Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Book Review: Social History of the Machine Gun

March 14, 2013 Ian McCollum 11

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I opened up John Ellis’ The Social History of the Machine Gun – machine guns and social histories of anything don’t really tend to go together. Ellis […]

Swiss MG94 Maxim

March 13, 2013 Ian McCollum 5

When Hiram Maxim began building his machine gun, the standard cartridges of the day were still large (.45 caliber or thereabouts) black powder rounds. Maxim’s early “World Standard” guns were designed around these rounds, and […]

Dual-Magazine MP40/I

March 8, 2013 Ian McCollum 41

From the first introduction of detachable magazines on firearms, people have been looking for ways to increase magazine capacity. Whether it is drum mags, longer box mags, jungle clips to connect multiple mags together, or […]

Vintage Saturday: Baywatch

March 2, 2013 Ian McCollum 3

A soldier of the Black Watch stands (well, sits) guard with a Lewis LMG. Thanks to reader Michael G. for the photo (and many others)!

“Rakov” DP-28 Magazine Loader

February 20, 2013 Ian McCollum 13

If you think about it for a minute, it suddenly seems odd that there aren’t any military surplus loading tools out there for DP28/DPM pan magazines. At least, that was my reaction when our friend […]

PM-63: Poland’s First PDW

February 13, 2013 Ian McCollum 34

Today we have another guest post, and this time Leszek has really outdone himself. The subject is the Polish PM-63 machine pistol… PM-63: Poland’s First PDW by Leszek Erenfeicht Almost twenty years before the West […]

DShK Video

February 11, 2013 Ian McCollum 18

We’re still working on an extended write-up on the DShK heavy machine gun, but thanks to our friend Leszek in Poland, we have some nice HD video of one firing: The Russian counterpart to to […]

Hythe Gun Camera

February 8, 2013 Ian McCollum 15

Training aircraft gunners has always been a task requiring some creativity, as it requires a lot more than just a paper target for an infantryman to blast away at. In the very early years of […]

Vintage Saturday: Naval Maxim

February 2, 2013 Ian McCollum 20

MG-08 Maxim in German naval service, complete with shoulder stock, AA sights, ammo can, and brass-catching bag.

.455 Villar Perosa Photos

February 1, 2013 Ian McCollum 18

Italy has produced some fine guns, but they also have a pretty impressive collection of really poorly thought out ones, like the Fiat-Revelli M1914 and the 1915 Villar Perosa. The latter was basically a very […]