Artillery
Vintage Saturday: Desolation
US soldiers of the 23rd Infantry with a 37mm M1916 Infantry Gun in France, circa 1918.
France
Commentary
So Many Machine Guns!
Not too long ago, a pretty serious machine gun collector named Richard Wray passed away, and his estate is auctioning off his collection, which includes 80-odd transferable machine guns – nearly all of them very […]
Bolt Action Rifles
M1886 Lebel Video
The French M1886 Lebel was the first smallbore smokeless powder rifle adopted by a major military, and was a game changer in the European arms race in the 1880s. It wasn’t an outstanding design in […]
Book review
Book Review: Social History of the Machine Gun
I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I opened up John Ellis’ The Social History of the Machine Gun – machine guns and social histories of anything don’t really tend to go together. Ellis […]
Select-fire Rifles
French FAMAS F1
The FAMAS was one of the first mass-produced bullpup rifles, and as a forerunner in the area, it shows a number of interesting features, both good and bad. The FAMAS spent 9 years in development, […]
Semiauto pistol
Clair Automatic Pistol
The French Clair pistol of 1893 is one of the lesser known and least documented early automatic pistols, and unusual in its method of operation as well. The majority of the successful early automatics (the […]
Book review
Book Review: The Parabellum is Back!
The final chapter in our continuing Luger series is today’s book, The Parabellum is Back! While Sturgess’ three-volume encyclopedia covers the pistol through 1918 and Simson Lugers takes us through Weimar, that leaves a lot […]
Light MGs
Mle 24/29 Chatellerault
Our friend Joe had the opportunity not too long ago to take out a French Mle 1924/29 Chatellerault light machine gun for test firing. The 24/29 is a quite nice LMG that is definitely under-appreciated. […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: Resistance in Style
This is a pretty well-known photo, but damn if it isn’t a good one.
Semiauto Rifles
French RSC Modele 1917 selfloading rifle
The French government had run a series of semiautomatic rifle trials in 1913 and had several designs with a lot of potential, like the A6 Meunier. In fact, most of the designs had dropped the […]