Colt 608: The AR15 as a Pilot’s Survival Rifle
As part of its effort to build out the AR-15 family of small arms, Colt introduced the Model 608 in 1965. This was intended to be an aircraft survival rifle, able to pack disassembled into a small...
View ArticleWF-51: A Swiss Intermediate-Cartridge Copy of the FG-42
After World War Two the Swiss needed a new self-loading military rifle to replace their K-31 bolt actions. Two major design tracks followed; one being a roller-delayed system based on the G3 at SIG...
View ArticleThe Experimental SOE Welrod MkI Prototype
The Welrod was a program to develop a silent assassination pistol for British SOE (Special Operations Executive) late in 1942. It needed to be chambered in the .32 ACP cartridge, be effective to a...
View ArticleWF-54: The Swiss FG-42 Scaled up to 7.5×55
https://youtu.be/OJrcPi5ItKo After World War Two the Swiss needed a new self-loading military rifle to replace their K-31 bolt actions. Two major design tracks followed; one being a roller-delayed...
View Articlesa81 KRASA: Czechoslovakia’s Ultra-Compact Lost PDW
The Krása project (which translates as “beauty”, but is also a shortening of “short assault rifle” – “KRÁtký SAmopal”) is a fascinating piece of Czech small arms development. In 1976, the...
View ArticleZB47: A Truly Weird Czech SMG
The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38;...
View ArticlePraga I: A Blow-Forward Bullpup Semi-Auto-Selectable Vickers Gun
The Praga I was the first machine gun design from noted Czech arms designed Vaclav Holek. Three examples were made for Czech military testing in 1922, but they were not acceptable. Instead, this...
View ArticleSamostril Netsch: Bizarre Prototype Czech Automatic Rifle
When Czechoslovakia began looking for new small arms in the early 1920s, one of the things they were interested in was a “samostřil” – something akin to the automatic rifle in English. A select-fire...
View ArticlePraga I-23: Prototype Belt-Fed Predecessor of the ZB26
Vaclav Holek’s first machine gun design for the Czech military was the Praga I, built in 1922 and based heavily on the Vickers/Maxim system. However, it became clear that the military wanted something...
View ArticleAimpoint’s Only Gun: The PC-80 Symmetrical Action
Today we are looking at the entire scope of Aimpoint’s firearms development division…which is actually just this one firearm. Aimpoint was founded in 1975 as a partnership between Arne Ekstrand (a...
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