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

  1. The best way to describe Swiss arms manufacturing tradition is to point out they made a milled version of the MG42.
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  2. The PPS-42 and PPS-43 were probably the "best" SMGs of WWII, when analyzed holistically (balancing logistics and performance). You can shovel train loads of these out, and they're at least 80% as good as anything produced during WWII that was less expensive than a really nice rifle . Several other, far more expensive to make, SMGs were less capable and reliable. And the production logistics were only the beginning - the ability to simplify magazine issue and the fact that it used half as much ammunition, basically, add up in reducing the logistics burdens on field units trying to support the guns.
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  3. Almost 20 years ago, I was involved in a team that was looking at improving the chances for an ejected pilot by figuring a better survival weapon option. At the time, we were really leaning towards something like a Glock 19 sized gun, with a shoulder stock and a suppressor. The idea being that the pistol could be worn on the survival vest (as sidearm are now), and the suppressor and a polymer frame stock could be strapped along the lower legs. Thus, the pilot would always have all three components on them. (Alternative proposal was a takedown SBR carbine conversion kit for the Glock (or whatever) with a integrally suppressed barrel and rifle type sights on the upper This wasn't so 1LT Flyboy could play Rambo. The idea was, if he needed to take small game or take out one random troop, he could do so without giving away his position to everyone within a mile, and the stock would give him a little bit better hit probability, to give him a chance out to about 50m. I'll note the USAF now uses modified take down M4 type rifles in the seat pack for pretty much the same thing, although I don't believe they issue a suppressor. The primary driver there was to give the pilot the chance to survive uncaptured for just a few more minutes by heading to a hilltop or similar and hold the enemy off at distance, to give the PJs more time to get to him.
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  4. So it came down to a violation of MIL-TFD-41. Make It Like The Friggin' Drawing, For Once.
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  5. Now, Bond's "hold the wrist" like that was a commonly taught technique of the era, right along side the "lay the strong side forearm across the weak side forearm as a rest" was common and official.
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  6. Given it's almost as heavy as an M3A1 (almost 8 lbs), has about the same ROF, (450 RPMs), and is in 9x19mm, I can only imagine that this thing is almost "Hollywood action hero" levels of controllable.
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  7. I always loved the cyber-noir feel this pistol gives, including the way the translucent amber grips feel both "old" and "futuristic" at the same time.
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  8. A few points you missed, Ian, because they are fairly obscure. The bubble level sight on the side is for using it for indirect fire at large, stationary targets (such as a house), and allows you to fire at up to 370 yards in that mode. Set the sight for range, turn the buttplate sideways, tilt the gun back on the buttplate util the bubble is centered in the sight, line that long white painted line with the target, and fire it to use it as a mortar. Also, that plastic looking tray in the chamber is only for firing the training rounds, which are much skinnier than the war shots or the loading practice inert bombs. The tray makes up the difference between the diameter of the warshot rounds and the firing practice rounds (which are basically solid steel batons with a hole bored out for the rod and propelling charge.) Cheap to make (literally they are entirely lathe work), impossible to mistake for live explosive rounds, and a ballistic match to warshots.
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  9. That Arisaka reminds me of the Cold War Soviet joke: Why do Estonians pour old motor oil in their gardens? To keep their rifles from rusting.
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  10. I suspect "small mountain valleys" have a couple of geographic advantages for arms production (especially for pre-electricity founded facilities): 1. Access to materials. 2. Access to running water with a decent head for water power. 3. Isolation from densely populated regions for the inevitable co-located powder mill explosions. 4. Easier to move products downriver (even if you have to wagon or rail it along the waterway, you're going mostly downhill on generally fairly flattish ground) to where a major transport hub will be located.
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  11. It always seemed to me that the spinner ended up in competitions pretty much so the guys who insisted on .45AARP as "a man's caliber" had something they were better at than the guys with GP35s and CZ75s. (Note, I carried a 1911 for nearly 20 years, before becoming a heretic and carrying Combat Tupperware in .36 Europellet.)
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  12. Neat. I've long wanted to see the guts. The North Korean bolt group is interesting - I think the totally separate belt withdrawal hooks seem to be a good idea, making it easier to fix tension problems without having to deadline the gun and send it back to an actual armorer. You could just issue every gunner a spare hook in their spares tin. OTOH, I'm not sure about some of the simplified cuts. That squared off cut, for instance - I wonder what the failure rate of that part at that location, versus the Soviet rounded cut.
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  13. "Revolvers: the bolt action infantry rifle of fighting pistols."
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  14. OK, when I first clicked on this, I was thinking, "Didn't Ian already cover this several years ago?" until I got a few seconds in to the video.
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  15. His comment about the philosophy of their primary goal being preservation of life, trying to bring their subjects in for trial rather than merely neutralizing them reminds me of a meeting I was in at work. We had USN and USCG folks in the room, in a rather heated argument about whether a Navy proposed weapons fit met the Coast Guard requirements for the platform in question (USN was lead design for a USCG program, simply because the Navy had more experience and a stronger engineering organization). The question was whether or not the weapon and sight in question could meet the requirements for "warning and disabling fire" - the Navy and Coast Guard had opposing stances, and things had gotten quite heated and bothnsides bunkered up. It eventually hit me (I was on the Navy side) that we had a fundamental difference in outlook, and I cleared up the matter by addressing each side to explain what I suddenly realized about this difference. [Addressing the Navy guys] "To the Coast Guard, when they say they are 'prosecuting a target', they mean they're going to put him in handcuffs and drag him to a judge. They're trying to take the boat equivalent of the SWAT team 'hostage shot'." [Awareness dawns] [To the Coast Guard side of the room] "To the US Navy, a smoldering oil slick IS a target that has been 'warned or disabled'." [Awareness dawns]
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  16. They rearmed right at the end of WWII, and chose the American .30-06 as the "obvious" choice, years before 7.62x51mm was adopted by NATO. They standardized on the cartridge that their biggest ally had (and since the US was basically giving away all the US arms our Allies needed during the late 1940s...) So, Luxembourg adopted the SAFN 49 in .30-06, and FN had a package deal including the BAR in the same caliber for countries that adopted the SAFN. Much like later on (after 7.62x51mm was adopted by NATO), they had a package deal of GP35 pistol, (eventually) Uzi SMG, FAL rifle, FALO "LMG", and MAG58 GPMG. Literally, call up FN with an RFQ, tell them your basic force structure and over all size, and they could draft up a complete small arms package (including maintenance support), for a predictable price, at reasonable financial arrangements, with the entire package contract ready in days and delivery to start within weeks or a few months of acceptance.
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  17. Years ago, I had a friend who referred to my .25ACP Browning I carried when wearing shorts and a t shirt as, "The Warmth" - because it wasn't big enough to call it "packing heat". LOL
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  18. Never been a fan of relying on US made magazine parts for 922(r) compliance. Even though I've never heard of anyone getting jammed up by 922(r) because they used the "wrong" magazine from their stash. (For that matter, I don't recall hearing of any cases where an individual ran into 922(r) enforcement, unless the charge was added as a cherry on top of a while cornucopia of other gun charges and they happened to find out he had too many "scary imported parts" after they'd already siezed the gun for the other violations. AFAIK, that particular code section has only been used to force importers and distributors to change configurations, or as an easily disposable "plea bargain" charge to add leverage to the prosecution in pressure a plea deal.)
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  19. If you want to know what a belt fed BAR would look like, well, that's basically the FN MAG58 (AKA M240 in US service). The MAG58 is basically a BAR flipped upside down (really necessary for the belt feed) and adapted to belt feed.
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  20. I really like that the J-hook safety position blocks the sight line. Troops under stress yanking on the trigger and wondering why the gun doesn't go bang because they don't forgot to take it off safe (and now don't really remember there is a safe position) is a real thing. Blocking the sight line at least helps if Pvt Johansen is trying to aim - "Hey! There's something in the way! Oh, yeah!"
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  21. I'm surprised you didn't bring up the actual late Cold War "wartime emergency" rifle proposals to be kept on file for "if and when needed". Both were similar - open bolt, full auto only, side magazine feed directly above the pistol grip. The US version, from TRW, IIRC, simply used an M60 grip assembly and M16 magazines. The British version used L1A1 magazines and a Sterling SMG FCG.
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  22. The ".30 versus .50" argument over aircraft mounted guns continued even into the metal skinned monoplane era. And (surprisingly and counterintuitivly), the British arguments that .50 didn't offer a significant improvement in terminal effectiveness round for round, no noticeable improvement in effective range in air to air combat, and the ability to mount more guns or more ammo in the same space and weight when you stuck with .30 was a huge advantage were still valid. Airplanes (even today) just aren't armored (aside from oddities like the modern A-10) sufficiently well to handle .30 bullets (and those that are are generally also able to shrug off .50 hits). And since the limiting factor in air to air combat witbout computer aiming assistance is not the ballistics, it is the inability for pilots and bomber gunners to generally hit past 100 (or sometimes 200) yards. Which is why most nations other than the US tended to jump right past .50 to a 20mm or larger automatic cannon. The light autocannons do provide a noticeable terminal effectiveness advantage over .30 and .50 guns, one that is worth the space and weight to replace at least some of the .30 guns with cannons, usually replacing multiple .30 guns with single light cannon.
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  23. I would say one "machinegun" that shouldn't be under the NFA - M2 Carbine marked receivers without the M2 full auto parts kit. After all, the M2 (in a mechanical sense) doesn't really exist - it's just an M1 semiautomatic carbine with a drop in "machinegun conversion kit", and like AR15 RDIAS and HK registered sears, should be considered a Title I firearm that has a Title II "firearm" (the conversion parts) dropped in. And declaring a specific component of the M2 full auto parts to be the "receiver" of a "machinegun conversion kit", while removing the carbine receiver itself from NFA control would be consistent with the Vollmer case over some HK rifles with registered sears. (Vollmer installed the registered sears, then figured since they had "machineguns", they could go ahead and restore the rifle receivers to original selective fire configuration. ATF said, "No, because the receiver is now a 'machinegun receiver', so you now have two 'machineguns' in one gun and only one of them is registered. Note that ATF was absolutely correct , statutory speaking. So Vollmer restored the receivers back to the original ATF-approved Title I configuration, leaving the registered sears in place. ATF then invoked the "once a machinegun, always a machinegun" and said that all of the converted receivers were still unregistered machinegun receivers. The court ruled that ATF was insane - since the receivers had been restored to be identical to legal semiautos, ATF's position on "once a machinegun,.always a machinegun" was absurd and legally unsupportable. Unsurprisingly, and exactly as they did for years with the T/C Contender carbine/pistol kit ruling, ATF refuses to admit this case has any precedential application.)
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  24. Keeping in my kind that the original China Lake launchers were probably even smaller scale production, you have to think, "Maybe there's a reason the China Lake just sort of died on the vine..."
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  25. Given the Japanese focus on the charge, I have always been surprised they didn't make nearly as heavy a use of SMGs as the Soviets. SMGs (especially with Type.30 bayonets fixed) just seem to so perfectly fit with the militant imperialist version of Bushido they pushed so hard. I mean, SMGs practically force your troops to engage the enemy more closely.
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  26. I'm honestly surprised I didn't see these all over movie screens in the 1990s, as they look like something a prop house would snap up for the look alone.
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  27. Well, the S&W Thrid Generation semis really were the US police semiautomatic to beat. Which Glock later did by simply underbidding Smith right out of the picture.
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  28. I liked hearing John mention Hydramatic M16A1s. My rifle in Basic in 1987 was a Hydramatic.
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  29. If this gun gets reasonably popular (even in a niche application, like top end competition), I can totally see aftermarket grip frames and (more importantly) top straps.
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  30. About the M1A1 question - my dad did use one, with an M2 full auto group as a PDW during one of his Vietnam tours. Special circumstances - he was an Ordnance officer on MACV staff, and spending a lot.of time flying from firebase to firebase. So, one of his sergeants found him an old M1A1 stock somewhere and relieved the stock so it would accept the M2 bits. Dad kept it slung behind his back with a couple of spare mags in his shirt pockets, and basically forgot about it. As Dad said, "It was out of the way and just enough gun to get me away from the scene of the crash. Much easier to carry than the other choices, and not much more of a problem than the .45 on my hip."
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  31. Ah, the White patent gas system of the M60 and M14. But as Army Ordnance officers were writing publicly as early as at least January 1945, it's a system whose core idea is about as based in reality as the Blish lock. Because, as they found when measuring operating sequences with super high speed photography and pressure sensors, by the time the gas piston has moved far enough to cut off the gas, the bullet has already left the barrel and the port pressure has dropped to nearly ambient anyway - which means that before the "gas cutoff" even gets to go into effect, the reciprocating bits have already received all the input energy they're going to get, so it's about as "self regulating" as the AK and it's holes in the gas tube or has block (depending on model). Just as a Blish equipped Thompson is basically nothing but unlocked blowback with extra (and unnecessary) fiddly bits, the M14 and M60 are bog standard long stroke gas pistons with some unnecessary holes drilled in the gas system. The M14 hapoens to be appropriately gassed, while kost versions of the M60 are skightly undergassed.
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  32. I really think the thermal issue illustrates a match design issue. In a world where some competitors may be using thermals, you definately need heated targets.
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  33. Note about British selection of the 9mm for the Sten over .45 goes into more logistics details. The British actually liked the .45 cartridge. However, they had a giant pile of captured 9x19mm (more than they had .45ACP on hand, probably), the fact they would have a lot of design work to do (as Ian pointed out), but 9x19mm uses about HALF as much metal in its construction, which means the same pile of brass, copper, and lead will make almost twice as much ammo as if you insisted on .45ACP. Today, a shooter buying his ammo one box at a time might not care, but when you're looking at making ammo by the train load AND you have to import a lot of your materials over U-boat patrolled oceans, it really matters a lot. Even a few pennies per round would add up quickly.
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  34. The golf ball dimpling is amusing, given the origin of the Western 40mm GL as Project Niblick (Niblick being a brand name of golf ball, and the inspiration for the original projectile they tested.)
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  35. @Sqwee it's a Melonite coated barrel, not bare steel. Superior corrosion resistance and accuracy to typical chrome lined barrels, and unless your doing mag dumps or otherwise treating it like a machinegun barrel, should be just fine. You might see excessive erosion compared to chrome that actually starts to affect accuracy more than chrome does after 5000+ rounds.
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  36. I have always loved the way the 1968 GCA tried to outlaw imported small pistols, and how the ATF decided to regulate that. The thumb rests on the grips and the adjustable sights make this PMM give it enough points on the ATF import worksheet to be legally defined in the US as a "sporting" pistol, because those are "target pistol" features ATF chose to put on the list 50 years ago.
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  37. Companies like to make them.unique to lock customers into their support infrastructure as a captured audience. It's really nice to see designers that reject that business model.
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  38. That "split feed lip" system is especially cool. Looks as if it gives you the advantages of BOTH feed lips on the magazine (cheap, simple production without having to add cartridge retainer widgets to every magazine like the Madsen LMG) and feed lips machined into the receiver (less likely to get damaged than if they were sheet metal and exposed on the magazines), without the downsides of either (easily damaged feed lips on sheet metal magazines, more complicated cartridge retention in the magazine, feeding systems that have rounds that are in the action in between the magazine and the chamber that have to be cleared out).
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  39. I was saving up for an FNC and autosear, right up until the SCAR guys figured out the FNC autosear fits. Regardless of what ATF has said, this caused the price to jump quickly, and they haven't dropped afterwards. Of course, the ATF position is wholly indefensible, particularly with regard to restricting FNC autosears to Belgian FN production. They have a skinny, palsied, osteoporosic leg to stand on with regard to using FNC sears in SCARs, but case law utterly rejects their position with regard to, say, a brand new domestically manufactured FNC, of one were on the market.
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  40. It is also possible that cleaning it dislodged some junk that ended up fouling the firing pin or striker run (more likely the former, I would think), slowing down the firing pin just enough.
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  41. I had an opportunity two years ago to handle one of these and some original ammunition (didn't shoot it, however) in a private collection. It's even more impressive and "weird" seeming in person (despite being a pretty Bog-standard bolt action rifle and ammo, aside from proportions and dimensions). Handles rather better than you would expect (it ain't no 98K or No4 Enfield, but it isn't a Barret, either).
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  42. Given the size of the FIDF and the TO&E of British infantry, it makes sense they wouldn't have had sniper rifles before the Argentine invasion - IIRC, through the Cold War, the scout/snipers were kept at battalion level, and it probably wasn't considered critical to set up an island based sniper course nor ship candidates to the UK. However, given the nature of the FIDF and the terrain, I'm somewhat surprised they didn't make more use of designated marksman with scoped SDM type rifles (like the Canadian Rangers). A militia of dispersed farmers seems more suited to a lot of guys with bolt action .308 rifles kept at home that are not dissimilar to hunting rifles.
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  43. New handguard also looks far better, ergonomically. Humans, after all, have hands adapted to grab round profile things like branches - not squared off Legos.
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  44. Dead on about "What I'm used to using is the superior method". Yeah, MOA is more granular than mildot. However , I spent a lot of time having mildot bashed into my brain by the Army for ranging various objects (all szed in meters, and ranged in meters) that the math feels more natural to me. For someone who looks at target sizes and thinks of them in inches, and ranges in yards, yeah, MOA is going to be "more natural".
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  45. The other issue with the Sten magazine was the majority of the problems it had in service had nothing to do with the physical design of the magazine - MP28s didn't suffer many of these problems. The most common "in service" problems with the Sten magazine were due to feed lips bending out of spec, due to improper heat treatment (the British didn't have the TDP for the MP28 and its magazine, after all, and didn't differecially heat treat the lips to make them stiffer). Frankly, as long as the feed lips are in spec, Sten magazines are great... except when you're trying to reload them and you NEED the tool (a friend of mine used to joke his Sten shouldn't be in the NFA Registry - the LOADING TOOL should be the "registered receiver" 😂 ).
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  46. Makes sense that a roller delayed gun would have less gas when suppressed than either a Stoner internal piston or an unlocked blowback.
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  47. The maximum length stock really puts the gun into the "same size as a genuine SMG", which seems counterproductive. It looks slightly longer with the stock stowed than the 1990s MP5K-PDW with a side folded stock. The minimum length stock seems the most in line with the design intent of the chassis, although I wonder if reducing the vertical length to about even with the bottom of the grip would compromise its utility as a stock all that much. The medium length is probably a practical compromise. I also wonder if there is an extended slide and barrel combo that comes right to the end of the chassis. Since you can't make the gun any shorter than the frame, might as well use ALL the frame length forward and eke out an extra 50 FPS or so, if you can.
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  48. MSRP is $2K, which means i expect "street" price by the end of the year will be around what an AUG is.
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  49. ​ @majesticface3631 True. And had Springfield basically done that, it is entirely likely the M14 wouldn't have been cancelled as abruptly as it was. 1. It would have gone into production faster, thus not already drawing the ire of McNamara right at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration (after the scandal of our "best and brightest" forward deployed troops in Berlin were still carrying Garands and effectively an entirely WWII suite of small arms during the Berlin Blockade, and being photographed next to British troops already equipped with SLRs, etc.) 2. We still would have likely adopted the M16, and eventually still would have made it the standard service rifle. It justvwould have taken longer to transition from "limited specialty purposes" (M2 Carbine replacement, use by SF & recon troops, use in SE Asia, etc.) to "everyone gets an M16, worldwide".
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  50. For people wondering "Why copy a PPSh41, but use M56 barrel and magazine?", there's a simple answer: 1. The Submachine Gun Designer's Handbook was published by Desert Publications in 1981, and one of the two SMG designs it gave detailed and dimensioned drawings for (the other being the Sten) was the PPSh41. And those drawings, interestingly enough, show the selector as a solid part, not bent sheet metal. 2. The barrel and magazine are going to be the two hardest parts for a small shop to design and fabricate. Using an existing store of those parts would dramatically reduce production time and cost, even if you have to tweak the design you're making parts from scratch for. And, after all, the M56 and PPSh41 and M56 are, after all, both 7.62x25mm Tokarev already - tweak the dims of the mag well to fit the M56 mags and tweak the bolt to feed from a double feed mag. The other design adjustments are fairly straight forward and look simple enough to incorporate into the PPSh end of the hybrid, possibly even easier to make consistently and reliably by the manufacturer than the original design. I'm also quite swayed by the suggestion above that this may have been a shop that did airguns before the war. I can see the pivot and latch systen, as well as the stock overall, being from spring piston break barrel air rifles from a small manufacturer.
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