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: Military Weapons from the Past
Military Weapons From the Past: Steyr-Hahn Pistol Variations
The Steyr-Hahn is one of the less glamorized pistols used in WWI, despite being made in quite large numbers (250,000-313,000, depending on who you read). The gun is an interesting mix of features, including bits from the Roth-Steyr M1907 and the early Colt/Browning 1900/1902/1903 pistols. As the M1912, the gun was the standard pistol for…
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 EMC-49 SMG Was Too Futuristic For The British Army
Following the end of World War II, the British Army sought a replacement for the STEN Gun which had been the British military’s workhorse submachine gun since 1940. The Army did not choose the futuristic Experimental Machine Carbine, 1949 from BSA. But maybe it should have. The STEN was simple, cheap and arguably nasty. While…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Suppressed M1 Carbine
Much of the history behind the suppressed M1 carbine remains unclear. Great Britain’s Royal Small Arms Factory apparently developed this quiet version of the iconic M1 for the U.S. Office of Strategic Service and the British Special Operations Executive, probably between 1943 and 1945. Based on standard receivers built by General Motors’ Inland Division, the…
Military Weapons From The Past: The P-08 Luger
If there is one handgun that everyone knows on sight, it is the Luger P-08 (aka “Pistole Parabellum“). It definitely has the ergonomics and angled grip everyone wants in a true target pistol, and was the basis for Bill Ruger’s first .22 Auto. Originally designed in 7.65mm or .30 Luger, a bottlenecked cartridge that feeds…
Military Weapons From The Past: STG-44’s in Africa?
This is a neat follow-up to an event I had strong doubts about being authentic in the first place.-SF A while back, a video made the rounds of a cache of StG-44 rifles being found in (allegedly) Syria – I commented on it here, in fact. It was pretty much without any context, though. Where…
Military Weapons From the Past: Mauser 712 Machine Pistol aka the “Schnellfeuer”
The Schnellfeuer, or Model 712, was Mauser’s answer to the Spanish production of selective fire C96 lookalikes. Just over 100,000 of these pistols were made by Mauser in the 1930s, mostly going to China (although some did see use in other countries, and also with the SS). They use 10- and 20-round detachable magazines, and…