Vintage photo - Forgotten Weapons

Vintage Saturday: Turret Gunner Training

January 7, 2017 Ian McCollum 27

US gunner with a training weapon, a Browning Auto-5 or Remington Model 11 set up to emulate flexible-mount .50 caliber M2 Browning. The rear sight is not visible, but note the elevated front sight, the […]

Vintage Saturday: Anti-Aircraft Lewis

January 7, 2017 Ian McCollum 8

The wheel is for fast and easy traverse. The Lewis gun adapter allows it to be mounted on a Vickers tripod, and it’s mounted backwards to allow flexible elevation (you could do that with the […]

German MG08 machine guns on the line early in WWI

Vintage Saturday: Early WWI Machine Gun Emplacement

December 24, 2016 Ian McCollum 23

I don’t have a date or location for this photo, but it is clearly quite early in the Great War. Note the nice pickelhaube covers and the big shields on the MG08s. Those shields would […]

Vintage Saturday: Goumier

December 17, 2016 Ian McCollum 52

Moroccan troops, known as les Goumiers Marocains were part of the French auxiliaries in the Army of Africa. As with all post-surrender French forces in WWII, they were armed and equipped with other Allied equipment; […]

German soldiers with captured American arms

Vintage Saturday: More Spoils

December 10, 2016 Ian McCollum 62

German soldiers with captured American small arms, circa 1944. The other guy’s stuff is always better than yours, right? Well, I would rather have an M1 than a K98k, but the Thompsons? No thanks. Interesting […]

Vintage Saturday: AR10 in Angola

November 5, 2016 Ian McCollum 55

From the look in his eyes, he knows you will burn down a village to get one of those rifles. Note the integral bipod on the AR-10 (A Portuguese m961 model).

Vintage Saturday: Austrian Prisoners

October 29, 2016 Ian McCollum 43

This photo is an original color picture, not a modern colorization – taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, a pioneer of color photography. Also of interest, note that the Russian guard on the far left is […]

Vintage Saturday: Snipers in Shorts

October 22, 2016 Ian McCollum 33

The man in the front has an FR-F1, a French-issue sniper’s rifle roughly based on the MAS-36. The man others appear to have MAS 49/56 semiauto rifles. And of course, it wouldn’t be a desert […]

French and British troops on the Somme, 1918

Vintage Saturday: Lined up on the Somme

October 15, 2016 Ian McCollum 86

Actions of the Somme Crossings. Men of the 20th British Division and the 22nd French Division in hastily dug rifle pits covering a road, Nesle sector, 25th March 1918. the Frenchman in the foreground […]

Vintage Saturday: Short-Lived Nation

August 6, 2016 Ian McCollum 135

The Republic of Biafra was supported by Czechoslovakia during its brief existence, and the men here are equipped with a Czech ZB-53 machine gun and what appears to be a CZ-47 or CZ-247 submachine gun.