ForgottenWeapons

RT20: Croatia's Insane Kludged 20mm Anti-Material Rifle (Ad-free)

During its Homeland War, Croatia manufactured a wide variety of ad-hoc firearms including a number of anti-material rifles. The RT-20 was the largest of these, and its development began with the discovery of a stash of Yugoslav M55 anti-aircraft cannon barrels chambered for 20mm Hispano in a warehouse. These barrels were cut down, fitted with single-shot bolt actions, bipods, and bullpup stock assemblies and became the RT-20s. The most unusual element of the design is the use of gas vents abo...

Colt 608: The AR15 as a Pilot's Survival Rifle (Ad-free)

As part of its effort to build out the AR-15 family of small arms, Colt introduced the Model 608 in 1965. This was intended to be an aircraft survival rifle, able to pack disassembled into a small space with four 20-round magazines for use by the US Air Force. With a 10 inch barrel, fixed tubular stock, and cut down grip it weighed just 4.75 pounds and had a maximum length of just 17.6 inches when disassembled. It was only produced as a prototype, with ten or fewer being made in total.

...

Enjoying Black Powder Episode 3: The Martini-Henry MkIV (Ad-free)

The full version with hand loading information (not permitted on YouTube) is available here: https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/videos/martini-app-cut

Sorry about the wind noise! We did our best to deal with it in post-production.

Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, and they are actually pret...

History of SAW Use in the US Army (Ad-free)

The first squad automatic weapon used by the US Army was the French Mle 1915 Chauchat, which was the primary LMG or automatic rifle for troops in the American Expeditionary Force in World War One. At that time, the Chauchat was a company-level weapon assigned where the company commander thought best. In World War Two, the Chauchat had been replaced by the BAR, and one BAR gunner was in each 12-man rifle platoon. The BAR was treated like a heavy rifle though, and not like a support weapon as l...

MAGAL: A Galil in .30 Carbine for the Israeli Police (Ad-free)

In the early 1990s, Israeli Military Industries (IMI) developed the Galil MAR (Micro Assault Rifle) and the MAGAL at the same time. Both were intended to be very compact rifles, with the MAR in 5.56mm and the MAGAL specifically for police in .30 Carbine. The MAGAL offered the same handling and ergonomics as the regular Galil family, but with a reduced-power cartridge and only semiautomatic operation for better police suitability.

Mechanically, the MAGAL uses a totally standard Galil re...

OTs-14 Groza: Russia's Over-Hyped 9x39mm Spetznaz Bullpup (Ad-free)

The 9x39mm cartridge was introduced in the final days of the Soviet Union as a subsonic round intended specifically for suppressed weapons. The first weapons developed for it were the AS Val and VSS Vintorez. These were followed in the early 1990s by the OTs-14 "Groza", developed by Valery Tells and Yuri Lebedev at Tula. The concept was for a modular multi-purpose rifle which could be assembled on a mission-by-mission basis by special forces or police troops as required. The complete load out...

FN M249S SAW at the Range (Ad-free)

We previously looked at the mechanics of FN's semiauto version of the US SAW, the M249S. Today we are taking it out to the range for some shooting...

Nova Modul CTS9: a 9mm AK Upgraded for Competition (Ad-free)

The CTS9 (Competition Tactical Shooting) is a 9x19mm AK variant made by Nova Modul in Romania. Specifically, in Cugir Romania - the same town that houses the massive small arms factory complex that made millions of small arms during the communist era. Nova Modul, despite being in the same city, is a much more recent privately-owned company that began as a machine shop specializing in making complex gears (such as those used for vehicle transmissions). They got into the small arms field initia...

Colt Service Model Ace: Carbine Williams Makes a .22 1911 (Ad-free)

"Carbine Williams", aka David Marshall Williams, has a reputation as the designer of the M1 Carbine, and a very colorful history. He was a moonshiner who pled guilty to second degree murder of a sheriff's deputy and served time in prison. He gained a reputation as a gunsmith in prison, fixing the department's guns in the prison shop, and was eventually allowed to work on his own firearms designs. Eventually released, he patented a design for a gas tappet system. The system was used for the M1...

Icelandic Swords: Blades of the Viking Frontier (Ad-free)

(Sorry for the messed-up framing at the beginning of the video!)

While I was in Iceland, I had an opportunity to visit the National Museum of Iceland and take a look at a couple of settlement-era swords found on the island. Since these are really outside my area of expertise, two experts generously offered to join me on the video to help explain the history and context of these swords. First we have Ármann Guðmundsson, an archaeologist with the Museum who can speak to the weapons of t...

Custom DeLisle: A .45ACP Mini-Mauser in Classic Sporting Lines (Ad-free)

Today we are checking out a bespoke gunsmith's project; a DeLisle-inspired .45ACP Mauser built by Lars Rannstad Slang of Oslo. Using a commercial small-ring Mauser action, he fabricated a new bolt head, trigger guard, follower, and large aluminum mono-core suppressor to built a rifle that functions like a classic SOE DeLisle silenced carbine but with the aesthetics of a classy 1920s sporting rifle. It feeds from 5-round stripper clips, with an internal magazine instead of the original detacha...

Cugir Model 92 "Dragana" Mauser: Hunting Rifles From MG34s (Ad-Free)

With the fall of communism in Romania, the Cugir Arsenal complex lost its government financial support. Looking for commercial products to sell to keeps its workers employed, the factory turned to producing hunting rifles for the domestic Romanian market. This was possible because the factory had a stock of spare parts for maintaining the older weapons of the Romanian Patriotic Guards (equivalent to a territorial home guard). These included vz.24 Mausers and MG34 machine guns. The Model 92 wa...

FN M249S Semiauto for Military Collectors (Ad-free)

In 2015, FN USA introduced a Military Collector product line - semiautomatic versions of their military contract small arms. These were the M4, M16, and - most interestingly - the M249 SAW. The SAW is a version of FN's Minimi light machine gun, developed in 1974 and adopted by the US in 1982. The semiauto version, designated M249S, is exactly the same as the military M249 but adapted to fire from a closed bolt in semiautomatic only, making it a non-NFA item like any other semiautomatic rifle...

Wieger 942: East Germany Makes a 5.56mm AK (Ad-free)

East Germany purchased a license for production of the AK-74 in 1981, but that license was for domestic use only. There was an apparent market for export production AKs in the western 5.56mm cartridge, and so the East Germans developed their own new rifle to fill that demand and bring in some much-desired hard currency. That new project would be designated the 940 series of rifles, with fixed-stock 941, folding stock 942 (the subject of this video), compact carbine 943, squad automatic 944, a...

History of the Krummlauf Device: Hitler's Folly (One of Many) (Ad-free)

Today we are taking a look at the backstory of the famously recognizable Krummlauf device, the curved barrel attachment for the StG-44. It is really a perfect example of how German late-war desperation weapons took shape. It went from an idea nobody actually wanted to an impossible development program in the chaos of the German defeat.

You can see my previous video on an example of the Krummlauf (from 2014) here: https://...

Tour of Sport Systems Dittrich: Reproduction WWII German Rifles (Ad-free)

I recently had a chance to visit Sport Systeme Dittrich, a firm in Germany that manufactures high quality reproductions of German World War Two small arms. They were the manufacturers of the PTR-44 Sturmgewehr copies about 10 years ago, and they are now working with a US partner (DK Production Group) to import their guns into the US. The first one to be ready here was the BD-38 (copy of the MP38), and the StG-44 will be the next one coming...

Pump-Action AK: Romanian PAR-3 (How Not to be an "Assault Weapon") (Ad-free)

Between 1994 and 2004, there was a national "assault weapon" ban in place int he United States, along with some related importation restrictions on military-looking rifles. Most semiauto rifle importation continued by adjusting various cosmetic features to not fall under the provisions of the various rules, but at one point someone realized that hey, the law only covered semiautomatic rifles. So if the gas system were replaced by a manual pump action, a rifle would no longer be prohibited reg...

Romanian Model 1879 Martini-Henry Rifles & Carbines (Ad-Free)

Following its experience in the Russo-Turkish War, the Romanian Army was quite impressed by the Martini-Henry rifle in Turkish service. Unlike so many Western observers who were taken by the Winchester repeating rifles that actually didn't make much battlefield impact, the Romanians recognized the all-around quality of the Martini. So after the war when looking to equip their own newly independent army, they went to Britain for Martinis. They were not able to get rifles made in Britain, but d...

Landstad 1900: A True Semiautomatic Revolver (Ad-free)

The Landstad Model 1900 is a magazine-fed, semiautomatic revolver designed by Norwegian Halvard Folkestad Landstad, who lived in Kristiana (now called Oslo). He designed the gun on his own dime, and presented it to military trials in 1901, which it failed miserably. The gun has a six-round detachable box magazine of 7.5mm Nagant cartridges, a two-chamber cylinder, and a simple blowback action. Its firing cycle is to chamber a round from the magazine into the bottom cylinder chamber by manuall...

Belton Repeating Flintlock: A Semiautomatic Rifle in 1785 (Ad-free)

In 1785, Joseph Belton (an American inventor) and William Jover (an English gunmaker) sold 560 repeating flintlock rifles to the British East India Company. The guns were a very remarkable design which used a detachable magazine tube of 7 rounds stacked in series with a seven sequential touch holes. When the first round was fired, the flintlock ignited a piece of "portfire" slow match that would burn for about one minute. Pulling the trigger would move the portfire rearward one touch hole at ...

Universal AK Optics Rail from KGM Consortium (Ad-free)

At the IWA trade show earlier this year, a representative from the Polish KGM Consortium gave me a sample of a new AK optics rail to try out. This idea here was to create a universal optics mount for basically any AK/AKM/AK74 rifle that would be light, not require permanent modification, and not interfere with other military accessories like under barrel grenade launchers. The target market was Ukraine; to provide a way to quickly and easily improve the combat effectiveness of legacy Kalashni...

Enjoying Black Powder Episode 2: The Modele 1874 Gras (Ad-free)

The full version with hand loading information (not permitted on YouTube) is available here: https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/videos/black-powder-episode-2-gras-app-cut

Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, and they are actually pretty easy to reload for. The unavailability of fac...

Handguns in the US Army in World War Two (Ad-free)

Was the 1911 an emotional support totem or a viable combat weapon? Or both? American soldiers had a bit different take on handguns than soldiers of many other armies, and I think it stems from the American identity with the frontier - the Wild West was well within memory for many people when World War Two broke out. So today, let's look at the American take on handguns during that war...

CZ Bren 2 MS: The Civilian Version of a Modern Combat Rifle (Ad-free)

CZ's Bren 2 is one of the more successful recently developed military service rifles, having been adopted by the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as entering licensed production in Ukraine. The semiauto Bren 2 MS is a fine rifle on its own merits, but also offers an opportunity to build a near-perfect clone of a current service rifle. This used to be possible with imported rifles before 1989, and is seeing a bit of a revival these days with companies having domestic American manufacturing ...

PAM-2: Argentina's Improved 9mm Grease Gun (Ad-free)

The Argentine factory FMAP-DGFM was first set up to produce a copy of the Colt 1911, and in 1954 they began production of the PAM-1 (after demonstration of the first prototype in 1950). The PAM-1 was a copy of the American M3A1 "Grease Gun" chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum. Production ran until 1961, at which point the factory switched to production of the new FAL rifle for Argentine forces. By that time, about 33,000 had been produced.

Almost as soon as production ceased a process of co...

LMT Ion-LT Suppressor: Multipurpose, Light, & Low Back-Pressure (Ad-free)

LMT's new line of suppressors is designed for multi-purpose use in mind. The .30 caliber Ion 30 and Ion LT are rated for anything from .17 HMR to .300 Winchester Magnum, including automatic use. Both .30 and .22 caliber endocarps are available, and the mounting system is the standard Hub type. The company has muzzle devices of their own for both 5.56mm and 7.62mm standard rifles, making it an easy proposition to move an Ion around between several different guns. The construction is seam weldi...

The GI's Darling: M1911A1 at the BUG Match (Ad-free)

What more classic backup gun is there than the M1911A1, beloved by GIs as a backup to their M1 Carbines, M1 Garands, BARs, and tanks? Today I'm running an April 1945 production original military M1911A1 at the match. Note that this gun puts me in the "Big 5" division, so I have to start each stage with only 5 rounds in the magazine.

The 1911 is not a beginner's pistol, but it can certainly deliver if you can run it!

Fort 221: The Ukrainian Tavor TAR (Ad-free)

In 2008, Ukrainian manufacturing conglomerate RPC Fort received a license from IMI to produce a variety of Israeli small arms, including the Tavor TAR and Tavor X95. In Fort's catalog, these were designated the Fort-221 (TAR) and Fort-224 (X95). A small number were allegedly produced for special forces, the Presidential Guard, and the Ukrainian National Guard - all elements run by the Ministry of the Interior (which also owns RPC Fort). In 2021, all of the IMI licensed products were removed f...

Makarov PB: Silenced KGB "Wet Work" Pistol (Ad-free)

In 1967, the Tula arsenal introduced a specialized silenced version of the Makarov for covert use. This was a very effective pistol, and its design was also very heavily changed from that of the regular pistol. With a two-part silencer surrounding the barrel, the recoil spring had to be moved to a location inside the grip panels. It was still chambered for 9x18mm Makarov though, and used standard Makarov magazines. Not much official information has been published on the PB - it may actually s...

Sten Mk5: The Cadillac of the Sten Family (Ad-free)

The Sten Mk5 (sometimes written Sten MkV) was really the Cadillac of the Sten series. It was designed in 1943, and featured a full wooden buttstock patterned after the No4 Enfield rifle, as well as a front sight abductor bayonet lugs for the Enfield. It has a wooden pistol grip as well (and early production examples also had a wooden vertical front grip). It was mechanically the same as the earlier Stens, simply with the fire control group moved forward to fit the pistol grip. The Mk5 was not...