Welcome to out first episode of Forgotten History! This will be an occasional series looking at interesting events and places in military history. We will begin with the capture of Fort Douaumont on February 25, 1916...

This video was made possible by Military History Tours, and it is the firs...

The imposing heights of the Vercors Massif form a very impressive natural defensive position in the southeastern corner of France. It was here that the French Resistance had its largest set piece battle against German occupation forces, in the summer of 1944.

Plan Montagnards originally called...

When one visits the Montfaucon American Memorial (to the soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne offensive), one finds the road in flanked by a pair of (mostly) surviving German bunkers. These standing artifacts of 20th-century warfare are something that we simply don't have in North America, and I find th...

With the surprise capture of Fort Douaumont in February 1916, the French reinforced all the remaining forts around the city of Verdun, and would hold them all successfully for many months. In fact, the only other fort in the area to fall would be Fort Vaux, in June of 1916.

In the chaos of th...

The German army captured Blanc Mont Ridge in the early months of World War One and occupied it throughout the years of fighting, fending off repeated French assaults throughout 1915 and 1916. While the ridge looks far from imposing, it is a piece of high ground which overlooks a large part of the...

Here at a forested railroad crossing outside Compiègne in Picardy, France, two rail cars met in November of 1918 - one with members of the Allied/Entente high commend and ones with representatives of Imperial Germany. They met here to end 5 years of slaughter; the German delegation being presente...

The CAL (Carabine Automatique Leger; Light Automatic Carbine) was FN's first attempt to produce a 5.56mm rifle as a counterpart to the 7.62mm FAL. While light and handy, the CAL was a relatively complex and expensive design, and failed to garner many sales. About 12,000 were made in total before ...

As usual, I have a recap today of the final prices of the guns I filmed from the most recent Morphy's auction (Fall 2018). One of the things I noticed here is an opportunity for people interested in some of the big tripod-mounted early heavy machine guns. They aren't cheap my most standards, but ...

Thanks to the generosity of a collector in the Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters, we have a chance today to take a look at a pre-production FG-42, serial number 015. This is one of the guns manufactured by Rheinmetall (the series production would be handed over to Krieghoff) in ...

Today I am joined by Mr. Stephen Petroni, chairman of FESAC - the Foundation for European Societies of Arms Collectors. FESAC is an organization set up to advocate for and protect the rights of European arms collectors at the European Union level. Here in the United States many people shrug off g...

I have been trying to get my hands on Fedorov M1916 rifle for a while, and I finally had the opportunity at the NFC, part of the British Royal Armouries. The Fedorov was designed in the years just before World War One, and originally chambered for a proprietary 6.5mm cartridge (also designed by F...

Century International Arms has imported a quantity of Ethiopian ammunition, and asked me to do a video on it. So, I have a three-part evaluation here: appearance and packaging, live fire testing (including velocity and consistency), and teardown and bullet weight consistency. This ammunition was ...

Egypt was the first country to adopt the FN-49 rifle, and its purchases actually predated FN's development of a method for mounting a telescopic sight to the rifles. So Egypt came up with its own solution, using Czech Meopta 2.5 power scopes.

However, by the time Egypt was making its last ord...

This video has been updated from its original form to remove a reference to an erroneous claim that it did not effectively obturate, and was thus fired from the hip.

The Dreyse needle rifle (or zundnadelgewehr, which translates to needle firing rifle) was a major step forward in military rifle...

Created by noted South African gun designer Tony Neophytou, the NTW-20 is a bolt action anti-materiel rifle made in 20x82mm, 20x110mm, and 14.5x115mm. The weapon began as idea to use the large quantities of surplus 14.5mm ammunition available at the time, and a recognition that the 14.5mm Soviet ...

Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named "Lada", and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle was mechanically an AK, but had a number improved features including a thumb-operated ...

The Cobra was one of a variety of semiautomatic compact carbines designed and manufactured in Rhodesia in the latter half of the 1970s for sale as civilian self-defense weapons (primarily for rural farming families). Unlike most of these guns, the Cobra was designed as a hammer-fired, closed bolt...

I had a chance to spend a couple days filming at Movie Armaments Group up in Toronto, and took a minute to speak with Charlie Taylor, their Managing Director. MAG is has been around for 25 years supplying guns to the film and TV industry, and Charlie has immense experience working with blank-fire...

China adopted this pistol in 1998 in a domestic 5.8x21mm cartridge, and also manufactured examples like this one in 9x19mm Parabellum for export. It is a design built around a sheet metal skeleton holding the fire control parts, with a polymer grip assembly that can be changed out. A rotating bar...

We have a new Brownells BRN-10A reproduction AR-10 to take a look at today, hot off the production line! Brownells is making both AR-15 and AR-10 rifles in their "Retro" reproduction line, but this is definitely the more interesting one to me. You can piece together a good retro AR-15, but the AR...

Get your copy here: https://amzn.to/2jzWnkI
Or here: https://amzn.to/2JOpMm3

The Wipers Times was a satirical trench newspaper printed from February 1916 until December 1918 by British Captain F.J. Roberts and a crew of assistants. Such papers were not particularly uncommon, but the Wipers Ti...

Available direct: https://www.vickersguide.com/books

I am proud to announce the newest book in the Vickers Guide series: Kalashnikov (Volume 1)! Cowritten by Larry Vickers, Rob Stott, and myself, this is a beautiful exhibition of 7.62x39mm AK rifles (smallbore AKs and other types will be cover...

Experiment and Trial, by Mathieu Willemsen, is a catalogue of the 218 guns in the collection of the Dutch School of Musketry, which existed from 1855 until 1933. It includes a large number of very unusual prototypes, as the School was a testing ground for designs submitted by inventors hoping to ...

If you have been looking for a comprehensive reference work on the P38 pistol but balked at paying $400 for the out-of-print three volumes by Warren Buxton, the solution is here. Newly available in English is "The P.38 Pistol" by Alexander Krutzek, with Dietrich Jonke and Orvel Reichert. Based in...