Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Hudson .30 Cal Machine Gun Toolroom Model (Video)

October 24, 2016 Ian McCollum 52

Robert F Hudson developed a series of machine guns for the US Navy during the 1920s and 1930s, including this .30 caliber example as well as .50 caliber and 1.1 inch versions. What makes these […]

Vietnamese soldier in French service working on his MAT-49 SMG.

Vietnamese Guns for Algeria

October 18, 2016 Ian McCollum 42

I was pointed to this interesting snippet of a document about one particular shipment of arms to the Algerian rebels fighting French colonial occupation in the 1950s – from Vietnam. Can’t say I would have […]

Thompson SMG in 30 Carbine (Video)

October 17, 2016 Ian McCollum 65

When the US military released a request for what would become the M1 Carbine in 1940, the Auto-Ordnance Corporation offered up a Thompson submachine gun simply rechambered for the new .30 Carbine cartridge. This entailed […]

Great Article on the Dror LMG

October 11, 2016 Ian McCollum 10

Terry Edwards has graciously offered to let me repost the excellent article he wrote for Small Arms Defense Journal. It’s a two part PDF, and I have posted both parts below. If you are interested […]

Vintage Saturday: Marching Finns

October 8, 2016 Ian McCollum 42

The three guys on the left all have Mosin-Nagants, the middle guy has an LS-26, next guy to the right has an m/31 Suomi, and the far right man has a Winchester 1895 lever action […]

RIA: M1944E1/M1945 Johnson Light Machine Gun

August 27, 2016 Ian McCollum 54

After getting his Model 1941 machine gun purchased in small numbers by the US military, Melvin Johnson continued to press for more sales and a general adoption. Following testing results and recommendations from soldiers in […]

Vintage Saturday: Short-Lived Nation

August 6, 2016 Ian McCollum 135

The Republic of Biafra was supported by Czechoslovakia during its brief existence, and the men here are equipped with a Czech ZB-53 machine gun and what appears to be a CZ-47 or CZ-247 submachine gun.

M1915 Villar Perosa Video

August 5, 2016 Ian McCollum 39

The Villar Perosa is one of the first small machine guns developed and used by a military force. It was designed in Italy and introduced in 1915 as an aircraft weapon, to be used in […]

W.A.R. – the Winchester Automatic Rifle

August 1, 2016 Ian McCollum 31

With the failure of the G30M and G30R to lead to any military orders (American or otherwise), the Winchester company took the advice of the Ordnance Department to scale the design up to an automatic […]

Semiauto RPD Light Machine Gun (Video)

July 13, 2016 Ian McCollum 67

The RPD was the first belt-fed light machine gun (or squad automatic weapon) developed by the Soviet Union. It was designed in 1944 for the then-new M43 cartridge (7.62x39mm), although wartime exigencies followed by post-war […]