Five different companies in Germany produced designs for the last-ditch Volkssturm bolt action rifles, and they were designated VG-1 through VG-5. The VG-2 was developed by the Spreewerke company, and differed from the others in its use of a sheet metal stamped receiver (and consequently a pretty distinctive look). In total, somewhere between 16 and…
Category: Know Your Weapons
Military Weapons From The Past: The Suppressed M3 “Grease Gun”
The U.S. Army’s M3 submachine gun from World War II drew inspiration from the British STEN. Likewise, the suppressed M3 followed the suppressed versions of the STEN — the Mk. II and Mk. VI. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services formed in June 1943, modelling itself on the British Special Operations Executive. Like the SOE, the…
Know Your Weapons: The Walther P-38, Germany’s Most Popular Wartime Pistol
In 1929, German gun-maker Waffenfabrik Walther began developing a new nine-millimeter pistol for military use. The development violated the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, so Walther kept it secret. Early Walther attempts focused on scaling up its “PP” line of pistols to chamber the larger nine-mil round. This pistol, the Militarpistole, wasn’t…
Military Weapons From the Past: Japanese 7.65mm Hamada Pistol
The Hamada was one of very few Japanese military weapons made by a private commercial firm. Designed and introduced in 1940, the basic Type Hamada pistol was a blowback .32ACP handgun similar in style to the Browning model 1910. About 5000 of them were manufactured during WWII, although most of these were sent to China….
Know Your Weapons: The History of the SIONICS Suppressor
In the early 1960s, former U.S. Office of Strategic Services operative Mitchell WerBell III founded a company dedicated to the development of cheap and efficient sound-suppressors for automatic weapons. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, WerBell had joined the U.S. Army, serving briefly as a second lieutenant with the Signal Corps before volunteering to…
Military Weapons From the Past: The Lewis Gun
It must be an automatic rifle, Robert Jordan thought. “How much does it weigh?” he asked. “One man can carry it, but it is heavy. It has three legs that fold. We got it in the last serious raid. The one before the wine.” “How many rounds have you for it?” “An infinity,” the gypsy…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Burton Machine Rifle aka Winchester Model 1917
We don’t know much about Frank Burton’s Winchester-Burton Machine Rifle — a.k.a., the Winchester Model 1917. Little documentation of the rifle survives, but historians believe Burton meant it to be an anti-balloon weapon. During World War I, observation balloons helped armies on both sides of the conflict direct artillery fire and track enemy troop…
Military Weapons from the Past: Yugoslav 8mm Chaucat/M1915/26
Reader Mihajlo sent me a couple cool photos of Yugoslav troops with Chauchats converted to 8x57mm. Here’s his commentary: Here’s a picture from WW2 Yugoslavia I’d like to share with you. The guy on the right is holding a Dutch M.20 6,5 mm Lewis gun and the other guy is holding a Yugoslav Chauchat CSRG…
Military Weapons From The Past: How NOT to Design a Machine Gun
In May 1915, Canadian designers Alphonse Huot and Joseph Prefontaine applied for a patent for their new machine gun design. The aim of the Huot-Prefontaine Machine Gun, the designers claimed, was to “provide a compact, durable and efficient machine gun which can be operated either mechanically or manually and can be quickly produced in large numbers…
Know Your Weapons: “Carlo” The Cheap, “Go-To” Gun For Palestinian Terrorist
Ater the knife, one of the most notable symbols to emerge from six months of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank has been the “Carlo,” otherwise known as the Carl Gustav submachine gun. The homemade or craft-produced rudimentary automatic weapon has been used in the majority of shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and…