Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: Worst-Smelling Pillbox Evar
The gun is a Modele 1931 “Reibel” – basically a Chatellerault 24/29 converted for vehicle and fortification use. Photo provided by Max Popenker – thanks Max!
France
Submachine Guns
Hotchkiss Universal Video
The Hotchkiss Universal is a pretty interesting submachine gun, despite its rather clumsy appearance. The overriding design intent was to make a very compact folding carbine, and Hotchiss certainly met that objective. However, the gun […]
Bolt Action Rifles
Lebel and Berthier Manuals
Since I spent yesterday talking about my new Turkish converted Berthier rifle, I figured it would be a decent idea to upload a couple manuals for the mainstay rifles of the French Army during WWI, […]
Bolt Action Rifles
New Addition to the Collection
One of the great things about collecting old guns is that there is such a huge variety out there – there’s always something new around the corner that you didn’t know about before. Scores of […]
Light MGs
Chauchat Followup
We had a lot of feedback on Tuesday’s post on the CSRG Chauchat light machine gun, so I figured I should do a bit of followup today. Leszek in Poland sent us these photos of […]
Light MGs
The Worst Gun Ever
By popular internet acclaim, the Worst Gun Ever is officially the Chauchat light machine gun. Every time the question comes up, that’s what people say. I’m not saying they’re necessarily wrong – but everyone always […]
Medium MGs
French AA-52
The AA-52 was adopted to replace the Chatellerault light machine gun in French military service in 1952. The AA52 is rather unusual in being a rifle-caliber (7.5×54 French, specifically) machine gun using a lever-delayed blowback […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: French Troops with an M1916 Cannon
We think the M1916 37mm cannon is just terribly cute. Here one is being used by French troops – note in particular the spare ammo in a belt. The same belt and ammunition was used […]
Heavy MGs
ABC’s of Machine Guns
Here’s another neat manual – A.B.C du Mitrailleu – the ABCs of Machine Guns. This was published in 1917 (the fifth edition, anyway) in French, and does a nice job showing all the most useful […]
Submachine Guns
MGD / Erma PM9
The PM9 was an interesting an unique submachine gun designed by Louis Debuit for the French firm Merlin and Gerin (hence the MGD name – Merlin, Gerin, Debuit) in the late 1940s and early 50s. […]