United Kingdom - Forgotten Weapons

The kit of a French Private Soldier in the Battle of Verdun, 1916

World War One Soldiers’ Loadouts

July 5, 2016 Ian McCollum 54

A reader sent me a link to a pretty cool image gallery showing the basic clothing and equipment of five different major combatant powers from mid-WWI. I have re-uploaded the individual photos in case the […]

RIA: Webley 1905 Pocket Automatic

June 12, 2016 Ian McCollum 25

William Whiting was an engineer who spent his entire adult career with the Webley company, and was responsible for all of their in-house self-loading pistol designs. This work initially focused on a behemoth of a […]

Trench Warfare Notes, 1915

May 25, 2016 Ian McCollum 22

I have a really neat document to share today, generously sent to me by a reader named Chris in the United Kingdom. These are the notes from a 1915 course on trench warfare as recorded by […]

Greener MkIII Police in a 2-Gun Shotgun Match (Video)

May 23, 2016 Ian McCollum 39

Every few years, there is a special 2-Gun match at my local club, using shotgun and pistol instead of rifle and pistol. The rules of this match are a bit different than most multigun competition […]

BSA 1926 & 1929 Thompson SMGs

May 11, 2016 Ian McCollum 36

In the early days of the Thompson Submachine Gun, the Auto-Ordnance Company was looking for customers globally. General John Thompson had personally run a demonstration of the gun in England in June of 1921, which […]

New Video Series from the Pattern Room

April 29, 2016 Ian McCollum 18

Nope, it’s not mine (although I do look forward to visiting the NFC again in the future) – my friend Vic has started a video channel looking at some of the guns in the monumental […]

James D. Julia: An Overview of 4-Bore Stopping Rifles

February 27, 2016 Ian McCollum 61

The 4-bore (approximately 1″/25mm bore diameter) is the largest shoulder-fired rifle actually used for hunting. Developed in the days of black powder muzzleloaders, it was intended to be the ultimate rifle of last resort, to […]

WWI Trench Hand Weapons

February 24, 2016 Ian McCollum 98

Karl and I recently did some work with a wide selection of hand weapons from WWI (some original, some reproductions) for a video in collaboration with the excellent YouTube channel The Great War. Have a […]

RIA: Greener’s Humane Horse Killer

February 5, 2016 Ian McCollum 23

Humans have been killing animals for thousands of years, and with the development of the self-contained cartridge, the Greener company started making a compact and efficient Humane Horse Killer. Used by veterinarians for euthanizing creatures […]

RIA: MP3008 Sten Copy

February 4, 2016 Ian McCollum 71

The MP 3008, aka Gerät Neumünster, was one of two German efforts to copy the British Sten gun. The first was the Gerät Potsdam (“gerät” meaning device or project; basically project code name), which was […]