Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Marlin UD-42 from the Dutch Resistance

January 11, 2018 Ian McCollum 21

The UD-42 was originally the design of Carl “Gus” Swebilius, who was at the time (1940) working for the High Standard company. It failed to attract interest form the US military, but was appealing to […]

Croatian Šokac SMG – A PPSh-41 Copy from the 1990s

January 9, 2018 Ian McCollum 21

The Šokac is just one of more than a dozen different submachine guns developed and produced domestically in Croatia during the Yugoslavian civil war of the early 1990s. It is a mechanical copy of the […]

The Iconic “Burp Gun” – Shooting the PPSh-41

December 16, 2017 Ian McCollum 40

The Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun is most distinctive for its very high rate of fire – approximately 1250 rounds/minute – and large drum magazine. What may come as a surprise to those who have […]

Shpagin’s Simplified Subgun: The PPSh-41

December 15, 2017 Ian McCollum 37

After making the decision to mass produce a submachine gun, the Soviet Union adopted the Degtyarev PPD-38 and PPD-40, but this design was too expensive for the huge scale of production that the USSR […]

The Swiss Cheap Out: SIG 310, aka MP48

December 1, 2017 Ian McCollum 38

The SIG 310, aka MP48, is the final evolution of SIG’s submachine gun design from the 1920s. It began as the MKM/P/S/O with a folding magazine well, wooden stock, and fancy lever-delayed operating system. Over […]

The MG-15: A Flexible Aircraft Machine Gun Pushed into Infantry Service

October 29, 2017 Ian McCollum 29

The MG-15 was the first standard flexible-mounted aircraft machine gun adopted by the Luftwaffe in the 1930s. Both it and the MG-17 are evolved form a Rheinmetall/Solothurn design which would also become the Austrian and […]

Shooting the ZB-26: A Jewel of an Interwar Light Machine Gun

October 27, 2017 Ian McCollum 18

Today we have a chance to do some shooting with a ZB-26, a German-occupation 8mm light machine gun made at Brno in Czechoslovakia. The ZB-26 does not get nearly as much attention as LMGs made […]

ZB26: The Best of the Light Machine Guns

October 26, 2017 Ian McCollum 38

The ZB-26 stands as one of the best magazine-fed light machine guns developed during the 1920s and 30s – it was a very popular gun for small military forces and many countries which did not […]

Shooting the Madsen LMG – The First True LMG

October 20, 2017 Ian McCollum 18

We have looked at a couple different Madsen light machine guns previously, but until today I have not had the chance to do any shooting with a fully automatic example of one. So I am […]

The St Etienne Mle 1907: France’s Domestic Heavy Machine Gun

October 19, 2017 Ian McCollum 37

When the French first began testing machine guns in the late 1890s, they were one of the few countries that did not purchase quantities of Maxim guns. One of the reasons was that in France’s […]