In the previous video, we looked at the Winchester G30M rifle as it was submitted to Marine Corps trials in 1940. When the trial result came back with the G30M in last place, Winchester immediately assigned David Williams to work on adapting it to resolve the problems found in testing. What Williams did was to…
Category: Military Weapons from the Past
Obscure Weapons: The Browning Gas-Toggle Pistol
On the April 20th, 1897, now-legendary firearms-designer John Browning received four patents for various pistol designs. These included two recoil-operated systems, a blowback design and — most interestingly — a pistol using a gas-operated toggle action. Browning had developed the gas-operated design a few years earlier in 1894 and ’95. It was actually Browning’s first pistol design. Unfortunately, it also…
Military Weapons From the Past: The British EM Series – The First Bullpup Design from the 1950’s
By late 1947 the British Army’s Armaments Design Department had designed three principal rifles for the Infantry Personal Weapon program. The new rifles got their official designations in January 1948. They were Stanley Thorpe’s EM-1, the EM-2 designed by Capt. Kazimierz Stefan Januszewski and the EM-3, the latter the brainchild of Major J.E.M. Hall, an…
World War I Era Weapons: Japanese Arisaka Type 30
Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons Follow C&R Arsenal on YouTube for some Really Cool History Lessons on Military Weapons From the Past.
Military Weapons From The Past: Burton 1917 Light Machine Rifle
America’s first assault rifle? Well, it does meet all the requirements – select-fire, intermediate cartridge, and shoulder-fired. It was never actually fielded, though. The Burton Light Machine Rifle was developed during World War One, with the firing model completed in 1917. It was intended as an aircraft observer’s weapon for attacking balloons – a role…
Military Weapons From The Past: Smallest Guy Gets The BAR?
One of the most beloved and hated weapons of World War II was the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Another of John Browning’s classic designs, it was literally the first Squad Automatic Weapon. Though it lives on in weapon lore, like we said earlier, it had its detractors. World War II Marine William Manchester wrote in…
Military Weapons From The Past: Swiss 1893 Mannlicher Calvary Carbine
I have an affinity for Swiss Bolt Actions. The Schmidt-Rubin was one of my first Curio and Relic Firearms and the 7.5×55 Swiss is one the more accurate calibers of the C/R Bolt Actions.-SF The Swiss were the first country to adopt a bolt action repeating rifle with their Vetterli, and followed this by changing…
Military Weapons From the Past: The Soviet SVT-38 Rifle
A lot of people think that the US was the only country in World War II to mass-issue a semiautomatic infantry rifle, but that isn’t true. While the US was the only country to issue *everyone* a semi auto, both the Soviet Union and Germany produced large numbers of them. The Soviet rifle in particular…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Spanish FR-8 “Cetmeton” Rifle
The FR-8 is a Spanish rifle manufactured in the 1950s as part of Spain’s adoption of the CETME semiautomatic rifles. Spain was not only moving to their first semiauto rifle, but also changing from 8mm Mauser to the new 7.62mm NATO. It was not possible to immediately equip everybody with the new rifles, so a…
Military Aviation History: The First Anti-Aircraft Gun
The Prussian made “Ballon Kanone” was the first Purpose Made AA Gun The first untethered balloon flight took place on Nov. 21, 1783, with the first military use occurring during the French Revolutionary Wars. A century later during the Franco-Prussian War, the French again deployed observation balloons — and when Prussian troops besieged Paris, they became a…