Quotulatiousness

November 10, 2020

WWI Pritchard Bayonet for the Webley Revolver

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Nov 2016

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The Pritchard bayonet for the Webley revolver is one of the more photogenic and less truly practical weapons to come out of the Great War. Designed by one Captain Pritchard after he spent a year in France in 1915-1916 with the Royal Berkshire Regiment, the idea was to use the front 8 inches or so of a sword on a cast gunmetal hilt to create a bayonet mounted on a British service revolver. He first presented the idea to the Wilkinson Sword Company, but they were too busy making sabers and rifle bayonets, and suggested that having to sacrifice usable sword blades for production would make it quite the expensive endeavor.

Pritchard next took his idea to W.W. Greener, where he found a more receptive audience. Greener had a large supply of surplus French Gras bayonets, which were cheap and served as excellent donors for the Pritchard bayonets. Something like 200 were made in total — not formally adopted by the British but available for commercial sale to officers who might want them. While some may have seen service, no hard evidence has been found to prove any combat action with them.

Over the decades, a great many fake and reproduction Pritchard bayonets have been made — many times more than there are originals. As far as I can determine, this one is a legitimate original (although it may have a replacement locking lever). A few things to look for in authenticating a Pritchard are engraved patent and manufacturer marks (most reproductions have no manufacturer logo and a stamped patent number) and a quality casting. When you hold the blade and tap the handle with a hard object, it should ring bright and bell-like (which this one does).

October 26, 2020

Classic Imperial British Revolvers: the Webley WG Army and Target

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Aug 2018

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The Webley company used the “WG” (Webley Government) nomenclature in its literature starting in 1883, but the first revolver actually marketed as such was the WG Model of 1889. These revolvers were made primarily for the military market, as officers were responsible for supplying their own sidearms in the British military until 1915. The WG was a full size service revolver in .455 caliber (accepting a wide variety of .45 inch British cartridges, including the .450, .455, .476, Enfield Mk II, and Enfield MkIII). A series of refinements would be made to the design culminating in the generally-accepted standard WG pattern in 1896. These would be produced until 1902, when they were replaced by the Webley WS (Webley Service).

The two main variation of the WG were the Army and the Target. The Army typically had a bird’s-head grip and a 6 inch barrel, where the Target had a longer 7.5 inch barrel and a flared square-butt grip, as well as adjustable sights. However, Webley was happy to supply and mix of features to a customer, and many branded patterns exist. The Target pattern proved very successful for shooters at the Dublin, Glasgow, and Wimbledon matches of the period. A total of about 22,000 WG pattern revolvers were made, with the “standard” 1896 model appearing around s/n 10,000.

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September 22, 2020

An idea for the blighted 21st century — Radio Free Earth and an updated “Liberator” pistol

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the most recent edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith considers a couple of ways to help oppressed peoples all around the world:

An example of the original Liberator pistol from WW2.
Screen capture from a Forgotten Weapons video.

The first is an idea that I originally read about in the 1950s in a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s a satisfying irony about using it against the Chinese communists,since Clarke himself was an ardent collectivist (among other nasty things) and wrote about it as a way that communists might bring Western Civilization to its knees. Building on Clarke’s original concept, imagine a tiny radio receiver, tuned only to a single frequency, with no moving parts, small enough to fit almost entirely into the human ear, and with the right coloration to be virtually invisible.

Now imagine a geostationary satellite standing 22,300 miles in space over China. The basic idea is like Radio Free Europe, but with significant differences. Instead of dull propaganda (I listened to some of those RFE and Voice of America broadcasts), there would be readings by celebrities like James Earl Jones and Dennis Haysbert from the works of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and other Founding Fathers. Nineteenth century thinkers like Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tucker would be featured, as well, along with H.L Mencken, Ludwig von Mises, Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayeck, and Milton Friedman from the twentieth century.

Very importantly, these lessons in liberty would be interspersed by good, old-fashioned action-adventure radio drama, featuring the works of individualist scribblers like Robert A. Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, Poul Anderson, and little old me, Underdog. Jammed in there just to keep the comrades listening avidly, there would be what I like to think of as “weaponized pornography”, high-quality dramatic readings of Pauline Reage’s Story of O, among others. If it works in Chinese, it will work in Arabic or Farsi, as well.

The geostationary satellite would beam all these offerings down twenty-four hours a day to the millions of little radios that we have air-dropped or otherwise smuggled to the citizenry. Sailors on their brand-new ships would probably listen in, as well. The Chicoms would try their damnedest to outlaw them and maybe even shoot the satellite down, but 22,300 miles is a long way away, and battle-lasers can defeat missiles laboring at the peak of their climb. Such satellites are relatively cheap and replaceable, especially if they can prevent World War III, and we’d keep sending the Chinese those little radios.

That’s Idea #1. Idea #2 involves a World War II project most gun enthusiasts know about called the “FP-45 Liberator Pistol”. A million of the crude, stamped, single-shot firearms, unrifled and chambered for the .45 automatic pistol cartridge, were manufactured by the Guide Lamp Division of General Motors at a total cost of $2.10 apiece (that’s $31.55 today). The whole package contained a few spare cartridges, a wooden ejection rod, and a comic book illustration showing how to use it: sneak up on a Nazi soldier, blow his brains out, and steal his rifle.

You were supposed to throw the pistol away, but me, I would have kept it. You never know when you might need it. The Liberators are so scarce today that the bidding starts at $600, meaning that there are hundreds of thousands of the ugly little roscoes still tucked away in barns and attics in eastern Europe. Wikipedia, no bastion of liberty, claims that they were all rounded up and destroyed by Allied troops (which probably cost more than the guns did). If true, it means that I was right when I wrote in my first novel, The Probability Broach, that WWII was basically a conflict between competing brands of fascism.

September 16, 2020

QotD: Firearms apocrypha

Filed under: Business, History, Quotations, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Certain models of Smith & Wesson have bits of apocryphal lore that become permanently entwined with them. You can’t see a top-break .44 Russian without someone telling you that the weird hook on the trigger guard was to parry saber slashes.

People like to repeat the myth that the tiny M-frame .22 “Ladysmith” was discontinued because a puritanical D.B. Wesson heard that it was popular with “ladies of the night”, because that’s sexier than the fact that it was selling poorly, expensive to make, and constantly broke when people ran the then-new .22 Long Rifle cartridges through the fragile little guns.

Similarly, there’s a legend involving Mr. Wesson that’s attached to the final iteration of the .38 Double Action […] In this case, the story goes, D.B. heard the tale of a police officer who, while arresting a miscreant, had the offender reach over and pop the latch on his top-break Smith, dumping the rounds on the ground, like Jet Li with the slide of a movie prop Beretta. The officer, goes the legend as it was told to yours truly, was killed in the ensuing struggle.

Moved by the fate of the dead officer, the apocryphal tale has Mr. Wesson designing the Perfected Model top-break. This model features a Hand-Ejector style cylinder latch that must be operated in conjunction with the more normal “T”-shaped barrel toggle in order to break the revolver open.

This origin myth is almost certainly, to use the technical term, a load of hooey.

Tamara Keel, “Sunday Smith #60: .38 Double Action Perfected Model”, The Arms Room, 2020-06-14.

September 2, 2020

Luger Model 1902 Carbine

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Sep 2016

Failed to sell at auction.

With the advent of successful self-loading pistols, one of the additional markets that many companies tried to appeal to was the compact carbine. Self-loading rifles in proper rifle cartridges would not be developed as quickly as the pistols because their much greater chamber pressures represented a more difficult engineering problem. However by simply attaching a stock and long barrel to a pistol, many ambitious manufacturers hoped to sell a weapon as a sporting carbine. These were done by DWM with the Luger, as well as Mauser’s C96, Mannlicher 1894 pistol, and many others.

Model 1902 was the designation of the major batch of commercially made Luger carbines, although there were several small batches of prototypes prior. Only a couple thousand were made, and they ultimately took quite a long time to all sell — it turned out this type of firearm was simply not very popular for its cost. The same story was true with the other contemporary pistol-carbines — none would be very successful. DWM did make another group of carbines in the 1920s, although those were made from various leftover parts and are both not as nice as the original 1902 guns (which were mostly made in 1904 and 1905) and widely faked.

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August 26, 2020

London-Made Lorenzonis Repeating Flintlocks

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 26 Aug 2016

Sold for $28,750 (for the pair).

A 7-shot repeating handgun before cartridges had been invented? Yep, long before. These two pistols are London-made examples of the Lorenzoni system, in which a gun was made with internal magazines of powder and projectiles and a rotating central loading spindle like a modern reloading powder throw. By rotating a lever on the left side of pistol 180 degrees and back, a shooter could load a ball into the chamber, load powder behind it, recock the action, prime the pan, and close the frizzen all in one automated sequence.

This system originated with a German gunsmith named Kalthoff in the mid 1600s, but it was an Italian by the name of Lorenzoni who made it more practical and began building pistols of the type. Lorenzoni is the name that has been generally applied to the system as a result. These two were made by a gunsmith named Glass in London in the mid 1700s — in those days of hand-made firearms, ideas and systems like this would slowly spread and be adopted by craftsmen who were capable of producing them and thought they could find an interested market for them.

The Lorenzoni system offered unmatched repeating firepower for its time, but was hampered by its complexity. Only a very skilled gunsmith could build a reliable and safe pistol of the type, and this made them very expensive.

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August 23, 2020

Variations of the .455 Webley Fosbery Automatic Revolver

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Apr 2020

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These are lots #558, 559, 1585, 1586, 3535, and 3536 in the upcoming RIA Premier Auction. It was scheduled for April, but has been postponed — check their web site for upcoming Online Only auctions every month, though!

Today we are taking a look at the different variations in .455 caliber Webley-Fosbery automatic revolvers. The two main types are the Model 1901 and Model 1903 (the Model 1902 was the very rare .38 caliber version). The main change between the two is the change from a coil mainspring to a V mainspring, to improve reliability when dirty; done in response to British military testing. In addition the 1903 has an improved fire control mechanism, a lower hammer profile and a new cylinder removal system.

Within the Model 1903, there is also a change from a standard frame and cylinder to shortened versions of both. These changes occurred at about serial number 3350, in 1912. The shortened cylinder was made to fit the new Webley MkII ammunition, which was notably shorter than the MkI type — and a shorter cylinder reduced weight.

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August 16, 2020

Collier Flintlock Revolvers

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Nov 2016

Sold for:
First Pattern Musket: $51,750
Second Pattern Rifle: $46,000
Second Pattern Pistol: $63,250

Elisha Collier is probably the best-known name in flintlock revolvers — to the extent that any flintlock revolvers are well known. Because of the great cost and required skill to manufacture a functional repeating flintlock handgun without modern machine tools, these weapons were never common, but they were made by a number of gunsmiths across Europe. Collier and a fellow American gunsmith named Artemis Wheeler developed this particular type (the specific contributions of each party are not known), and Collier patented it in England in 1818. He proceeded to market the guns, which appear to have been made for him under contract by several high-end British gunsmiths (including Rigby and Nock).

Collier made three different basic types of guns. They share the main feature of a revolving cylinder which must be indexed manually between shots (seeing them while traveling in India was reportedly the inspiration for Samuel Colt’s idea to connect the mechanical functions of hammer and cylinder to invent the single action revolver). The first two patterns of Collier are flintlocks, differing in lock and cylinder design, as well as having slightly different mechanisms to self-prime. The third pattern was actually made as percussion guns, as Collier’s guns were being made right at the end of the flintlock period and the dawn of the percussion cap. In total, 350-400 guns were made, including 50-100 bought by the British military for use in India.

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August 13, 2020

Development of the Luger Automatic Pistol

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 31 Oct 2016

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Lugers! there are approximately a gazillion different recognized varieties, because the pistol became so popular and iconic. And yet … they all kinda look the same, don’t they? (If you are a Luger collector, don’t answer that!) A great many (I daresay the significant majority) of the Luger variations are minor changes in production details. So, what was involved in the mechanical evolution of the Luger?

Not much, really — which is a testament to the talents of Georg Luger. He got the gun almost totally right on his first try. There are, however, two major variants of the Luger mechanically — the 1900 model and the 1906 model. In this video I will walk through the differences between these two, as well as the initial Borchardt pistol that Luger used as his starting point and a couple other relevant milestones (a Swiss trials gun and a transitional French trials gun). And since they are the most common of the military models, we will also take a quick look at the German Army, Navy, and Artillery models.

August 4, 2020

Sturmtruppen Firepower: The Artillery Luger

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Apr 2020

https://www.instagram.com/rockislanda…

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This is lot #3569 in the upcoming RIA Premier Auction. It was scheduled for April, but has been postponed — check their web site for upcoming Online Only auctions every month, though!

The lP08 (Lange pistole 08) was formally adopted in 1913 to replace the Reichsrevolver for the field artillery. These were the German light artillery troops, who were specifically given a pistol caliber carbine to provide maximum firepower in a very compact package. They were made by the Erfurt Arsenal in 1914, and by DWM throughout the war, with a total of about 180,000 made.

What is most interesting to me is the evolution of the use of the “artillery Luger” throughout the course of World War One. Starting as simply a compact weapon for artillery, it was quickly recognized by aviators as an ideal weapon for aircraft before the mass introduction of aerial machine guns. The stock allowed more accurate fire, and the semiautomatic operation minimized the handling movements required to fire. More substantially, it was adopted by the German Sturmtruppen for maximizing the striking power of small and flexible units. It is for these men that the 32-round drum magazine was developed in 1916. This represents one of the very few formal military uses of a pistol-caliber semiautomatic carbine, as it was superseded by the advent of the submachine gun in 1918.

A few small batches were made in the 1920s and 1930s, but it would not see significant use in World War Two – leaving it a weapon specifically iconic to the Great War.

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Forgotten Weapons
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July 2, 2020

Early Automatic Pistol Cartridges – What, When & Why?

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Oct 2016

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In discussion with a friend recently, the topic of early automatic pistol cartridges came up. Specifically, looking at the context of which cartridges were actually available at which times, and how this might provide helpful context for understanding why particular cartridges were adopted (or commercially successful) or were not.

I decided to see if I could put together a useful video on the subject, and this is the result. We will look at the cartridges available prior to 1900, the ones developed or introduced between 1900 and 1904, and then a few followups which appeared between 1905 and 1910.

Some cartridges became popular because of their ballistic characteristics — like the 7.63mm Mauser and the C96 “Broomhandle” — while others became popular because of the handgun much more than the cartridge itself — like the Browning 1900 and the .32ACP / 7.65mm Browning.

June 3, 2020

Inglis High Power: How a Chinese Whim Became A British Service Pistol

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Jan 2018

Sold for $3,163.

During World War Two, the Canadian government set up a loan program to help Chinese companies provide all manner of material aid to Canada’s allies. Among many others, one recipient of this aid was the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai Shek. Chinese representatives asked the John Inglis company to manufacture no less than 180,000 Browning High Power pistols, and the company agreed.

After some wrangling, Inglis acquired a license from FN representatives to make the guns, got a complete technical package through the British government and FN’s representatives in exile, and the direct personal aid of Laloux and Saive from FN. Delivery proved difficult, though, with only about 4000 guns being shipped to Karachi and then needing to be flown over The Hump in cargo planes, along with massive amounts of other aid — and a few pistols didn’t get a lot of priority there.

By the fall of 1944, the contract was cancelled under concerns that it was not really contributing to any progress in the war against the Japanese, along with insistence from American General Stilwell that the Chinese forces be armed with weapons that could be supplied more easily through the American logistic network. Production restarted after the defeat of Germany, with another 40,000 or so being made and delivered before it was cancelled again when the Nationalist Chinese forces were seen to be clearly losing to their Communist opponents.

Each of these pistols was supplied with a combination shoulder stock and holster. In the US, attaching a stock to a pistol would normally subject it to registration as a Short Barreled Rifle, but the Inglis High Powers are among the guns exempted from this requirement. They are, in fact, among the least expensive and most modern guns to be exempted in this way.

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May 30, 2020

Some of Ian’s Gun Collection, on a Matrix Armory Display Wall

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Apr 2017

https://www.matrixarmory.com/

Matrix Armory is a new gun display system developed by Jeff High (a long-time Forgotten Weapons supporter, incidentally) who wanted something that would really do justice to guns that you want to display and appreciate. The other sorts of display/racking systems out there are much more industrial in style, primarily to store guns. Matrix Armory was designed to make your guns look their best, because nothing is quite as sad as a great gun collection squashed into a safe and never actually seen (assuming one has a secure room for display, naturally).

I have gotten a lot of people asking to see my own personal collection, and so I figured this would be a cool way to do that; showing you some of the highlights of my collection in conjunction with the Matrix Armory wall we installed in my office. I have no financial stake in the product — I think the years of work Jeff has put into it have led to a really nice product that I think will be of interest to some of the folks who read Forgotten Weapons.

May 27, 2020

Webley 1913 Semiauto Pistol: History and Disassembly

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 May 2017

William Whiting and the Webley company had high hopes for their self-loading pistols being adopted by the British military — but they never got the success they were hoping for.

After the poor performance of the Webley 1904 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hT38…) at trials, William Whiting decided to make sure his next attempt would be fully developed before he put it in the hands of the military. He did very well at that too, as the gun which would become the Model 1913 Webley did very well from its very first military tests. The Royal Navy was, in fact, quite enthusiastic about it, although the Army was not. The Navy would ultimately adopt the gun and purchase about 8,000 of them during World War One, while the Army acquired just a couple hundred and preferred to stick to its revolvers.

Thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage magazine for loaning me these pistols to bring to you!

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May 23, 2020

“System Mauser” – The Very First C96 Pistols

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Feb 2020

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The very first group of C96 pistols made — about 200 in total — are called “System Mauser” pistols. They have this hand-engraved on the top of the barrel, and have a number of other very early features that would quickly change. Most of these changes involve lightening the gun, but they also have a distinctive stepped barrel and a holster/stock that opened to the left; the opposite of all the later standard holsters.

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