Netherlands - Forgotten Weapons

Interview: Mathieu Willemsen, Curator of the Dutch National Military Museum

May 24, 2018 Ian McCollum 8

Today we have a brief conversation with Mathieu Willemsen, Curator of the Dutch National Military Museum. This was shorter than I would have preferred, because it came right at the end of a long day […]

Book review: Experiment and Trial by Mathieu Willemsen

May 13, 2018 Ian McCollum 6

Americans can order the book from Gun and Sword Collector, and Europeans should order from Verlag Militaria. Experiment and Trial, by Mathieu Willemsen, is a catalogue of the 218 guns in the collection of the Dutch […]

Dutch Mannlicher Plus Lewis Gun Bolt Equals Semiauto…?

May 2, 2018 Ian McCollum 14

Basically nothing is known about this rifle in terms of who created it or when – but it is a pretty interesting example of an attempt to convert a bolt action rifle to semiautomatic. This […]

Semiauto Portuguese AR-10 on a Sendra Receiver

March 23, 2018 Ian McCollum 31

So, you would like to get an original AR-10 rifle to shoot? Well, the original Armalite AR10 rifles were almost all manufactured by Artillerie-Inrichtingen in the Netherlands, and they were virtually all machine guns. They […]

Colt R75A: The Last Commercial BAR (With Shooting)

March 2, 2018 Ian McCollum 16

The R75A was the last version of Colt’s commercial BAR, with 832 made between August and December of 1942 for the Netherlands Purchasing Commission. It was a derivative of the commercial R75 BAR, with a […]

Snabb Semiauto Conversion of a Dutch Mannlicher

January 18, 2018 Ian McCollum 17

Snabb was a Swedish company created to market a system for converting bolt action rifles into semiautomatic rifles. The system was patented in the US in 1938, making this one of the very last attempts […]

Marlin UD-42 from the Dutch Resistance

January 11, 2018 Ian McCollum 21

The UD-42 was originally the design of Carl “Gus” Swebilius, who was at the time (1940) working for the High Standard company. It failed to attract interest form the US military, but was appealing to […]

Papuan Vrijwilliger Korps Mauser Carbine

December 18, 2017 Ian McCollum 26

During the transition from Dutch colonial rule to independence, the Dutch government armed a group of Papuans to help defend the territory form Indonesian military incursion. This organization was the Papuan Vrijwiliger Korps (Papua […]

Tour of a Dutch Gun Collection

May 30, 2017 Ian McCollum 18

One of the collectors who offered me access to video some of his guns during my recent trip to Europe said I should do an overview of his whole collection. There is a misconception in […]

RIA: Dutch Police Revolver (with safety!)

June 4, 2016 Ian McCollum 39

This Dutch police revolver is an interesting example of technology being used as an element of police policy and procedure. The Dutch police administration in the late 1800s/early 1900s decided that officers should carry a […]