#7.62x25mmTokarev

Russian archaeological team called “Yuri Gagarin” publishes on its  YouTube channel videos of excavations of WW2 relics from the battlefields of the war. In several recent videos, they show how they retrieve many really well-preserved firearms and other items from a swamp. Even after being in the swamp for about 75 years, these relics are in amazingly good condition. Below is a set of screenshots of the most interesting weapons and other items shown in their latest videos.

In this fourteenth installment of Personal Defense Weapon Calibers, we’ll be looking at a highly minimalist incarnation of the PDW/SMG round: The 7.65x20mm French Longue. The story of the French Longue begins with the US entry to World War I and the brilliant inventors John D. Pedersen and John Moses Browning. Faced with the stalemate of trench warfare, these designers were tasked with finding a solution in the form of handheld autoloading weapons. Both came up with semiautomatic rifles firing small, low recoil .30 caliber rounds. Pedersen’s “Device” converted a standard M1903 rifle into a rapid fire semiautomatic, but it was Browning’s autoloading rifle and its .30-18 round (very similar to the .30 Pedersen used with the “Device”) which caught the eye of the French Ordnance officials. The .30-18 Browning, as it is called, was evidently cloned to become the 7.65x20mm Longue used with the interwar French Mle. 1935 pistols and MAS-38 submachine gun.