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...

Mauser did not limit their Model 1912 and 1912/14 pistols to just being chambered in 9mm - they also developed a number of prototypes in .45ACP. Today we have a series of three such prototypes showing the sequence of changes in the operating Mechanism used by Mauser. The first uses a friction lev...

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These unique and unmarked prototype .32 ACP pistols are apparently Iver Johnson prototypes - and I can't find any information on them beyond that description from their consignor. One is a simpler example in the white, and the other is a more developed example with both a manual safety and an unu...

This rifle started out its life an a normal M91 Carcano long rifle, before being converted into an experimental self-loader by the Terni Arsenal. Rather than adding a gas piston to the barrel, Terni engineered a short recoil system. The barrel and bolt recoil together about a centimeter (3/8 inch...

The Pavesi Model 1942 is a prototype Italian semiauto rifle chambered for the 8x59 Breda cartridge. It is a short recoil action with a 4-lug rotating bolt, and appears to use a Mannlicher type en bloc clip like a Carcano (no sample clip was available for me to look at). It is marked on the chambe...

This rifle is pretty much a big mystery - I have virtually no good information on it. Through inspection, we know it is a mechanical copy of the Soviet SVT 38 or 40 - it shares the same exact bolt, locking system, and gas system. Even many aesthetic features like the metal front handguard, muzzle...

David Marshall Williams was hired by the Winchester company in 1939, and would have a hand in a number of major projects during his 10-year stint with the company, although best known for the M1 Carbine. The Carbine was an offshoot of the Winchester G30 and G30M rifles, which would also evolve in...

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In the previous video, we looked at the Winchester G30M rifle as it was submitted to Marine Corps trials in 1940. When the trial result came back with the G30M in last place, Winchester immediately assigned David Williams to work on adapting it to resolve the problems found in testing. What Willi...

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The Hagen is an early semiauto rifle designed by a Norwegian, manufactured in the UK, and tested by several different militaries - but adopted by none. It uses a long stroke gas piston and a two-lug rotating bolt to operate. Compared to other contemporary rifles, it was a quite light and sleek de...

In a last hopeful attempt to get a rifle adopted and produced for the US military, John Pedersen designed his own copy of the M1 Garand rifle in the late 1930s (approximately 1939). His toggle-locked rifles had been irreversibly rejected, and the Garand rifle fully adopted by 1936. Pedersen's exa...

The Swiss factories of SIG and W+F Bern both produced a remarkable number and variety of experimental self-loading rifles in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Nothing would be adopted by the Swiss military until the StG-57, but these two firms were continuously working to develop a military self-load...

The Colt 1907 was one of the significant developmental iterations of the design that would eventually be adopted as the Model 1911 by the US military. This pistol began as John Browning’s Model 1900 in .38 caliber, with the .45ACP cartridge being first created for the Model 1905 iteration. That 1...

On October 1, 1928, the US War Department published a request for semiautomatic rifle designs. The Colt company submitted this .276 caliber rifle to the ensuing trials in 1929. It was designed by Jonathan Edward "Ed" Browning (half brother of John Moses Browning) and was a recoil-operated, tiltin...

Like most other nations with modern military forces. Czechoslovakia was interested in developing a semiautomatic infantry rifle in the 1920s and 1930s. The most successful such rifle to come out of Czech factory during this time was The ZH-29, but it did have competition. A major series of trials...

With the failure of the G30M and G30R to lead to any military orders (American or otherwise), the Winchester company took the advice of the Ordnance Department to scale the design up to an automatic rifle. The BAR had a number of known shortcomings in WWII, and the military was interested in repl...

In the 1930s, the Italian military (like all major military forces at the time) was investigating options for a semiautomatic service rifle. Beretta's Tulio Marengoni developed one such rifle, and submitted it in two forms.

The first version of the rifle was produced in 1931, chambered for the t...

With the death of Jonathan "Ed" Browning in 1939, development of the Winchester G30 rifle was passed into the hands of a new employee at Winchester by the name of David Marshall Williams. Williams would become widely known as "Carbine" Williams in later years thanks to Jimmy Stewart and Hollywood...

During the 1920s, a lot of experimental rifle development work was being done in the US. The military was interested in finding a semiautomatic rifle, and plenty of inventors were eager to get that valuable military contract. One particular item of interest to the military was the possibility of ...