Bolt Action Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

SSG-69: Steyr’s Cold War Sniper Rifle

March 2, 2023 Ian McCollum 15

In the 1960s, Steyr Daimler Pusch developed a modern sniper rifle for the Austrian military (and also for commercial civilian sale). It was adopted as the SSG-69 (Scharfschützen-Gewehr; sharpshooter’s rifle), replacing the SSG-98k in military […]

SSG-98k: Austria Repurposes German Sniper Rifles

February 27, 2023 Ian McCollum 14

In the aftermath of World War Two, the Austrian Army was basically disarmed and disbanded. When it was allowed to reform in the 1950s, it needed new armaments, and in 1958 it adopted the SSG-98k […]

Austrian Troop Training: Erma EL-24 .22 Kit for the Steyr M95 Carbine

February 11, 2023 Ian McCollum 21

The German company Erma (Erfurter Maschinenfabrik) developed a .22 rimfire kit for the Mauser 98 for the German Army in the 1920s. It was used for training, both to allow for more effective fundamental practice […]

Chrysanthemums in the Snow: Finnish Arisaka Rifles

February 6, 2023 Ian McCollum 16

When Finland took its independence, the most common type of firearms in the country was the Mosin Nagant – and the second most common was the Arisaka. An assortment of Type 30, Type 35, and […]

Operation CARPETBAGGER: French Resistance No4 Enfield

November 18, 2022 Ian McCollum 8

During 1944, the US and UK cooperatively ran a major effort to drop arms and equipment to French Resistance forces in preparation for the Allied landings in France. It began as Operation Carpetbagger with night […]

VG45K: Rheinmetall’s 8mm Kurz Volksgewehr

October 8, 2022 Ian McCollum 95

As the end of World War Two loomed close, the German arms industry turned to a number of Volkssturm rifle designs. These were the crudest and simplest rifles that could be made to work with […]

Prototype 7.7mm Arisaka Type 99 Carbine

October 5, 2022 Ian McCollum 19

The Japanese military made the decision to move from a 6.5mm infantry rifle to a more powerful 7.7mm cartridge in the 1930s, with specifications for the new rifle proposed in 1938. In response, the Nagoya […]

The Original Shorty Mosin: The Model 1907 Carbine

August 22, 2022 Ian McCollum 13

The creation of a short and handy Mosin Nagant carbine to complement the standard M891 was prompted by the Russo-Japanese War. Lots of Russian troops with roles other than infantry – machine gun and artillery […]

L39A1: British Service Target Rifle Before the L42A1

August 5, 2022 Ian McCollum 4

The story of the conversion of the Lee Enfield to 7.62mm NATO would not be complete without the L39A1. This is essentially the civilian competition version of what would become the L42A1. It was actually […]

Spanish M43: The Worst Sniper Rifle Ever Made

August 3, 2022 Ian McCollum 13

The standard Spanish infantry rifle from 1943 until the adoption of the CETME was the M43, an 8mm Mauser short rifle made at the La Coruña arsenal. As is fairly common, a sniper rifle variant […]