When the German Army wanted a new semiauto service rifle in 1941, it received submissions from two companies; Walther and Mauser. Walther’s design didn’t strictly meet the criteria set forth, but it was clearly the better rifle and would eventually win the competition. This involved conducting tr...

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...

The Alar is an interesting very rare Croatian domestic SMG. It is called the "Alar" after it's designer, Stipe Alar. He first came up with the design in 1971 and built one illegally - which resulted in him going to prison for a time. When the Croatian Homeland War broke out and guns were urgently...

The AKB-15 was a project developed by Arex Defense in Slovenia in 2015. The company received a request from a small country (they decline to reveal exactly who) to modernize a stock of AKM rifles with adjustable stocks, picatinny optics mounting, and new barrels among other features. Arex develop...

At the end of World War Two, the Mauser factory complex was in the French occupation zone, and more than a few Mauser engineers went to work for the French. Among them were Ludwig Vorgimmler and Theodor Löffler. These two men joined the Centre d’Etudes et d’Armement de Mulhouse (CEAM) and worked ...

There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. The Russians made the Vityaz, the Hungarians made the KGPF-9…and the Czechs actually made a version form the CZ-2000. This was the attempt to make a 5.56mm AK family of rifles form the roots of the...

The CZ-2000 project in the Czech Republic (derived from the Lada developed in the late years of Czechoslovakia) envisioned a full suite of infantry arms, much like the AK as used by other countries. There would be an SMG-type compact weapon (akin to the AKS-74U "Krinkov"), a standard infantry rif...

We have previously looked at the development of the CZ 2000 and Lada rifle programs in Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic, and today we are taking a close look at one specific variant. This is the SMG pattern CZ 2000, although by current nomenclature it would not be called an SMG because ...

The CZ Skorpion grew out of a Czech Army request for a new 9x19mm SMG as the newly formed Czech Republic pivoted to a Western orientation in the 1990s. The CZ factory took a look at what it already had that might be suitable, and did in fact revisit the vz.61 Skorpion design in 9x19mm (originally...

This really neat compact PDW prototype was developed by Ladislav Findorak in the 1990s for a Czech military program, although nothing was adopted as a result. The lever-delayed system allows it to have a much lighter bolt and carrier than a typical blowback action, while also remaining very compa...

After encountering Italian Villar Perosa machine pistols in the field, Austro-Hungarian troops requested a similar weapon. The project was given to FÉG to work on, and the result was the Pistolen-MG Model 1917: a pair of Frommer Stop pistols with long barrels and 25-round magazines, redesigned to...

The Browning High Power story begins with a French 1921 request for a new military pistol. FN engineer Dieudonné Saive developed a double stack, single feed magazine and John Browning adapted a Browning 1903 pistol to use it, and this was sent to France for consideration. This pistol worked well ...

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...

Today we are continuing to trace the development of the IM Metal / HS Produkt VHS rifles. During this period, Croatia briefly considered adopting the Israeli Tavor rifle. Part of the adoption would have included a license for domestic production, and HS Produkt would have been the company to do t...

After their abortive effort at designing a bullpup AK conversion, IM Metal (later to become HS Produkt) decided to make another try at developing a rifle for the Croatian Army. This time, they decided to base their design on the FAMAS. Why that rifle? Well, at the time the Croatian Homeland War w...

The HS Produkt company, best known for making the XD pistols sold in the US by Springfield, was originally called IM Metal, and was a general fabrication company in Croatia. When the Croatian Homeland War began, there was a clear need for domestic small arms production, and the two engineers at I...

The original Scorpion was adopted in .32 ACP caliber as the vz.61 by the Czechoslovakian military – but development of the Scorpion did not end there. Prototypes were also developed in .380, 9×18 Makarov, and 9x19mm. In particular, the 9x19mm version, designated vz.68, got as far as field trials ...

The vz.52 pistol was originally adopted by Czechoslovakia as a short-term option, with an intention to quickly replace it with something better. The problem was that without a viable domestic pistol, the Soviet Union would have forced Czechoslovakia to start production of the TT-33 Tokarev. Out o...

During the late 1920 and early 1930s, the Walther company worked on developing a military pistol in 9x19mm. They began from the basis of the PP/PPK design, and produced three separate designs, the first two designed “MP” (Military Pistol) and the third being the Armee Pistole (which was followed ...

As the end of World War Two loomed close, the German arms industry turned to a number of Volkssturm rifle designs. These were the crudest and simplest rifles that could be made to work with minimal time, labor, and raw materials. Most were bolt action rifles chambered for 8x57mm, like the Walther...

William Dodge and his brother were inventors in Washington DC who in the 1870s patented a bunch of different improvements to the Remington Rolling Block, among other guns. This particular one I cannot identify with a specific patent, but to my eye it is a way to give the Rolling Block system a sa...

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known for the Lewis light machine gun, but that was not his only foray into firearms design. He also patented two different types of handguns - one gas operated and this short recoil design. Very little information about this pistol is available, although it was apparen...

The M1915 Howell Automatic Rifle is a conversion of a standard No1 MkIII Lee Enfield rifle into a semiautomatic, through the addition of a gas piston onto the right side of the barrel. Despite its very steampunk appearance, the Howell is actually a quite simple conversion mechanically. The rifle ...

W.E. Knoble of Tacoma, Washington is not a well-known gun designer, and was in fact not a successful gun designer. But he did enter a .45 caliber pistol in the 1907 US pistol trials, and in so doing put his name permanently in the annals of firearms history. In addition to that design, he also ma...