Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it. Now, a good definition for “assault rifle” in my opinion comes from Anthony G. Williams, a British author, ammunition collector, and military [Read More…]
Here follows a short story from a recent visit to the Central Armed Forces Museum. The place is also known as the Museum of the Soviet Army and is located in the northern part of Moscow, close to the Red Army Theater. Lets’ begin with the entrance, where we find a [Read More…]
The Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow contains a large amount of information, vehicles and firearms from the time around 1941-1945. It opened to the public in 1995 and is a museum and memorial for the World War II, in Russia known as “The Great Patriotic [Read More…]
The AUG, short for “Armee-Universal-Gewehr” (universal army rifle), was designed in 1977 and was adopted by the Austrian Army as the StG 77 (Sturmgewehr 77) in 1978. Time flies and to honor the 40:th Anniversary, Steyr Arms Inc. are releasing the STG77 for [Read More…]
If you’re in London please take time to visit one of the Imperial War Museums. It’s a great place to see British Military History (and hide from the terrible weather). The pictures below are from TFB’s recent visit to Imperial War Museum London, on [Read More…]
The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make [Read More…]
The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make [Read More…]
Since we’ve covered the two most prominent PDW rounds of today, I want to take a quick detour and look at an interesting – but obscure – personal defense weapon/assault rifle round from history. After World War II, the apparati of the German war [Read More…]
Continuing on from where we left off yesterday, in this article we’ll address the arguments that center around the Sturmgewehr’s designer – Hugo Schmeisser – and his career in Izhevsk. Let’s get on with it: 4. The AK-47 looks just [Read More…]
We are all familiar with the standard conspiracy theories: NASA faked the Moon landing on a Hollywood soundstage, President Kennedy was shot by another gunman who was working for the CIA/the mob, all world leaders are actually reptilian aliens from Alpha Centauri, [Read More…]
Earlier this week, Business Insider released an article written by Christian Lowe entitled “6 weapons the US military should bring back from the dead“ with a very self-evident, but interesting premise. However, the weapons (all firearms, oddly) that the [Read More…]
One of the early automatic rifles that has caught my interest for several years going now is the Winchester Machine Rifle, also known as the Burton Machine Rifle or the Light Machine Rifle. The Burton – as I’ll call it for the purposes of today’s post [Read More…]
The nations engaged in World War II all fielded one or more main infantry rifle, and in this episode of TFBTV, we take a look at five that we believe to be the best. Remember this is a list of rifles, so submachineguns, machine guns, assault rifles, and so on are not included. Transcript … [Read More…]
I normally try to keep the worlds of guns and games separate, but sometimes, when everybody’s talking about it… Matt of Historical Firearms and Othais of C&Rsenal both have taken a look at the new trailer for Battlefield 1, the cheekily named WWI era [Read More…]
Well, I didn’t realize that I had shot this much over the course of this program. This video contains some shooting highlights filmed over the course of producing TFBTV. I sure have made a lot of memories doing this, and we hope you all have enjoyed our content. Special thanks to Ventura [Read More…]
For as long as people have been fighting one another, it’s been self-evident that he who can avoid getting hit has the best chance of coming out of the fight alive, if not victorious. Warfare has come a long way from hunter-gatherers dodging atlatl-thrown spears, [Read More…]
One of several interesting automatic individual weapon designs from World War I, the Winchester Machine Rifle was a concept for a dual-purpose anti-observation-balloon/ground weapon that featured several concepts that, for better or worse, were definitely ahead of their [Read More…]
The US trials that led to the adoption of the first standard issue military selfloading rifle are together one of my favorite parts of small arms history. Recently, Forgotten Weapons’ van Dyked and ponytailed founder and host Ian McCollum got a chance to handle [Read More…]
Some guns just get way too much attention. In this list, we highlight 5 firearms that get unfairly placed on a pedestal for a multitude of reasons that we lay out for you to consider. You may disagree, and that’s just fine. Also the list is about overrated guns, not necessarily bad ones. [Read More…]
The M1 Carbine is a weapon that, although popular with shooters and soldiers alike, has been unfairly dismissed in the broader context of the development of the modern assault rifle. Although initially fielded without select-fire capability, the lightweight and handy M1 [Read More…]
Russian and Arabic language news sites are reporting that the Russian MTs-116M sniper rifle has been seen in use with Syrian Arab Army forces, specifically female fighters. The rifles, based on the successful MTs-116 target/hunting rifle, are equipped with 5- or 10-shot [Read More…]
This is the fourth part of a series of posts seeking to describe and analyze the 7.62mm Lightweight Rifle concept promoted by the Americans, and subsequently adopted by NATO in various forms. This series will cover development from before World War II to the present [Read More…]
While it’s well known that the Germans were the first to field select-fire assault rifles in large numbers during World War II, the Soviets, thoroughly impressed by the idea of an intermediate-power infantry cartridge and intrigued by the idea of the assault [Read More…]
A little over eight years ago I published a map of the world showing countries which had adopted the AR-15 either as a primary service rifle, or as a niche special forces weapon. Back then about half the world was using the AR-15. (Ironically this map was made just [Read More…]
During the first and second World Wars, Russian and German infantry were armed with Mosin Nagants and Mauser 98 rifles respectively. Thus, the Eastern Front twice saw these two rifles pitted up against one another in countless engagements. In this installment of TFBTV, Alex and Miles drag out a 114 [Read More…]
The StG 44, or the Sturmgewehr 44, introduced in 1943 was the first modern assault rifle. It’s a rifle that’s on my wish list that I will never get to own. They’re pretty rare and very expensive, however you can try and snag one from the huge cache [Read More…]
An assault rifle has to meet a certain set of criteria: It must be select-fire and use an intermediate cartridge. In this video we explain what our favorites are, factoring in accuracy, controllability, and of course how easy it is to shoot. Also I anticipate this, so let me state it here: The AK is [Read More…]
What rifle influenced Kalashnikov’s famous carbine design more, the Garand M1, or the Haenel MP 43? This question was broached by blogger Jeff of TwistRate in a video posted to the Full30 gun video hosting website recently. Readers can follow the link to watch [Read More…]
The still below captures the use of a weapon that some of our readers will immediately recognize, but that might be new to others: The rifle is an MKb.42(H), Haenel’s prototype for what would later become the famous MP-44 Sturmgewehr. The Maschinenkarabiner [Read More…]
In response to the recent EMI/WTD 91 audit report on the G36 rifle’s thermal issues, Heckler and Koch has issued a statement rebuking the claims made by the Ernst Mach Institute about the rifle. The statement has been machine translated into English and replicated [Read More…]
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