Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Star Z45: Spain’s Improved MP40 Submachine Gun

January 17, 2020 Ian McCollum 33

The Z45 was a submachine gun designed during World War Two by the Start firm in Eibar, Spain for export sale to Germany as well as domestic Spanish use. It was heavily based on the […]

Post-War Paris Police MAS 38 Variation

January 15, 2020 Ian McCollum 19

At the end of World War Two, the Paris Police decided that they needed a few different features on a police submachine gun than the then-standard MAS 38 offered. A few hundred were converted to […]

H&K’s Experimental SMG and SMG II for the US Navy

January 3, 2020 Ian McCollum 31

In the 1980s, the US Navy requested a new submachine gun to replace the MP5 then in use. In particular, the Navy wanted a gun that was optimized for use with a suppressor. H&K built […]

EOKA Cut-Down Beretta 38 SMG

December 27, 2019 Ian McCollum 24

This cut-down Beretta Model 38/44 submachine gun was made by the EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) terrorist group, which fought in the late 1950s for Cyprus to be reunified with Greece, instead of being a […]

Italian Sci-Fi Blaster: The Franchi LF-57

December 23, 2019 Ian McCollum 28

Introduced in 1957, Franchi’s LF-57 submachine gun has a very distinctive sci-fi look to it, but was never able to become a major player in the Cold War arms market. It is in all ways […]

Chauchat Field Testing vs Mock MG08/15 Nest

December 14, 2019 Ian McCollum 41

Out at the range today with the Chauchat, testing accuracy against a simulated MG08/15 nest at 150 yards. I’ll try out semiauto and full auto (in short bursts), and see how they compare. For reference, […]

Huot Automatic Rifle: The Ross Goes Full Auto

December 13, 2019 Ian McCollum 23

During World War One, Joseph Alphonse Huot, a Canadian machinist and blacksmith living in Quebec, designed a conversion of the Ross MkIII rifle to become an automatic rifle. The Ross was the standard issue Canadian […]

Belgian Model 1915/27 Improved Chauchat

December 9, 2019 Ian McCollum 46

The Belgian Army was the second to adopt the Chauchat automatic rifle, after the French. Almost all of Belgium was under German occupation during World War One, leaving Belgium significantly dependent on French aid for […]

All the Guns on an M4 Sherman Tank (with Nicholas Moran, the Chieftain)

December 7, 2019 Ian McCollum 37

Try out World of Tanks with a special bonus tank using this link! Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at DriveTanks.com courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a World War Two Sherman […]

Chambers Flintlock Machine Gun from the 1700s

November 8, 2019 Ian McCollum 27

Joseph Chambers invented a repeating flintlock weapon in the 1790s, and I think it is appropriate to consider it a “machine gun”. The design used a series of superposed charges in one or more barrels, […]