#Ww2

The Type 4 (sometimes also called the Type 5) was a clone of the US M1 Garand rifle developed by the Japanese Navy towards the very end of World War II. It’s a fascinating rifle for its combination of American engineering and Japanese style. Forgotten Weapons released a video yesterday giving an overview of the rifle at Rock Island Auction:

Hardcore Collectors are some of the most peculiar sorts of gun owners that we’ve all probably ran into. I mean, the guys will literally have dozens and dozens of the SAME rifle/pistol/shotgun. I mean, I’m all for a huge gun collection, but wow, diversify a little will ya? Joking aside, I do absolutely admire those collectors out there who go the extra mile in identifying and keeping the historical details of firearms alive for future generations. Especially when they are also good writers and publish the information they have painstakingly gained over a lifetime of firearms collecting experience. As one of these collectors told me, “We are just the stewards of our firearms”.

If you read the previous two installments on how to order from the CMP, then you have a good idea about how to get eligible, fill out your paperwork, and send in your packet for a Field- or Service-Grade M1 Garand rifle. Now what? Once the waiting is done, and your rifle arrives at your doorstep, you have received a shiny new example of Patton’s “deadliest rifle in the world”.

The Fedorov Avtomat is an important milestone in the history of modern small arms. With the Federov, for the first time, an individual soldier could possess automatic firepower in a package small enough to move and fight with, while at the same time not significantly compromising the range or effectiveness of the bolt-action rifle. However, the weapon fell out of favor during the Soviet era, and was never produced in large numbers. By way of WeaponsMan.com (H/T to Hognose), we are brought yet more details of the Fedorov’s story, written by Alexander Vershinin for Russia Beyond The Headlines:

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 day, but will focus primarily on the period from 1944-1970, which constitutes the span of time from the Light Rifle’s conception until its end in the United States with the standardization of the M16. This article itself deals with the fully automatic variants of the M1 rifle developed before US focus shifted to the then-new, shorter .30 Light Rifle cartridge that led to the 7.62 NATO caliber. Therefore, all rifles covered in this article were chambered for the standard .30 M2 caliber, and the series of fully automatic M1 derivatives chambered for the .30 Light Rifle experimental round will be covered in a subsequent installment. In more than one way, this is the first “true” installment of the Light Rifle series, as the three preceding articles can be considered prologue material, though that does not reduce the importance of their subjects. My readers should also note that while I consulted a variety of sources to write this article, my narrative heavily relies upon Bruce Canfield’s magnum opus The M1 Garand Rifle , as well as R. Blake Stevens’ U.S. Rifle M14 from John Garand to the M21. Indeed, the title of this article is adapted from the third chapter of that latter book, as I could think of nothing superior.

Nearly two weeks ago, I published an article that caused a great deal of consternation among my readership, even resulting in a prompt rebuttal video from Ian and Karl with InRange TV. That highly negative article was entitled 7 Reasons I Don’t Like The MP-44 Sturmgewehr. As a result of the unexpected waves it caused, the Sunday after the article ran I took to the proverbial recording studio with Ryan Michad to discuss the Sturmgewehr, its context, and to hopefully explain some of the more controversial talking points of the article.

In the early summer of this year,  a car-full of gun nerds set out to capture the rare Pedersen rifle on camera for the first time. The passenger with the van Dyke mustache and ponytail had just mentioned how if he could own any machine gun, it would be an StG.44, the German assault rifle of the second World War. Upon this, the driver, a tall, blonde Texan in cowboy boots, rebounded that one of the other passengers was the only person he’s ever met who wasn’t impressed with the German ur-sturmgewehr, which caused a great deal of whiplash to the others as their heads spun around to look in surprise and incredulity at the overweight one with the unkempt beard and brown mop of hair.

The Simonov PTRS 14.5mm anti-tank rifle was a very innovative rifle, that seemingly offered the Soviet AT gunner of the early part of World War II a frightening amount of firepower. Its semiautomatic action, and en-bloc clip loading gave the infantry five rounds of high velocity heavy AT rifle ammunition on tap, that could be fired as fast as the trigger could be pulled and the target reacquired. By comparison, the contemporary single-shot Degtyarev PTRD seems downright crude. However, as this evaluation translated by EnsignExpendable of the Soviet Gun Archives blog shows, things are not always how they seem:

The Mauser 1914 is not a well-known firearm today, but during the First World War, it became one of the most important small semiautomatic handguns of the early 20th Century.

This post is a result of a recent post done by War History Online of a story that has certainly made its rounds among different communities, American Rifleman, Field & Stream, Guns.com and Sightm1911.com. You can read the biography behind the pilot involved at Wikipedia as well. The War History Online account is directly taken from the American Rifleman article, while the picture is taken from the Field & Stream article. Anyways, the skinny of the account is that a certain Lt. Owen Baggett was apart of a B-24 crew over Burma in World War Two, also know as the China Burma India Theater of Operations (CBI). Bomber goes on a mission that doesn’t do so hot, gets shot down, crew bails out, Japanese Zero flies by Baggett, wherein he takes out his issued 1911A1 and kills the pilot while he himself is in midair, floating down to earth in his parachute. This is the fuller account of the story from Sightm1911.com, in my opinion, the most fullest and detailed of all accounts because it takes from an article published in an Air Force magazine, which in turn was authored by Baggett and another Air Force officer.

The Daily Mail has come out with an article about a lady who served in the British intelligence service after World War Two as a translater and left behind a 9mm Sten submachine gun after her passing in 2014. She was 99 years old and lived in a small row house in south west London. The Sten still had the original sling, but there was no mention made of a magazine or live ammunition. From the Daily Mail-

If you have not seen the trailer then head on over to Gun Pundit. It looks amazing!

From another age (1943):