Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons" channel.

  1. +Helghastdude Beretta 34, M91, MAB38, Breda PG, Breda 37, Breda 38, Breda SAFAT, Breda 20/65... No really successful semiauto rifle had been designed until the end of the 30s. IE, until the end of the 20s John Garand wasted ten years playing with a quirky primer acutated blowback design, then switched to gas actuated, the rifle was adopted, after seven years of ironing out problems, in 1937, but the M1 became really reliable only with a last modification done three years after its introduction, in early 1940. Probably this rifle is closer to be a good service rifle than a M1 prototype of the same year.
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  2. +besternamedensgibtxd When the round is fired, in the barrel, between the bullet and the bottom of the case, that lay on the bolt, it develops a very high pressure, that locks the walls of the case against the chamber, so preventing the hot gasses to be driven back to the face of the shooter. If the bolt begin to travel backwards too early, when the pressure in the barrel is still high, then the thin metal of the case is stretched between the chamber (since the walls of the case are still locked to it by the pressure) and the bolt that is travelling backwards. That way the case can break, and the hot gasses and brass splinters can hit the shooter's face, with unpleasant consequencies.
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  3. The water cooled HMGs of the time had the advantage of weight. Like in contemporary factory tools, the mechanic was so overbuilt in respect to the work they had to do that there were really few things that could go wrong. They worked until there were bullets and water. The Hotchkiss' mechanic was as reliable, but it was air cooled, so it could overheat. But it was not all peaches and dandelions for water cooled MGs. The weight prevented them to be used as offensive weapons, and the exposed water jacket was a liability. A bullet, or a splinter, on it, and the MG became useless, because the barrel was too thin to resist to more than few dozen of rounds without water.
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  4. At the end of WWI the studies of the Italian Army concluded that the bolt action rifle was obsolete and almost useless. The submachinaguns demonstrated to be much more useful in trench warfare, so the suggestion was to replace the bolt action rifles with "moschetti automatici" ("automatic carabines") as soon as possible. They first started to design a real assault rifle (Terni mod 21, 7.65X40mm intermediate cartridge, select fire, 25 round magazine), but the commission that tested it, probably mainly composed by traditionalists, found it unsaticfactory ("this weapon has all the inconvenient of the automatic weapons without having their advantages"). At that point they thought the semiauto rifle to be a good compromise between the bolt action and the automatic, so made the first concourse for a semiauto rifle, in the early '30 (Beretta M.31, MBT 29 and Scotti Mod. X). The Scotti Mod X won that, but, first that it could be officially adopted, the army decided to switch cartridge, from the 6.5X52 to the 7.35X51. Then they decided to have another concourse (Scotti Mod X, Beretta M37, Breda 1935 PG and Armaguerra 39) this time won by the Armaguerra. At that point the war had already started, and it was too late to adopt a new main battle rifle (even the Soviets had to stop to produce the optmal SVT 40 and revert to the Moisin). "Better is the enemy of good."
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  5.  @stealthnoid  Put it how you want and invent any story about the M16 you want if that makes you feel more comfortable, but not pretend to sell it to others.
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  6.  @stealthnoid  It's not in opposition. It's only an elegant way to switch argument. Because if the argument was that battle rifles were outdated it would have been "battle rifles were outdated", not "Italian military individual weapons has been outdated until '90." if someone wants to say that gasoline cars are obsolete, doesn't say "Jason Smith's car is obsolete". And no. GIs were not amazed at all. The M16 had an atrocious reliability in Vietnam, due to the poor choice of the ammo's propellant. Still in the '80s the general opinion was that the M16 was a lemon. As already said: "the early studies on intermediate cartridges (IE for the Terni 1921) came from the experiences of thrench warfare and the need of automatic fire to clear trenches. When the Germans adopted the STG44 they already passed from fighting in the steppe to the forests of eastern Europe. The US switch to the M16 was due to the forests of Vietnam. In Afghanistan the GIs often found themself outranged with the M4, and had to dust off some M14. As a result of the perceived shortcomings of the 5.56 NATO, THE US ARMY HAD JUST ADOPTED ANOTHER BATTLE RIFLE IN A CARTRIDGE THAT'S MORE POWERFUL THAN THE 7.62 NATO, THE SIG SPEAR. To me it's a mistake. The Spear has almost all the damning defects of the M14, and some more, but that demonstrates that the question had not been settled yet." Can you get it?
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  7.  @stealthnoid  Sorry, but you switched your argument. "Italian military individual weapons has been outdated until '90." is not "NATO military individual weapons has been outdated until '90". BTW the early studies on intermediate cartridges (IE for the Terni 1921) came from the experiences of thrench warfare and the need of automatic fire to clear trenches. When the Germans adopted the STG44 they already passed from fighting in the steppe to the forests of eastern Europe. The US switch to the M16 was due to the forests of Vietnam. In Afghanistan the GIs often found themself outranged with the M4, and had to dust off some M14. As a result of the perceived shortcomings of the 5.56 NATO, the US Army had just adopted another battle rifle, the SIG Spear. To me it's a mistake. The Spear has almost all the damning defects of the M14, and some more, but that demonstrates that the question had not been settled yet.
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  8.  @stealthnoid  the 7.62X51 was what the NATO selected and used. The competitors to the BM59 were the M14, FAL, G3 and AR10, all in 7.62X51 period. It doesnt' have any sense to say that the BM59 was outdated in respect to something that couldn't exist in the west. The 5.56X45 was standardized as NATO cartridge ONLY IN 1980.
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  9.  @Cyan_Nightingale  To economically make BM59 you have first to have M1 Garand receivers to convert. Otherwise to machine a new receiver is out of this world compared to a G3 or a FAL. Beretta could make BM59 for the Italian Army because it received one of the two production lines for the M1 Garand (that of Winchester) and a ton of spare parts already produced (that's why many Beretta made BM59 have the original Winchester and Springfield markings). But in itself the BM59 is a great battle rifle. Easily the most controllable of the four in full auto. Easily the one with the best magazine (and it was straight in, not rock and lock) and the most complete out of the box (select fire, bipod, grenade launcher, winter trigger, muzzle brake). The problem was that it was a battle rifle, not an assoult rifle, but that was in common with the G3, FAL, M14...
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  10. What's the use of a safety if your hammer is down on an empty chamber? It's not like a round can magically appear there.
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  11. Consider that the collaboration ended because Beretta wanted to use a AK-like gas action (this one) and SIG a rolled-delayed blowback action (and ended up with the unsuccessful SG530, gas operated roller locked). Only later SIG ended with an action practically identical to the Beretta one in the SG540.
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  12. It won WWI It's more "How to know you’re on the losing side of a war: you’re issued a Mauser"
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  13.  @johnstacy7902  Easily done, since 6.5 Carcano and 7.62X39 cartridges have practically the same dimensions of the base. Back when the 7.62X39 were hard to obtain in the west and there were plenty of surplus Carcano ammos, 7.62X39 cartridges were made by necking down and reforming Carcano brass.
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  14. They got carried by their own dreams. For one and half million rifles, ammo availability would have been a problem. For 15.000, 50.000 or even 200.000 rifles, there were plenty of ammos already available. Better issuing a repeater with 400 rounds and call it a day (hardly a Volkssturm militian would have survived enough to fire all of them anyway) than issuing a single shooter even with 10.000 rounds.
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  15.  @justforever96  As already said, loading belts "was a backline activity". If you believe Germans loaded their MG belts in first line, you should check your brain (or, better, having it checked by someone with a functioning one) before talking of the intelligence of others. As for logistic, as already said: "the Volkssturm was armed with a pletora of different weapons, that had different spare parts and would have required different training that none could give to the militians." The idiocies you are "sure of" are your business only. Simply the Germans had grandiose (that was quite usual for them late in the war) plans to distribute HUGE quantities of rifles to the militia. For that quantity, convertion was convenient, and so they started to convert. But that quantity was also completely unrealistic given the conditions of their industry. "For one and half million rifles, ammo availability would have been a problem. For 15.000, 50.000 or even 200.000 rifles, there were plenty of ammos already available. Better issuing a repeater with 400 rounds and call it a day (hardly a Volkssturm militian would have survived enough to fire all of them anyway) than issuing a single shooter even with 10.000 rounds." "you don't also want to be digging out warehouses of captured enemy ammo and distributing it to units all over a chaotic front with the limited transport you have left." So, you already dug into those very same warehouses FOR THE RIFLES, and ignored the crates of million rounds sitting there already packed and ready to be transported. Then, "with the limited transport you have left" you carried the rifles to arsenals to be converted to single shooters, so consuming THE LIMITED INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY YOU HAVE LEFT, to make a single shooter out of a repeater. Then "with the limited transport you have left" you carry those single shooters to "a chaotic first line" WITHOUT SPARE PARTS OR TRAINING FOR THE GUNSMITHS, believing they could be good for something, instead of taking the rifles, the ammos for them, and simply delivering the rifle along with the ammos. Now, let's see what the Volksturm really had. On 15 January 1945, for example, the Volkssturm in Gau Bayreuth had a total of 1,148 rifles Model 1888 ( needed obsolete 8mm "88 patrone" cartridges), 1,265 rifles Model 1898 (from World War One), 543 Karabiner 98k, 5 Gewehr 43 (semi-automatic rifles), 17,562 Italian Carcano rifles, 1,974 French captured rifles, 64 Russian rifles (Mosin-Nagant), 1 Romanian rifle, 34 Dutch rifles, 129 Belgian rifles, 134 Czech rifles, 13 Polish rifles, 2 British rifles, 34 Austrian rifles, 173 9mm pistols, 2,038 7.65mm pistols, 982 6.35mm pistols, 1 Italian pistol, 19 French pistols, 25 Belgian pistols, 3 MPi 40, 2 MG 13, 4 MG 34, 2 Polish machine-guns, 2 Czech machine-guns, 1 French machine-gun, 1 Austrian machine-gun, 2 Czech heavy machine-guns, 1 mortar 5cm, 1 mortar 8cm, 1 French gun, 4,436 pieces Panzerfaust, 690 grenades Eierhandgranaten, 720 grenades Stielhandgranaten. So, surprise surprise, not talking of all the OTHER calibers. Only the Volksturm of a single German region of 2.2 million people had more Carcano rifles than the entire production of converted rifles of Krieghoff and FNA Brescia. So, surprise surprise, the Germans dug into those warehouses in search of ammos after all. So, surpsise surprise, to add a logistic supply line of converted 7.92 Mauser single shooter Carcano rifles to the already existing and vastly preponderant supply line of 6.5 repeater Carcano rifles, only complicated the German logistic. Who would have told?
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  16. More Mosins and PPSh
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  17. The FAMAS g2 is one of the few designs that really can be made, since it's modern enough (so with modern tolerances and reliability) that the manufacturer has not to completely redesign it to make it work. It only has to make the parts with the right dimensions.
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  18. 0:55:00 seriously. There are no more big arms manufacturers in France and Britain, but there are in Germany, Austria, Italy and Czech Republic, with Austrian and Czech gun laws being particularly strict. It seems to be a simple question of competition more than gun laws. UE is a single market. The manufacturers that were located in Britain and France simply lost to the others. 1:07:42 this often repeated story of the different attitude of European officers in respect to "US and British ones" surely has no roots in the cartridges adopted. The .455 Webley was nothing exceptional for European standards (it was a little less powerful than the 10.35mm Italian Ordnance adopted 13 years before for that very same Chamelot Delvigne revolver, not to say of the .44 Russian) . The .45 Colt was very powerful for any contemporary standard, but it replaced a rather unimpressive cardridge (the .44 American) and was replaced by a very weak one (the .38 Long Colt)
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  19. A nice addition Beretta made to avoid the Garand thumb.
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  20. The BM59 is a lot more similar. Actually BM stands for "Beretta Modifica" (Beretta modification, of the original M1). It reused M1's receiver, trigger group, stock and rear sight, only sligtly modifying them. So much it was a modification that several BM59 issued to the Italian troops had been done using original US made M1 receivers, and still had the original Springfield or Winchester markings on them. http://www.collezionareexordinanza.it/uploads/source/IMG_6484_1.jpg
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  21. Mind that the BM59 was not the only option. The alternative was the Franchi LF59 (you can google it, it's actually a very nice looking battle rifle), that used a STG44-esque action (long stroke, tilting bolt, gas action), coupled with a very clean telescopic "MP40 style" recoil spring placed behind the gas piston, like in a AK (so that it could have a collapsible stock). The LF59 was prefectly serviceable, but the BM59 won because its price couldn't be beaten.
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  22. As said, for the spanish law of the time, for a patent to be valid in Spain, the thing had to be manufactured in Spain, so Spanish manufacturers freely made clones of a lot of popular foreign designs.
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  23. There is no point in using asbestos in a buffer pad. It's frail.
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  24. Yes, it's a Madsen LMG.
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  25. That's the patent. https://patents.google.com/patent/US461968A/en Being the lever quite sturdy, it's only the strenght of the frame that limits the power of the cartridge (Notice that the frame wraps around the pivoting point of the lever, so that it's not the hub to be stressed). In theory you can made a Tribuzio in .45 ACP capable to accept 1911 magazines. And it will still be quite compact (the bore axis is so low that the recoil will be even pleasant).
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  26.  @bryangrote8781  Ian forgot one issue with shotgun shells. Due to the rapid decrease in pressure in the barrel, and so decrease in temperature, shotgun shells are ineherently dirtier than smallbore bottleneck ammo. That’s why recoil actions had remained relevant for so long in shotguns (and still are) while they had become little more than a curiosity in rifles, and that’s why gas action shotguns have complex self-cleaning pistons, often with multiple ribs, while rifles have much simpler ones. The disassembly of the Auto-5 is really not the simplest, but other long recoil action shotguns simplified it a lot.
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  27. This weapon was not a "last ditch" in the sense of putting the more gun that's possible in the hands of the more peoples that's possible (like the German or japanese ones), It was a "last ditch" intended to be issued to experienced soldiers, only easier to manufacture than a MAB38. The front safety solved a real issue of early SMGs, and had never been a problem in combat situations. The fact that a design is unusual does not mean that's failed.
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  28. Infact. And you change magazine with the right hand while holding the magwell with the left hand, that way you can reload even without looking It was pretty convenient.
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  29. It's not cause the Italians had friendly-fire incidents that much of the SMGs designed after the war uses some kind of automatic bolt locking safety. It's that the experience of WWII taught that the main sources of incidents with those weapons was a hit in the back, that makes the bolt retreat enough to catch a round, and not enough to catch the sear, so cycling and accidentally discharging it. That's only a very simple (it's a last ditch weapon after all) way to solve that problem that, by 1945, was well known.
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  30. You really should do some research. The SMG that jammed first was the Thompson of Walter Audisio (those unreliable American weapons...), then he grabbed the Beretta 34 (that's a pistol, not an SMG) of Aldo Lampredi, that jammed too. Mussolini was finally killed with the MAS38 of Michele Moretti.
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  31. All the known pictures when the particular can be seen, all the surviving samples, and even some rusted sample found with a metal detector, show the safety still in place.
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  32. To reload 9mm para to 9mm Glisenti specs is how those rounds are usually made, but the right reloading specs have to be used (do not use the "4 grains bullseye" that's often repeated in the English speaking world. that's a specific load for the "Villar Perosa" SMG. The original load is more 3.3 grains bullseye). Commercial subsonic 9mm Para are not right, since they usually are subsonic tanks to a heavier bullet.
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  33. It depends on the design, but to cycle the action usually requires only a fraction of the recoil of the cartridge. Subsonic 9mm Luger loads that develops energies comparable to the 9mm Glisenti usually cycle the 9mm Luger pistols without problems.
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  34.  @mustafankamil1973  I don't doubt of your personal experience, but personal experiences have very low statistical significance. The tests on the P7A13 had been "Terminated by the Army on September 18, 1984, for falling reliability and corrosion resistance requirements". In the 1984 trials the P7A13 had a failure every 158 rounds fired, the worst of any entrants (comparison Colt 1911 included, the second worst with a failure every 162 rounds) and a resistance to salt water corrosion of 86%, again the worst of any entrants. See NSIAD-86-122.
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  35. Actually the P7A13 didn't reach the cost comparison phase of the trial. It was eliminated because it fared atrociously in the reliability tests.
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  36. Those guns were manufactured in Germany, and, in those years, the German Mark more than doubled its value compared to the US Dollar. However the price point didn't matter at all in the P7 not having been selected in the XM9 program. The P7A13 didn't even reach the cost comparison phase of the trial. It was eliminated because it fared atrociously in the reliability tests.
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  37. The price point didn't matter at all in the P7 not having been selected in the XM9 program. The P7A13 didn't even reach the cost comparison phase of the trial. It was eliminated because it fared atrociously in the reliability tests.
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  38. Bicycle troops were common in those years. They obviously didn't replace cavalry, but mounted infantry. A man on a bicycle can travel longer distances in shorter time than one on a horse actually.
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  39. Bicycle troops were common in those years. They obviously didn't replace cavalry, but mounted infantry. A man on a bicycle can travel longer distances in shorter time than one on a horse actually. Good luck in finding a BAR or a SMG in 1891.
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  40. A lightweight rifle with a lightweight ammo and a faster way to load the magazine with one more ammo than other designs (the Enfield had ten rounds, but you had to load it with two stripper clips) made the best bolt action rifle of WWII.
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  41.  @ragnarragnarsson3128  91/38 had standard rifling too.
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  42. First, they didn't change calibers in the middle of a war. When the war started in Europe (not in for Italy, that entered in it only in June 1940), they gave up with the change in caliber and started to make the same rifle in the old caliber. Is impossible to feed 7.35 ammos in 6.5 rifles. The opposite is possible, but at least is not dangerous.
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  43. Because to say it was inaccurate justifies the conspiracy theory. The Army expert that tested it, testified it was as accurate as a brand new M14. That's nothing to write home about for a bolt action, but more than enough to hit a man-sized target at a maximum distance of 80m.
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  44. Actually is YES. Almost all the bolt actions designed after WWII have a one-piece bolt very similar to the Carcano one, while two-piece Mauser and Enfield style fell out of use.
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  45. The 7.62 NATO had been designed after WWII exactly because modern powders allowed to replicate the performances of the 30-06 Springfield in a MUCH SMALLER case. The 7.35 Carcano had to use a 1891 case with a 1891 designed action made for 1891 pressures.
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  46. The Carcano is loaded with en-block clips. You slam the six rounds in the rifle WITH the clip. The Lee Enfield is loaded with stripper clips. You insert the cartridges in the rifle FROM the clip, but not WITH it. That requires more time.
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  47. The "accuracy" thing is just a mith (Carcano, iron sights at 1500m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA5xmQGZHc4 ) . Reload is faster with en-block clips than with stripper clips, and already in 1905, examining the battelfields of the Russo-Japanese war, Władimir Fiodorow (the future designer of the Fiodorov Avtomat) noticed that, in mud and snow, Manlicher actions tended to be more reliable than Mauser actions (the passing of the clips and the bottom hole kept the action cleaner).
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  48. That one was in 6.5. For the rest it was the same rifle.
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  49. Infantry rifles had not influenced the outcome of any WWII battle. For how much they mattered, soldiers could have been equipped with nerf guns.
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  50. The 6.5 never had accuracy problem. they wanted a bullet with a flatter trajectory in the first 300m (the 7.35 was lighter) and with a better terminal ballistic (the 7.35 had an aluminium tip to shift the center of gravity backward so to ensure it tumbling into the body).
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