Submachine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Lever-Delayed Prototype SMG: The MAS Mle 1948 Series

September 20, 2023 Ian McCollum 17

When France decided to adopt a new 9x19mm submachine gun after World War Two, all three of the main French arsenals (St Etienne/MAS, Chatellerault/MAC, and Tulle/MAT) developed designs to compete for adoption. Tulle would eventually […]

Pleter M91: Croatia’s High Quality STUzi

August 28, 2023 Ian McCollum 9

The Pleter M91 is a simple design, but a high-quality one that was manufactured by a proper factory production line. The company making it was planning on (hoping for?) large-scale production, and they invested to […]

Story of the Alar: A Simple Student-Made SMG

August 14, 2023 Ian McCollum 5

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 […]

MAC/Skorpion Hybrid at the Range: the Alka M93

August 5, 2023 Ian McCollum 2

The Alka M93 was a very simple SMG made by IM Metall (which later became HS Produkt) during the Croatian Homeland War. It is essentially a MAC M11A1 with a long barrel and a vz61 […]

Spectre SMG at the Range

July 29, 2023 Ian McCollum 18

The SITES Spectre was imported into the US primarily as a semiautomatic pistol – but it was really designed to be an SMG. It has an interesting closed-bolt fire control system, and in SMG for […]

Croatian HS-91: A Mystery Hybrid of M56 and PPSh-41

July 24, 2023 Ian McCollum 10

The HS-91 is a Croatian-made submachine gun form the Homeland War period of the early 1990s. This is the only example known, and it was seized well after the war by the Croatian Police (and […]

Crogar M91: MP40 Meets Yugo M56 in the Croatian Homeland War

July 10, 2023 Ian McCollum 21

SKM was a small industrial manufacturing company in Croatia that began making submachine guns in 1991 to equip Croatian fighters in the Homeland War. Their product was the M91 Crogar, which is a selective-fire, open […]

Chatellerault Experimental SMGs: MAC48 & 48LS

June 12, 2023 Ian McCollum 10

Continuing our look at the French submachine gun designs from the Chatellerault Arsenal, today we have the MAC48 and MAC48LS (lightened and simplified). In the development program that would eventually lead to adoption of the […]

Chang Feng CS/LS 06 – China’s Take on the Helical-Mag SMG

June 5, 2023 Ian McCollum 15

The Chang Feng is named for the company that developed it, the Chongqing Chang Feng Company Ltd in (you guessed it) Chongqing. It was designed by one Qing Shangsheng, who had ample prior firearms design […]

Gnome et Rhône R5: A Foiled Communist Arms Plan

April 26, 2023 Ian McCollum 23

The R-5 was a French-made copy of the Sten produced after the 1944 liberation of France. It was built by Gnome et Rhône, a French company best known for making aircraft engines. The Sten was […]