Trevor Weston sends us more information on obscure Italian prototypes, this time two general purpose machine guns design by Breda. Trevor’s contact Vic Tuff writes:

The Breda machine guns are very interesting and the LMG version has a definite ‘Bren’ look about it (they made it in magazine fed and belt fed)… that is probably down to the fact that Breda repaired/refurbished Bren’s for the Italian Army in the 50’s. They even converted several Bren’s to use .30″ ’06 ammo as they wanted to standardise on that calibre. They also converted Breda Mod 37 Machine guns to .30″ ’06 but it all came to nought when the Army rifle trials came down to the acceptance of the Beretta BM-59, they then adopted the German MG3 (MG42/59 conversions too) as their machine gun.

 

The final GPMG model is the blossoming of the LMG into a true GPMG type, it still has the lines of the LMG but much sturdier.

Below are some archive photos of the machine guns, including a magazine-fed variant:

Unfortunately, I know very little else about these machine guns, but I will definitely keep our readers updated as new information becomes available!