The Vault

Vintage Saturday: Type 53

Yes, I know the carbine is also called the Type 53, but this Type 53 is a machine gun, okay? (photo from Max Popenker)

Unrelated to this photo…the Zhejiang Iron Works in China made everything from machine guns to grenades to field glasses – and called everything “Type 77″ in commemoration of the Marco [...]

Vintage Saturday: More BAR!

I’ve got a fever…and the only prescription is more BAR! (photo from reader Ruy)

The BAR sure got around, didn’t it? This is a Polish wz.28 Belgian Modele 30 model in China (thanks to Leszek for the correction).

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Vintage Saturday: LMG Variety Pack

Around here we grin like this when we get our hands on these guns too…because we don’t have return fire coming in at our range. (photo courtesy Max Popenker)

ZB light machine guns are pretty often seen with Chinese troops, but the DP-28s are less common. And the BAR variant (either a Colt or [...]

Movie Review: The City of Life and Death

The Second Sino-Japanese War is a relatively unknown part of the Second World War here in the US. Japanese troops invaded Manchuria in 1931, and by 1937 sporadic skirmishes had evolved into a full-scale war which would claim more lives than both sides of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. The Imperial Japanese Army was a brutal [...]

Vintage Saturday: Japanese Holdouts on Mars!

Someone alert the writers of Iron Sky! The Curiosity rover has just sent back this photo of what appear to be Japanese soldiers still holding out on Mars

 

Okay, it’s actually from 1940, at the Battle of Zaoyang Yichang in central China. Note the funky hopper-fed Type 11 LMG.

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Vintage Saturday: Making a C96 look big

The only person to ever complain that the length of pull on a C96 Mauser is too long

Chinese guerrilla fighter, circa 1939. Today, she’d be an Olympic gymnast.

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Books, Magazines, and David Tubb

If you were interested in Bin Shih’s very nice book on Chinese firearms of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) but didn’t get one before they sold out, you’re in luck! He’s going to be running a second printing (we’re not sure if it will be the English or Chinese version, or both). If you would [...]

Vintage Saturday: Motorized Type 38 Arisakas

This represents typical horsepower, armor, and crew space in a Japanese WWII armored vehicle (click to enlarge)

If they all fire in the same direction simultaneously, that cart will exceed the maximum speed of a Type 89 medium tank.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. A bit. (I know someone will chime in to defend Japanese armor, [...]

SIG KE-7 Light Machine Gun (Again!)

Yep, if you do a search through the blog, you’ll find that we’ve talked about the KE-7 twice before. But we have yet more material to add this time! And it’s a great example of a forgotten weapon, too. The KE7 was a light machine gun design developed by Pal Kiraly and a colleague in [...]

Chinese C96 Mauser Stock/Bayonet

Here’s an interesting item we ran across recently – a combination bayonet and shoulder stock made by the Chinese for the C96 “Broomhandle” Mauser (and also the TT33 Tokarev, I believe). This design is relatively recent, judging from the plastic handle, but shoulder stocks on pistols were very popular in China prior to WWII. The [...]