Developed for Spetsnaz and the KGB Wet Teams, the PB was a Suppressed Pistol with some Serious Design Compromises Developed for Spetsnaz units and the KGB in the mid-1960s, the Soviet PB — also known as the 6P9 — took the proven Makarov PM design and incorporated a two-stage, integral suppressor. During World War II, the Soviet NKVD had…
Category: Know Your Weapons
Know Your Weapons: The Armalite AR-10
In 1955, the small Californian firearms company ArmaLite unveiled one of the most defining and influential rifles of the 20th century — the AR-10. The hard-hitting rifle would see extensive service in bitter colonial conflicts and provide the basis for the M-16, one of the most iconic rifles of all time. But despite its importance there has…
Know Your Weapons: French Marine Commando’s with CETME Rifles
I was doing some reading up on the early roller-delayed rifles (in Blake Stevens’ exquisitely technical and detailed book Full Circle: A Treatise on Roller Locking) and came across this very cool story, which I wanted to share… Spain formally adopted the CETME Model B in 1958. It was mechanically pretty much the same gun…
Know Your Weapons: The CIA Probably Still Uses Some of the High Standard Spy Pistols It Bought During World War II
A suppressed .22-caliber “Wetwork” weapon that never needed replacing When the United States entered World War II, the Pentagon quickly bought up all the stocks it could find of .22LR target pistols — a .22-caliber handgun that fires a rifle-style cartridge—for training purposes. But the British Special Operations Executive was already using suppressed versions of similar weapons in combat….
Know Your Weapons: The Spetsnaz AS VAL Assault Rifle & VSS Sniper Rifle
Russian Commandos Carry Suppressed Rifles That Can Shoot Through Body Armor The AS Val and VSS are fearsome weapons In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union’s Central Institute for Precision Machine Building — TsNIITochMash — developed the AS Val suppressed assault rifle and the derivative VSS sniper rifle specifically to outfit Russian special forces and intelligence agencies….
Military Weapons From The Past: The British Besal Machine Gun
The Besal Was Wartime Great Britain’s Desperate, Last-Ditch Machine Gun Cheap and easy to make, the weapon was for fighting a German invasion In the autumn of 1940, Nazi Germany controlled most of mainland Europe, France had surrendered and the British Army had evacuated the continent — in the process, leaving behind much of its arms and…
Military Weapons From the Past: The M3 “Grease Gun” v2.0
The Philippine Marines Teach a SMG that dates back to WW2 some New Tricks War Is Boring and Historical Firearms recently posted a story about the use of suppressed M3 “Grease Gun” from World War II onward to Vietnam. U.S. forces stopped issuing the guns to troops in 1992, but at least one unit in…
Know Your Weapons: The Adams Revolver
Robert Adams and Samuel Colt Waged a Vicious, but Largely Unknown War over the 19th Century Pistol market By 1850, Samuel Colt had come to dominate the American revolver market, aggressively defending his patents and using advanced manufacturing processes to out-produce rivals. Meanwhile in February 1851, British gunsmith Robert Adams patented his double-action revolver design….
Obscure Weapons: Thompson Model 1923 Auto Rifle
One of the very early entrants into the United States Ordnance Department’s semiauto rifle trials was the Auto-Ordnance Company, makers of the Thompson submachine gun. For the rifle trials, they designed a .30-06 rifle using the same Blish-locking principle as had been applied to the SMG. Since the Blish principle doesn’t actually work, this resulted…
Know Your Weapons: Hiram Maxim Invented More than Machine Guns
Hiram Percy Maxim, son of Hiram Maxim — inventor of the machine gun — is best known for his silencers. The younger Maxim developed the first viable firearm suppressors at the turn of the 20th century, securing a series of patents between 1909 and 1920. He sold his designs through the Maxim Silent Firearms Company, which would eventually become…