Ian McCollum - Forgotten Weapons

RIA: Liegeoise 1888 Trials Rifle

August 19, 2015 Ian McCollum 69

The Belgian Army held rifle trials in the late 1880s to choose a new infantry rifle, and the winner was the Model 1889 Belgian Mauser. Quite a few different guns were involved in the competition […]

RIA: German Gewehr 41(M)

August 18, 2015 Ian McCollum 40

When the German military started looking for a self-loading rifle in the late 1930s, they had a pretty strict set of requirements. Most significantly, the rifles could not have gas ports or recoiling barrels, could […]

The “R9 Arms” Machine Pistol

August 17, 2015 Ian McCollum 83

By request of more than a few readers, I am doing a post on this – although there really isn’t much information I can contribute on the subject. These things got a lot of attention […]

Vintage Saturday: Classi Alpini

August 15, 2015 Ian McCollum 55

Italian Alpini posing for a photograph with a nice selection of Italian small arms – 1934 or 35 Beretta pistols, Beretta 38 submachine gun, and a 1935 model Fiat-Revelli machine gun.

Heavy Machine Guns of the Western Front, WWI

August 14, 2015 Ian McCollum 60

I have been really enjoying The Great War series on YouTube (a rolling weekly account of what happened in WWI this week 100 years ago), so I figured I ought to take advantage of an opportunity […]

Inside a Chinese Mystery Pistol

August 13, 2015 Ian McCollum 15

I recently did some horse trading with Chuck at GunLab, and he ended up with a couple of my Chinese Mystery Pistols. Today, he pulls one apart to look at the insides…and it’s not a […]

Soviet Experimental DPM-36 LMG Variations

August 11, 2015 Ian McCollum 26

From the Soviet Gun Archives blog, some photos of an experimental DPM-36 light machine gun (an improvement of the DP-28). Unfortunately, SGA does not list any source documents and my copy of Bolotin’s book doesn’t […]

Czech Sa vz. 26 SMG (Video)

August 10, 2015 Ian McCollum 61

The Czech Samopal vz. 26 was one of a family of submachine guns (the vz 23-26) that pioneered the use of bolts telescoped out forward over the barrel, allowing guns to have much better ratios […]

Vintage Saturday: Armor Terror

August 8, 2015 Ian McCollum 42

Technically speaking, Raketenpanzerbüchse 54, inspired by the US Bazooka.

American WWI Experimental SMG (Video)

August 7, 2015 Ian McCollum 54

Reader Larry sent me this video, which was produced by the US Army Ordnance Corp just recently. It’s a one-off experimental submachine gun built in 1918, and is definitely not something like you have seen […]