Britain - Forgotten Weapons

Book Review: Social History of the Machine Gun

March 14, 2013 Ian McCollum 11

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I opened up John Ellis’ The Social History of the Machine Gun – machine guns and social histories of anything don’t really tend to go together. Ellis […]

Wacky Propaganda

February 19, 2013 Ian McCollum 34

It’s always interesting to look at the propaganda that military organizations put out regarding their opponents – it can often reveal what was particularly worrisome to men in the field at the time. A good […]

Hythe Gun Camera

February 8, 2013 Ian McCollum 15

Training aircraft gunners has always been a task requiring some creativity, as it requires a lot more than just a paper target for an infantryman to blast away at. In the very early years of […]

Vickers-Berthier LMG Video

January 28, 2013 Ian McCollum 23

The Vickers-Berthier was a light machine gun that competed with the Bren unsuccessfully for British military use but was adopted by the Indian Army. We had the opportunity to handle a pair of them (an […]

Photos of 1950s Light Rifle Prototypes

September 14, 2012 Ian McCollum 13

In the aftermath of World War II, there was a significant amount of effort put into deciding what rifles would be used by the post-war Allied armies. The UK and US wanted commonality, but couldn’t […]

Vesely V-42 Submachine Gun

July 20, 2012 Ian McCollum 12

The Vesely Machine Carbine (aka V-41, V-42, and V-43) was a submachine gun designed in Britain by a Czech refugee named Josek Vesely. In most respects, the Vesely was a typical subgun, firing 9mm Parabellem […]

EM2 Video

July 16, 2012 Ian McCollum 24

I offer our Facebook fans the choice of which video they would like to see today, and the result was overwhelmingly the British EM2 rifle. These were made in both .280/30 and 7.62 NATO calibers, […]

Book Review: Guns of the Ghurkas / Treasure is Where You Find it

February 9, 2012 Ian McCollum 0

Today we’re looking at two books on the subject of Nepalese firearms. The video goes a bit longer than usual, but the story behind these books is a really cool one – a lost time […]

Hotchkiss Portative video

October 24, 2011 Ian McCollum 4

The Hotchkiss Portative was the British variation of a light machine gun used widely in World War I. It was also used by the French, Belgian, and American armies (In the US, it was adopted […]