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…
Category: Obscure Weapons
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…
Obscure Weapons: The Standschultze-Hellreigel Submachine Gun
The Austro-Hungarian Standschutze Hellriegel debuted in 1915. Today the automatic, light firearm is something of a mystery. The prototype blended pistol-caliber ammunition with the firepower of a machine gun, making it one of the first weapons which could be considered a “submachine gun.” That much, we know. The rest is … conjecture. The images in this…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Thompson SMG T2
Introducing the “Cheap and Ugly as Hell” Version of one of the Baddest Ass SMG’s in History The U.S. Army had initially been uninterested in submachine guns, and it was only in the late 1930s that the Ordnance Department placed Auto-Ordnance’s Thompson SMG on its “limited procurement list.” In September 1938, officials green-lit procurement of…
Obscure Weapons: The 1898 Schwarzlose Pistol
A Pistol So Far Ahead of it’s Time Most Customers Rejected It Schwarzlose is a name that most will associate with the M1907 medium machine gun that the Austro-Hungarian army used in World War I. But there’s another Schwarzlose gun. In 1898, Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose completed a truly advanced pistol design that was well ahead…
Obscure Weapons: 1929 Simson Prototype 9mm
In the late 1920s, German Ordnance hinted at an interest in replacing the P.08 Luger pistols with a less expensive handgun design. This prompted a number of submissions from hopeful companies, including this design from the Simson company of Suhl. It is chambered for the 9×19 Parabellum cartridge (as requested by Ordnance) but is a…
Know Your Weapons: The Adams Revolver
Robert Adams and Samuel Colt Waged a Vicious, but Largely Unknown War over the 19th Century Pistol market By 1850, Samuel Colt had come to dominate the American revolver market, aggressively defending his patents and using advanced manufacturing processes to out-produce rivals. Meanwhile in February 1851, British gunsmith Robert Adams patented his double-action revolver design….
Obscure Weapons: Thompson Model 1923 Auto Rifle
One of the very early entrants into the United States Ordnance Department’s semiauto rifle trials was the Auto-Ordnance Company, makers of the Thompson submachine gun. For the rifle trials, they designed a .30-06 rifle using the same Blish-locking principle as had been applied to the SMG. Since the Blish principle doesn’t actually work, this resulted…
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….
Military Weapons From the Past: Japanese Type 100 Paratrooper
The Type 100 (sometimes called the Type 0) was one of the initial Japanese experiments in paratroop rifles. Manufactured from standard Nagoya Arsenal Type 99 rifles, the Type 100 used a set of interrupted lugs at the chamber to allow the rifle to be broken into two short sections. Only a few hundred of these…