#Ww2

Dusty Faces, or ‘ Verstaubt sind die Gesichter‘ in the original German, is a new webseries from the German indie production company ParaLight Worx dramatises the experience of German soldiers’ during World War Two. In the video’s description,  ParaLight Worx explain that they aim to tell the personal stories of ordinary German soldiers during the war, relying “on gathered and told experiences to stay as much historically accurate as possible.”

With the soldier’s load growing beyond the bounds of reason, and the Army set to replace the M4 Carbine in some units with the new Interim Combat Service Rifle, questions have arisen about how the soldier’s burden has changed over time. In the comments section of several of my articles relating to these subjects, readers asked if I could compare the current soldier’s load with the soldier’s load from World War II, to see how they compare. As always, I am happy to oblige.

PPSh-41 submachine gun was the main SMG of the Soviet Union during the WW2. It was cheap to make and was deployed in large numbers. It was also chambered in 7.62x25mm Tokarev, which means it shared the same ammunition as the handgun and the same caliber/bore as pretty much all the WW2 small arms of Soviet Union. The relatively controllable high rate of fire (about 1000 rpm) coupled with the 71-round drum magazine and high-velocity cartridge proved to be pretty successful on the battlefields of the war. In this article, we’ll take a look at some rare, prototype and experimental versions of the PPSh SMG. The list below goes in no particular order.

The 2.36 inch M1A1 “Bazooka” entered service midway through the Second World War in the U.S. campaign in North Africa. From there it become widely liked that the rocket launcher was issued at the infantry platoon level and used with much success against German and Japanese enemy positions and armor for the remainder of the war, of course barring the Tiger and Panther tanks employed on the Western Front. Although seemingly a well-thought out weapon system, the “Bazooka” is as rudimentary as a Walmart Potato Gun. Made from simple tubing, wooden furniture, wrapped wire, a heat shield, and sights that would make Browning himself blush, the weapon was very intuitive to operate and maintain. Later versions incorporated a tube that could be folded in half, and a 3.5 inch rocket. This saw much usage in the Korean War as a the M20 Launcher.

Corey joined us for a talk about rifle grenades and launchers in use by U.S. Infantrymen during the Second World War. Particularly we focused on the M1 Launcher for the M1903 Springfield rifle, however we also discussed some of the aspects of the M7 Launcher for the M1 Garand, and a very similar one for the M1 Carbine.

Recently we’ve been looking at a number of high-profile developments that came out of Special Operations Executive. Namely the infamous Welrod and Welwyn suppressed devices, and the Norm and Welgun experimental submachine guns. In this video, we take a look at some of the much lesser-known developments of the spy organization during the Second World War. A fully automatic .22 LR Colt Woodsman that had an excessive rate of fire, a hip mounted handgun that was designed to be shot while the user had their hands in the air, some fascinating cover stories that allowed the gunmaker John Wilkes Brothers to modify and repair small arms for SOE, and finally a highly modified and integrally suppressed M1 Carbine. Some of these small arms armed the agents parachuting into Fortress Europe and across lands captured by Imperial Japan, while others barely left the drawing board and served more as experiments of curiosity. However, all of these weapons were indicative of a time when the Allies were willing to throw any amount of effort at even a half-baked idea that would get Hitler or Tojo to surrender their empires quicker.

The Welrod and Welwand are fascinating objects of a bygone era of espionage. Invented specifically for the British Special Operations Executive, they were purely weapons of assassination for use inside Fortress Europe or against Imperial Japanese Military officers. So effective and reliable were these weapons that the Welrod is reported to have been in active service until very recently behind the closed doors history of the British Special Air Service.

The De Lisle Commando Carbine has fascinated small arms enthusiasts since knowledge of it became widespread after the Second World War. Almost entering myth like lore, it is claimed to have been the quietest weapon ever issued and used by Allied forces both in the European and Pacific theaters of war. Only 129 are known to have been produced on a production line (there might have been more but we only have 129 recorded) and were mostly issued to Special Operations Executive (SOE), Royal Marine Commandos and in very rare cases some American special operations forces during the war.

WWII warbirds have always interested me since I was a kid, I used to build model kits of P-51 Mustangs, Mitsubishi Zeros, Spitfires etc. A while back I posted a pretty cool video of the Twilight Tear, a P-51 Mustang test firing her six .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns out to 75 yards at a specially built range.

Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it.

Since we’ve discussed the .30 M1 Carbine caliber, it is probably only a matter of time before someone mentioned another .30 caliber round used by the Allies during the Second World War, that being the 7.62x25mm Tokarev. The round is a turbocharged derivative of the 7.63 Mauser, itself a hopped up variant of the very first successful rimless pistol cartridge, the 7.65 Borchardt. It was adopted in 1930 by the new Soviet Russian government for use with the Tokarev TT pistol, and later was also used in the PPD-40, PPSh-41, and PPS-43 submachine guns. Outside of Russia, it has been a popular cartridge as well, being used by the Vietnamese, Czechs, Yugoslavs, and most notably, the Chinese (with whom it remains in service today).

Previously on TFB we discussed the Lessons Learned from our WW II Squad Live fire which you can read about here, and watch the original episode here. In this episode of TFB TV we have a round table discussion from the actual participants and several subject matter experts who were present at the live fire as to what they experienced and what they went through. For many of us it was our first time extensively handling these WW II small arms in the manner that they were used, and in trying to recreate some of what those soldiers in 1941-1945 went through on an almost daily basis. We discuss smaller matters such as the safety on the M1s, to larger topics when it comes to fire and maneuver with an entire squad. The reenactors played an essential role here because they gave us some of the context of what soldiers then would have encountered.

The US .30 cal M1 Carbine is one of the most important developments in the personal defense weapon story, being one of the very first* intermediate calibers to be adopted as standard issue by a nation, and arguably the first purpose-designed PDW caliber in history. Even today it occupies a strange halfway point between pistol and rifle cartridges, being similar in design to a long pistol round or magnum revolver round with its straight-walled case and round-nosed bullet, but loaded with rifle powders designed for the 18″ barrel of the handy little M1 Carbine.

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

As a researcher and history enthusiast, one of the issues I often have to wrestle with is that of eyewitness accounts, specifically when to trust them and when not to. That subject itself is one for another time, but today I want to look at a specific example of an eyewitness account as an illustration of how they can be misleading to someone trying to reconstruct historical events.