Russia

Origin of a Flare Pistol: Shpagin’s SPSh-44

June 7, 2018 Ian McCollum 2

This flare pistol is coming up for sale at RIA on June 23. After finishing his work on the PPSh-41 submachine gun, Georgiy Semyonovich Shpagin was tasked with creating a simplified flare or signal pistol […]

PTRD 41: The Simple Soviet Antitank Rifle of WWII

May 25, 2018 Ian McCollum 46

The Soviet Union had originally eschewed the use of large numbers of antitank rifles, anticipating that any potential combat use of them would be largely against tanks impervious to AT rifle cartridges. However, when […]

Russian Type 2 AK: Introducing the Milled Receiver

May 23, 2018 Ian McCollum 44

With recognition of the production problems of the original Type 1 AK, an alternative was needed. Russian engineer Valeriy Kharkov led a team of engineers who designed a replacement drop-forged and machined receiver for the […]

Type 1 Russian AK: The Actual AK-47

May 21, 2018 Ian McCollum 75

https://youtu.be/f5UFzsnmIlQ The AK-47 rifle was formally adopted in 1947, as the name implies, and went into production in 1948. In this very first form, it used a stamped receiver with front and rear trunnions riveted […]

GPMG Firing Comparison: PKM vs UK vz.59

May 12, 2018 Ian McCollum 43

Since I had the opportunity to do some shooting with both a Yugoslav PKM and a Czech vz.59 general-purpose machine gun, I thought it would be interesting to compare them side by side. Which is […]

Reproduction RP-46 Belt-Feed Conversion from SMG Guns

May 7, 2018 Ian McCollum 10

InRange TV Operator’s Guide to the RP-46: You can order your own by contacting SMG Guns at smgguns@yahoo.com or placing an order online at SMGGunsStore.com. It’s very exciting to have these available, as they are […]

Book Review: The Kalashnikov Encyclopaedia by Drs. Cor Roodhorst

April 15, 2018 Ian McCollum 4

All three volumes available worldwide from: http://www.kalashnikov-encyclopaedia.com While there are several books available which showcase a decent number of different Kalashnikov variants (like Tokoi’s work), and there are good reference works on the history and […]