Prototype - Forgotten Weapons

TRW Low Maintenance Rifle: America’s Roller Locked Flechette Rifle

March 30, 2026 Ian McCollum 63

TRW’s Low Maintenance Rifle seems to have been the result of a program to use a blank slate and a modern space age scientific mindset to develop a rifle that would be more reliable and […]

Austrian Sniper Prototype: SSG-1917A4 (M1917 and 03A4 Springfield Hybrid)

March 25, 2026 Ian McCollum 12

In the years after World War Two when the Austrian Army began looking for new sniper rifles, one of their experiments was to use available M1917 rifles and M73B1 scopes (from M1903A4 sniper rifles). The […]

M15 Automatic Rifle (aka T44E5): Adopted But Not Produced

March 23, 2026 Ian McCollum 59

When the US replaced the M1 Garand, the plan was to adopt both a select-fire infantry rifle and a heavy-barreled support weapon on the same platform. During development, both the T44 (later M14) and T48 […]

Eugene Stoner’s Future Assault Rifle Concept (F.A.R.C.)

March 6, 2026 Ian McCollum 57

After developing the AR-15 with Armalite, Eugene Stoner worked for a number of different companies. In 1972 he cofounded Ares Inc, where he and his partners worked on a wide variety of weapons platforms. Their […]

ZKP-524: A Prototype Czech 7.62x25mm 1911 Copy

February 18, 2026 Ian McCollum 82

The Czechoslovak military knew when they adopted it that the vz.52 pistol was not very good, and they initiated a replacement program as the same time as its adoption. Two pistols were developed to be […]

Coenders’ Bolt-Less Last Ditch Bolt Action Rifle

February 4, 2026 Ian McCollum 112

When the German Army tested last-ditch Volkssturm rifles late in World War Two, one of the particularly obscure submissions was August Coenders’ Coenders-Rochling Volkssturmkarabiner. This was a bowl action rifle chambered for 8mm Mauser with […]

Roller Locked Czechnology: the CZ 482 Pistol (Which Eventually Became the vz.52)

January 26, 2026 Ian McCollum 9

The Czech vz.52 service pistol actually began as a commercial export program at CZ. It was developed by two brothers, Jan and Jaroslav Kratochvíl. They actually designed two pistols with similar shape and controls, one […]

Stamm-Saurer Model 1916 Short-Recoil Light Machine Gun

January 23, 2026 Ian McCollum 15

Hans Stamm developed a series of firearms in Switzerland in the early 1900s, and today we are looking at a Model 1916 light machine gun. This was developed while Stamm was working for the Saurer […]

The Real T26 “Tanker” M1 Garand

January 5, 2026 Ian McCollum 11

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 […]

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 […]