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

  1. "not desiged here". To give a hint, after the M73/219 coaxial machinegun (probably the biggest POS that had been given the name of "machinegun") spectacularly failed, in the early '70s tests to find a replacement, STILL the M219 managed to end on top position, along with the M60E2 and the FN MAG and well above the MG3 and other beloved and battle proven designs still in service today. Leave out the two US proposals, and you have the real winner.
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  2. Because having the charging handle on the right side, and so operating it with the shooting hand, while holding the weapon on the forestock with the other hand, it's the only way to reload without moving the weapon out of line. That's why any bolt action rifle has the charging handle on the right side ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jo9gifLCDs&t=291s ), that's why the M1 Garand had the charging handle on the right side, that's why the BREN had the charging handle on the right side... that's why most semiauto and auto weapons that haven't an ambidextrous charging handle (Included almost any SMG: Thompson, M3 grease gun, Sten, KP31, PPSH...), have it on the right side.
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  3. Not if you are crawling out of a trench or under the barbed wire.
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  4. Mud is going to be much more of a problem for cloth belt fed MGs. In reality, like any industrial tool of the time, those MGs were so overbuilt that dirt couldn't really do anything to them.
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  5.  @MichaelBerthelsen  Into the mechanism there is an incredible amount of space where the dirt can go instead of locking it, and very few ways it can actually do damages. That thing would probably keep going even opening the inspection window and throwing a handful of mud into it. As said, this was no different from industrial tools for the time, that worked in workshops that were really not that clean.
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  6. Actually it was nearly identical to the US M1 Carbine bayonet, only the muzzle ring diameter differs. The Italians retained the same bayonet with the AR70/90 too.
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  7. The problem was the choice of making it SS, not the carburizing method, that was only an attempt to make the design work. Low temperature carburization of stainless steel, up until the '90s, was an empirical process. You didn't know in advance what alloys were carburizable and what was the appropriate process for any of them. It could only be learned trough trials and errors. It's not by chance that the first stainless steel pistol was released only in 1965, and it was a revolver (S&W 60) so it didn't need many hardened parts. When stainless semiautos began to be introduced, in the mid '70s, all of them had galling problems. In 1983, Randall introduced a line of stainless-steel pistols. The guns were advertised with the slogan “Randall, The Only Stainless Steel Fit For Duty.” because all the previous ones weren't. The trick was to use different alloys for frame and slide and use different hardening treatments, that reduces the galling problem,however it not completely eliminates it. Today is less felt largely thanks to better lubricants.
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  8. With the benefit of hindsight, since the galling problem prevented any sales, we can say "no". But probably that bunch of guy in the bar only knew there was stainless steel and were fascinated by doing a pistol out of it. They didn't know anything about the related problems.
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  9.  @saoirse5308  It's not like Beretta did a .380 because they can't make a 9mm. They made a .380 because they wanted to make a .380. You liking or not, is up to you. You want a 9mm? Go buy one. None is forcing you to buy a .380. But, if you want to compare the 80X it to some other gun, you should compare it to other .380.
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  10. Infact that's the king of the free floating barrels. Once the round is fired, the expansion of the case tighten the action and the gun is accurate. The MG34 barrels works the same way.
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  11.  @hoyschelsilversteinberg4521  OMG, how many people believed in that movie? That's your "head" moving towards the shooter when hit by a Carcano cartridge. The bullet's pressure wave compresses the matter into the head towards the skull bones. Breaks through them exiting. The compressed matter exits from the hole and propels the "head". https://youtu.be/AqGehPXnkBw?t=123
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  12. Precisely. the Steyr GB pistol works the same way. They use gas as a recoil buffer.
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  13.  @hugossg7908  Those were the words of those that had to use them.
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  14.  @hugossg7908  The recommended ROF of the BREN was one magazine (of 27 rounds, because 30 were likely to jam the weapon) a minute. In case of necessity, it was allowed an emergency ROF of four magazines a minute, advising the gunners that the squad had 20 magazines available (battles tend to last more than five minutes) and the barrel had to be changed every ten magazines. The Breda had no problems in keeping that real life ROF. That's why the loading method is not reported as detrimental, or even as a curiosity. Nor in that report, nor in the manuals written for the gunners that had to use the captured ones. Who had really to use the weapons on the field noticed other things than modern armchair "experts".
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  15.  @hugossg7908  27 rounds in the magazines instead of 30, or the weapon was likely to jam. The standard and emergency ROF, the necessity to change the barrel every ten magazines of emergency ROF and the provision of the squad are in the BREN manual. You believing or not is inconsequential.
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  16.  @ScottKenny1978  Unfortunately Prvi Partisan makes excellent brass, but the bullets are .264 in diameter, while original Italian ammos are .267. They are accurate only in rifles with nearly pristine rifling.
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  17. It'a actually extremely simple and, as long as WWI HMG are considered, quite practical.
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  18.  @LifeisGood762  Yeah. It's because I have eyes that I can say it's operating mechanism being the simplest among WWI HMGs, bar that of the Hotchkiss.
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  19. Among WWI MGs, only the Hotchkiss is arguably simpler than this.
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  20.  @tbrowniscool  In theory Ukraine would be the ideal scenario for battle rifles. Not much carrying the rifle around, a lot of shooting between sides of farm fields with troops behind bushes and light covers. And yet NONE really wants to use a battle rifle.
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  21.  @Asghaad  The reason you see "only short range" combat had been clearly written in US Army studies already in the '50s. In over 90% of possible battlefields, a soldier is not going to see an enemy standing in broad daylight at 300m distance. Because there's something between them. In Ukraine we've seen enemy squads moving at no more than 20m distance without seeing each-other.
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  22.  @Asghaad  600+m is well within the possibilities of .203, and an MG on a tripod can deliver accurate fire at over 1km distance not since yesterday, but since WWI. What optics don't do is to clear the line of sight, and it's pretty dumb to worsen the performances of the infantry issued weapon in 95% of the scenarios to enhance them in the residual 5%.
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  23. The rifle is actually very simple. Except for the burst mechanism, that's an added part not integral to the design, it's made of very few parts. In this rifle. Is very easy to have access/remove the parts that requires more servicing (gas ports and bolt assembly) or that have to be replaced more often (statistically, the recoil spring and the firing pin). You can replace them in seconds and without tools, that was not a given at that time. To completely disassemble the rifle is more complicated, but it had not to be done that often. In almost all the bolt action and semiauto rifles made until then (and several made afther then, think of the Gewehr 41 and 43 for example) the receiver and the trigger group were not made to be removed from the stock that often, infact they were secured with bolts and screws. An M1 Garand for example is made with a completely different philosophy. The rifle is easily disassemblable, but not really field strippable. To have access to the firinng pin, you have to completely take the rifle apart (and have a lot of small parts flying arounf you). What can annoy of this design, is that the entire gas piston is not easily accessible, but in reality, all the "magic" happens under the muzzle cover, that contains the exhaust ports too, is exposed once the muzzle cover is off and can be fully cleaned. The rest of the piston is only a piece of steel to which very little could happen.
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  24. The safety lever had never been a issue IRL. 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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  25. I don’t agree with leaving out blowbacks just because they're blowbacks. Especially the FN1903 and Beretta 1915. The 9X20mm Browning Long, 9mm Glisenti, 8mm Roth Steyr and the military loads of 9mm Steyr develop practically the same energy. The FN and Beretta had not weight disadvantages over the breechlocks (The Beretta was actually the lightest of the pistols firing the four cartridges, and the Steyr M1912 the heaviest). Blowbacks were easier to build, so why are they excluded?
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  26. Yes and no. The Savage design is a delayed blowback. That of Beretta and Grand Power is a breechlock design (the barrel rethreat with the slide until it's unlocked) that derives from that of the Steyr 1912.
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  27. That was the MG15.
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  28. Mind that, for example, the Colt 1911 career in the Navy could have been as long as 5 entire years. In the 1918 Navy trials John D. Pedersen's Remington M53 was the clear winner, it was not adopted only because it couldn't compete price-wise with a model that was already mass produced. The M53 compared favourably with the 1911 in the 1920 Army trials too, but at that point there were too many 1911 around, and not enough reasons to replace them. Browning was surely a gifted designer, but he was not alone.
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  29. That'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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  30. Mind that the military load of the 7mm Mauser, the only relevant for this rifle, develops barely 2787J of energy (173grains at 2300 fps) , that's comparable to the .280 British (that was supposed to be an intermediate cartridge from the start, even if a strong one) and much less than the 7.62 Nato,30-06 Springfield or 8mm Mauser (from 3400 to almost 4000J)
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  31. Actually the bolt's weight in a SMG is usually much more than what's simply needed to keep it closed for enough time to safely shoot the cartridge. The weight is used to slow down the fire rate, that otherwise would easily exceed the 1000RPM (that infact were exceeded in the first SMG, the Villar Perosa of WWI).
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  32. The Liberator was simply made for a use that didn't exist in real life. A French Partisan should have found a lone German soldier (already a mythological figure) so confident to let him approach at arm length to effectively use a single shot, smoothbore, handgun, then the Partisan should have stolen his weapon, to have a real gun. How many times that situation was supposed to happen IRL? An hatchet would have been better, at least it was quieter.
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  33. The goal was exactly to not have a detachable magazine, cause detachable magazines often had feeding issues, cause it was not easy to design a magazine that was so cheap to be discarded on the field, and so tough and consistently built to not have feeding troubles. The problem was real, so that the Brits too designed a tilting magazine for the BREN (they didn't adopt it in the end, but it was even more awkward than that of the Breda).
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  34. I've always found that non-captive guide rods make the replacement of the recoil spring easier without downsides. Many high quality firearms, especially race guns that are more likely destined to be customised, have non-captive recoil springs.
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  35.  @MarvinCZ  That's a backline activity. Only loaded belts are supposed to reach the first line. Rifle's ammos instead comes in nice stripper clips. Another supply line.
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  36.  @MarvinCZ  Instead 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. Had not the Germans got carried by their own dreams, all of them could have been equipped with a single, quite simple, repeating rifle using a single ammunition. A lot of common logistic.
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  37. It served well, but it was already quite outdated the moment it had been adopted.
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  38. The MG34 was adopted by the Germans only in 1938. Only its bolt was composed of 28 precision machined parts (that of the Breda was composed of... 4 parts recoil spring included), the barrel change took way longer than that of the Breda and, when used as an LMG, to reload one of its "drum" 50 rounds magazines required more time and actions than to reload the magazine of a Breda 30 three times.
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  39. What really helped was the straight op-rod (M1's bent one, in full auto, became a spring whose armonics interfered with the burst, jamming the action) and to get rid of BAR's magazines, that were pretty bad, and were reliable only if helped by the inertia of the heavy bolt of the BAR).
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  40.  @tyrrannoform  The front part of the BM59'a op rod is a short and straight cylinder. That of the M1 is longer and slightly bent (WWII's GIs had to be specifically instructed to not straighten it, since it could seem it had been bent by chance during use). The elasticity of the long and bent op rod easen extraction, but it interferes with an eventual burst.
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  41. It was not illegal in any way. It was completely jacketed, and so it was completely legal.
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  42.  @Jay22222  You stated: "the problem is a whole lot worse if even when/if the ammo is okay, your zero is fixed and not where you’d like them to be at that" So the fixed sights were what made the problem "a lot worse". Now, I can understand that, for some reason (that I suspect to be mainly psychological. It's not like the Finns are a population that naturally shoot to human-sized targets with metallic sights past 300m) the Finns disliked it, but it remains the fact that the same solution became common after the war.
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  43.  @Victor-hg1lo  According to? The .223 Remington had been made specifically to pierce through a standard steel helmet at 600m.
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  44. The similar .32 Extra Short had about the same power than a modern .25 ACP.
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  45. Yes. The subsequent S18-1100 was full auto capable.
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  46. Yeah. He was killed by the 6.5 version.
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  47. And the action is much more closed, one of the problems of the Garand actions, and it has several stamped parts to ease production... I wonder if this rifle, converted in in .223 Rem, competed with the AR15, instead of the Winchester Lightweight Military Rifle, what would have happened.
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  48. Browning's designs have nothing pure. His best designs (1911 included) had been revised multiple times according to the requests of the customer to reach their final form, and the best iterations of several (IE the BAR) had not been designed by Browning.
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  49. It's quite simple actually.
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  50. There are three possible reasons why the ROF slowed down when they adopted the fixed firing pin. 1) Rebound. In the previous model, when the cartridge was fired, and started pushing rearward, the bolt already rebounded vs the receiver and was slightly retreating, so the recoil found less resistance. 2) Advanced primer ignition. The fixed firing pin fired the primer when the cartridge was still seating, and so the bolt was still pushing forward due to inertia. So part of the recoil energy was used to stop the bolt. 3) The hammer spring. It was compressed when the bolt was pushed forward, so it aided the rearward movement.
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