Will a jaunty helmet make up for not having AA sights or a buttstock?
Sailor mounting an antiaircraft Hotchkiss Portative machine gun on the Canadian corvette Trillium.
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I was pretty excited to dig into Tim Mullin’s Testing The War Weapons when I first got a copy of it, having already read his book on SMGs, shotguns, and machine pistols cover to cover. I quite enjoyed that volume, and I figured that this one would be better still, being twice the length [...] Thanks to the folks at SMG Guns in Texas, I just got my completed semiauto Bren gun in 7.62x39mm. What the best way to break it in? Take it to a run-n-gun match, of course! First off, the front grip is a repro experimental piece made by IMA – it would not originally have [...] The Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, was a staple of American infantry forces through WWII and the Korean War, and has an outstanding reputation today. The gun was originally developed in 1917 and first fielded in the closing days of World War I, in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In fact, per an agreement made with John [...] Back when pom-poms on hats were cool. British soldiers manning a post somewhere in Palestine. The Lewis gunner is adjusting his sights, while his A-gunner is ready with a new magazine. Three men in the background looking at something else, and using SMLE rifles. Thoughtful of them to top the rock walls of the [...] If I say “John Inglis”, the first two things that probably come to mind for a gunnie are High Powers and Bren guns. Inglis was a Canadian company that made a huge proportion of the Bren guns used during WWII, as well as other munitions. At its peak, Inglis employed 17,800 workers…and yet in 1937 [...] I’ve discussed the much-maligned CSRG machine rifle (the Chauchat) previously – it was not the utter disaster that common knowledge would lead you to believe. You won’t find much literature on the Chauchat, but fortunately what has been written is of top-notch quality: Gerard Demaison’s and Yves Buffetaut’s Honour Bound: The Chauchat Machine Rifle. Published [...] The first serious automatic weapon considered for military service in Canada was the brainchild of Joseph Alphonse Huot, a machinist and blacksmith from Quebec. Born in 1878, Huot was a large and strong man (not surprising for a blacksmith), standing 6’1″ tall and weighing in at a muscular 210 pounds. His personality included a great [...] Women in combat? Preposterous! Leningrad, 1942, with a DP28 light machine gun. Women served the Red Army in substantial numbers as pilots, snipers, and machine gunners. In light of the controversy over US women moving into combat roles, this seems like it might be a relevant part of the conversation. [...] The Madsen light machine gun is note-worthy for several reasons – it was the first military-issue light machine gun developed and it was successful enough to remain in production into the 1950s (long after every WWI-era machine gun was long out of production). It was also one of the most usual machine gun mechanisms ever [...] |
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