This week, we will be featuring all Swiss weapons here at Forgotten Weapons. Kind of like Shark Week, but more land-locked. We'll kick off today with a video showing you around a Swiss LMG-25 light machine gun we found for sale at Cornet & Company in Brussels (a better gun shop than any I've foun...

The Sturmgewehr 45 (aka Gerat 06H) was the first functional roller-delayed blowback rifle developed, and it was slated to replace the StG44 as Germany's primary combat rifle when WWII ended. We have a reproduction of one made exactly to original spec, and we wanted to see how it would have fared ...

The Volksturmgewehr Gustloff (commonly and incorrectly called the VG1-5) was a last-ditch rifle developed by Germany at the end of World War II. Only a few thousand were made, and they did not make a significant impact on the war. The rifle was intended to are the Volksturm, the German equivalent...

We had the opportunity to take a look at a PTR-44 semiauto reproduction of a German Sturmgewehr today, and it's a gorgeous rifle. There were some issues reported by early owners (including miscut chambers due, actually, to incorrect dimensions on the original German blueprints) so we're eager to ...

It may look like we're only interested in military arms, but that's not the case. We're mostly interested in military guns, but there are plenty of other interesting corners of the firearms world to explore too.

While we were visiting one particular collector, we ended up having a great time t...

The "Bigot" was a modification of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol developed by the Office of Strategic Services during WW2. The OSS was a clandestine operations service, the predecessor of the CIA. The Bigot was intended as a way for commandos to quietly eliminate sentries - although we are not sure ...

We have another experimental German WWII piece for you today, Mauser's last-ditch "Volkspistole". It was developed at the end of the war as an extremely inexpensive home guard weapon, although how much use a pistol would have been in fighting off the Red Army and US Army is pretty questionable. T...

Charles Manville developed this weapon in the 1930s as a riot control tool, and they were built in 12ga, 25mm, and 37mm. We should point out that the 12ga version was for tear gas rounds only (like today's 12ga flare launchers) and not safe to use with high-pressure ammunition. Anyway, it was int...

We have a brief video from a friend of the Forgotten Weapons site showing a standard M1915 Chauchat in use. Although short, the video does a good job of showing the gun's rate of fire and general operation. You can see the open magazine design that caused so much trouble, and see how the heavy re...

Today we have one of the oldest guns we've looked at, a Lorenzoni repeating flintlock pistol. The system was designed by an Italian gunmaker in Florence name Michele Lorenzoni. They were made in very small numbers, and the workmanship is stunning, especially considering that they were first manuf...

Japanese Papa Nambu Pistol with Matching Stock

We have been able to find very little information on the Vitali 1910 automatic pistol, but we did have the opportunity to take a look at one recently. It is very clearly marked Vitali 1910 Terni, but bears no other markings whatsoever. The gun is much more typical of its era than the Hino-Komuro,...

Amerigo Cei-Rigotti was a major in the Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) in 1900, wen his innovative self-loading rifle design was first introduced. Unlike many or the very early semiauto rifle designs, the Cei-Rigotti is a light, handy, and pretty compact rifle:

The rifle was select-fire, ...

Dolf Goldsmith is a renowned author and machine gun expert, having written landmark books on the Maxim, Vickers, and Browning machine guns, and having been an avid shooter and gun collector for more than 60 years. We had the pleasure of speaking with him at the SAR West gun show last month, and d...

The Hotchkiss Universal is a pretty interesting submachine gun, despite its rather clumsy appearance. The overriding design intent was to make a very compact folding carbine, and Hotchkiss certainly met that objective. However, the gun ended up being too expensive and complex to achieve any real ...

The German military establishment during WWII has a reputation for innovation and excellence, which is pretty well deserved. But even they produced some real goose eggs, and the Gewehr 41 is one of them. That the G41 was even remotely successful is a tribute to the creativity of the Walther and M...

During the 1960s, the Colt company was looking to help market the M-16 rifle to military forces by pairing it with a light machine gun. They were going after the exact same market segment as the Stoner 63 system. The first attempt at this was the Colt CMG-1, which had some limited parts commonali...

Today we're looking at VIS Radom: A Study and Photographic Album of Poland's Finest Pistol, by William J. York. The Radom is not a as well known as other pistols of the era (like the 1911, Browning High-Power, or Walther P38), but is an excellent gun and has a devoted following. It is also one of...

It's a bit of a different book review today - since we've been looking at Swiss arms all week (and there's a really unique one coming up tomorrow), we needed to find a book on the Swiss. What we have is one of 9 or 10 volumes on Swiss military arms, both issued and experimental. This volume (the ...

A general look at a couple of early automatic pistol designs, and what they have in common. We have a Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21, a C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser, and an Astra M900.

The Tarn was a 9x19mm pistol developed by a Polish ex=pat designer named Z. de Lubicz Bakanowski. It was a simple blowback design, with a quite heavy slide and recoil spring. It was manufactured by the Swift Rifle Company, and ten examples were made as prototypes. They were tested formally by the...

Finnish Brutality 2021 is going to be a tough match in the best case. But I will be running it in a 1940 uniform, with a Mosin. A Finnish M39 Mosin, sure, but still a Mosin. That means that I have a lot of things already working against me, and the last thing I want is to have the rifle not shoot...

Today I am out at the range with a new M91 from Zastava USA. This is the civilian version of the Serbian M91 sniper’s rifle, which was developed in the 1990s to replace the M76 in Serbian Army service. The M76 was chambered for 8mm Mauser, while the M91 uses 7.62x54R. Aside from a 3-position adju...