Forgotten Weapons
Published Mar 25, 2024The Charlton was a conversion of a bolt action Lee rifle into a light machine gun, designed by New Zealander Phillip Charlton. Some 1500 were made in New Zealand, but a bit later it appears that there was an effort to also produce the gun in Australia. The Electrolux company (the same one that makes washing machines and other home appliances today) made a few prototypes.
The Electrolux version is different from the original in a couple ways. While the basic conversion mechanism is the same, the Electrolux is more refined, with a shorter gas system and a fairly clean action cover over the working parts. It is also semiautomatic only, intended to be a shoulder-fired rifle where the original was made for the LMG role. Electrolux also used standard No1 MkIII rifles as its base, where the originals were made from a variety of mostly worn out Lee Metfords and Long Lees.
The Electrolux contract was cancelled in June 1944, and only a few prototypes were made. This example is in the British Royal Armouries collection, to whom I am grateful for the access and the trust to take it apart for you!
My video on the standard production Charlton:
https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/video…
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July 7, 2024
Electrolux Charlton: Washing Machine Company Converts Bolt Action to Semiauto
July 4, 2024
How the First Tanks CONQUERED the Trenches
The Tank Museum
Published Mar 16, 2024This is the story of the evolution of the tank during World War One. Notorious for its appalling human cost, the First World War was fought using the latest technology – and the tank was invented to overcome the brutally unique conditions of this conflict.
Arriving at the mid-point of the war, they would be built and used by the British Commonwealth, French and German armies – with the US Army using both British and French designs.
00:00 | Intro
01:17 | The Beginnings of WWI
02:13 | The Solution to Trench Warfare
03:47 | Initial Ideas
05:42 | How to Cross a Trench
08:08 | How Effective was the Tank?
15:40 | Battlefield Upgrades
17:09 | New Designs
24:32 | ConclusionThis video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.
#tankmuseum #evolution #tank #tanks #ww1 #technology
June 28, 2024
The weird and the W.E.I.R.D. gather at Vibecamp
Kulak, just back from a road trip to visit two pretty far offbeat gatherings, writes about what she heard and saw at Vibecamp:
VibeCamp is maybe the extreme intersection of Rationalist, Post-Rat, Effective Altruism, Silicon Valley, Quant Finance, and 5-10 other Cyber-Left, Grey-Tribe, autistic-centrist, techno-optimist blogging/twitter world. […]
Given that setup you could probably imagine the two overwhelming facts about Vibecamp:
- With rare exception everyone in attendance was shockingly intelligent. At random points throughout the festival I was having deep dive conversation on the geostrategic situation in Israel, the effects of Interest rate increases on venture capital, early 20th century Canadian poetry, and the fate of the petrodollar and the nature of Foreign Exchange markets.
- With rare exception everyone in attendance was incredibly weird. Some in very obvious ways visible at 100 paces, some in little uncanny ways it might take you an hour to isolate and identify.
[…]
The shape of the people jumps out at you. There were an incredible number of normal and average looking people, and a much lower portion of obese and Amerifat body-types than almost anywhere else in the US… Perhaps owing to the extreme intelligence and incomes of those involved … But in about 30-45% of people in attendance there’s just some unusual distortion of body proportions that would be remarkable and memorable encountered in an individual, but when assembled together gave the White and Jewish attendees (a combined 90+% of the total) the look that they were all descended from some unusual gothic ethnicity you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Some strange isolated country bordering The Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Romania, and the Basque region of Spain … That they’d all come from whatever part of the old country the Adams Family comes from.
[…]
These unusual heights (or lack there-of) were exaggerated by recurring extremes of bodyfat percentage, with several of the attendees (male, female, and between) having a spider-like absence of body fat entirely denoting some unusual hormonal profile expressed in a true kaleidoscope of personalities and interests.
This was expressed most keenly in the faces in which latent autism, and the aforementioned hormonal oddities, were expressed in large eyes and other unusual features, resting positions, and expression creases. Which weren’t all necessarily unattractive, but gave most of the women (and a good percentage of the men) a rather spaced out looks which remained somehow unique in each instance … As if they were all on another planet, but each a very different one from the one each other was on.
Thankfully with psychedelics and other pharmaceuticals they seemed able to meet up on a few mutually agreeable worlds.
[…]
Vibecamp attracts a great deal of biohackers and supplements freaks. Men, women, and others of extreme nutritional theories … and while some of them look like their theories haven’t panned out (the vegans) some look like they’ve discovered the Holy Grail.
This extreme bifurcation and assemblage of extremes was expressed right down to their vehicles… Walking through the parking lot there were $100,000 CyberTrucks and sportscars, whereas 1-2 cars down the line from them there were vehicles practically ripped apart with the engine showing under bodywork that’d long ago been scattered across some guardrail, reassembled just enough to (somehow) get back on the road but with not a dime spent on restoring it’s appearance. This wasn’t 1 car, this was a TYPE of car at the festival. Denoting in the owners some combination of MacGyver resourcefulness, Chadlike indifference, autistic obliviousness, and Victorian Frugality that I can’t but admire … (Or I suppose, possibly, extreme motor impairment. I don’t know that these accidents didn’t happen ON THE WAY to the festival)
[…]
The broken heterosexual male-nerd anxiety and tentativeness around sex and other forms of human interaction and intimacy could be cut with a knife … And it wasn’t like everyone had all been corralled and lectured night one or anything of the sort, somehow this broken progressive Dysgenic (actively failing to generate) culture had infected the urban male technological elite, from Bay Area techfounders, to New York Medical Experts, to DC Military Industrial Complex people, to British Forex Traders, to Dutch and Australians visiting the US for the first time … All of them had had that instinctive flinch trained into them … Some of the Wealthiest, Oddest, Most intelligent, and a small handful of the most attractive men in the world … had all been broken like horses, to flinch and start moving the minute the riding crop is grabbed.
Heartbreaking.
There’s an irony that the places which most engage in therapy language and most proudly proclaim their “acceptance” are almost always the most unforgiving … My friend continued to crash VibeCamp events after they tried to kick him out, and he might have been one of the only people in VibeCamp history to start dating a girl at the festival … (not a man to receive a priestly censor), but the sensitive nerdy men I encountered, with well meaning hearts and souls for poetry, hopeless.
So while I had a blast and enjoyed myself I certainly don’t expect it to be a culture that’s still there in 20-30 years, The people there will maybe produce 100-200 offspring in that time for every 500 that actually attended. If that.
June 24, 2024
Raise a glass of your favourite microbrew to … Jimmy Carter?
Glenn “The Instapundit” Reynolds visits a local brewing festival in Knoxville and remembers what it was like before — of all people — Jimmy Carter began the process of deregulating the beer industry by legalizing homebrewed beer in 1978:
The Instapundit models his Hamm’s Beer Hawaiian shirt at a recent Knoxville beer festival.
This weekend I want to the Knox Brewfest at the Knoxville World’s Fair Grounds. As the name suggests, it was a collection of most of the local micro-breweries, each with a booth offering samples. (There were also a few bigger operations, like Sierra Nevada, Abita, and Paulaner). I wore my Hamm’s Beer Hawaiian shirt, which was a surprisingly big hit.
And there were some lessons, about which more later.
Hamm’s doesn’t really exist anymore except as a sometimes-produced minor product of Coors, which bought the trademark after it passed through the hands of numerous other companies. But it’s not forgotten!
The beer was good and the crowd was cheerful.
Mostly me, and my friend Jim (who I’ve known since junior high) were reflecting on the vast improvement in the world of beer in America, and particularly in Knoxville. As late as, oh, 1990 or so, you could go into almost any bar in Knoxville and if you asked what kind of beer they had you’d get an answer like this: “We’ve got everything! Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Light, Coors, Coors Light – anything you want!”
It’s easy to take the craft-brewing revolution for granted, but it brought about huge changes and for the better. Nowadays, the beer scene in America tends to be better than that in Europe. No, really. In fact, one of my former research assistants, who practices law in Belgium now, brought over a couple of Belgian friends who wanted to see Tennessee. I met them for lunch at Barley’s in the Old City, to hear a bluegrass show and eat pizza and drink beer. They were very impressed with the fifty or so taps that Barley’s offers.
Back home they said, the bars are usually owned by the breweries and only sell their own brews, so you might have only three or four varieties, all from the same label. Nothing like this.
[…]
This deregulatory story started (like airlines and trucking deregulation) with Jimmy Carter of all people. Despite his (often true) reputation as a bossy micro-manager, he was an engineer and a rationalist. That worked out poorly in foreign policy, but led him to undo a number of irrational regulatory structures, one of which was the limit on home beer production. Carter signed a bill legalizing homebrewing in 1978, and those homebrewers were the nucleus of the craft beer movement a decade or so later.
June 10, 2024
Bigger Isn’t Always Better: A1E1 Independent | Tank Chats Reloaded
The Tank Museum
Published Mar 1, 2024A bigger tank is a better tank, right? Wrong.
Meet the Interwar Vickers A1E1 Independent: a failed prototype, a prototype that proved bigger isn’t always better. Impractical and expensive, it was never accepted into service – but it is said to have inspired equally cumbersome designs including the German Neubaufahrzeug and the Soviet T-35.
Join David Willey, The Tank Museum Curator, as he examines one of the more unusual vehicles in the collection – and discover how it became a focus for political espionage in the early 1930’s.
00:00 | Introduction
02:56 | Tank Design & Vickers
03:28 | Heavy Tank Requirements
05:38 | Initial Blueprints & Prototypes
11:08 | Test-bed Vehicle
14:50 | Myths, Issues and Life after Trials
19:25 | Does it lead to anything?This video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.
#tankmuseum #davidwilley #Interwar #heavytanks
June 9, 2024
Men In Armour (1949) – The origins and operation of tanks
FWD Publishing
Published Feb 18, 2024Lengthy documentary made in 1949 about the men and tanks of the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC).
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 27, 2024
Floating Fun: The History of the Amphibious Boat Car
Ed’s Auto Reviews
Published Aug 9, 2023A classic car connoisseur dives into the general history of amphibious cars and vehicles. When did people start to build boat-car crossovers? What made Hans Trippel’s Amphicar 770 and the Gibbs Aquada so special? And why don’t you see a lot of amphibious automobiles out on the road and water these days?
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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 4, 2024
See Inside Panther | Tank Chats Reloaded
The Tank Museum
Published Dec 29, 2023Chris Copson takes a detailed look inside and out, of arguably the most advanced German tank of WW2 … the Panther.
Is the Panther the formidable opponent that is was made out to be? Would the allies use such a vehicle and was it over engineered? Find out in today’s video.
00:00 Intro
00:54 Overview – Our Panther
02:41 War time variants & armour
06:06 Design
08:30 Weaponry
10:18 Crew, equipment and flaws – a look inside
17:53 Performance & conclusion
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April 3, 2024
The Flying Saucer Designed To Ram Soviet Bombers | Avro Canada Silver Bug
Rex’s Hangar
Published Dec 29, 2023Today we’re taking a look at a concept “aircraft” developed in the 1950s, the Avro Canada Silver Bug — part of a long line of flying discs drawn up by designer John Frost.
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March 31, 2024
HMS Unicorn (I72) – Guide 367
Drachinifel
Published Dec 23, 2023The Unicorn, a fleet maintenance carrier of the British Royal Navy, is today’s subject.
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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 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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