Aircraft MGs
Vintage Saturday: Salvage
Finnish troops salvaging Maxim guns from a downed Russian Polikarpov R5 bomber shot down near Suistamo, Finland.
Aircraft MGs
Aircraft MGs
Quad MG81 Anti-Aircraft Mount
by Tom Laemlein As World War II progressed, the Luftwaffe looked to increase firepower wherever possible, from deploying large-caliber air weapons or increasing the rate of fire with smaller, rifle-caliber weapons. Such is the case […]
Accessories
MG17 Adapter, and Some Grainy Old Video
First up, you may recall that a while back we had some photos of an MG17 belt-feed adapter salvaged from the wreck of an Me-109. The fellow who owned that piece was hoping to restore […]
Aircraft MGs
Vintage Saturday: Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Parabellum 1914 MG in gunnery school, Belgium, 1918 (photo from Drake Goodman)
Accessories
Browning 1919 Experimental Belt Box
About a year ago, I wrote a post about some Browning 1919 feeding devices that were patented but never went into production. Well, reader Alex found photos of one of them in the Springfield Armory […]
Aircraft MGs
German Machine Gun Nomenclature
One would think that Germany, of all places, would have a logical and consistent system for identifying service machine guns. Any yet we see things like the WWI MG08/15 and the WWII MG15. What gives? […]
Aircraft MGs
MG17 Belt Feed Mechanism
The MG17 is one of the lesser-known German machine guns used in WWII, used for aircraft armament. Mechanically, the MG17 is basically the same as the MG15 ground gun, but with some aircraft-specific features like […]
Aircraft MGs
Turkish Manual for the Colt MG40
I recently found this in a private library, and I believe it’s the first Turkish-language manual I’ve come across. It’s dated 1936, and although the cover illustration shows a 1917 type water cooled gun, the […]
Aircraft MGs
Richard Wray Machine Gun Auction Followup
So, the auction of the late Richard Wray’s machine gun collection (see previous post) was yesterday, with the non-NFA guns being auctioned today. The final prices are interesting to look at, with some wallet-wrenchingly high […]
Accessories
Hythe Gun Camera
Training aircraft gunners has always been a task requiring some creativity, as it requires a lot more than just a paper target for an infantryman to blast away at. In the very early years of […]