The German military establishment during WWII has a reputation for innovation and excellence, which is pretty well deserved. But even they produced some real goose eggs, and the Gewehr 41 is one of them. That […]
Amerigo Cei-Rigotti was a major in the Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) in 1900, when his innovative self-loading rifle design was first introduced. Unlike many or the very early semiauto rifle designs, the Cei-Rigotti is a […]
The first prototypes of the FAL rifle were produced by Fabrique Nationale on the company’s own initiative in the aftermath of World War II, and presented to the British government for testing in early 1947. […]
Before the British adopted the FAL as the L1A1 rifle, batches of several different variants were made for extended troop trials. The first two were the X8E1 and X8E2 – the X8E1 used standard FAL […]
Thanks to reader David, we have several photos of a Sjogren 12ga shotgun. The Sjogren was a very early Swedish semiauto design using a recoil action with a fixed barrel. Most recoil orated firearms function […]
The EM1 was an experimental British rifle developed in the late 1940s, and was definitely the high-tech wonder rifle of its day. It was a bullpup-style design before that was a trend, and used a […]
Captain Carl Pelo (retired) of the Finnish Army was involved in arms design for twenty or thirty years (including a stint as technical manager of the Sako factory in the 1930s), and produced several prototype […]
Edit: Sorry, guys! I managed to link to an unrelated video. It’s fixed now. 🙂 The Volksturmgewehr Gustloff (commonly and incorrectly called the VG1-5) was a last-ditch rifle developed by Germany at the end of […]
James Paris Lee is one of the less recognized prolific arms designers in American history, between the Lee straight pull rifle adopted by the US Navy and the British Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield rifles. One of […]
Russia (or the USSR, for these purposes) had an early self-loading rifle in the 1916 Federov, but it was not a satisfactory combat weapons, for several reasons. The Soviet military held a number of trials […]
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