tank Rifle.
(more…)

November 1, 2021

Britain’s Last Ditch: Wartime Changes to No4 Lee Enfield

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Jul 2021

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When we think of “last-ditch” rifles, we normally think of 1945 and the very end of World War Two. For the British, however, the lowest ebb of the war was in 1941 and 42, and it is during that period that the Lee Enfield was at its crudest. British ordnance instituted a number of simplifications to maximize weapons production. In particular:

– Walnut replaced with kiln-dried birch and beech for furniture
– Two-groove barrels replacing five-groove ones
– A vastly simplified 2-position flip sight in place of the original fine micrometer style
– Simplified bolt release, designated the No4 MkI* (which was only produced in the US and Canada)
– Aluminum buttplates
– Much reduced standards of fit and finish, leading to really ugly machine marks and haphazard markings.

Most of these changes would be walked back later in the war as Britain’s footing became more solid, but they make a very interesting period of changes for the collector to study.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

October 29, 2021

A New Enfield for a New War: The No4 MkI

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Jul 2021

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The stalwart No1 MkIII “Smelly” served the United Kingdom well during the First World War, but by the 1920s it was growing obsolescent. The war had revealed a number of shortcomings of the design, and in the interwar years the British developed a replacement. The main issues that the new rifle would address were:

– Better mechanical accuracy, through use of a heavier barrel
– Better practical accuracy, through use of a micrometer-adjustable aperture sight
– A more practical short spike bayonet
– More efficient manufacturability

After a brief dalliance with the No1 MkV rifle in the early 1920s, the No1 MkVI was developed, which was fundamentally the new No4 rifle, just without the name. In the early 1930s a run of about 2500 No4 MkI rifles was produced, and they would go through field trials for the next several years until being formally adopted in 1939. Production actually began in the summer of 1941 at Maltby, Fazakerley, and BSA.

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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
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October 25, 2021

P90: FN’s Bullpup PDW

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Jul 2021

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FN began developing the P90 in the late 1980s, actually preceding the NATO requirement that it would eventually compete for. The idea of the P90 was to develop a weapon for secondary troops to replace 9mm pistols and SMGs. There was an anticipated threat of Russian paratroops wearing armor that could defeat 9mm ball. The P90 was intended to be a light and handy weapon that was easily controllable without a tremendous about of training, and could defeat that sort of body armor.

The result was the 5.7x28mm cartridge, firing a 31 grain armor-piercing bullet at 2350 fps. This was combined with a simple blowback action and a Hall-style 50-round magazine in a fully ambidextrous, bullpup layout. The gun was introduced onto the market in 1990, and has been widely purchased by security and special operations organizations. In its original intended role for support troops, it has only been adopted by Belgium.

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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
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October 22, 2021

L-34 Sampo: Aimo Lahti’s Rejected Masterpiece

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Jun 2021

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Finland’s standard light machine gun going into the Winter War was the LS-26, a gun which did not succeed in field use. It was complex and cumbersome, and Finnish troops quickly replaced it with captured Russian DP-27 LMGs. Part of the problem of the LS-26 was its recoil-operated design. Finnish military authorities specified a recoil-operated mechanism for their LMG in light of the success of the recoil-operated heavy Maxim guns in Finnish service. Gas operation was quickly recognized as a superior system for light machine guns, but too late to stop adoption of the LS-26.

In the early 1930s, Aimo Lahti did design a gas-operated LMG, heavily influenced by the Czech ZB-26 system. A handful of prototypes were made by VKT, looking for both Finnish military acceptance and international sales. The gun was made in several calibers, most notably 7.62x54R for Finland and 7.92x57mm Mauser for export. However, bureaucratic issues prevented its consideration by the Finnish Army, and the timing was too late for exports. The L-34 was significantly lighter and simpler than the LS-26, and it was performed quite well in Finnish trials — which did not happen until the 1950s. By that time, the Finnish military was looking for an intermediate-caliber belt-fed gun, and the L-34 was not suitable regardless of its performance.

Many thanks to Sako for providing me access to film this L-34 from their reference collection!

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Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

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