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…
Category: Military Weapons from the Past
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…
Obscure Weapons: 1846 Norwegian Knife-Pistol
This is one of the more practical knife/pistol combinations I have seen – it actually has a pretty reasonable grip when used in either capacity. It has two muzzleloading smoothbore barrels, with a percussion cap hidden under each top ear of the crossguard and a folding trigger in the body of the grip. After I…
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: Swiss SK-46 Semi-Auto Rifle
The SK-46 was one of several post-WWII experimental self-loading rifle designs developed for testing by the Swiss military, or for commercial export. It was manufactured by SIG at Neuhausen in both 7.5mm Swiss and 8mm Mauser. The rifle is gas operated, with a rather complex tilting bolt action. It uses 5- or 6-round detachable box…
Military Weapons From The Past: The British De Lisle Silenced Commando Carbine
British firearms-enthusiast and engineer William Godfray De Lisle designed his De Lisle Silenced Commando Carbine around the action and stock of the Mk. III Lee-Enfield rifle. Chambered in .45 ACP and accepting slightly-modified .45-caliber Colt 1911 pistol magazines rather than the Lee-Enfield’s standard 10-round .303 magazine, the De Lisle boasted an 8.2-inch integral barrel sound-suppressor….
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…
Military Weapons from the Past: The British Sten Mk. VI(S) Sub-Machine Gun
The Royal Small Arms Factory built the first suppressed Sten submachine gun following a request from the Special Operations Executive — Britain’s World War II commando headquarters — for a weapon for clandestine missions demanding lots of firepower. Early experiments with suppressing the Thompson submachine gun — the weapon British commandos preferred earlier in the…
Military Weapons From the Past: Historical Weapons Found in Libya War Zone
Armament Research Services (ARES) has a database of Conflict Material (CONMAT), logging arms and munitions documented within the illicit sphere in conflict and post-conflict zones. I have been working on co-athoring a report with N.R. Jenzen-Jones covering Libyan arms trading conducted via social media platforms between November 2014 and November 2015 for Small Arms Survey. One of the…