The C96 'Broomhandle' Mauser already had the capability of using it's holster as a stock for improved accuracy, so why did German service personnel need a version with a permanently longer butt and barrel? The answer, as is often the case with this series was to solve issues brought on by the rap...

The Colt 1911 is one of the most recognisable weapons firearms, featuring in two World Wars as well as being a regular on the big screen and across the biggest video game titles. What you may not have known about this famous pistol is that the British army seriously considered adopting the 1911's...

Instantly recognisable to weaponry enthusiasts, the Luger is a mainstay of war movies and video games alike. This suppressed example is an extremely rare variant, as it was designed for covert operations by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. Join Jonathan ...

The relatively rare Danuvia VD-01 is the focus for this week's What is this Weapon? episode. While boasting a relatively unremarkable spot in the story of firearms development, the VD-01 does have some interesting features, including polygonal rifling and a helical barrel.

Military aviation was still in its infancy at the outset of the First World War. Pilots and navigators took to the skies wielding a host of handheld small arms including pistols, rifles and even shotguns alongside larger fixed machine guns. The Webley self-loading pistol in .455 calibre with its ...

This cheap and easy to produce pistol, designed to be made with stamped sheet steel was a last-gasp attempt by Nazi Germany to mass-produce a sidearm in the dying months of the Second World War.

Post-war Britain was looking for a new service pistol and turned to the tried and test German Walther P38 for inspiration. However, this new weapon's designer, Marion Karol Jurek decided to make a few changes. Jonathan Ferguson explains.

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball History and practical use of the 2nd World War Hungarian 37M self loading service pistol designed by Rudolf Frommer. Enjoy! If you want to support our work, please check our products: http://kapszli.hu/en/termek-kategoria/capandball-product...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball The TT or Tokarev was the most common self loading pistol of the Red Army during World War II and it was the most common semi auto pistol of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. My impression about the TT3333: accuracy, tactics, history, disassem...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball I think this pistol is something we all know. The Colt 1911 pistol is an icon, just like the Luger P08, or Mauser C96. Here is my impression about a true World War II veteran, a 1911A1 produced by Remington in 1944. History, specifications,...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball The Mauser C96 is one of the best known self loading pistols of the World. The Red 9 (9mm Luger version, manufactured during the 1st World War) is quite rare. Watch my short film about its history, system, tactical use, disassembly - reasse...

What was the first true semiautomatic pistol? Let's take a look...

Before there were self-loading pistols, there were manually operated repeating pistols with magazines - like the 1850s Volcanics. A surprising number of this type of pistol were developed in Austria in the 1880s, and they led d...

This cute little pocket pistol was an early project of Vaclav Holek, who would become much better known for his work with the ZB-26 light machine gun and ZH-29 rifle. It is a very small .25ACP selfloader, intended to be operated with one hand only. The trigger locks into a folded position to allo...

Before the Type 14 Nambu pistol was developed to replace the "Papa" Nambu, Kijiro Nambu experimented with a high-capacity design with a 15-round magazine. This pistol was called the Type A Experimental, and was designed around 1920. Only 15 or 20 were made, and they show elements of both the Papa...

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known as the designer of the Lewis light machine gun, of course - but that was not his only work in the firearms field. In 1919, he patented a semiauto handgun using the same gas-operated, rotating bolt mechanism as the machine gun. It is a pretty massive steel beast of...

The Steyr-Hahn is one of the less glamorized pistols used in WWI, despite being made in quite large numbers (250,000-313,000, depending on who you read). The gun is an interesting mix of features, including bits from the Roth-Steyr M1907 and the early Colt/Browning 1900/1902/1903 pistols. The gun...

Just as production of the .32ACP Type Hamada pistols was reaching full scale, Bunji Hamada was asked to redesign his pistol to use the standard 8mm Nambu cartridge. This he did, and after several changes required by the Army (which appear to have had more to do with giving the Army some claim to ...

After a series of pistol trials, Norway adopted a copy of the Colt 1911 in .45 ACP as its standard service pistol in 1914. A license was purchased from FN (while under German occupation, interestingly) to produce the guns locally at Kongsberg, and production ran slowly and sporadically until Germ...

The Model 1920 was Star's first locked-breech pistol, basically a combination of features from the Colt 1911 and their traditional Eiber blowback .32 pistols. It was tested by the Spanish Army in 1920, with inconclusive results. The Guardia Civil, however, found it to be suitable and adopted it a...

Alkartasuna SA was a company formed in 1914 by a handful of disgruntled Astra (well, Astra was still called Esperanza y Unceta at that time) employees. This was a difficult time for the Eibar gun industry - demand was low, their reputation for quality was not good (the lack of a central proof hou...

The German military used a lot of different small-caliber pistols during World War One, and the Jager is one of the most interesting of them. Its unique design was the result of needing to build pistols for the war effort on machines and tooling that were not suited for pistol production. The an...

Designed by Austrian immigrant Joseph Joachim Reifgraber, this is a prototype gas-assisted short recoil pistol in a .38 rimmed revolver cartridge. While this version did not see any serial production, the Union Firearms Company of Toledo (Ohio) did market a slightly smaller model in .32 S&W (and ...

The Eibar region of Spain is known as the center of a lot of pistol production from WWI through the Spanish Civil War, typically pistols called Ruby clones. Well, the various small gunmakers there were looking to copy more than just the Ruby. They duplicated a number of American and European revo...

William Whiting was an engineer who spent his entire adult career with the Webley company, and was responsible for all of their in-house self-loading pistol designs. This work initially focused on a behemoth of a pistol, the Model 1904 intended for military contracts. The gun proved insufficientl...