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

  1. Tell to the 22nd Armoured Brigade that at Bir El Gubi their asses had been kicked by non effective enemies then.
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  2. It's the external part of a spring-loaded plate that holds the grenade in place.
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  3. Considering that the starting rifle was fairly light, probably not that much.
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  4. Infact the Luftwaffe faced the same problem and came out with the 9X18mm Ultra (that was a ballistic copy of the 9mm Glisenti) as the most powerful round that could be fired by a blowback pistol mantaining weight advantages over a short recoil one. However, "less than 25 ounces" for a 9mm, Luger, Ultra, or Glisenti, was simply an unrealistic request in 1949. It needed at least 30 ounches / 850 grams to have a functional gun, blowback or short recoil actuated.
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  5. Exactly. "Why this rifle exists, if there is the AR15 already?" is simply the wrong question. It doesn't make sense, and makes the speaker seems like he is obsessed with the AR15. That 90% of black rifles are AR15s is a US thing only. In other markets, even where they are freely available, things are different.
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  6. There is a lot of people that buy guns without having handled it in person, and back in the '80s there weren't online reviews. Access to information on product quality was a bit more difficult.
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  7. It's more than the kennedy thing influenced the reputation. Since LHO shooting had to be impossible (to justify the conspirancy theory), the rifle had to be junk.
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  8. It probably stands for "ripetizione", since the italian for "bolt action" is "ripetizione manuale".
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  9. It's understandable, but really it doesn't have effect on accuracy. Given the design of the weapon, the wobbling is simply given by the headspacing. Once fired, the expansion of the cartridge tightens all the parts, and the weapon is very accurate.
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  10. Is practically a Carcano action with rear locking lugs. Even the safety works the same way (it only had to be turned in the opposite direction. That's odd, since, in the Madsen, a right-handed shooter can't work it wit the right thumb while holding the rifle).
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  11. Is on the italian website, where there are the 12" barrel, flash hider, telescopic stock versions too. Pretty neat.
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  12. Actually the thing is field strippable without tools in any parts that needs cleaning. That was not granted at that time (cough… BAR… cough…).
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  13. The shortest version of the AR70, the SCS70/90 has a 352mm barrel, and the shortest version capable to fire a rifle grenade, the SCP70/90 has a 369mm barrel. A bit shorter the first, and almost identical the second to the 370mm of the M4 carbine.
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  14. You are welcome. Really it has already been, at least partially done. One of the competitors of the AR70/90 in the Italian Army AR selection contest was the SOCIMI AR-871 (evolution of the previous AR-831). It had a AR15 style receiver and bolt (but with a reciprocating, left placed, bolt handle), but with an AK47 style long stroke gas piston, with the recoil spring in the gas cylinder and over the bolt, like in a AK47.
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  15. Actually, when this MG had been adopted (1930) the only design around that was really demonstrably better was the ZB vz. 26. Today it could seem strange, but, in the first half of XX century, to design a detachable magazine that was at the same time so cheap to be discarded on the field, and so well and consistently built to not cause feeding problems was really an issue. The BAR and the BREN were plagued by jammings caused by defective magazines, ant those had been built by bountries that had not raw materials shortages. The British actually designed a fixed magazine for the BREN, loaded with two 15 rounds clips (they didn't adopt that, but it was really awkward compared to the Breda). So, in 1924, FIAT came out with a LMG design (FIAT 1924) that had a fixed magazine on the left of the weapon, loaded inserting a 20 round clip (similar to that of the subsequent Breda) from the right. In exchange of a little time lost in recharging, all the feeding problems were avoided. The flaw was that, to load a MG insrting a clip from one side, the gunner, or the servent, had to expose himself a little, and, laterally pushing the weapon, they can move it, loosing the line of sight. So the Breda had the subsequent evolution. By tilting the "fixed" magazine, in exchange of a little more time lost in recharging, the gunner could load the gun (and change the barrel, for that matter) without changing position at all. In the end, ten years later, at the start of WWII, it was an already outdated design, but it was actually not that bad. 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 naked than carrying that piece of junk!" and things like that. But those are modern days shenanigans. The contemporaries of the weapon, 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. Mind that, to use 4 spare barrels (the number the Italians deemed to be necessary after having used the gun in combat), you have to fire at least 800 rounds in quick succession. So much for the gun not being capable to really provide automatic fire.
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  16. +MacNutz2 That's totally wrong. Mussolini left the Socialist Party in october 1914 to found an interventionist newspaper, "Il Popolo d'Italia", and, when Italy finally entred in WWI (may 1915), he voluntereed, served as a "Bersagliere" (elite light infantry corp) Private, was promoted Corporal for merit (official motivation: "Attività esemplare, qualità battagliere, serenità di mente, incuranza ai disagi, zelo, regolarità nell'adempimento dei suoi doveri, primo in ogni impresa di lavoro e ardimento", "Exemplar activity, fighting qualities, serenity of mind, does not care of discomforts, zeal, reliable in the fulfillment of his duties, first in every enterprise of work and bravery"), and ended his military career being seriously wounded by the explosion of a grenade launcher during a training exercise in february 1917. All in all he had a rather exemplar military service. Not that the service in the trenches gave him some quality as a strategist, obviously, but he was a brave man.
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  17. Until at least the Gulf War the general consensus was that the M16 was a defective rifle, and the direct gas impingement was the main responsible. The Beretta AR70/90 came out as the Italian Army Assault rifle from a competition were one of the competitors, the Socimi AR-831, was an AR15 (bolt, bolt carrier, recoil spring, recoil spring guide, magazine catch and hold-open device, trigger group, fire selector, general receiver and plastic furnitures design), with a AK47 style gas piston (The subsequent AR-871 used an AK47 recoil spring too, so to have a fully collapsible stock), yet, the Beretta design was chosen. Every army has its specific requirements. French and Brits wanted a bullpup. The Italians, like for the previous BM59 and the subsequent ARX-160 wanted a select fire LMG.
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  18. Design costs. If you use a system used by one hundred other manufacturers, you doesn't really have to design anything new. All the weights, forms and tolerances are in the books, or you can more or less copy it from an existing design, and you concentrate on aestetics and/or secondary features. If you use a new system, you have to really design every bit of it starting from a White sheet. The dimension of the gas ports, their position in the barrel, the dimension of the gas chamber, all relative to the weigh tof the slide... Add that delayed blowback systems are slide-weight sensitive. Usually they comes in only one form (there is not a Compact HK P7, a compact Steyr GB or a compact Benelli B76) cause to design a different dimension of the same pistol, is like designing a new pistol.
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  19. Bring me Peter pan "m14s were full auto?" Yes and no. They could have, or not, the selector installed. Originally the M14 was intended to replace the M1 and the BAR with a single design, but the conception was still that of the riflemen squad, with the M14 in semiauto only, supported by LMGs, that were M14 with the selector and the bipod. But, when the soldiers begun to fight enemies armed with assault rifles, many formations switched all their M14 to full auto. At least to have a higher volume of fire. To hit what you was aiming at, was another story. The problem in using a full power cartridge like the 7.62 NATO in full auto is triple. There is the recoil, there is the muzzle flip, and there is the spin that the bullets give to the rifle (the reaction to the bullets being put in rotation by the rifling). The shooter, instinctively, tend to compensate the muzzle flip, so the burst tend to widen in a spiraliform pattern.
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  20. l. kerr The M14 had (and has) at least a good feature. Having the gas port moved back from the muzzle in respect to the M1 that doesn't affect the bullet any more, so, in semiauto, it's a very accurate rifle. Well suited for sharpshooters.
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  21.  @gravelydon7072  Lately (in the last 20 years more or less) there had been a renewed stress on long range accurate fire over short range volume of fire, and the old battle rifles happened to be available at a relatively low cost. They are used as designated marksman rifles in semiauto only. A support weapon anyway, not the service rifle of the army. Versions of the FN-FAL and G3 are used for the same purpose elsewere. It's interesting however that the Argentine Army, to replace the old FAL, instead of switching to an AR, selected a new battle rifle in 7.62 NATO (the Beretta ARX200).
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  22. There is a MR1 version without the pistol grip.
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  23. It's the ejector. At 2:41 you can see the part into the action. It's a cool design, very simple (like the rest of the gun) and easy to replace.
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  24. There are simply countries where AR15s and AKs are not so appealing to the public.
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  25. The AR15 is an American obsession. There are countries were it's legal, but people simply don't care that much. It's only one of many alternatives.
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  26. Around 12.000 FAMAS had been upgraded to the FELIN standard (new 1/7" Beretta-made barrel, new piticanny-rail carry handle, new sights, new bayonet, front pistol grip option...) but, with the newest base rifles to convert that are around 40 years old, it seems kinda like beating a dead horse. To be competitive with the newest designs, the rifle needs to be completely redesigned (a new bolt less picky about ammos, much more plastic in the body to keep the weight down, faster ambidextrous features) and, since the Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne closed in 2002, there is none to do the job.
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  27. They hadn't any requirement like that. The Scotti Mod X, that won the early '30s concourse for the semiauto rifle of the Italian Army and the Breda 1935 PG, that participated tho the late '30s one, were both gas operated. Simply the other designers were more comfortable with recoil operated weapons.
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  28. chrisloUSA Yeah, but that's true for the Germans, and for the Americans too (the M1 Garand had the muzzle gas-trap assembly until trhree years after it's adoption, and the rifles already produced had to be retrofitted lately). But the Scotti Mod. X had a perfectly normal gas port under the barrel and, as said, it won the early '30s' competition. It wasn't adopted only cause the Army first decided to change the service round, and then to redo the competition.
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  29. Given the design of the weapon (with the barrel not being locked on the receiver, but on the locking collar), the wobbling is simply given by the headspacing. Once fired, the expansion of the cartridge tightens all the parts, and the weapon is very accurate.
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  30. All the 9mm Glisenti cartridges are subsonic 9mm Luger, but not all the subsonic 9mm Luger are 9mm Glisenti. Actually only very little of them are comparable (much subsonic 9mm Luger loads are subsonic only due to very heavy bullets).
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  31. The 9mm Glisenti is a pretty powerful round actually. It's more powerful than a 9mm Makarov, and with a better ballistic coefficient than the 9mm Makarov bullets usually have. And 9mm Makarov SMGs are used with success, by armies and special forces, even nowadays.
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  32. Those are .380 ACP, or 9mm short. A less powerful cartridge that was designed to be used with blowback designs. In theory, every cartridge can be fired by a simple blowback design, and 9mm lugers had been, and are, fired by blowback pistols (Astra 400, Hi Point...). But, in a blowback, the only thing that prevent the action to open too early (when there is too much pressure in the chamber, the walls of the cartridge are stuck to that of the chamber, and so to pull out the cartridge can cause a case rupture) is the weight of the bolt. The more powerful the cartridge, the heavier the bolt, and that means an heavier pistol, with an odd (top heavy) balance.
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  33. Seven what?
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  34. Yes they do.
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  35. At the time of it's adoption there was not a single belt fed LMG in the world, and the concept wouldn't be a success still for several decades.
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  36. What could be called the LMG version of the M1919 (being very generous, cause 15kg is not "light" by any means), the A6, came out only in 1943. The MG08/15 was an HMG with a stock.
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  37. It's not DA/SA, so no.
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  38. +pkt1213 Those markings were intended for volley fire. To shoot to enemy formations (that, at that time, still moved in close ranks) , not single soldiers. Later, that function was taken by heavy MGs.
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  39. The grandsons of the "Tromboncino".
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  40. +Laurent Belkacem It balance the "Type I" Japanese rifle, that's almost always referred as "Type one", while really the "I" was a letter (standing for "Italian" since it was made by Beretta) and not a numeral.
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  41. Yes, but in the sense that the Chauchat was actually a good weapon, and the Breda 30 was not that bad.
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  42. As Loutral said, it's 2500 RPM only if you fire both the barrels at the same time.
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  43. To me the original ZB vz.26 was superior to the BREN, cause the BREN had to use rimmed cartridges. I think a shorter barrel VB vz. 26, with a 25 round magazine in 6.5 Carcano would have been the perfect LMG for the Italians in WWII. That said, the Italians used the Lewis gun in WWI, it was not like they didn't know it. The Lewis Gun was a good weapon for WWI, but it was not by chance that everyone of its users, bar one, phased it out of first line use first than WWII (and it was not by chance that 20-25 round magazines was the norm for WWII LMGs). The Lewis gun was heavy, it didn't have a quick exchange barrel, it was extremely sensible to the slightiest trace of dirt, it jammed easily and jammings were very difficult to clear, it was difficult to field strip and clean, to replace the pan magazine required the servent to expose himself, since it had to be made while looking at the weapon from above. Even in WWI it had been noted that it was more an ambush weapon, when it could fire from at least partially protected positions, than a real attack weapon. Unforunately there is a tendency, on the net, to sanctify some weapon and to damn some other only on the base of often repeated rumors, and regardless of what the contemporaries (those that had to DAILY use those) thought of them. From Tactical and Technical Trends (the magazine of 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. Was the Breda 30 the best, or among the best WWII LMGs? Surely not. But it get the job done, and, on the field, the differencies with other designs were very limited. MInd that, 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. that was what the Breda was capable of. Try it with a Lewis Gun, or a BAR for that matter.
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  44. The 1911, like the other breechlocked pistols of the time, required a lot of machining to be made. This seems to be made mainly of stamped parts, and the ohters has very simple machining. Probably it was much more apt to be mass produced. Kinda like the Thompson vs. the Grease Gun. It makes sense if the plan was to provide handguns to all the soldiers of the army, and probably someone thought of it, since pistols proved to be more useful than bolt action rifles in trench fight (like almost anything really, knifes, clubs, showels...). However shotguns and SMGs proved to be better than pistols, so...
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  45. The semiauto shotguns' gas actions are the most "battle proven" actions existing. The shotguns rented by the Argentine outfitters, for example, fire thousands of rounds a day every day, with sketchy manteinance at best, and using cartridges that are far "dirtier" (it's inevitable, due to the rapid loss of pressure in the shotguns' barrels) than any commercial bottleneck round. And among them, the Beretta and Benelli actions are always deemed as the most reliable. All that ridges on the piston and the guide rod are not there for show. They are meant to keep the metallic surfaces clean from the debris of combustion in conditions where a typical "tactical carbine" action will get stuck after few hundreds rounds.
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  46. EthosAtheos What I was saying is that bottleneck carbine rounds like the .223 Rem are inherentlhy "clean", cause the small bore and the gas seal of the projectile make so that the drop in pressure of the gasses in the barrel is slow enough to give to almost all of the powder the time to burn completely. Shotgun rounds instead are inherently dirty, cause the drop in pressure is almost instantaneous. For gasses, drop in pressure means drop in temperature, and so the powder have not the time to burn completely. Shotguns always produces more combution debris than carbines, so semiauto gas actuated shotguns needs to have some system to get rid of them. To use a simple piston, short or long stroke, like that of the typical black rifle (AUG, Tavor, Beretta ARX 100/160 and so on), in the same conditions, that means for a shotgun action, would mean to have it stuck in debris after few hundred rounds. On the other hand, it could be said that, to use a self-cleaning action, like that of the Benelli, for carbine rounds is an overkill, since even a simple piston can shoot some thousand of them without cleaning.
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  47. Blair Maynard "I didnt start the MG42 comparison" It was a comparison of kind of intended use. The intended use of both was that of point weapons. A lot of bullets on a little space in a short time. Not long bursts. "The lesson of the MG42 is that "higher rate of fire is not always better". According to Wikipedia, the MG42's main drawback was ammunition consumption." The Italians manufactured 836 million Glisenti rounds for 14.564 Villar Perosa manufacutred. More than 28.000 rounds for barrel. It seems that they were prepared for the consumption. "If the MG42 gunner chose to use the 50-round belt "pods"..." The standard lenght of the MG42 belt was 50 rounds. It could be lenghtened by linking several belts. But, again, you are comparing what's arguably the most avdvanced MG of WWII with WWI weapon. "he would have to change magazines once every 50 rounds, while the Villar-Perosa gunner has to change magazines twice every 50 rounds." Please, The 50 rounds drum of the MG42 was only a can that contained a 50 rounds belt. In order to change the drum the gunner had to: remove the spent drum, open the new drum, attach the new drum to the MG, open the action of the MG, extract the end of the belt from the drum, place the end of the belt on the action, close the MG. It takes MUCH less time to change a pair of magazines, and you have not a spent belt hanging from the MG while you are running. But, again, you are comparing what's arguably the most avdvanced MG of WWII with WWI weapon. "Sure it would be a GREAT gun to defend narrow passages when a large number of troops try to get through at the same time, and you have the ability to spread or an angle your shots so that you arent putting all the bullets into the first person, but a Lewis gun would also be pretty useful there too" And a Maxim, and a Schwartzlose, and a MG08, and a Hotchkiss... Have I said that others MG are useless? But the Villar Perosa has it's advantages. It's lighter, it's easier to manufacture and service, it's thougher (with the shield, the weapon is practically invulnerable to rifle-caliber projectiles), and its ROF makes it a point weapon. "AND the Lewis gun..." The Lewis gun was a very good LMG, but the Lewis Gun was heavy, expensive, sensible to dirt, It's drum was difficult to change (see vintage and modern clips. The servent can't really replace the drum while remaining in prone position. In the end, again, it was easeir and faster to replace a pair of magazines) its low ROF makes possible for the soldiers in the trench to return fire. The Lewis gun was really more apt for ambushes, when the gun could be placed in partially covered position, than to run on the battlefield and clear trenches.
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  48. yo boi jonx The Villar Perosa and the MG42 are similar in the fact that they both had been designed to have a high ROF and for the same reason. German gunners in WWII were instructed to not use the MG42 for suppressive fire. It was a point weapon, made to shoot short bursts in the few moments the gunner actually saw a enemy. Obviously they are different. A tank of WWI is different from one of WWII. But they have some common charateristic.
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  49. yo boi jonx I've not compared the Levis Gun to the MG42. The MG42 was never mounted on planes only cause the Germans already developed the MG81 from the MG34, whose performances were perfectly comparable with that of the MG42. After the war, and until today, the MG42 (Beretta MG 42/59, Rheinmetall MG 3) had been mounted on countless helicopters. Yes, you like saying stupid stuff.
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  50. You have not to thank me. The MG42 was never mounted on planes only cause the Germans already developed the MG81 from the MG34, whose performances were perfectly comparable with that of the MG42. At the end of the war the Germans still used the MG42. After the war, and until today, the MG42 (Beretta MG 42/59, Rheinmetall MG 3) had been mounted on countless helicopters. They are still MG42.
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