Heavy MGs
Kord: Russia’s New .50 Cal Heavy Machine Gun
The Kord was developed to replace the Soviet NSV heavy machine gun. The NSV was developed in 1969 to replace the DShK, and it was a pretty good gun – but it was manufactured in […]
Machine Guns
Submachine Guns
Sten MkIII: A Children’s Toy Company Makes SMGs
Lines Brothers was a company in the UK that made sheet metal childrens’ toys prior to the war. When production of the Sten guns began, Lines Bros was a parts subcontractor. Their engineers analyzed the […]
Submachine Guns
Romania’s AK-Based SMG: the LP7
Full cut with shooting segment in History of Weapons & War: https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/videos/lp7-smg-4k In the mid 1990s, UMC Cugir began looking at ways to adapt its AKM production tooling to make a 9mm submachine gun. What […]
Submachine Guns
Sten MkII: Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Simpler
The Sten MkI had barely been approved for production when the Sten MkII was born. Initially requested to produce a version of the gun suitable for paratroopers, in March 1941 Harold Turpin redesigned the front […]
Submachine Guns
Sten MkI & MkI*: The Original Plumber’s Nightmare
The Sten gun was designed by RSAF Senior Draftsman (sorry, Draughtsman) Harold Turpin in December, 1940. He sketched out a simple trigger mechanism on December 2, showed it to Major Reginald Shepherd the next day, […]
General Purpose MGs
Finland’s Prototype Belt-Fed GPMG: L41 Sampo
During the 1930s, there was interest in Finland in replacing the Maxim heavy machine gun with something handier and more mobile. There were experiments with large drum magazines for the LS-26 light machine gun, but […]
Heavy MGs
MG08: The Devil’s Paintbrush
The MG08 was the German Army standard Maxim gun in World War One. The Germany Navy adopted the Maxim first in 1894, followed by the Army in 1899, then a new pattern in 1901, and […]
Light MGs
.30-06 M1918 American Chauchat – Doughboys Go to France
When the US entered World War One, the country had a grand total of 1,453 machine guns, split between 4 different models. This was not a useful inventory to equip even a single division headed […]
Submachine Guns
Madsen M50: From the Korean War to Star Trek
During World War Two, Madsen (DISA) manufactured a licensed copy of the Finnish Suomi (see: https://youtu.be/hjs1uiAIpNQ). When the war ended, they wanted to replace this with a more modern, inexpensive design of their own. The […]
Commentary
How to Avoid the Legal Pitfalls of a Transferrable H&K Auto Sear
One of the particularly popular transferrable machine guns out there is the H&K auto sear. Since H&K grip and trigger assemblies are interchangeable between 9mm, 5.56mm, and 7.62x51mm guns (ie, MP5, HK33, and G3) a […]