Experimental AG-42B Conversion to 7.62mm NATO
Circa 1954, Sweden was starting to look for a new self-loading rifle to adopt for its infantry. The 6.5x55mm cartridge was a good round, but the idea of having ammunition compatibility with its...
View ArticleHaenel’s Prototype Simplified Sturmgewehr StG45(H)
In December 1944, the Haenel company received permission to produce a simplified version of the StG-44 Sturmgewehr. The idea was to keep the mechanical system and controls as similar as possible to...
View ArticleDSA’s Unique Titanium FAL Project
DS Arms got some billet titanium and decided to make a batch of titanium receivers and other parts. This turned out to be a nightmarish amount of work, and two of the receivers had to be scrapped,...
View ArticleModern Stocked Pistol: B&T’s Universal Service Weapon (USW)
The genesis of the B&T USW was a two and a half hour car ride home from a youth hockey game, when Karl Brugger and a friend were thinking about how to improve police effectiveness with handguns....
View ArticleAR-1 “Parasniper”– The First Armalite
The first rifle produced by Armalite began in 1952 as a project between the brothers-in-law, Charles Dorchester and George Sullivan (no relation to later Armalite engineer L. James Sullivan). Sullivan...
View ArticleSamopal vz 38: Czechoslovakia’s Interwar Drum-Fed SMG in .380
Military interest in a submachine gun was late in Czechoslovakia, but by the late 1930s a development program was put into place. Interestingly, the main use case for an SMG was seen as being a...
View ArticleURZ: Czech Prototype Universal Modular Weapon
The URZ (Univerzální Ruční Zbraň, or Universal Hand Weapon) was a 1966 project designed by Jiří Čermák (designer of the vz.58 rifle). He envisioned a weapons system family with largely interchangeable...
View ArticleAK fm/54: Prototype Swedish Paratrooper Rifle
Check out Headstamp Publishing’s extensive catalog of excellent books: https://www.headstamppublishing.com/home-forgotten As Sweden experimented with updating the AG42 Ljungman in the 1950s, one of...
View ArticleRoller Delay in France: The H&K 33F (Trials & Export Models)
Check out Headstamp Publishing’s extensive catalog of excellent books: https://www.headstamppublishing.com/home-forgotten When France was looking to replace the MAS 49/56 rifle for military service in...
View ArticleFox .32: Police Prototype of CZ’s First Pistol
Alois Tomiška, best know for the Little Tom pistol, was one of the original founders of the South Bohemia Armory, which became CZ of Strakonice. The first pistol produced by the company was his “Fox”...
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