Part of my trip to the UK took my to Le Havre, France. Being so close, I had to go to Normandy and see Omaha Beach. I went to the Normandy American Cemetary. The visitor center has a wonderful exhibit with a few firearms inside. Springfield M1. German [Read More…]
One of the places I visited was Guernsey. It is owned by the British but it is a small island off the coast of France, west of Normany, past Cherbourg. Guernsey is famous for being the home of Victor Hugo during his exile from France. He lived there for 15 years and [Read More…]
Chuck is feeding the beast with his most recent post of a cutaway TT-33 Tokarev over at GunLab.If you’re like me, you just can’t get enough of cutaway firearms! Pictures are embedded below, but please click through to Chuck’s site to see more: [Read More…]
This photo of Belorussian Soviet Snipers was taken in Germany on May 4, 1945. These woman had 775 confirmed kills between themselves, out of the 12,000 confirmed kills credited to female snipers in the Soviet Army. Female snipers of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian [Read More…]
A design that truly could have changed the war, the StG 45 was not completed until 1945. Designed to replace the StG 44, which was expensive and time-consuming to produce, the StG 45 was the result of a cost-reduction and mechanical simplification development. To meet [Read More…]
It served the Imperial Japanese military for 40 years and drew inspiration from several sturdy European designs of the day, so how well does the Type 14 work? Well, we set out to find out! Many thanks to Christian for the German subtitles and Osamu for the Japanese subtitles. Transcription below [Read More…]
The Sturmgewehr is a rifle that will never lose it’s place in history; it is one of the single most influential weapons of the 20th Century. It is not the first of its kind, however, and we at TFB have previously taken a look at some of the rifle’s [Read More…]
The early model Japanese Type 99 Arisaka was by far the most optimistic rifle ever made. The designers envisioned soldiers shooting 175 grain 7.7x58mm rounds and taking down aircraft. The operation of the sights are explained in this excellent video by C&Rsenal [Read More…]
In my critique of the M1 Garand rifle on Sunday, I noted that John Cantius Garand was not only a firearms designer, but a machinist as well. It was his intimate understanding of the world of the shop floor that made his rifle economical to produce, which is in my [Read More…]
For those who thought the GunLab VG1-5 project was très chic, the first example is now complete and awaiting BATFE approval. Even better, Allegheny Arsenal is now accepting preorders! The guns will cost $4,000 each (despite the decidedly inexpensive construction [Read More…]
One of the many projects GunLab has been hard at work completing is producing reproduction VG1-5 (more properly referred to as the Gustloff MP 507) carbines. These were last-ditch carbines, intended to be vastly cheaper to make than either the Kar98K or StG-44 [Read More…]
Zachary sent us this photo of the Walther P38 pistol and bayonet his grandfather brought back from WWII. The bayonet has its original Afrika Korps belt frog. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “frog”, a frog is what holds the sheath onto the [Read More…]
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated with WWII warbirds, my favorite being the P-51 Mustang. The North American P-51 Mustangs were armed with six .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns, a good amount of firepower for the day. If you’ve been to airshows [Read More…]
This video is from 2011. Ted Gundy is a WWII Veteran. On top of that, he was a sniper. The US Army Marksmanship Unit honors his achievement and skill with the USAMU Black Hat. According to Lt. Col. Daniel Hodne, only 8 black hats have been given to people outside of [Read More…]
The Lahti pistol was the brainchild of Aimo Johannes Lahti, a Finnish soldier turned arms inventor. While there is some dispute it’s hard to ignore the fact that Lahti’s pistol uses a very similar locking block to the earlier Bergmann-Bayard pistols. The [Read More…]
Our friends at Forgotten Weapons published the Boys anti-tank rifle training film created by Disney for the Canadian Army. It is pretty hilarious. It starts off with Hitler complaining to the devil that they can’t win the war because of the Boys anti-tank rifle, [Read More…]
The Providence Journal has a fascinating article about the many layers of subcontracting that took place during WWII. Richard Parker writes about his time as a driver for the Pantex Pressing Machine Company. During the war the company was sub-contracted to make clones [Read More…]
I apologize to those readers who clicked through hoping to read that Andrew Tuohy had taken up figure skating, the rest of you can breath a sigh of relief that you won’t be seeing Andrew in a lycra skating outfit. This post is instead about two curious photos of [Read More…]
I can barely contain my excitement! A german firm called Tactics Group will be producing a “tacti-cool” version of the German WWII Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 (Paratrooper Rifle 42) aka. FG-42. It will feature all the accessories found on modern rifles. The [Read More…]
The below video is Part 1 of a WWII German sniper training film with an English voiceover. Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7
Gun archaeologists Max Popenker and Anthony Williams uncovered a previously unknown prototype machine gun that dates back to WWII. Max blogged the below photos, but is tight lipped about the details. The gun will be featured in their upcoming book Sub-Machine Gun. This [Read More…]
Degtyaryov’s infantry machine gun, aka. DP / DP-27 / DPM (modernized), with its large pan magazine, is one of the most distinctive weapons of WWII. The pan magazine proved not to be the best idea and after the war the Soviets developed the RP-46, an ingenious [Read More…]
While interned in a POW camp during WWI Louis Marquis designed a .22 belt buckle gun. He later received a patent the design and during WWII was commissioned by Himmler to produce prototypes. It is thought that about 12 were made. During the 50s and 60s many copies were [Read More…]
The The Ghosts of World War II’s Past photos were created by Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov. He photoshopped WWII photos over modern photos taken at the same location and the results really make history come alive. The City of Ruins is a short film showing [Read More…]
The Vollmer Maschinenkarabiner M35 was developed in Germany sometime pre-WWII. Fortunately they never adopted it! There is practically no information on the internet about this gun, so please share your knowledge in the comments below. [ Hat Tip: (Defense and Freedom) ]
I have blogged about the German grenade pistols before. They were an intriguing segue in the history of firearm development which was not really revisited until recently with the development of small caliber 20mm and 25mm grenades. The WWII In Color forum has some very [Read More…]
A reader emailed in these photos which he took at a weapons exhibition run by a Paratrooper Association. The expo was held in Chambery, France, during the weekend. Sadly these guns are all demilled to comply with French law. Nazi symbols, which are present on some [Read More…]
The Kriegsmarine apparently issued mini-RPG rounds for their double-barreled flare gun. Crazy.
Designed to be as inexpensive as possible, assembled from mostly stamped sheet-metal parts, the Liberator was a single shot pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge the US military was using for standard handguns and submachine guns. It was so cheap that each one set [Read More…]
The T26, otherwise known as the “Tanker” Garand, was an experiential 18″ barreled carbine version of the M1 Garand. It was designed late in WWII for use in the Pacific jungles. Tom emailed me photos of his new T26-style M1. Tanker (top) fitted with [Read More…]
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