After he failed to win US military adoption of his toggle-locked rifle design, John Pedersen went looking for other countries that might be interested in the gun. One of these was Japan, which experimented with toggle-locked Pedersen rifles and carbines for several years in the early/mid 1930s. T...

The most common Japanese pistols used during World War II were the Type 14 and Type 94 Nambu designs, by a huge margin. However, there were a number of other handguns used in small numbers, and today we're looking at two of those. The first is the Sugiura, essentially a copy of the Colt 1903 made...

Gustloff was a large industrial concern in Germany which made many different weapons for the military. In addition to these, its attempted to market a small-caliber pistol for police or SS use. This pistol used an alloy frame (with steel inserts for durability in crucial areas) and steel slide, w...

During the 1920s and 1930s, a combination of civil wars and international arms embargoes led to a lot of domestic firearms production in China. The size and quality of manufacturing facilities varied widely - everything from massive factories established with European technical assistance to one-...

Andrew Burgess was an extremely prolific gun designer who gets very little recognition today. One of has particularly interesting weapons was a pump-action, folding shotgun. Because Spencer already had a patent on the use of the forearm as the pump, Burgess designed his gun to use a sliding sleev...

The Blake was one of many rifle designs submitted to the US Army trials that would ultimately result in the adoption of the Krag-Jorgensen as the US Army's standard rifle. The main innovation of Blake's design was a unique ammunition "packet" system which held 7 cartridges. The rifle would be loa...

Siam, now known as Thailand, was one of the few independent south Asian nations around the turn of the 20th century. Looking to modernize its military to protect against colonial imposition, is decided in 1903 to adopt a copy of the Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle. Siam (which changed its name to Thailand...

Today's book is really more of a pamphlet than a proper book, but it still serves well given its purpose. It is Rifles of the Snow by Doug Bowser and Powers Dunaway, and it is an introduction and basic handbook of Finnish military rifles - specifically Mosin-Nagants. While Finland used a wide var...

During WWII, the Turkish government wound up in possession of several thousand (between 5k and 10k) French Berthier rifles, mostly 1907/15 models, but also some Mle 1916s. There is some question as to exactly how, but the most likely explanation appears to be a shipment of arms from Syria to Iraq...

The M60 light machine gun is something of a contentious subject. Many veterans who used it in combat in Vietnam remember it very fondly despite its design defects, while many more recent users detest it. I think I know why - because many of the M60s flaws were related to its long-term durability,...

We met up with Greg - who runs Allegheny Arsenal - at a gun show a couple weeks ago, and this is the first of a couple interviews we did with him on the MG34 and its mount. Greg can do anything that needs to be done to a Lafette mount, and stocks all the parts you'll need to get your 34 running a...

Today, we take a look at a reproduction FP45 Liberator pistol. These pistols were originally designed to be scattered across occupied Europe in huge numbers, and literally a million of them were made during WWII. The plans fell through, though, and almost all of them were simply scrapped.

While we were visiting the Institute of Military Technology, we took a few minutes to check out their two 5-barrel Nordenfelt guns and chat with Joe from GardnerGuns.com about them. The Nordenfelt was one of the early manually-operated "machine guns" not seen much in the United States (the Gatlin...

This week, we will be featuring all Swiss weapons here at Forgotten Weapons. Kind of like Shark Week, but more land-locked. We'll kick off today with a video showing you around a Swiss LMG-25 light machine gun we found for sale at Cornet & Company in Brussels (a better gun shop than any I've foun...

The Sturmgewehr 45 (aka Gerat 06H) was the first functional roller-delayed blowback rifle developed, and it was slated to replace the StG44 as Germany's primary combat rifle when WWII ended. We have a reproduction of one made exactly to original spec, and we wanted to see how it would have fared ...

The Volksturmgewehr Gustloff (commonly and incorrectly called the VG1-5) was a last-ditch rifle developed by Germany at the end of World War II. Only a few thousand were made, and they did not make a significant impact on the war. The rifle was intended to are the Volksturm, the German equivalent...

We had the opportunity to take a look at a PTR-44 semiauto reproduction of a German Sturmgewehr today, and it's a gorgeous rifle. There were some issues reported by early owners (including miscut chambers due, actually, to incorrect dimensions on the original German blueprints) so we're eager to ...

It may look like we're only interested in military arms, but that's not the case. We're mostly interested in military guns, but there are plenty of other interesting corners of the firearms world to explore too.

While we were visiting one particular collector, we ended up having a great time t...

The "Bigot" was a modification of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol developed by the Office of Strategic Services during WW2. The OSS was a clandestine operations service, the predecessor of the CIA. The Bigot was intended as a way for commandos to quietly eliminate sentries - although we are not sure ...

We have another experimental German WWII piece for you today, Mauser's last-ditch "Volkspistole". It was developed at the end of the war as an extremely inexpensive home guard weapon, although how much use a pistol would have been in fighting off the Red Army and US Army is pretty questionable. T...

Charles Manville developed this weapon in the 1930s as a riot control tool, and they were built in 12ga, 25mm, and 37mm. We should point out that the 12ga version was for tear gas rounds only (like today's 12ga flare launchers) and not safe to use with high-pressure ammunition. Anyway, it was int...

We have a brief video from a friend of the Forgotten Weapons site showing a standard M1915 Chauchat in use. Although short, the video does a good job of showing the gun's rate of fire and general operation. You can see the open magazine design that caused so much trouble, and see how the heavy re...

Today we have one of the oldest guns we've looked at, a Lorenzoni repeating flintlock pistol. The system was designed by an Italian gunmaker in Florence name Michele Lorenzoni. They were made in very small numbers, and the workmanship is stunning, especially considering that they were first manuf...

Japanese Papa Nambu Pistol with Matching Stock