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…
Category: Military Weapons from the Past
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…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Soviet 6P9 (PB) Pistol
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…
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…