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

  1.  @LilSwinney  "in this case the british machine guns were gonna get the superior canadian ammo because as you pointed out they needed ever ounce of material" So to the Canadians were not given ammos? Otherwise this sentence has no sense. Had the Canadians tought their ammos were useful to keep their rifles working, they could have easily kept them. Nothing more difficult than to say "our rifles don't work with your ammos, sorry". Unfortunately they didn't because "Canadian experts said the chamber of the Ross was already large enough to take the new British ammunition in a pinch, and the tighter fit could only increase accuracy anyway". "Also the surrounded canadian troops..." "Nor they could intern some hundred of thousands of Canadian soldiers depriving the front of them (during WWI? Please...)" Again. The Brits desperately needed the Canadian support, not the contrary. UK was not in position to impose anything, nor taxes, nor conscription, nor tariffs, nor to use Canadian ammos, had the Canadians tought they needed them.
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  2. Most of times it seems they didn't fully uderstand what they were copying, like when they replaced the double set of pawls in the feed tray cover of the MG42 with a single one, with the result of the M60 not being able to pull the belt in against the slightest resistance, and often damaging the cartridges. Or like when they replaced the slightly angled locking lugs of the FG42 with straight angled ones, with the result that the metal-on-metal slam on closing invariably chipped the M60 locking lugs.
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  3. Actually it's simple even by modern standards. In WWI only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  4. 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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  5. If you want to fire less, you can use less ammo bearers. An MMG is a crew served weapon, and it's more important than 9, or 90, bolt action rifles.
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  6. The Germans used the MG131 in 13mm.
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  7. Mind that the most famous automatic rifle until the Belgian FAL and the Italian FAL (that were about the same weight) was the 20 pounds BAR.
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  8. An Hi-Point slide weights only about 520 grams, and it's enough to delay 9mm +p and .45 ACP. The entire Astra 600 weights 1.08 kg, easily more than 500 grams are on the slide as well.
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  9. 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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  10.  @ragnarragnarsson3128  91/38 had standard rifling too.
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  11. At that time it was really a problem to design a magazine at the same time so consistently and well built to not have feeding issues and so cheap to be discarded on the field. In movies, and on the range, all is good, but in reality every WWII LMG had continuous jammings that the gunner had to clear, and most of them were caused by badly made or damaged magazines. Even the Brits designed a tilting magazine for the BREN to solve the problem. They didn't adopt it in the end, but it's reloading was even more awkward than that of the Breda. The italians decided to sacrifice a little practical ROF to always have a "perfect" magazine.
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  12. Unfortunately Ian left out the fact that's actually already a locked breech gun. It's called an "expander lock". In theory there's no limit to the power of the ammunitions this gun can use, as long as the frame is strong enough. https://patents.google.com/patent/US461968A/en
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  13. The gun in itself is fairly simple. The count of the parts of the gas system, the bolt assembly and the trigger group (bar the burst device, that's an added part) is actually very low.
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  14. Thanks to you. Unfortunately, Ian decided to disassemble the rifle (that was required to show the burst mechanism) without showing first how a field strip (that covers all the usual manteinance of the rifle, and 99% of the emergency operations) was supposed to be done. That gave the impression of the design to be complicated. Field strip (remove the muzzle cover and expose the gas ports, chamber and piston for cleaning; remove the recoil spring for inspection/replacing; remove the bolt assembly for cleaning/replacing the firing pin) is actually very easy and can be done in seconds without tools. Disassembly requires more time, but it has to be said that almost all the bolt action and semiauto rifles' designs until that point, and several later, were not supposed to have the receiver and trigger group removed from the stock that often. That's why they were screwed to it. When Ian reviewed the Gew. 41 and 43 for example, he didn't remove them. Otherwise there would have been several screws to remove as well. An M1 Garand, for example, is made with a completely different philosopy. The rifle can be easily disassembled, but is not really field-strippable. To remove the bolt from the receiver, you have to completely take the rifle apart (and pay attention to several small parts).
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  15. Unfortunately it's the thing that will facilitate the case rupture (since the front of the case is clinged to the chamber and the back is pushed out of it, the case is stretched and breaks). Infact, the fluted chamber was invented to aid extraction and allow the cartridge to start moving when the pressure is still relatively high. However a mechanism, the "ring delayed blowback" had been invented to instead use this pressure to delay the opening. However is debated if it really worked or not.
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  16. The Finns actually worsened the sights, asking for them to be zeroed at 100m instead of 200m before the rifles being delivered. That way they were practicaly useless past 150m, well into combat distance. BTW the M16 had a two aperture sight, where the battle sight was zeroed at 250m and served 0 to 300m. The long range sight (300m to 400m) was practically never used (the US army didn't, and doesn't, train past 300m).
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  17.  @workinmanworkinman3889  It's not your comment section. Learn what a battle rifle is.
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  18. fucile mitragliatore = automatic rifle.
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  19. Not a single belt fed LMG for many years after the adoption of this gun.
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  20. Yeah. Like the later 9mm Makarov, it had been designed to be the higest power that could be conveniently used in a blowback handgun (without weight disadvantages), Infact, the 9mm Glisenti, that was a bit more powerful (same muzzle speed, but with a 124 grain bullet instead of 110) needed some "trick" (the buffer spring and pad of the Beretta M1915 and M1923) to spare the frame and slide without overweighting them.
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  21.  @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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  22. Actually to manufacture the 7.35 was cheaper than manufacturing the 6.5. they gave up due to logistic considerations, since they couldn't build enough rifles to equip the entire army in short time, and didn't want to supply two different rifle ammunitions.
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  23. No, straight pull bolt action.
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  24. It's breechlocked. Here's the patent. It's called an "expander lock". The lever locks the bolt like a chair put at an angle under the door knob. In theory there's no limit to the power of the ammunitions this gun can use, as long as the frame is strong enough. https://patents.google.com/patent/US461968A/en
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  25. It's enough to see the animation to spot why it had not been adopted. https://youtu.be/X0mBbDTPfFo?t=128 It was reliable, but to machine that double-eared rotating locking block was a nightmare. What's incredible is that, in all that development time, they didn't come up with something with a simpler shape.
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  26. +Charles Inglin The short stroke piston isn't really needed (IE the Beretta BM59 had a long stroke one, and worked pretty well). The rifle had been made in 6.5X52 Carcano and 7x57 Mauser that, thus being full blown cartridges, develop about 1/3 less energy than a 30-06 Springfield or a 7.62 NATO and, weighting the rifle a kg more than a M14, it was probably enough to make the burst controllable . To me it's a pretty viable battle rifle, or an equivalent of the BAR with half the weight.
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  27. Or about poor old Bernardelli, whose "semiautomatico", prismatic magazine, shotgun had been the first Italian inertia-locked gun.
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  28. They tend to keyhole, but they were intended to be issued to rear echelon troops, the same that in WWI were armed with converted Vetterli rifles.
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  29.  @shawnr771  Err... no. Mussolini died on Apr. 28 1945.
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  30. Not really. The rifle is quite simple. The bolt and gas assembly is one of the simplest I've ever seen. Simply, like almost every bolt action rifle up to then, and several semiauto rifle after then (See the Gew.43 for example), this rifle is not made to have the trigger group and the receiver removed often from the stock (that's why they are fixed with screws). While the parts that require cleaning (bolt and gas ports) and have to be replaced more often ( almost universally the recoil spring) are very easily reachable.
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  31. Everyone knows the FAL and G3 are not controllable in full auto ("inch" FAL don't even have full auto) even if they are a little bit more controllable than the M14 (thanks to the inline stock) but they are easier to manufacture, and the G3 works even in very poor conditions. Also, many of their iterations have at least a bipod. That makes full auto an option. What everyone wanted to have in Korea was a M2 Carbine. A hint that the Ordnance Corp didn't take.
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  32. 11.43mm is the diameter of the projectile. 11.25mm is probably the diameter between the lands of the barrel.
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  33. 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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  34. That's not the Ljungman definition. Elklund clearly describes it as a piston action in his patent. Direct impingment doesn't exist. Both this, the direct derivate Hakin/Rasheed and the MAS 49/56 are piston actions. The term "direct impingement" had been used for the Ljungman by Stoner, in his patent, to artificially differentiate his "internal gas piston" system to the previous "direct impingement" ones.
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  35. Actually, to be sold on the market, any firearm must have shown to be capable to safely shoot proof cartridges that produces 25% more pressure than the maximum pressure limit for the same cartridge in its commercial version. Blowback weapons are as safe as breechlock weapon in firing +P ammos. The limiting factor, for both, is simply the resistance of the frame/slide assembly to the harder beating created by the more powerful (10% more in case of the +P) ammos. In reality, for pistol cartridges, the weight of the bolt/slide in blowback weapons is almost always much higher that the one needed to simply avoid case separation, even for proofloads. An heavier slide/bolt is used to tame the perceived recoil and, in SMGs, to reduce the fire rate.
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  36. No rifle caliber produces more than 10.000 joules of energy.
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  37. He said that it fired from a closed bolt. For a water-cooled gun it didn't make any difference, but, when it was turned into air-cooled before WWII, it caused some problem.
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  38. It's because it's really a cocking lever that resembles an hammer. The Savage is really a striker fired pistol.
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  39. Is on the italian website, where there are the 12" barrel, flash hider, telescopic stock versions too. Pretty neat.
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  40. It's the external part of a spring-loaded plate that holds the grenade in place.
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  41. Infact there had been a "Scotti LMG", as well as Scotti belt fed HMGs in 7.7mm and 12.7mm and the Scotti automatic cannon in 20mm. All used the same action.
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  42. In war magazines fails non-stop. Thinking of this magazine as a delicate piece of watchmaking, it's a problem. But, had this gun been mass-produced (a thing that couldn't happen. It's too expensive to produce), if a magazine would have failed, the soldier would have simply slammed another one in the gun.
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  43. It had been MUCH useful as it was. In attack, first, a sling that allowed to use it while walking, or running, designed by Col. Giuseppe Bassi, was added, then it was used a wooden stock that allowed to use the weapon on shoulder, and the MG had been extensively used for clearing trenches starting from 1916. Maybe it could have been done better for that role, but remember that, since1916 to late 1918, it was the best thing around for that role anyway.
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  44. google "bomba SR2" and you'll easily find the original instruction manual (in Italian).
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  45. Actually yes, FIAT was the owner of the Officine Villar Perosa, and the weapon had been adopted in 1915 as "Pistola MItragliatrice FIAT Mod. 1915". But it must not be confused with the FIAT/Revelli 1914 heavy MG.
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  46. That sight had never been intended for aerial use. In the rare cases this MG was mounted on aircrafts (cause it had always been intended to be an infantry weapon) diferent sights were mounted. On the aerial samples there wasn't even the round plate. the plate was integral part of the protection when the MG was used with the shield (and then the sight-hole was the only opening in the shield).
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  47. Unfortunately the pictures of the MG mounted on aircrafts clearly shows the plate was not used. Sometimes Ian is wrong. ;)
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  48. This thing had never been intended for close quarter fights. The shooters were trained to not shoot at less than 50m for their own safety, and the three position of the grenade sights were intended for 130m, 190m and 230m. The grenades were roughly as powerful as hand grenades.
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  49. 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 they were not really "flash bangs", they had been designed to be lethal. Italian grenades, in general, were designed to fragment in smaller pieces in respect to the "pineapple" designs. That way the lethal radius was smaller, but the pattern was more uniform (cast iron "pineapple" grenades tended to fragment in few pieces, so they hit at random, maybe killing someone distant from the bomb, and sparing someone close to it).
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  50. The M14 is an evolution of the M1 where everything is similar but nothing is identical, so there's no part compatibility but, from the user's point of view, is a 20 rounds Garand, no more, no less. The BM59 is a direct modification of the Garand, but it's not only a 20 rounds Garand. It's a 20 rounds Garand AND an LMG (bipod and muzzle brake/compensator) AND a grenade launcher (grenade sights and gas cutoff).
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