Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Vintage Saturday: Anti-Aircraft Lewis

January 7, 2017 Ian McCollum 8

The wheel is for fast and easy traverse. The Lewis gun adapter allows it to be mounted on a Vickers tripod, and it’s mounted backwards to allow flexible elevation (you could do that with the […]

Puckle Gun (Video)

December 25, 2016 Ian McCollum 37

The Puckle Gun is probably best known as that thing that had round bullets for Christians and square bullets for Turks, but there is much more to it than just that (and in addition, the […]

German MG08 machine guns on the line early in WWI

Vintage Saturday: Early WWI Machine Gun Emplacement

December 24, 2016 Ian McCollum 23

I don’t have a date or location for this photo, but it is clearly quite early in the Great War. Note the nice pickelhaube covers and the big shields on the MG08s. Those shields would […]

Slow Motion: M134 Minigun (Video)

December 23, 2016 Ian McCollum 10

Following up to yesterday’s look at the history and (partial) disassembly of a GE M134 Minigun, today we will check it out in slow motion. I filmed these high-speed shots, but there was so much […]

M134 Minigun: The Modern Gatling Gun (Video)

December 22, 2016 Ian McCollum 34

The General Electric M134 “Minigun” is essentially an electrically-powered Gatling gun – the conceptual operation of the gun is identical to Dr. Gatling’s original creation. What has changed, however, is the chambering (it’s in 7.62 […]

Vickers Heavy Machine Gun (Video)

December 14, 2016 Ian McCollum 24

The Vickers is quite simply the best heavy machine gun ever made.

German soldiers with captured American arms

Vintage Saturday: More Spoils

December 10, 2016 Ian McCollum 62

German soldiers with captured American small arms, circa 1944. The other guy’s stuff is always better than yours, right? Well, I would rather have an M1 than a K98k, but the Thompsons? No thanks. Interesting […]

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 […]