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

  1.  @andyrihn1  Uh, no. In the service life test only the 92F and the H&K P7 reached the 7000 rounds threshold with all three pistols intact. The P226 cracked a frame at 6523 rounds fired, but was allowed to pass, since the requirement was just for a service life, on average, of over 5000 rounds. the P226 failed the dry mud test, with only 79% reliability in those conditions. Being that significantly lower than the 1911 control weapon, it should have been eliminated due to the rules of the competition (notice that instead, in the XM17 trials, there was conveniently not a M9 control weapon around to be seen). It was allowed to keep on competing, because the Army wanted at least two manufacturers to compete on price, so it was simply decided that the dry mud test result was "not so important" and the result was simply not considered. So, not counting the result of the tests were the 92F performed better than the P226, then the P226 performed better than the 92F.
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  2. You were firing single base propellant cartridges (more unstable than the double base used for 6.5 ammos) more than 40 years old. The stabilizer content at least halved, and the flame temperature doubled, in respect to new ammos.
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  3. "after taking the time to look at these guns in-house and assess them and do some engineering work, presumably, Colt came to the conclusion that no, they weren't actually interested in further developing" a functional gun, and that people would have drooled over the Double Eagle instead.
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  4. It had been made in 20mm and 37mm.
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  5.  @inhumanfilth681  The .41AE was the way to go, since you could convert a 9mm by only changing magazine, barrel and recoil spring and NOT the slide, but so it went.
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  6. A shame Drachinifel contributed to spread that bogus info (he never stated the quality being "all over the place, generally trending towards bloody awful. Ocasionally in spec", but that's internet). Infortunately he does not read Italian, so he has to rely on what he finds in English. Second hand sources, wartime propaganda, etc... A common problem between self-made historians. The only source for the problem with Italian naval shells was Adm. Iachino, that had to justify his fiasco at Gaudo / Cape Matapan, and had been debunked by other sources, (IE Adm. Emilio Brenta, or the same Fire Director Officer of the Vittorio Veneto ad Gaudo). Reality is that in the conditions of the clash at Gaudo, no WWII battleship would have hit anything. As a matter of fact, the Italian 152mm and 203mm are the only Cruiser naval guns that obtained some +20km hits during WWII (even twice in the same battle, so it was not a fluke).
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  7. For 1934 It was simple to make too. The BAR, BREN, MG34 and Type99 (and both the BREN and MG1934 had been selected in 1938, the Type99 in 1939) had more complex machining. Among the most used LMGs of the time, Only the DP28 could be considered simpler to manufacture. But generally, though I like it, it seems like a promising prototype put in production before all the elements had been figured out throughly. Very good and simple operating mechanism, barrel change mechanism, general ergonomy, controls, gas settings… But three sets of lugs (it's a nightmare to match bolts and receivers)? That bipod (I’ve seen better in WWI)… no handle to grab a scorching hot barrel… And that magazine… It could have easily been so MUCH better.
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  8. Italy surrended to the allies. In the north Germans build a puppet state to serve their interests.
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  9. Several variants actually. The smaller ones were toys, the bigger ones, fully functional rifles, although firing reduced cartridges.
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  10. The heavier the bolt and the longer the bolt travel, the slower the fire rate. The spring tension has little importance (but it must be enough to reduce the speed of the bolt to values compatible with the survival of the receiver before the bolt impacts with it). Service SMGs (this one, the M3 Grease Gun, the STEN...) have fare heavier bolts than what's simply required to safely shoot their respective ammos, exactly to reduce the fire rate to the desired value.
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  11. Nothing to do. Of italian guns, it resembles more a Bernardelli P18, that was in itself inspired by the SIG P220 family.
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  12. +besternamedensgibtxd When the round is fired, in the barrel, between the bullet and the bottom of the case, that lay on the bolt, it develops a very high pressure, that locks the walls of the case against the chamber, so preventing the hot gasses to be driven back to the face of the shooter. If the bolt begin to travel backwards too early, when the pressure in the barrel is still high, then the thin metal of the case is stretched between the chamber (since the walls of the case are still locked to it by the pressure) and the bolt that is travelling backwards. That way the case can break, and the hot gasses and brass splinters can hit the shooter's face, with unpleasant consequencies.
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  13. This gun has never been designed to be an aircraft SMG. It only happened that the first 350 samples (of over 14.000 produced) 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. The MGs used on the aircrafts had a different mounting, without the round plate and with normal aerial sights. The round plate was intended to be used on the field 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. Its rate of fire serves the same purpose of the 1200 rpm ROF of the MG-42. they both had not been designed for suppression fire (heavy MGs were intended for that role), but to cover obligatory passages (through the barbed wires, or the mountain trails) and fire only when you actually see the enemy. Since the enemy is no stupid, he is visible only for a brief time, and, for this, a huge ROF is required to hit him. In 1916 Capt. Bassi, creator of the Arditi, begun to use it, without the shield, to clear the enemy trenches. A stretch ot trench is 20m long at best. With a single burst of the Villar Perosa you can saturate it without even seeing. That's useful, since the assaults were often performed at night.
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  14. There is no point in using asbestos in a buffer pad. It's frail.
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  15. Well, really not. The M1915 is a full size pistol, not a compact, but The 1911 is bigger in every dimension. The 1911 is 32mm tick, 210mm long, and 136mm high, and weights 1105g without cartridges. The Beretta M1915 is 29mm X 171mm X 131mm, and weights 850g. The 1911, thanks to a long refinement process started with the 1900, was ergonomically very comfortable for those days despite the dimensions. It would be interesting to hear a comparison with the Beretta 1915 in this respect.
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  16. To switch the bolt of the rifle (the Carcano bolt is a single piece that came out simply pulling the trigger) takes actually less time than to charge a live round and a grenade in the launcher.
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  17. The limit is 5 rounds for hunting rifles and 29 rounds for sporting rifles, regardless of the caliber. IE the Nuova Jager LT12 is an AR15 in .223 Rem, with a 12" barrel, classified as a sport weapon, and so sold with a 29 round magazine. ;)
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  18.  Superdude70  You are welcome!
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  19.  @robosoldier11  The analysis is of 1912. Then WWI happened (and semiautos like the Mondragon and the Remington Model 8) didn't impress there, unfit to trench warfare, they were relegated to the balloons of the artillery observers). However, this analysis, and the observations made during the war, led to the Terni 1921 prototype, already in an intermediate cartridge (7.35X32mm), that had been long evaluated. Then it was decided to not go with the intermediate cartridge and run a contest for a semiauto in 6.5X52 Carcano (the one won by the Scotti Model X). Then evaluations made on the Scotti in Etiopia, and the decision to switch to 7.35X51 cartridge anyway led to a new contest, that didn't end due to WWII.
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  20. +Alan Taggart +Grand Gousier However, the French had been the first to try to even the playfield, equipping the infantry with mass portable automatic fire, in the form of the Chauchat.
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  21. When it was used, it was not only decent. It was the best.
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  22. +Helghastdude Beretta 34, M91, MAB38, Breda PG, Breda 37, Breda 38, Breda SAFAT, Breda 20/65... No really successful semiauto rifle had been designed until the end of the 30s. IE, until the end of the 20s John Garand wasted ten years playing with a quirky primer acutated blowback design, then switched to gas actuated, the rifle was adopted, after seven years of ironing out problems, in 1937, but the M1 became really reliable only with a last modification done three years after its introduction, in early 1940. Probably this rifle is closer to be a good service rifle than a M1 prototype of the same year.
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  23. You have to handload them. However it's one of the easiest ammo to handload, since the 9mm Glisenti is dimentionally identical to the 9mm Parabellum, but with 1/4 less load. (IE, a recommended load for the 9mm glisenti is 3.3 grs Bullseye, and a recommended one for the 9mm Para is 4.4 grs Bullseye). The 9mm Glisenti always used truncated cone bullets.
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  24. It uses regular Carcano clips. They are not that hard to find. ;)
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  25. If you watch a video of the shooting of a Carcano, you can see that the aiming eye is way back, and the thumb had to be below the receiver already at the moment of shooting. However to have that recoiling mass close to the head, and to adapt the position of the trigger hand, is surely discomfortable, and is surely part of the reason the conversion wasn't adopted.
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  26. The 9mm Glisenti is more powerful by far. The 9mm Glisenti is slightly more powerful than the 9mm Makarov.
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  27. The original Glisenti load was almost identical to the original 7.65 Parabellum load (since, like the 9mm Parabellum, it derived from that cartridge, but the designers of the MBT, differently from those of the DWM, didn't took advantage of the larger case to enhance the load), so, 1/4 less than the 9mm para load (literally, 3.3 grains Bullseye is a good 9mm glisenti load, and 4.4 grains Bullseye is a typical 9mm para load). However, during WWI, 9mm Glisenti loads had been enhanced, since the cartridge was primarly used in the Villar Perosa SMG, and blowback SMGs are pretty strong actions. For example, USCco, during the war, made for the Italian Army a batch of 84 million Glisenti cartridges loaded with 4 grains bullseye, that's only 10% less than a typical 9mm para load. Those "hot" cartridges were not especially marked, and were in the Army magazines, so, a 9mm Glisenti pistol made in the '20s had to be safe to shoot them too. So, what happens if you tries to shoot a load that's 10% hotter than what the pistol is designed to handle? Nothing extraordinary. We are still in the safety margins of any pistol design. When the Beretta designers declared that the pistol could handle a 9mm para cartridge (obviously not +P or +P+, that didn't existed at that time), they were not mad or irresponsible. Simply YOU ARE PUTTING UNNECESSARY STRAIN IN AN ACTION THAT WAS DESIGNED FOR MILDER LOADS, and that is 90 years old too. In the long run, you'll almost surely have some damage in the action. Most likely in the slide. Moreover, if the recoil spring has weakened with time, you'll probably have some overpressure problem with the cases, and even some case head failure.
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  28. +Adrian Larkins First, there is brand power. Mauser was very good at selling his products, that were generally good, but sometimes not so exceptional, and the C96 is a sample of the latters. Second, the C96 was a 1896 design, when semiauto pistols were in their infancy. In 1910 there were many other design to compete with. Third, concauses. The C96 had not been really a success until WWI (it won contracts only for 7000 guns until then), but the fact that it had been round for 20 years (known design), the fact that Mauser had the capability to deliver them, and the hurry of the war made that the Austrian and German governments ordered 50.000 and 150.000 guns respectively in 1916. At that point the success of the broomhandle was secured, while in 1916, the Vitali 1910 was already a forgotten prototype.
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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. the "exposed trigger bar" is actually a disconnector. It disconnects the trigger from the hammer if the slide is not in full battery. So it's a safety feature that prevents out of battery firing. You can't fire the gun touching it.
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  31. +Jon-Paul Filkins It's the contrary. They didn't want a detachable magazine from the start. Cause at that time it was really difficult to manufacture a detachable magazine that was, at the same time, so well and consistently built to not have feeding issues, and so cheap to be discarded on the field. The problem was real, so much that the Brits too designed a tilting magazine for the BREN. In the end they didn't adopt it, but it's reloading was even more awkward than that of the Breda 30.
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  32. At the end of WWI the studies of the Italian Army concluded that the bolt action rifle was obsolete and almost useless. The submachinaguns demonstrated to be much more useful in trench warfare, so the suggestion was to replace the bolt action rifles with "moschetti automatici" ("automatic carabines") as soon as possible. They first started to design a real assault rifle (Terni mod 21, 7.65X40mm intermediate cartridge, select fire, 25 round magazine), but the commission that tested it, probably mainly composed by traditionalists, found it unsaticfactory ("this weapon has all the inconvenient of the automatic weapons without having their advantages"). At that point they thought the semiauto rifle to be a good compromise between the bolt action and the automatic, so made the first concourse for a semiauto rifle, in the early '30 (Beretta M.31, MBT 29 and Scotti Mod. X). The Scotti Mod X won that, but, first that it could be officially adopted, the army decided to switch cartridge, from the 6.5X52 to the 7.35X51. Then they decided to have another concourse (Scotti Mod X, Beretta M37, Breda 1935 PG and Armaguerra 39) this time won by the Armaguerra. At that point the war had already started, and it was too late to adopt a new main battle rifle (even the Soviets had to stop to produce the optmal SVT 40 and revert to the Moisin). "Better is the enemy of good."
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  33. +burger1690 Cause the mistake was not in the rifle, but in the cartridge. It was clear from the start (and I mean the start, from the Federov Avtomat, if not from the Cei Rigotti) that "select fire", in a weapon with the weight of a rifle, required an intermediate round to make the burst controllable. For that reason the British, after the war, proposed the 7mm British as the universal NATO cartridge. But the US Army didn't accept a round less powerful then the 30-06, so the 7.62X51 was adopted instead. The British, discouraged, adopted the FAL in semiauto only, cause, with the 7.62X51, the possibility to control the burst was only theoretical. The Italians made the BM59, with a complex muzzle brake and an integral bipod, to make it's burst at least a bit controllable, and the US replaced the M14 as soon as they realized that the guy with the M14 was outgunned by the guy with the AK-47.
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  34. Most of the magazine fed LMGs had top mounted magazine, while many SMGs, until the end of WWII had lateral ones. That was not cause they wanted them to be strange, but cause, to fire in prone position, bottom magazines are a nuisance, much more than offset sights (that really are not a problem at all in a MG of any kind).
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  35. The MAS 49/56 semiauto and the MAT 49 SMG.
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  36. The ammunition quality issue is often repeated, but unsourced. There is no proof that the 381/50 shot worse in battle than in trials. The same pictures taken by the British at Gaudo shows a longitudinal dispersion of about 2% of the distance of the Italian salvos, that, at that time, was considered good by any navy even in trials (US Navy experienced a 2.2% dispersion from the 16"/45 in 1941, and a 1.9% dispersion of the 16"/50 still in 1944 and they didn't have the low trajectory of the Italian 381), and the Vittorio Veneto was running at 28 knots. The delay coils were installed on the Littorio class battleships in 1942, further tightening the patterns.
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  37. You are welcome! :)
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  38. Bakelite
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  39. Tight tolerances IS a thing. A thing that made several weapon designs VERY sensible to dirt.
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  40. It isn't infact. Both works with the principle of accelerating the bolt carrier rearward at a much greater velocity than the bolt head, so, in practice, exchanging the mass of the bolt required to keep the action closed in a simple blowback design, with the accelerated speed of a part of it, according to the cinetic energy formula. The method to achieve this (levers, rollers or inclined surfaces) isn't so important.
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  41. Judging from the sound, it seems to be substantially subsonic, not only barely subsonic.I bet the books are right.
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  42. Well, from a modern day point of view, a 9mm Glisenti is a 9mm Para that uses a 123-125grs truncated cone bullet and is slightly subsonic off the shelf, so, a round with the same charateristics, IN THEORY, should work. And infact, the Glisenti loads are similar to some load that reloaders comes up with when they want to make 9mm Para subsonic ammos with 123-125 grs bullets. BUT that's not granted. Since bullet weight and speed are not all. Weapons tend to function better with the loads they were designed for also in terms of burning speed of the powder, primer charateristics and so on. So, is better to use loads that had been studied for 9mm Glisenti weapons. http://www.grurifrasca.net/Sito/Ricarica/pistole/9glisenti.html
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  43. Italians could have done so directly in 1891, Mauser was one of the designers who participated in the selection of the rifle at the time, and various style of stripper-clip-fed fifles were tested. They chose to use the en-block clip instead, cause the loading was faster this way. And that was still the case in the '30s.
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  44. When talking about a semiauto shotgun action borrowed to a carbine, it has to be taken in account that 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. 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 every few hundreds rounds. To use that action to fire .223 Rem rounds is even an overkill.
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  45. No, first than the M1915 Beretta was a dedicated producer of shotguns. Being in the business since 16th century is well likely they made many flintlock pistols in the past centuries, but the M1915 was the first modern design.
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  46. ***** Unfortunately there is an attitude between commentators of military equipements, being them "experts" or not, that could be described as "if there is something different to what we are used to, then there has to be something wrong in it". That "wrong" was rapidly "theoretically" identified, and then passed from a commentator to another as a "fact". An example is the manlicher clip fed system for rifles. Almost every description of it's efficiency contains a statement like "the bottom opening for the discharge of the spent clips was prone to let debris and dirt enter in the mechanism". Unfortunately, the only real-life comparative study of the efficiency of this system VS the closed magazine (the observations of Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov, the designer of the Fedorov Automat, on the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War), showed the exact opposite. On the winter battelfields, frozen mud and snow rapidly get stuck into the magazines of the Moisin Nagant, quickly rendering them single shooters, while the passage of the clips kept the action of the Steyr Manlicher clean and functional as repeaters. All in all the Chauchat was an exceptional design. A design that permitted to produce 262,000 of them during the war in a partly invaded country, VS only 50.000 Lewis Gun produced in both UK and US. As a single soldier, maybe I would prefer to have a Lewis Gun in my hands, but as an army (and as a soldier too) I would greatly prefer to have five times more LMGs on the frontline.
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  47. It falls for gravity. If the clip si a little deformed, it maybe not fall alone, but it will anyway when the next clip is pushed in.
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  48. Never. They had been used by the Police shooting team until the '60s. With good results in international competitions.
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  49. No, you only have to break the action open, like in a double barrel.
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  50. In a delayed blowback gun, ANY system (roller, lever, radial, gas...) the bolt/slide starts to travel rearwards the same moment the round is fired. The delay only makes so that the movement is slow enough that the bullet exits from the barrel before the case had been stretched enough to break it (the function that the simple mass of the bolt has in a pure blowback system). Then, in the case of the first gun shown here (the Steyr GB) it’s rather questionable if an opening half way through the barrel, from where the spilled gas has to fill a relatively large space can really act to delay the opening of the action until pressure drops to safe level. Probably it acts just like a buffer, preventing the slide to slam into the frame at a speed dangerous for the integrity of the gun (and detrimental for the comfort of the shooter), while the action is largely a pure blowback.
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