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HomePrototype

Prototype

Prototype

The Real T26 “Tanker” M1 Garand

January 5, 2026 Ian McCollum 10
Check out Headstamp Publishing’s extensive catalog of excellent books: https://www.headstamppublishing.com/home-forgotten The name “tanker” has been applied to shortened M1 Garand rifles for a long time and today we are looking at one of the rifle […]
Prototype

Tomiska’s Czech Army Pistol: Empty Magazine Auto-Ejection

January 2, 2026 Ian McCollum 10
Alois Tomiška is best known for designing the first commercially successful double-action semiautomatic pistol, the “Little Tom”. But he also designed this pistol for very early Czechoslovakian military pistol. The first trial in the program […]
Prototype

AR-16: Armalite’s Lost Battle Rifle

December 22, 2025 Ian McCollum 25
The AR-16 was developed in the late 1950s as a less manufacturing intensive option to the AR-10. It began with the AR-12, which was a prototype intended to use a stamped receiver with the Stoner […]
Prototype

M1E5 Experimental Paratrooper Garand

December 17, 2025 Ian McCollum 53
In January 1944 men of the 93rd Infantry Division field-modified an M1 to give it a shorter (18″) barrel, and the rifle was sent back to the US and tested by the Infantry Board. The […]
Prototype

T31: Garand’s Bizarre Bullpup

December 10, 2025 Ian McCollum 17
The T31 was John Garand’s last project during his employment at Springfield Armory. It was proposed in 1948 as a bullpup configuration rifle to minimize muzzle blast and flash. It was a select-fire rifle with […]
General Purpose MGs

The First M60 Prototype: FG42 + MG42 = T44

December 1, 2025 Ian McCollum 56
The FG-42 caught the attention of a lot of countries at the end of World War Two. The British and Swiss both used it as the starting point for some developments. The US went one […]
Prototype

Preproduction wz89 Onyx: the Polish Krinkov

November 26, 2025 Ian McCollum 8
After developing the 5.45mm Tantal rifle (adopted in 1988), the Radom factory moved on to designing a compact “SMG” version. This would be designated the wz.89 “Onyx”, but never made it into mass production thanks […]
Prototype

T20 Family: Springfield Makes the Garand a Grenade Launching Sniper Machine Gun

November 17, 2025 Ian McCollum 29
Late in 1944 the Ordnance Committee recommended adoption of a magazine-fed, select-fire version of the M1 Garand as a new standard US infantry rifle. Both Springfield and Remington developed rifles to meet the requirement, with […]
Prototype

The Original AR-15: Serial Number 6 in Original Configuration

November 1, 2025 Ian McCollum 16
The very first AR15 rifles submitted to US government trials were extremely light rights, with an assortment of interesting features that did not last long. They had top-mounted charging handles, one-piece hand guards, very thin […]
Conversion

Project PRAK: Converting the CZ50 Pistol to 9x18mm Makarov

October 31, 2025 Ian McCollum 7
In 1966, CZ undertook Project PRAK (“Slingshot”) to investigate the possibility of converting the CZ50 pocket pistol to 9x18mm Makarov. The PM Makarov was adopted in the 1950s and used throughout the eastern bloc, but […]

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