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

  1. At that time you can't buy rifles in 5.56 NATO / 223 Rem in Italy, so those couldn't be sold to civilians anyway. The ban had been lifted only recently.
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  2. The downsides were that it was anyway a stopgap. IE, for how much reliable and simple it could be, the entire receiver recoiling was uncomfortable for the shooter (you have the cheek and the thumb near to the recoiling mass) and the barrel was not apt for semiauto shooting (the higher rate of fire of a semiauto requires a shorter and thicker barrel to avoid overheat witout gaining too much weight). In the end, the saving was not enough to justify the adoption of a stopgap weapon.
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  3. I think only as a status symbol. With the same effort, they could have made a pair of perfectly functional shotguns (they were normally made in small ironworks, using brazing and low technology tools), that, are surely better than a single, barely usable, handgun, both for military than for other purposes.
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  4. +Metal.Pigeon The Breda 30 wasn't either. All the fuss over the "worst light machine gun ever made" are actually post-war guessings repeated over and over. During the war the reports on it's functioning were not that bad.
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  5. Actually, when this MG had been adopted (1930) the only design around that was really demonstrably better was the ZB vz. 26. The Lewis gun was really good for WWI, but it was not by chance that all of its previous users, bar one, phased them out of first line use first than the beginning of WWII, and the reputation of the Madsen was less than stellar. The Breda instead was not really good, but not even that bad.
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  6. Thanks to you for the kind reply :) The BAR was not really an LMG. It wasn't apt for firing in prone position, it wasn't apt for sustained fire (there was a reason if the Italians carried two spare barrels for the Breda 30, and then enhanced them to 4 spare barrels. How much the thin and fixed barrel of the BAR would have lasted in the same conditions?), it was difficult to field strip and clean, and, if not cleaned properly, it jammed easily. The only really improved version, with a quick detachable barrel and an effective bipod, was adopted by the Swedish only in 1937. It has to be noted that, to use 4 spare barrels, you have to fire at least 800 rounds in quick succession. So much for the gun not ben capable to really provide automatic fire. That said. To not be misunderstood, the Breda 30 had really been, all in all, a less than satisfactory weapon. And the Italians would have done better adopting the ZB vz. 26. (that they tried). But there is a tendency, on the net, when a weapon had some defect, tho extremize them, concluding that "it's the worst gun ever made!", "I would have rather fought nacked than carrying that piece of junk!" and things like that. Reality is that the weapons was actually not that bad, and the contemporaries, those that had to fight them daily, and reuse the captured ones, thought it was not that bad. From Tactical and Technical Trends (the magazine of the US Intelligence) No. 7, Sept. 10, 1942 "Use of Captured Italian Weapons" : "Breda Light Machine Gun". The Breda light machine gun is similar to the British Bren gun. It is mechanically superior to the Bren gun under dusty conditions. It requires only one man to service it as compared to several for the Bren gun. It has a slightly higher rate of fire than the British weapon. Its disadvantages are that it has no carrying handle, cannot be fired on fixed lines, and has no tripod mounting.
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  7. The MR1 is still in production, and can be seen in all of it's configurations (12.5" barrel, flash hider, telescopic stock...) on the Benelli Italian website. Benelli really chose to not push that rifle on the US market, infact, unlike other foreign companies, they did nothing to bypass the 1989 federal ban, and so the US customer can't have all the features (the rifle is even much more visually appealing with the telescopic stock).
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  8. The rifle is available with or whitout pistol grip, with fixed or collapsible stock, with 12.5" or 16" barrel, with or without flash hider, and it accepts STANAG magazines where allowed. Short barrel, flash hider and collapsible stock are not available in the US due to the US laws on import, not cause the rifle had been made for "non AR15 allowed" countries.
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  9. That's how 9mm Glisenti cartridges are currently made, but there are rigid tables to follow for the reload. IE http://www.grurifrasca.net/Sito/Ricarica/pistole/9glisenti.html (the page is in Italian, but the tables are easily comprehensible).
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  10. It has to be said that, in respect to it's disadvantages, the advantage of bullpups desing compactness in tansport is often void if compared to standard designs with collapsible stock (that bullpups can't have). Comparing the FAMAS and the Steyr AUG with another 5.56 NATO European design of the same years (the Beretta SC70/90), we see that the SC70/90, with the stock collapsed, is 756mm long with a 450mm barrel. The FAMAS is 757mm long with 488mm barrel, The AUG is 790mm long with 508mm barrel. So, the lenght advantages of the FAMAS and AUG designs, for the same barel lenght, are of mere 36mm (1.4 inches) and 24mm (1 inch) respectively. Hardly noticeable when the rifle is carried by a soldier in a truck. Obviously armies could have good reasons to prefer fixed stocks over collapsible ones (economy, ruggedness...), but, compared to the drawbacks of the bullpups...
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  11. You are welcome. It would be cool if Ian will manage to test one of those, since they had been really used in combat, altough in limited numbers.
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  12. and the 9X18mm Ultra was nothing more than a 9mm Glisenti (used in blowback Beretta 1915 and 1923) in a 1mm shorter case (to avoid a 9mm Para being chambered by mistake), but before that John Moses Browning designed, for the FN Model 1903, the 9mm Browning long, as the more powerful 9mm round you can use in a blowback gun without having weight disadvantages over a breechlock design (while he designed the .380 acp as the ideal 9mm round for pocket guns and the .38 ACP as the ideal for breechlock designs). All those rounds (9mm Browning Long, 9mm Glisenti, 9mm Ultra, 9mm Makarov) are in the same ballpark energy-wise.
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  13. A US BAR team (B-team) was composed of three persons as well. Only there weren't barrels to swap. You had only to wait for the gun to cool off.
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  14. The standard stock version is available.
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  15. 1) It had been put in service in 1985 with a 1945 mindset, where ease of mass production was all that mattered. See the overuse of simple stamped metal parts, the non existence of ambidextrous features... 2) it had been adopted without a real competition. There were not alternatives, so no better design to compare it with.
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  16. Simply, the weapon was designed to be used as a defensive weapon, with the shield, and in that role it was better like it was. When the weapon started to be used in an offensive role, there was nothing better around to compare it, so it was perfectly fine as it was. It's significant that even the Austrians copied the weapon as it was ( "Frommer-Stop M1917" and "Sturmpistole M-18").
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  17. FAMAS any day. Ergonomically it's on another planet even in respect to the A2, and, at least with the rounds it was designed for, it's reliable.
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  18. Anyone that wishes to be "freed" by Putin, deserves it plenty.
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  19. Cause the goal was to not have a detachable box magazine.
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  20. Christopher Penta Since the action was originally designed for an heavy MG / automatic cannon (the Scotti 20/77, patented in 1928), and was used in an aerial MG too (12.7mm Scotti) there are no dubt that the action is apt to this. To made a Scotti LMG of the Mod.X only needs a detachable magazine, a bipod and a quick exchange barrel. Is a modification that can probably be made even on already made rifles. Over the Breda 30 it would have had at least the advantage of minor production costs and less weight. Hovever the Breda 30 was surely an unsatisfactory design, but not so abysmal.
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  21. It had never intended to be an aircraft weapon really. It only happened that the first 350 samples had been given to the Air Force (that, at that time, was a branch of the Army) cause the Army wanted the weapon ready to be mass produced first to start to field it. It's use increased continuously throughout the war. At the end of the conflict a total of 14.564 MGs had been produced, and 836 millions of 9mm Glisenti round for them. 28.000 rounds for barrel. The Austrians were impressed enough to copy the weapon ( "Frommer-Stop M1917" and "Sturmpistole M-18").
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  22. If a service rifle would require to right-hand soldiers to shoot from the left shoulder, we'll simply call it crap regardless of all the other considerations. The fact that the L85 requires 10% of the soldiers to use it from the wrong shoulder makes it 1/10 crap.
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  23. Peter Pang The supposed fact that lefties in HM armed forces didn't complain about an AR that requires them to shoot from the right shoulder doesn't make this less of a defect. It's the problem to have to work around the tool instead of having the tool to work for you. Really the fact that British soldiers are not used to complain about their equipment probably covered many of the defects of this weapon until it was too late.
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  24. Every round can be fired by a simple blowback system. Even 20mm AA cartridges are fired that way. Is only a question of weight of the bolt. Somewere between the .380 and the 9mm Luger, the required increase in the weight of the bolt/slide "outweight" the gain in reducing the moving parts, and blowback handguns tend to be heavier than short recoil / delayed blowback ones. The 9mm Glisenti, 9X18 mm Ultra and 9mm Makarov are often considered the limit over which is no more convenient to use simple blowback systems.
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  25. The exposed hammer was both a signal of the cocking situation of the weapon and a decocking device.
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  26. Is on the italian website, where there are the 12" barrel, flash hider, telescopic stock versions too. Pretty neat.
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  27. A BAR is a 20 round weapon, and it's team (B-team) was composed of a gunner, an assistant gunner and an ammunition bearer, that means a 3 men crew. With the difference that a BAR has not a quick exchange barrel. 150 rounds and the 3 men crew was no more a MG crew until the mg cooled down. To use the four spare barrels the Italians deemed necessary for the Breda 30 after having used it in combat, you have to fire at least 800 rounds in quick succession.
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  28. "but we also had the browning m1919." And the Italians also had the M37 and M38, so? "In wartime units are under strength more often than not. It was probably more likely used by an individual with one other person humping ammo." And that's true only for the US Army? The Italians had never been under strenght? What you think "would be an unnecessary use of manpower" is immaterial. The story is that the Breda 30 was meant to be used by a 3 men team EXACTLY AS the BAR was meant to be used by a 3 men team. Occasionally they were BOTH used by reduced crews. The difference was that, after 150 rounds of continous fire, the 3 men crew of the BAR had to gaze their navels until the gun cooled off.
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  29. It has to be noted that the BM59 was made using that same Winchester tooling (Beretta inherited them after the war) that made those M1s and their modifications. However, the designer of the BM59, Domenico Salza, "made it right", solving all the problems of the conversion, even the controllability of the burst, in few months.
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  30. Mind that this gun is at least effectively field strippable, in any part that needed cleaning, without using tools. A thing that wasn't guaranteed at that time.
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  31. The SR2 bomb was filled with 32gr of TNT, into an iron case, and with an iron spiral around it to ensure fragmentation. The explosive filling was inferior to the later (from 1944) US MKII hand grenades, but superior to the earlier ones, so I wouldn't deem them as "ineffective". The bomb was designed to contain it's effects in a 50m range, and so the shooter was instructed to not shoot at closer distances (see "Istruzione provvisoria sull'uso della bomba S.R.2 con governale").
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  32. There is a version with the standard stock.
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  33. In 1917 was developed the "Pavesi Device", that allowed the weapon to fire selectively at 1500, 500 or 300 rpm (750, 250 or 150rpm per barrel), however it was a pneumatic device applied to the receiver (it took the place of the trigger lever), the spring remained the same.
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  34. "The 1923 has a very vertical grip angle; the 1934 has a more angled/swept back one." Looking to the pictures, they appear to have the same angle. At least for the front side of the grip. The one of the 1934 seems to be more angled cause the rear side is. Infact, in the 1934 model, is not parallel to the front one any more.
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  35.  @robosoldier11  I would rather see those ideas used in new firearms. Like a Scotti action GPMG, or a Breda action AR. We've already seen good ideas given justice after decades of oblivion. The Steyr rotating barrel in the Beretta Series 8000 and PX4, the Bergmann floating lock in the Archon, the Revelli rotating lock (that of the Glisenti 1910 pistol and FIAT-Revelli 1914 MG) in all the 5.7x28 pistols bar the new S&W...
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  36. +Seth Ritch Italy adopted a knife bayonet (even tough they still called it "sciabola-baionetta", "saber-bayonet") with a 30 cm (11.8") blade, along with the mod 1891 Carcano rifle.
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  37. The gun is neat, but, from a 1.13 kg gun that fires a round whose energy is barely above that of a .380 ACP (According to Cartridges of the World, the pistol fires a 224 grains FMJ bullet at 700 fps / 213ms, for mere 247 foot pounds / 335 Joules of energy) the least one can expect is that it is a soft shoooter. It weights at least 300g too much.
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  38. No military rifle would have been approved for use without the possibility to field strip it. You only have to know the passages. As for the charging handle, the same spring that closes the bolt has to be compressed in opening it. Seeing how powerful it is, the designer probably concluded that some form of lever action was needed to do it.
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  39. The level of machining involved in doing those receiver and bolt is huge. For that alone it doesn't seem a design very apt to equip a mass army.
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  40. Although they had been designed to be used in defensive positions, with the shield (when used with the shield, the plate was integral part of the protection, and the hole sight was the only opening in it), they had been used as offensive wepons, without the shield, starting from 1916.
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  41. The weird thing is that this MG had been adopted in 1957. For how much sound the basic mechanism is, for it's execution it's like the designers konwingly decided to ignore several decades of experience in small arms designs, or simple common sense, like they were things of the past, that didn't apply to them. Retaining nuts had been commonly used in infantry rifles (relatively inexpensive pieces of equipment) since the late 19th century, how it's possible that a post WWII GPMG (a valuable piece of equipment) has a screw that can get loose during use? The problem of changing a hot barrel without using pads and without the gunner having to move from prone position had been adressed since the end of WWI. The ZB vz.26 can do it, the Breda 30 can do it, the Bren can do it, The MG34 and MG42 can do it, the M60 can't! And so on...
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  42. And the will to adopt an indigenous design anyway, even if, in the mid '80s, there were better options around, even among the bullpups.
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  43. No. Officine Villar Perosa, was a renowed manufacturer of ball bearings. In 1914 it started the production of shell casings and bycicles for the army, and then that of this MG.
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  44. There is a conventional stock version, and a telescopic stock version available
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  45. +Antwon Jenkins "notoriously under-powered" according to who?
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  46. As quality of the single weapon, the Hotchkiss Portative, as usefulness for an army, the Chauchat (with the material, tooling, manhour required to assemble an Hotchkiss Portative you can likely produce at least three Chauchat).
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  47. The Breda 30 uses exactly the same cartridges of the rifle. The 6.5x52mm Carcano cartridge is not "quite weak" compared to other 6mm rifle cartridges. It's as powerful as the 6.5×54mm Mannlicher–Schönauer and the 6.5X53R Dutch-Romanian (that were 6.5 Carcano copies) and slightly more powerful than the 6.5x50 Arisaka.
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  48. I'll try to be more clear. THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A SPECIAL 6.5 CARCANO LOAD MEANT TO BE USED IN MACHINEGUNS. NEVER. Then, I'm not talking about "modern loading" but about the loading used at that time. AT THAT TIME the 6.5X52 Carcano was as powerful as the 6.5×54mm Mannlicher–Schönauer (Greek service cartridge) and the 6.5X53R (Dutch and Romanian service cartridge), that were direct 6.5 Carcano copies, and slightly more powerful than the 6.5x50 Arisaka. (Japanese service cartridge). All those cartridges, like the 6.5X52 Carcano can cycle machineguns without problems. Finally, it's not "i.e. than the 6,5 swedish" but "ONLY the 6.5 swedish". The 6.5 Swedish was THE ONLY 6.5 service round that was more powerful than the 6.5 Carcano at that time.
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  49. You are talking about the 91/38 Carbine. 451mm (17.75 inches) barrel lenght.
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  50. There is another reason. To detect hairline cracks and casting defects. They are much more visible on the mirror-like Surface than on the rough cast Surface.
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