Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jun 2023Today we are taking a look at a German G1 pattern FAL. The initial purchased of the G1 were actual made by the German Border Guard (the Bundesgrenschutz). In the aftermath of World War Two, the western Allies decided to perpetually disarm Germany, and German security was provided by French, British, and American forces. As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, that attitude softened — West Germany was on the front lines of the Cold War, and could be a valuable ally against Communism in the East. Thus in 1951, the West German Bundesgrenzschutz (Border Guards) were formed and armed — basically with all WW2 Wehrmacht equipment. Looking to improve its small arms in 1955/56, the BGS tested a number of modern rifles and decided to adopt the FAL.
The BGS initially ordered 2,000 FAL rifles from FN, with wooden hand guards and a fixed flash hider (essentially a standard Belgian FAL) — these are known as the “A” pattern. A second BGS order for 4,800 more rifles followed, this time of the “B” pattern with a metal handguard and folding bipod. This was the first use of an integral bipod on the FAL, and would go on to be a popular option for other buyers.
In 1955, the German Army was reinstated as the Bundeswehr. Looking over the BGS rifle testing, the Bundeswehr also decided to adopt the FAL, and placed and order for 100,000 rifles — the “C” pattern. These include sights lowered 3mm by specific German request, as well as a set of swappable muzzle devices (flash hider and blank-firing adapter).
Ultimately, FN was unwilling to license FAL production to West Germany, and this drove the Germans to adopt the Spanish CETME as the G3 rifle, which it was able to license. The Bundeswehr G1 rifles were eventually transferred to the BGS and later sold to other allies as surplus.
Special thanks to Bear Arms in Scottsdale, AZ for providing access to this rifle for video!
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October 7, 2023
Rearming West Germany: The G1 FAL
September 16, 2023
The many, MANY failed VW Beetle Reboots!
Big Car
Published 22 Oct 2021I recently made a video on the many, many times British Leyland tried to update the Mini. The lack of an update helped to make the original Mini an iconic shape. The same has happened to many other iconic cars, and the Volkswagen Type 1 or Beetle falls into the same camp. Why did it take 36 years until the Beetle would get a replacement, and how did a car made as a Nazi show of strength end up in a Disney film?
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July 14, 2023
MG-3: Germany Modernizes the Classic MG-42
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Apr 2023When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The MG3 included improvements to the belt feed system, added integral antiaircraft sights, and allowed a rate of fire between 700 and 1300 rpm depending on the choice in bolt, buffer and booster. It was the standard German MG until finally being replaced by the MG5 in 2012 — and it is/was in use by nearly 4 dozen other countries as well. Today we are going to compare this transferrable, C&R MG3 to an original MG42 to see the improvements that were made.
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December 15, 2022
Kraut Space Magic: the H&K G11
Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Dec 2018I have been waiting for a long time to have a chance to make this video — the Heckler & Koch G11! Specifically, a G11K2, the final version approved for use by the West German Bundeswehr, before being cancelled for political and economic reasons.
The G11 was a combined effort by H&K and Dynamit Nobel to produce a new rifle for the German military with truly new technology. The core of the system was the use of a caseless cartridge developed in the late 60s and early 70s by Dynamit Nobel, which then allowed H&K to design a magnificently complex action which could fire three rounds in a hyper-fast (~2000 rpm) burst and have all three bullets leave the barrel before the weapon moved in recoil.
Remarkably, the idea went through enough development to pass German trials and actually be accepted for service in the late 1980s (after a funding shutdown when it proved incapable of winning NATO cartridge selection trials a decade earlier). However, the reunification with East Germany presented a reduced strategic threat, a new surplus of East German combat rifles (AK74s), and a huge new economic burden to the combined nations and this led to the cancellation of the program. The US Advanced Combat Rifle program gave the G11 one last grasp at a future, but it was not deemed a sufficient improvement in practical use over the M16 platform to justify a replacement of all US weapons in service.
The G11 lives on, however, as an icon of German engineering prowess often referred to as “Kraut Space Magic” (in an entirely complimentary take on the old pejorative). That it could be so complex and yet still run reliably in legitimate military trials is a tremendous feat by H&K’s design engineers, and yet one must consider that the Bundeswehr may just have dodged a bullet when it ended up not actually adopting the rifle.
Many thanks to H&K USA for giving me access to the G11 rifles in their Grey Room for this video!
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September 1, 2022
Rheinmetall MG42/59: The Slow-Fire Commercial MG42
Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 May 2022After World War Two, when West Germany was allowed to reconstitute its army and join NATO, it needed small arms. The new Bundeswehr chose the MG42 as its standard GPMG, and the Rheinmetall firm undertook the project of recreating the technical data package to build them. The work was completed in 1958, and the company began making new MG42s in 7.62 NATO for the commercial export market as well as for the Bundeswehr (which designated the gun the MG1). Rheinmetall made a number of iterative improvements to the design, including nearly doubling the bolt weight (from 550g/1.2lb to 950g/2.1lb) for their MG42/59 model to bring the rate of fire down to a reasonable 700-900 rpm. The bolt (and its associated heavy buffer) was not adopted by the Bundeswehr, but was bought by other clients.
The MG42/59 also includes many of the other upgrades that would be implemented on the final MG3 version adopted by the military. These include:
– Top cover hinge that holds the cover in a raised position
– Feed tray to mount modern belt boxes and prevent belts from falling out when opened
– Integrated AA rear sight
– New muzzle booster designThis particular one is a beautiful example made in 1964 and brought to the US early enough to be a registered, transferrable, C&R piece.
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August 13, 2022
QotD: Erich von Manstein
One parallel between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conduct of the Second World War that has hitherto escaped notice concerns the relationship between the dictator and his generals. Just as the German General Staff obeyed Hitler’s orders, even when they knew him to be leading them not only to defeat but to depravity, so the Russian high command has capitulated to Putin despite realising that his war was not only a mistake but a crime.
In the Britain of the Sixties, a certain mystique still attached to the generals of the Third Reich. In their stylish uniforms and their gleaming jackboots, they had swaggered. Only two, Keitel and Jodl, were executed at Nuremberg; the rest got away with murder.
Even some of those who were convicted of war crimes had friends in high places. One of the most prominent was Erich von Manstein, the architect of many German victories both in the Battle of France and on the Eastern front. He was also complicit in the genocide of more than a million Jews and others by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in Ukraine.
Yet Churchill was among those who successfully campaigned to have Manstein’s 18-year sentence reduced to 12, of which he served only four.
Manstein’s memoir Verlorene Siege (translated as Lost Victories) appeared in 1958, a key text in the mythology that depicted the Wehrmacht as “clean” and laid the blame for war crimes on Hitler. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the postwar Federal Republic, also played his part in the rehabilitation of Manstein, on the grounds that West German rearmament required a sharp distinction between the Nazis and an untainted military tradition as the basis for the new Bundeswehr.
Daniel Johnson, “The moral blindness of Putin’s generals”, The Critic, 2022-05-10.
July 24, 2022
QotD: British armour from BAOR to the first Gulf War
To that end generations of British soldiers were stationed there training for a war that they hoped would never come. To this day there are still serving Cold War veterans who even into the late 1980s knew where they would deploy to, and the likely exact spot in the field or woods where they would dig their trenches and realistically be killed.
This force though was essentially a static one, designed to operate defensively and underpinned by an enormous static logistical and support network stretching from the Inner German Border all the way back to Antwerp and then the UK. The British Army was able to sustain armour in large numbers in part because it had the threat to face, the space to operate and the support network in place to enable this to occur. To this day the subject of how well supported BAOR was through the extensive rear communications zone efforts, and the widespread workshops (such as in Belgium) designed to repair and support UK units is not widely known or told, but deserves much greater recognition.
This matters because when people look back to the size of the British Army in 1990 and look at how many tanks we had then compared to now, they forget that the Army’s MBT capability was essentially a static garrison force waiting to conduct a defensive campaign against a peer threat where it expected to take heavy losses and probably operate very quickly in an NBC environment. It was not intended to be a deployable force capable of operating across the planet on an enduring basis.
This is why when people talk about how many tanks were deployed in 1991 to the Gulf War (some 220 Challenger 1’s were deployed) they forget that this was the first time since Suez that the UK had operated heavy armour overseas. It took many months to get this force into place, and it came at the cost of gutting the operational capability of the remaining BAOR units, who found their logistical support chains hammered in order to support the forces assigned to GRANBY.
The harsh, and perhaps slightly uncomfortable reality for the UK is that OP GRANBY required nearly 6 months of build up at the cost of gutting wider armoured warfare capability – proving that away from home, having 900 tanks is irrelevant if you are operating outside normal parameters and are having to effectively cannibalise or mothball most of them to keep 220 in the Gulf.
By contrast OP TELIC saw over 100 tanks deployed, but a significantly shorter lead in time for the deployment – testament to the significant investments made in the intervening period in logistical capabilities.
Sir Humphrey, “Tanks for nothing — Why it does not matter if the British Army has fewer tanks than Cambodia”, Thin Pinstriped Line, 2019-04-24.
June 13, 2022
Lightning fast interceptor turned nuclear strike bomber: the Canadair CF-104 Starfighter
Polyus Studios
Published 29 Sep 2020Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel!
Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudiosThis is an UPDATED version of the video. It includes many changes and corrections to the original video. Many thanks to Gary Watson for all his contributions!
Starting in 1959 Canadair began building Canada’s fastest jet at their plant in Montreal. It was designed as a sleek high altitude and high speed interceptor, but was adapted for low level ground strike missions with conventional and nuclear weapons. It was the Canadair CF-104 Starfighter, Canada’s missile with a man in it.
0:00 Introduction
0:33 Historical Context
2:01 Design Choice
4:15 Canadair’s Production Run
6:50 Configuration and Specifications
11:04 Nuclear Strike Role
12:13 Operational History
16:06 Conventional Role
17:53 Retirement and Replacement
19:28 Accidents, Controversy and Legacy
22:56 ConclusionMusic:
“Denmark” – Portland Cello ProjectResearch Sources:
Canadair CF-104 Starfighter by Harold A. Skaarup (http://silverhawkauthor.com/canadian-…)
Canadair CF-104 Starfighter by Canadian Starfighter Association (http://canadianstarfighterassociation…)
CF-104 Flight Operations by Air Force Museum of Alberta (https://www.rcaf.museum/history/rcaf-…)
Story of the F-104 Starfighter in Norwegian Service by Bjorn Hafsten (http://starfighter.no/hist-en3.html)
Starfighters with Turkey by Joe Baugher (http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighte…)
ASN Aviation Safety Database by Aviation Safety Network (http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/d…)
Starfighter by David L. Bashow (Fortress Publication, 1990, ISBN: 0-919195-12-1)
Photography credit 6mins10sec: Gary WatsonFootage Sources:
Personal Footage – Gary Watson
Cold War Fighter Pilot – Ken Castle, CD, Flight-Lieutenant (ret’d) – Canada Aviation and Space Museum (https://youtu.be/sEUOFyPLL94)
CF 104 Baden Soellingen 1965 – Gordon Price (https://youtu.be/4UZ9PE58Eq0)
CF104 Germany 1983/4 441 Squadron CAF – Tom Hammond (https://youtu.be/xrqjAKHflCo)
Great Planes Lockheed F-104 Starfighter – Discovery Channel (1996)
Avro Canada CF 100 Canuck – Avro (1956)#Starfighter #CanadianAerospace #PolyusStudios
May 20, 2022
The Cold War Legend That Delivered SAUSAGES To Tanks | Forces TV
Forces News
Published 26 Apr 2018To British troops based in north Germany in the last two decades of the Cold War, he was a legend. But this was no commando or member of the special forces.
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March 22, 2022
West Germany’s Wirtschaftwunder — the staggering economic postwar recovery
Christian Monson debunks the common tale taught in western schools of reason for the amazing recovery of West Germany’s economy after World War Two:
Occupation zone borders in Germany, 1947. The territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, under Polish and Soviet administration/annexation, are shown as cream as is the likewise detached Saar protectorate. Berlin is the multinational area within the Soviet zone.
Image based on map data of the IEG-Maps project (Andreas Kunz, B. Johnen, and Joachim Robert Moeschl of the University of Mainz) — www.ieg-maps.uni-mainz.de, via Wikimedia Commons.
This “economic miracle” is commonly referred to as die Wirtschaftswunder. But how did Germany go from rubble to riches in just a decade while neutral countries like Spain merely treaded economic water? If you ask your average American history student, they will say the Marshall Plan, of course!
Unfortunately, the ubiquity of the myth that the Marshall Plan rebuilt Germany is proof that state-controlled education favors propaganda over economic literacy. Despite the fact that most modern historians don’t give the Marshall Plan much credit at all for rebuilding Germany and attribute to it less than 5 percent of Germany’s national income during its implementation, standard history textbooks still place it at the forefront of the discussion about post-war reconstruction.
Consider this section from McDougal Littell’s World History (p. 968), the textbook I was given in high school:
This assistance program, called the Marshall Plan, would provide food, machinery, and other materials to rebuild Western Europe. As Congress debated the $12.5 billion program in 1948, the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. Congress immediately voted approval. The plan was a spectacular success.
Of course, the textbook makes no mention of the actual cause of the Wirtschaftwunder: sound economic policy. That’s because, for the state, the Marshall Plan makes great statist mythology.
Not only is it frequently brought up to justify the United States getting involved in foreign conflicts, but it simply gives support for central planning. Just look at the economic miracle the government was able to create with easy credit, they say.
And of course, admitting that the billions of dollars pumped into Germany after WWII accomplished next to nothing, especially when compared to something as simple as sound money, would be tantamount to admitting that the government spends most of its time making itself needed when it isn’t and thereby doing little besides getting in the way.
Credit for the turnaround should be accorded to Ludwig Erhard, according to Alasdair Macleod at the Cobden Centre:
Anyone who favours regulation needs to explain away Germany’s post-war success. Her economy had been destroyed, firstly by the Nazi war machine, and then by Allied bombing. We easily forget the state of ruin the country was in, with people in the towns and cities actually starving in the post-war aftermath. The joint British and American military solution was to extend and intensify war-time rationing and throw Marshall aid at the problem.
Then a man called Ludwig Erhard was appointed director of economics by the Bizonal Economic Council, in effect he became finance minister. He decided, against British and American misgivings, as well as opposition from the newly-recreated Social Democrats, to do away with price controls and rationing, which he did in 1948. These moves followed his currency reform that June, which contracted the money supply by about 90%. He also slashed income tax from 85% to 18% on annual incomes over Dm2,500 (US$595 equivalent).
Economists of the Austrian school would comprehend and recommend this strategy, but it goes wholly against the bureaucratic grain. General Lucius Clay, who was the military governor of the US Zone, and to whom Erhard reported, is said to have asked him, “Herr Erhard, my advisers tell me what you have done is a terrible mistake. What do you say to that?”
Erhard replied, “Herr General, pay no attention to them! My advisers tell me the same thing.”
About the same time, a US Colonel confronted Erhard: “How dare you relax our rationing system, when there is a widespread food shortage?”
Erhard replied, “I have not relaxed rationing, I have abolished it. Henceforth the only rationing ticket the people will need will be the deutschemarks. And they will work hard to get those deutschemarks, just wait and see.”
The US Colonel did not have to wait long. According to contemporary accounts, within days of Erhard’s currency reform, shops filled with goods as people realised the money they sold them for would retain its value. People no longer needed to forage for the basics in life, so absenteeism from work halved, and industrial output rose more than 50% in the second half of 1948 alone.
March 4, 2022
Checkpoint Charlie – Berlin’s Cold War Frontier
Mark Felton Productions
Published 4 Dec 2018The history of Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous of Berlin’s East-West crossing points and the focus of a serious standoff between the US and Soviet Union in 1961 that could have led to World War III.
Support Mark at Patreon for $1 a Month!
https://www.patreon.com/markfeltonpro…
December 21, 2021
Tank Chat #136 | Schützenpanzer | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 3 Sep 2021David Willey is back with another Tank Chat! This week’s episode is all about the Schützenpanzer. A West German infantry fighting vehicle developed from 1956 to 1958.
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November 10, 2021
Tank Chats #131 | Kanonenjagdpanzer | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 9 Jul 2021Curator David Willey discusses the German Cold War tank destroyer the Kanonenjagdpanzer or Jpz 4-5 for short.
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May 2, 2020
After The Berlin Wall: Making Germany’s Armed Forces (Bundeswehr 1991 Documentary)
Forces TV
Published 5 Jan 2018It’s more than 27 years since German reunification, when East and West Germany came together again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This documentary looks at the challenges facing the West German Army as they took over the East German National People’s Army.
Read more: http://www.forces.net/news/comment-bu…
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How things change … back in 1991, the Bundeswehr had a vast over-supply of military vehicles between the mass of Soviet-era equipment inherited from the DDR and the excess due to planned down-sizing of Germany’s overall military expenditure (the “peace dividend”). Earlier this year, Bild reported that German soldiers are being advised to take personal vehicles during military training exercises, due to a lack of infantry fighting vehicles and other military transport.
April 3, 2020
Tank Chats #66 Leopard 2 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 8 Feb 2019Curator David Willey gives chapter and verse on the German Main Battle Tank, Leopard 2, which first entered service with West Germany during the Cold War.
The Leopard 2 Main Battle Tank was kindly temporarily loaned to The Tank Museum by the Historic Collection of the Royal Netherlands Army.
Some stills and footage: © All rights reserved. (AR2011-0034-009, PA01-2016-0139-076, IS2010-3030-24, IS2011-1021-15, IS14-2017-0003-049, B11-ATHENA-020) reproduced with the permission of DND/CAF (2019)
At 8:55 Leopard 2 from The Arsenalen Museum, Sweden.
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Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/ #tankmuseum #tanks #tankchats
