Marlin UD-42 from the Dutch Resistance
Forgotten Weapons
•
7m 40s
The UD-42 was originally the design of Carl "Gus" Swebilius, who was at the time (1940) working for the High Standard company. It failed to attract interest form the US military, but was appealing to the Dutch government for arming their East Indies colonies. A contract for 15,000 guns was signed, but High Standard did not have the production capacity to fill the order. Instead, the United Defense company took up the contract, and then subcontracted the actual manufacture to Marlin.
Production startup issues slowed production, however, and it was April 1941 before the first gun was completed. Delivery would not come before the Japanese completed their conquest of the Dutch East Indies, and the guns were repurposed. They were ideal for OSS and SOE use in supplying Resistance organizations in occupied Europe, and the bulk of the guns would be distributed in this way, from Greece to Norway and most everywhere in between. This particular example is in Holland, with provenance back to an OSS covert supply drop.
Many thanks to the anonymous collector who let me take a look at this piece and bring you a video on it!
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
WW1 Rifle Mud Covers: Lebel & Gewehr 98
Given the prevalence of muddy horrible trenches in World War 1, why didn't anybody design dust covers to protect the actions of their combat rifles? Well, they actually did... and today we are looking at both French and German examples.
The French model was a very simple contoured sheet metal...
-
Italian Trials Czech ZK-391 Semiauto ...
The ZK-391 is one in a series of Czech developmental semiautomatic rifles designed by Josef Koucký. It was developed initially in 1939 (hence the "39" in the designation), and was tested by the Italian military in 1943. It was ultimately not put into production, but nonetheless is an interesting ...
-
Prototype Winchester WW1 .50 Cal Anti...
With the advent of the tank in World War One, antitank rifles became a priority for many countries, to provide infantry with some weapon to counter the new armored threat. The best known example of these (and the only one to see significant production before the end of WWI) was the German Tankgew...
