Germany - Forgotten Weapons

Mauser WW1 Flyer’s Rifle: the Flieger Selbstlader Karabiner 1916

November 1, 2022 Ian McCollum 26

Paul Mauser dedicated much of his life to the development of a practical semiauto military rifle, and did manage to have a design that was used in combat by Germany in World War One. It […]

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 […]

Armatix iP1 Smart Gun at the BackUp Gun Match

September 24, 2022 Ian McCollum 32

Yesterday we looked at the history and the functioning of the Armatix iP1 “smart gun”, and today I’m taking it out to a BackUp Gun Match. How will it perform? Will it cycle reliably? Will […]

Armatix iP1: The Infamous German “Smart Gun”

September 23, 2022 Ian McCollum 27

The Armatix iP1 is a pistol created by former H&K designer Ernst Mauch that was released – or almost released – in the US in late 2013 and early 2014. It is a .22LR caliber […]

Germany Copies the Soviets: L23 & L27 Silencers

September 12, 2022 Ian McCollum 4

The German L23 silencer was essentially a copy of captured Soviet Bramit silencers, complete with the attachment system locking around a rifle front sight. Two hundred of these made for the K98k rifle for German […]

New Book Review: “Third Reich Lugers” by Tom Whiteman

September 6, 2022 Ian McCollum 3

Tom Whiteman (of Legacy Collectibles) has just recently published “Third Reich Lugers: An Illustrated Collector’s Guide to German Military Lugers from World War II”. The full title pretty much says it all here; this is […]

Roller-Delay Showdown: Angstadt MDP-9 vs H&K SP-5

August 20, 2022 Ian McCollum 4

Today we are out at the range to compare the Angstadt Arms MDP-9 to the classic H&K SP-5. We will do a bunch of runs on a course of fire that incudes precision targets, spinners […]

Zielfeuergerät 38 Blank-Firing Training Aid

July 13, 2022 Ian McCollum 23

When the Allied examined the weapons discovered in the German Reich after the war, they came across a device which was classified as a “spring gun” or “trip wire activated static defense machine gun”. Nevertheless, […]

Two World Wars: A Weimar Police C96 Mauser

June 22, 2022 Ian McCollum 32

In the aftermath of World War One, German police forces were responsible for maintaining social order is a very chaotic Germany. They were reequipped with small arms, and in particular needed pistols. The ideal sidearm […]

Walther Prototype MP – A Missing Link From PP to P38

May 9, 2022 Ian McCollum 34

During the late 1920 and early 1930s, the Walther company worked on developing a military pistol in 9x19mm. They began from the basis of the PP/PPK design, and produced three separate designs, the first two […]