Book Review: Automatwaffen II
Forgotten Weapons
•
3m 8s
It's a bit of a different book review today - since we've been looking at Swiss arms all week (and there's a really unique one coming up tomorrow), we needed to find a book on the Swiss. What we have is one of 9 or 10 volumes on Swiss military arms, both issued and experimental. This volume (the only one of the bunch we have in our reference library) focuses on machine guns and mortars, and it has a tremendous number of photos of really unusual firearms. It was printed in either Germany or Switzerland, and the text is all German unfortunately - but the illustrations alone are worth the price. We picked it up overseas several years ago, and have not been able to find any of its companion volumes - if you know of a source for them, please let us know!
The full title is Bewaffnung und Ausrustung der Schweizer Armee seit 1817, by Christian Reinhart and Michael am Rhyn.
For a more practically useful book dealing with Swiss rifles, I would suggest Joe Poyer's Swiss Magazine Loading Rifles, which is inexpensive, readily available, and does a very good job covering the rifles which are generally found on the market today.
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
Early Automatic Pistols
A general look at a couple of early automatic pistol designs, and what they have in common. We have a Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21, a C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser, and an Astra M900.
-
USMC Johnson Rifle
-
Tarn: A Terrible British WW2 Experime...
The Tarn was a 9x19mm pistol developed by a Polish ex=pat designer named Z. de Lubicz Bakanowski. It was a simple blowback design, with a quite heavy slide and recoil spring. It was manufactured by the Swift Rifle Company, and ten examples were made as prototypes. They were tested formally by the...