Czechoslovakia - Forgotten Weapons

sa81 KRASA: Czechoslovakia’s Ultra-Compact Lost PDW

October 14, 2024 Ian McCollum 29

The Krása project (which translates as “beauty”, but is also a shortening of “short assault rifle” – “KRÁtký SAmopal”) is a fascinating piece of Czech small arms development. In 1976, the Czechoslovakian military requested development […]

Samostril Netsch: Bizarre Prototype Czech Automatic Rifle

October 2, 2024 Ian McCollum 0

When Czechoslovakia began looking for new small arms in the early 1920s, one of the things they were interested in was a “samostřil” – something akin to the automatic rifle in English. A select-fire weapon […]

Prototype vz.80: Improved Czech vz.50/70

March 1, 2024 Ian McCollum 5

The vz.50 pistol was a compact .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning) double action pocket pistol used by police forces. It was given a face lift and redesigned the vz.70, and there were plans at one point […]

Prototype Czech Silencer-Ready vz70

February 12, 2024 Ian McCollum 1

Courtesy of CZ and their reference library, we are looking at a prototype model of the vz.70 pistol intended to use a suppressor. It has an extended and threaded (with interrupted threads for quick attach/detach) […]

Hangfires & Ballistics Gel: Czech vz.52 at the Range

November 18, 2023 Ian McCollum 14

Yesterday we took a look at the vz.52/57 rifle in 7.62x39mm, and today I have one of it’s 7.62x45mm predecessors out at the range. Not so much to do some shooting, as it turns out, […]

Czech vz. 52/57: The SKS We Have At Home

November 17, 2023 Ian McCollum 7

We don’t need the SKS, we have gun designers at home! In the early days of the Cold War, the Czechoslovak communist party was on very good terms with Josef Stalin, and were able to […]

Romanian ZB-30 LMG: Improving the Already-Excellent ZB-26

August 30, 2023 Ian McCollum 8

Brno’s ZB-26 was one of the best light machine guns of the 1920s, and it was widely adopted by countries that did not have domestic arms design and production capacity (and it would eventually become […]

Ugly Pistol Day at the BUG Match: CZ38

August 19, 2023 Ian McCollum 5

For this month’s BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 – one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It’s a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, […]

Origins of the vz.82: A Western Pistol for Communist Czechoslovakia

September 2, 2022 Ian McCollum 19

The vz.82 and its cousin the CZ 83 are pistols that originated when the Czech state export company during the Cold War began looking for arms it could export to bring in hard currency. The […]

East Meets West at the BUG Match: CZ’s vz.82

September 2, 2022 Ian McCollum 9

Yesterday we looked at the history and development of the vz.82 pistol; today I am taking it out to the BackUp Gun Match. this should be a pretty competitive pistol in this environment, and it […]