Category: History

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the […]

The Evans rifle/carbine was developed in 1873 by a Maine dentist named Warren Evans. Its main innovation was a large helical magazine that held a whopping 34 cartridges of Evan’s proprietary .44 caliber cartridge. By 1877 Evans had made a number of revisions and improvements to the gun, including developing a newer and more powerful […]

What is it about “Metal from the Heavens” that is so intriguing and fascinating to work with?  To have a weapon forged from a “falling star” would be a truly unique symbol of power indeed. In the news lately a few such weapons have popped up on the radar. In school, we have all learned […]

Museum volunteer realizes ‘telegram machine’ in eBay ad is Nazi relic (FOX)- Listed as a “telegram machine,” the military-issue Lorenz teleprinter was being stored in a garden shed “with rubbish all over it” in Essex, museum volunteer John Wetter tells the BBC. The museum bought the machine for about $15. Initially, museum volunteers thought they […]

The Czech-made ZK-383 submachine gun is a bit of an oddball in the world of submachine guns. It has several design features typically associated with rifle-caliber light machine guns – an integral bipod and a quick-change barrel. In fact, the ZK-383 was designed to be a hybrid gun, usable as either a standard SMG or […]

The Japanese Type 93 and its slightly-improved sister the Type 100 were the standard flame weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army for its fighting in China and the Pacific. They are a smaller and handier design than the American weapons, and less user-friendly. The Type 100 uses a rotating valve to fire, paper incendiary cartridges […]

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 […]

One of the options for having multiple shots available in the age of the muzzleloading rifle was the swivel-breech rifle. Such a rifle would have typically two barrels and one lock – one the first barrel was fired, the whole barrel assembly could be rotated 180 degrees to bring the other barrel into alignment with […]

We have all seen plenty of sporter CETME rifles and civilian HK-91s, but when the G3 was new to the Germany military, there was already an interest in bringing semiauto versions into the US. The Golden State Arms Corporation was the first to do so, with three batches of imports in 1962 (just 3 years […]

Like most countries, Germany had a standard-issue antitank rifle when World War II began – the Panzerbuchse 39. It fired an 8x94mm cartridge with a small very high velocity armor-piercing bullet. And like the other AT rifles from the 1930s, the PzB-39 became obsolete quickly as tank armor improved during the war. However, while most […]