Prototype
Hill SMG/Pistol: Inspiration for the FN P90
John L. Hill was a World War One fighter pilot who went into the oil and gas industry, and enjoyed tinkering with guns in his free time. In 1949 he got an idea for a […]
Handgun
Semiauto pistol
Lugers Under Versailles: The 1926 Simson P08
Simson & Co of Suhl was chosen as the sole contractor legally allowed to manufacture and rework military small arms for the German military under the Versailles treaty. They acquired the P08 Luger tooling from […]
Semiauto pistol
Fritz Mann Model 1921: Chamber-Ring-Delayed Blowback
In 1920, Fritz Mann of Germany patented the idea of cutting a shallow ring in the chamber of a pistol as a delaying mechanism. When fired, a cartridge case would expand into this groove, thus […]
Semiauto pistol
1945: The French Occupy Mauser and Make Lugers
In July 1945, just a few months after the first French troops entered Oberndorf, the Mauser factory began assembling guns under French oversight. In addition to HSc pistols, P38 pistols, K98k rifles, and Model 45 […]
Semiauto pistol
The Lahti L35 in Soviet Testing
This guest article written by Andrey Ulanov. In 1941, at the NIPSVO shooting range, the Soviet military conducted a series of comparative tests of standard foreign and Soviet pistols as well as the Soviet experimental […]
Semiauto pistol
The Luger in Finland
After the failure of the domestic production Ahlberg pistols and some disappointment with the performance of surplus French Ruby pistols, the Finnish military turned to DWM in Germany for a main service pistol in 1922. […]
Prototype
Mauser 1912/14: Flapper-Delayed Blowback
Starting in 1909, Mauser had a plan to introduce a family of automatic pistols, with a picket gun in 6.35mm (.25 ACP) and a military/police service pistol in 9mm Parabellum that shared the same basic […]
Bergmann
Ian Fangirls Over Some Weird Bergmann (Prototype M1910)
This unique Bergmann Model 1910 was made by Anciens Etablissements Pieper with a grip angled slightly back compared to the standard model. It was also fitted with a square front sight and square rear notch […]
Antiques
1896 Bittner: The Most Beautiful Steampunk Pistol
One of the very last, most common, and best looking of the Austrian manually operated pistols is the Bittner. Designed by Gustav Bittner in 1893 and going into production in 1896 (the known examples were […]
Antiques
Maxim-Silverman .455 Caliber Behemoth of a Pistol
Hiram Maxim’s hired shop supervisor was a man named Louis Silverman. He was a skilled engineer, who was treated rather poorly by Maxim, and whose contributions were systematically understated. One of the most interesting projects […]