#SecondWorldWar

In this post, we offer an amazing selection of photos from Mons in Belgium and the 75th anniversary of Belgium’s liberation during World War II

The roller-locked* Heckler & Koch G3 rifles and MP5 submachine guns have become iconic weapons of the Cold War era, being used in conflicts everywhere from civil wars in Africa, to hostage rescues and counter terror operations in Europe, to anti-cartel operations in South America. The operating system of these rifles is as unique as they are, and dates back to the death throes of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II. Desperate to save their failing state, the Nazis tasked engineers with developing new weapons, and the engineers were all to happy to oblige, lest they too be handed an old rifle and sent to the front!

Every day we literally lose hundreds of veterans around the world from the Second World War. This makes sitting down and discussing an in-depth subject such as what B17 Flying Fortress’s were armed with against the German fighters that tried to shoot them down so much more valuable when we actually get to talk to one of the crew members on those heavy bombers in the European Theater of Operations. James Lee Hutchinson was a gunner turned radio operator on a B17G in 490th Bomb Group based in England during the war. He went on 20 combat missions by the time he was twenty years old and when the war ended in May 1945. In this episode he discusses the finer points of taking care of the seven M2 .50 BMG heavy machine guns mounted throughout the bomber, and how the crews would use the guns.

It’s a blunder so bad it makes you look twice: On the new sculpture dedicated to Russia’s most famous small arms designer, there is an unintentional homage to a weapon of Russia’s hated adversaries during the Great Patriotic War. Behind the tasteful statue unveiled last Tuesday of Mikhail “Mikhtim” Kalashnikov cradling his invention like a fine instrument, there lies a sculpture panel dedicated to his inventions themselves – and, by accident, the Nazi Sturmgewehr of World War II. While the majority of the panel is filled with models of Kalashnikov’s inventions and derivatives, nestled in the backdrop of the representation of the AKS-74U compact assault rifle is a slab depicting an exploded view of the MKb42(H),, a World War II German assault rifle which helped serve as the inspiration for the program Kalashnikov’s rifle was designed to satisfy.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

On January 28th, TFB TV undertook a daunting task. We wanted to try and recreate an organizationally correct U.S. Army Paratrooper squad, with the same small arms and live ammunition that squad would have used in 1944. Recreating World War II small arms has been done through reenactments and in the film industry, but these only involve blanks. Shooting World War II small arms at a square range go doesn’t very far in understanding how these weapons functioned in combat. But neither is truly using these small arms as intended. These M1 Garands, M1A1 Carbines, and 1919 LMGs were created to be used by American soldiers in accomplishing their task of assaulting Fortress Europe and conquering the Japanese in the Pacific theatre. They were adopted and issued to be used by entire units of men, working together to neutralize an opposing enemy force.

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. The folks at the Cody Museum were tremendously helpful in getting high quality pictures of the weapons in their collection, and so I’d like to give a big “thank you” to Ashley and Danny!