Headstamp Publishing has announced Ian McCollum, of Forgotten Weapons fame, new book ‘Pistols of the Warlords – Chinese Domestic Handguns, 1911 – 1949‘. The new book comes hot on the heels of the shipping of their latest book Thorneycroft to SA80: [Read More…]
Back in March Ian McCollum, Nic Jenzen-Jones & James Rupley launched Headstamp Publishing, a new publishing house specialising in small arms and military history. The first book published by Headstamp will be Ian McCollum’s book on French Military Rifles. [Read More…]
If you love history and old firearms there are a few YouTube channels you probably follow. For many, two of those will definitely be Forgotten Weapons and C&Rsenal. Ian, Othais and Mae have come together to put seven original World War One vintage light machine guns [Read More…]
For many of us, the first things that spring to mind about the Rhodesian Bush War are bush shorts and FN FALs. Thankfully, only the latter is covered in two videos recently posted by the Vickers Tactical channel and Forgotten Weapons. In the videos, Ian McCollom and [Read More…]
Ian and Karl of Forgotten Weapons lore have recently announced a two gun competition open to the public, based in Arizona. Desert Brutality will take place in early February is based on the theme that Forgotten Weapons has always been known for, championing historic [Read More…]
If you’re not following both C&Rsenal and Forgotten Weapons you are missing out on some of the best gun history videos around. With C&Rsenal’s current World War One focus, systematically working their way through the weapons of the Great War, and [Read More…]
The Russian PKM: Arguably the best general purpose machine gun in the world, it combines a robust reliability with best-in-class light weight. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons recently released two video overviews of the weapon, giving us a good enough excuse as any to [Read More…]
Larry Vickers of Vickers Tactical and Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons will team up to work on writing the new Vickers Guide: WWII Germany. Ian will be the historical advisor and commentary contributor of the project. The announcement of this collaboration was [Read More…]
Gun Jesus Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has already written about his success at Rock Island Auction’s recent sale, or more specifically about his acquisition of a CSRG Chauchat in .30-06. I love this buy, and here’s why: I wanted it. And, for what it’s [Read More…]
While the STEN gun endures to this day, if only as the “cheapest” full-auto machine gun that US civilians can purchase, it was not the first sub machine gun from the UK in World War II. That honor goes to the Lanchester MkI, which certainly has a familiar [Read More…]
Famous strategic and political thinker once said that “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” From many perspectives, this is entirely true and weapons being tools of war can then be seen as weapons of politics. While we here at TFB focus on [Read More…]
Following military trials, especially historical ones, is a wonderful way to learn what not to do for weapons design. While some trails produce a few good offerings like the Garand/Pederson trials, most tend to quickly weed out the inferior designs (like the MHS’s [Read More…]
The traditional wisdom goes: Lightweight or “pencil” profile barrels can shoot great – just so long as you don’t get them hot. After a mag or two of heat is dumped into your lightweight build, your point of impact (POI) will probably shift by [Read More…]
Where most equate the post World War 2 British Army with the FAL, it should not have been and should not have come to pass. Experimenting with surprising alacrity and inspired by German designs, the British Royal Arsenals went straight to work on the development of [Read More…]
Despite using the arguably backward L85A2 (which Ian did a great series on that Nathan S. covered), after World War II, the British were one of the foremost thinkers in terms of individual small arms. Almost immediately after the war, the British Army and start [Read More…]
Over the last few months, InRange TV has found a successful niche of testing various firearms under their internal “Mud Test” for various classic and modern firearms. While not perfectly representative of the various military standards (their mud is [Read More…]
Perhaps wrapping up what must have been a gun nerd’s dream visit to the UK Royal Armouries National Firearms Centre, Ian at Forgotten Weapons has moved from the main SA-80 rifle into the sub-variants, which is a fascinating topic in and of itself. In this video, [Read More…]
I’ve had more than one e-mail from our dear readers on why I continue to write up Forgotten Weapons’ L85 Series. Outside the complaints of repetitiveness, the complaint that struck as the reason why I am publishing them came out – that no one wants to [Read More…]
I don’t know about you, but I try to give any movie I watch in the theaters at least 30 minutes to see if it will get good. Case in point – John Wick – which if you don’t stay through at least 20 looks to be an incoherent mess. Now, over a half [Read More…]
Often more fascinating than the weapons developed is the history of developing weapons. In almost all cases, weapons are frought with initial troubles, constantly moving mechanical targets, and perhaps most trouble – politics. While today’s politics is well [Read More…]
Most of the time Forgotten Weapons takes a look at weapons that are indeed largely forgotten. Sometimes they cover modern weapons and some of their history, and at other times they cover weapons that many wish were just forgotten. This is one of those latter times, [Read More…]
The First World War was a nasty conflict. It’s slaughter is something we often fail to comprehend if only on the sheer scale. Working to avoid direct trench assaults, the Entente developed the first tanks, which when employed struck terror into the German troops. [Read More…]
John Moses Browning was known to have stated his High Power designs and the technological upgrade and successor to the venerable 1911 handgun. Using a double-stack 9mm magazine and the first handgun to feature the now ubiquitous Browning tilting block operation, the [Read More…]
What happens when you are Beretta, one of the most storied gun makers in the world, when you are rejected by Colt? Why, you go off and make a competing rifle, partially co-developed by Sig! In all seriousness, realizing that the M16 was a true revolutionary leap forward [Read More…]
One of the more captivating and fascinating designs to come out of Russia in the past several decades, the 5.45x39mm AN-94 has recently been covered in great detail by Ian of Forgotten Weapons, in conjunction with Armament Research Services on The Hoplite Blog. If you have a chance, go over to The [Read More…]
Gun Jesus, AKA Ian from Forgotten Weapons, recently rolled out a video about a gun display wall from Matrix Armory and decided to spice it up a bit by taking us on a brief tour through some of his collection. So what does Gun Jesus hold dear? He goes into detail in the [Read More…]
I love it when Ian over at Forgotten Weapons falls off the actual “forgotten” weapons and delves into well-known and respected designs. His brain housing group is replete with an encyclopedia of facts and history on weapons and when applied to even [Read More…]
As weapons technology has progressed through generational leaps, it has bee historically common for notoriously frugal militaries to look to adapting their current standard issue to the new development. Generally speaking, these attempts are disasters as the [Read More…]
After the first two World Wars, Lugers were plentiful. Highly sought after by troops, the weapons made it back in droves to the United States where they were a commodity for some time before gaining the status us an uber-collectors item today. Given this, a poor (or [Read More…]
A few weeks back Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons released a teaser photo of him shooting the Walther WA2000 semi-auto sniper rifle. When we posted about it many of you were upset because the WA2000 video wasn’t done quite yet, and if I admit, I was [Read More…]