Forgotten Weapons

Forgotten Weapons

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Forgotten Weapons
  • A Gun For Aiming: M8C .50 Caliber Spotting Rifle

    The M8C is a .50 caliber self-loading rifle designed to mount on top of the 106mm M40 recoilless rifle. The recoilless rifle creates a massive signature when fired, and so it is imperative that operators move immediately after firing. In order to make accurate first-round hits, the M8C was built ...

  • FN-DA1: The BAR for NATO

    After World War Two, FN put the BAR back into production. This was initially the FN-D version with a quick-change barrel, but with NATO's adoption of the 7.62mm cartridge, there was a demand for the BAR in that chambering. The Belgian Army adopted this new round, and plenty of other nations did a...

  • Beretta SCS-70 for Italian Special Forces

    The SCS-70 (Special Carbine, Short) is a version of the standard Beretta AR-70 rifle made for Italian special forces use. It has a 12.7” barrel, no gas cutoff or rifle grenade capability, pistol grip storage compartment, and a polymer sidefolding stock. These were used until about 1990, when the...

  • MAS Type 62: France Does the FAL, With a Twist

    In the late 1950s and early 1960s, France was seriously considering joining the NATO small arms standardization. They were equipped with the MAS 49/56 semiauto rifle at this point, and were looking at three possibilities:

    1 – Convert the 49/56 rifles to 7.62 NATO. (This was actually tested wit...

  • Danish Madsen-Saetter GPMG at the Range

    The Madsen-Saetter is a general purpose machine gun that had the unfortunate luck to compete against the MG42/MG3 and FN MAG. It is a quite nice gun to shoot, but not quite up to the overall standard et by those other two guns, arguably the best of their type ever made in the West. This example i...

  • M60: Its Purpose, Mechanics, and Development

    The concept for the M60 began at the end of World War Two, when US Ordnance officers became very interested in the German concept of a universal machine gun (originally conceived by the Danes, but first put into large-scale use by the Germans). This was the idea of having a single machine gun tha...

  • H&R's Prototype Simulator, M14, .22 Caliber, Mark I

    Harrington & Richardson was one of the main contractors for the M14 rifle program, and they also had been a major producer of the M1 Garand rifle. In particular, H&R had produced a .22 rimfire training rifle to mimic the handling of the M1 Garand, which was adopted by the US military as the MC-58...

  • M8C Spotting Rifle at the Range

    The M8C is a .50 caliber self-loading rifle designed to mount on top of the 106mm M40 recoilless rifle. The recoilless rifle creates a massive signature when fired, and so it is imperative that operators move immediately after firing. In order to make accurate first-round hits, the M8C was built ...

  • Lynx Brutality Day 2: The Kettlebell is not Enough

    Day 2 of Polenar Tactical's epic Lynx Brutality 2022 is upon us! I did really well on Day 1; can I keep the streak going, or will I crash and burn? Will I continue to crush it with the Arex Delta? Will the FAMAS height over bore finally prove my undoing? Join me and find out!

  • Lynx Brutality Day 1: From Slovenia With Love

    Welcome to Lynx Brutality! This is a 2-gun Brutality match organized by Polenar Tactical and run at the Lynx Pro Training Center in Kočevje, Slovenia. It's got kettlebells, weight bags, a tower, tires, ballistic shield, and more. I am shooting it with a semiauto FAMAS (courtesy of Fab from Bloke ...

  • My Favorite Chinese Warlord Pistol: the Luger Grip Type

    My favorite pattern of domestic Chinese pistol form he Warlord Era is the one I have termed the "Luger Grip Type". The Luger was not a very common pistol in this period in China, and it is rare to see elements of it copied on Chinese designs. This pattern, however, very specifically uses the grip...

  • Le Redoutable: A Double-Barrel 20-Shot Revolver

    "Manufrance" was the common abbreviated name for Manufacture d'Armes et Cycles de Saint Etienne, a massive mail-order catalog company in France for many decades. Like Sears Roebuck in the United States, one could get pretty much anything from the Manufrance, including firearms. In the years leadi...

  • Lahti's Last Machine Gun: The L33/39 Antiaircraft Gun

    In response to a Finnish military need for a machine gun better than the old Maxim for aerial and anti-aircraft use, Aimo Lahti developed the L33 machine gun from the basis of the Lahti-Saloranta design. It was recoil operated, with the ubiquitous Lahti accelerator lever, and a quite high rate of...

  • Engineering Adaptability and the NFA: Lage Max11/15 System

    The Lage Max11/15 - there is some pretty clever engineering going on here. Let's take a look at both the AR recoil mechanism and the IRM (internal recoil mechanism) and see how they compare...

  • L39A1: British Service Target Rifle Before the L42A1

    The story of the conversion of the Lee Enfield to 7.62mm NATO would not be complete without the L39A1. This is essentially the civilian competition version of what would become the L42A1. It was actually in British service as a target rifle - not intended for combat. It followed the L8 (the first...

  • Germany's L26 Silencer for the K98k, G43, and StG44

    Patented in Germany as System Schätzle, the L26 was a departure from the copies of the Russian wipe-based silencer designs. The L26 used a set of six identical cone-shaped metal baffles inside a simple tube. It attached to a rifle by clamping around the front sight, just like the rifle grenade la...

  • Germany Copies the Soviets: L23 & L27 Silencers

    The German L23 silencer was essentially a copy of captured Soviet Bramit silencers, complete with the attachment system locking around a rifle front sight. Two hundred of these made for the K98k rifle for German trials. These resulted in a desire for a better attachment method, and this led to th...

  • KE Arms KP9 Polymer Lower 9mm Receiver

    KE Arms has released a 9mm polymer lower, based on the KP-15 AR lower. It is set up for Glock magazines, and makes for a nice lightweight and inexpensive base for a 9mm PCC...

  • Kordun 7.62: A Double-Stack Tokarev Pistol from Yugoslavia

    The “Kordun” (named after a region in Croatia) was the first pistol design from Marko Vukovic, lead designer for IM Metal and later HS Produkt. It was made in 1985 for the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, with the goal of being a softer-shooting and higher capacity sidearm than the then-standard M57 Tokar...

  • Kholodovskii: The Greatest Mosin Nagant in History (at Least on Paper...)

    The Kholodovskii Mosin was the result of a Russian ordnance project begun in 1912 to improve the M91 Mosin Nagant rifle. Lieutenant-General Nikolai Kholodovskii and the Tula Arsenal were to cooperate to develop rifle that was lighter, more accurate, and more shooter-friendly than the M91. This wo...

  • Jatimatic on the Range

    How well do the Jatimatic's recoil-controlling features work? Will the front grip snap off while firing? Can I actually get the progressive trigger to work? Let's find out!

  • The *very* wonky Finnish submachine gun: The Jatimatic

    You might recognise this wonky weapon from films and games. In reality only around 6000 were ever made and it was never adopted into service by any armed forces. This rare gun gives us a fascinating insight into one design that tried to solve the issue of recoil reducing accuracy.

  • Type 94 Japanese 37mm Antitank Gun on Guadalcanal

    The Type 94 was the standard infantry antitank gun of the Japanese Army during World Ware Two. It was developed in the early 1930s as tensions with the Soviet Union rose; there had not been much need for Japanese antitank weapons in China. However, high explosive ammunition was also made for the ...

  • What Are Some of Today's Best Investment Handguns?

    Today I'm joined by Len Antaris of Historic Investments to discuss, well, historic investments. I maintain that firearms are better bought for their historic value than as speculative investments, but there are certainly plenty of people who do both. So, Len and I figured we would discuss what we...