The VP9 "Veterinary Pistol" (um...yeah) from Brugger & Thomet is a manually operated 9x19mm handgun with a quite effective suppressor built right onto the barrel. It is, in fact, a remarkably close copy of the British SOE Welrod pistol from World War II, right down to some pretty minor details.
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In the 1870s, Switzerland was looking for a new military revolver, and they were particularly interested in finding a system which would allow faster reloading than the standard loading gate and manual ejection rod. A military veteran and gunsmith by the name of von Steiger in Thun submitted a de...

Among all the antitank rifles developed between the World Wars, the highest quality and most sophisticated was the Solothurn S18-1000. It fires the 20x138B cartridge which was also used in the Finnish Lahti L-39 and the German 20mm Flak guns, and it does so using a semiautomatic action and an 8-r...

In 1940, Switzerland began a series of trials to replace their Luger service pistols with something equally high quality, but more economical. They had squeezed as much simplification out of the Luger as they could in 1929, and by this time the guns just needed to be replaced. The first 1940 tria...

The Swiss were the first country to adopt a self-loading service pistol; the Luger in 1900. They would keep those in service clear through World War 2, at which point they began seriously looking for a more economical and more modern replacement. During the 1940s, a number of experimental designs...

Rico is a gunsmith at SIG Neuhausen who likes to tinker. He put together this SIG 510 (aka Stgw 57), with a modern collapsing stock, quad rail foreend, Aimpoint red dot, heavy barrel, and massive muzzle brake. And we just happen to have some 7.5 Swiss and a full-auto grip assembly. How hard can i...

In many countries, manually operated rifles are substantially easier for civilians to own than semiautomatic ones - and this was not lost on firearms manufacturers. In an effort to potentially open a new market, SIG experimented with manufacturing a pump action version of their very successful 55...

The SIG 210, aka the P49, was a magnificent pistol, but really too expensive for a modern military sidearm. In the 1960s, the Swiss military began looking for a new service sidearm that would be a bit less costly, and SIG developed the 220 in response, which would ultimately be adopted as the P75...

When looking at P-49 (aka SIG 210) pistols used by the Swiss military, there are five distinct groups, with different characteristics. Today we will be showing you these differences, as well as a few features of the Swiss military holster for the P49. For reference:

Type 1: 100001-103200
Hig...

The SIG company of Neuhausen Switzerland spent the 1920s, 30s, and 40s working on developmental semiauto rifles to sell both to the Swiss military and abroad. One of the experimental models in the succession of designs was the Model U, of which 16 were made in caliber 7.5x55mm Swiss. It was a gas...

The Reibel Modele M31 was the variation of the French Chatellerault M24/29 light machine gun made for use in vehicles and fortifications. In accordance with that role, it lacked a buttstock or sights (these were integrated into the vehicle or fortress mounts), was fitted with a very heavy barrel ...

The Swiss replaced their Vetterli rifles in the late 1880s with the new Schmidt-Rubin pattern, and this eventually trickled down to the cadet corps. These youth programs had been using short single-shot 1870 Vetterli carbines, but as those became obsolete and in need of replacement, the 1897 Kade...

Before they became obsolete, antitank rifles were a way to bring substantial firepower to small infantry teams - but they were never light weight. As with some of the early water cooled heavy machine guns, designers looked for ways to make the weapons more easily transported, and the solution arr...

Originally developed for use in light tanks purchased from Czechoslovakia, the Tankbuchse 41 was a 24x139mm semiautomatic rifle designed by Adolph Furrer of the Waffenfabrik Bern factory. Furrer was also responsible for the LMG-25 and MP41/44 used by the Swiss, and with the TB-41 he once again us...

When I filmed yesterday's video on the MP-41/44, and did not know I would have a chance to actually do some live fire with it. But we snuck off to a little shooting range to have a try (sorry for the poor lighting!). The question going in for me was whether the locking system and the weight of th...

Today at the Kessler auction house in Kreuzlingen Switzerland we are taking a look at the W+F Bern C42 and E22 rifles. These are the guns supplied by Bern to compete for the Swiss military Sturmgewehr 90 trials. The C=type ones are chambered for the 5.56mm cartridge, but Swiss adoption of that ca...

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 Bloke, briefly beardless, receives a package in the post. What could be more YouTuberish than an unboxing video? What could possibly be hiding in the box?

Well, it's a private series M1889/96 Schmidt-Rubin, his rarest and most expensive straight-pull to date! No, it's not an M1889, nor is ...

In an Internet First, Bloke takes his shiny new hundred year and extremely rare old private-purchase Schmidt-Rubin 1889/96 to the range, and actually manages to find some 7.5x53.5mm GP90/03 that goes bang! Well, click-bang, anyway. And only about 3 of them... But anyway, he does it all the same. ...

The Chap pulls out his Swiss Peabody and takes it out for a little blat. The Peabody was adopted as a stopgap before the Vetterli rifles came on line, and fires the same 10.4x38mm rimfire cartridge. It's basically pretty much an external hammer tipping-block Martini rifle

Despite having destroyed and laid waste utterly to the bad gen from the English-language literature about Swiss 7.5x53.5 mm GP90 being semismokeless, The Bloke sets up a comparison, just because. Using original 7.5x53.5mm GP90 bullets in his 1889 Schmidt-Rubin, he loads 4 cartridges:

1x 32gn R...

A philosophical episode, this one - on the many lives lived by milsurp rifles. This one is a Schmidt-Rubin K00/11, a K11 converted from an earlier model 1900 short rifle. The rifle lived a number of lives, and we have a bit of the human history behind the last one.

I promised someone I'd do th...

As the start of a looooong series looking at each of the Swiss straight-pulls from the 1889 to the K31, The Bloke gives a short (ha!) overview of the series, and the context of the Swiss militia system in which they existed.

Yeah, there's a couple of ad breaks. Sorry. But it helps to support w...

Bloke takes a trip through the history of the straight-pull Schmidt-Rubin 1889 rifle in 7.5x53.5 mm GP90 calibre. This video was going to be complete with a mechanical description, but a last-minute executive decision was taken to split it in a humorous way. Or, if not humorous, at least bizarre....