“But Sarge, how do I reload this thing?” “Eh, we’ll stick Garcia on the back of the bike to do it”
Motorcycle of the Guanabara Police Department, sporting a Hotchkiss 1914 heavy machine gun. Rio de Janeiro, 1960. Thanks to Ronaldo Olive for the photo!
Sold for $5,750 with four other rifles at the February 2020 RIA Sporting & Collectors auction. In the aftermath of World War Two, Brazil decided to adopt a semiautomatic rifle for its military, in .30-06 […]
In the early 1990s, the Brazilian Imbel factory made a small run of FAL rifles converted to 5.56mm using AR magazines. They used standard FAL receivers and bolt carriers, with a boltface cut for 5.56x45mm […]
Today we have another article by Ronaldo Olive, reprinted with his permission. This was originally published in Jane’s Defense Weekly in 1984, when the LAPA FA-03 was still more or less in prototype phase – […]
That is a pretty sturdy and substantial sidecar platform — they would have needed it given the weight and recoil of the Hotchkiss. It also looks as if the whole platform was designed to take the gun as-is, complete with its original tripod, which would have added to the overall bulk. Quite different from the light and compact World War II-era BMW and Zundapp sidecar combos with a pintle-mounted MG-34 or MG-42.
That is a pretty sturdy and substantial sidecar platform — they would have needed it given the weight and recoil of the Hotchkiss. It also looks as if the whole platform was designed to take the gun as-is, complete with its original tripod, which would have added to the overall bulk. Quite different from the light and compact World War II-era BMW and Zundapp sidecar combos with a pintle-mounted MG-34 or MG-42.
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