Military Weapons From the Past: Winchester M2 Rifle

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 Williams did was to replace the tilting bolt with a virtual duplicate of the Garand’s two-lug rotating bolt. Williams also worked to reduce the weight of the gun, and was able to bring it down to a remarkable 7.5 pounds (3.4kg).

This prototype of the rifle (which Winchester optimistically designated the M2, implying that it would supercede the M1 Garand) was actually made largely from M1 Garand forgings, as Winchester was by this time build M1 rifles on contract. The receiver, bolt, and operating rod in this rifle was converted from Garand parts. Clearly it is not a finished product, and show many signs of being a shop prototype – but it was in this state when it was shown to ReneStudler of the Ordnance Department in early 1941. Studler was impressed by the design, but knew that it would not replace the M1 at that point. However, he urged Winchester to scale the gun down to the .30 Carbine cartridge (which Winchester had themselves developed) and submit it in the second round of the Light Rifle testing which was to happen soon.

Does a two-lug rotating bolt, short stroke gas tappet, and Garand-style operating rod sound like a familiar set of features? Well, there is good reason…

Winchester took Studler’s advice, and the scaled-down version was developed in just a few weeks and proved to be the best gun in the trials. It would be developed quickly into the M1 Carbine, and become the most-manufactured semiauto rifle of WWII. At that point Winchester would set aside the .30-06 side of this rifle design for a little while, as they had plenty of work now with M1 Garand and M1 Carbine production. But we will see the M2/G30M/G30 come back in new form in the next episode…

Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons

Obscure Weapons: The Browning Gas-Toggle Pistol

On the April 20th, 1897, now-legendary firearms-designer John Browning received four patents for various pistol designs. These included two recoil-operated systems, a blowback design and — most interestingly — a pistol using a gas-operated toggle action.

Browning had developed the gas-operated design a few years earlier in 1894 and ’95. It was actually Browning’s first pistol design. Unfortunately, it also proved to be an evolutionary dead end.

Chambered in what would become known as .38 ACP, the prototype reflected Browning’s then-ongoing experimentation with gas-operation. It had a vent on top of the barrel that allowed venting gases to act on a “gas lever” connected to the breech-bolt by way of a toggle link.

Unlike Browning’s later recoil and blowback designs, the gas-toggle pistol didnot feature a slide. To cock the weapon, the shooter pulled the gas lever, bringing the bolt to the rear.

When the pistol fired, the gas lever flipped back toward the operator. A connecting rod then pushed the breech-bolt to the rear, unlocking the breech, ejecting a spent case, cocking the hammer and stripping a new round from the magazine as it returned forward under spring-pressure.

The prototype was 21.6 centimeters long, weighed 964 grams and fed from a seven-round box magazine. It was this pistol that Browning first demonstrated to Colt representatives on the July 3, 1895. They were so impressed with the pistol and Browning’s other designs that they entered into a verbal agreement to purchase production rights to Browning’s pistols.

On the July 24, 1896, Colt bought the manufacturing and sales rights to all four of Browning’s pistol designs. While the blowback and recoil-operated designs would go on to spawn iconic pistols, the gas-operated design languished. Browning built only the single tool-room prototype.

Read the Remainder at Historical Firearms

Military Weapons From the Past: The British EM Series – The First Bullpup Design from the 1950’s

By late 1947 the British Army’s Armaments Design Department had designed three principal rifles for the Infantry Personal Weapon program. The new rifles got their official designations in January 1948.

They were Stanley Thorpe’s EM-1, the EM-2 designed by Capt. Kazimierz Stefan Januszewski and the EM-3, the latter the brainchild of Major J.E.M. Hall, an Australian.

The three designs shared one common design feature — they all featured the bullpup configuration, with the action behind the trigger. This layout produced a compact weapon ideally suited to close-quarters combat.

Hall began developing his rifle in 1944 as a response to problems he encountered during a small-arms course at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. He patented his bullpup design in February 1945.

Hall’s rifle was semi-automatic only and used an interesting vertically-sliding block to lock the rifle’s breech. He meant the weapon to fire a rimless .303-caliber round — although, in practice, the rifle was compatible with a range of cartridges. Hall’s EM-3 bullpup fed from a 10-round, detachable box magazine similar in dimensions to that of the Lee-Enfield’s.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring

Military Weapons From The Past: Smallest Guy Gets The BAR?

One of the most beloved and hated weapons of World War II was the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Another of John Browning’s classic designs, it was literally the first Squad Automatic Weapon. Though it lives on in weapon lore, like we said earlier, it had its detractors.

World War II Marine William Manchester wrote in his memoir Goodbye Darkness–A Memoir of the Pacific War:

“The BAR was a bitch. There were bolts and firing pins, extractors and receiver groups, a sliding leg assembly, a flash hider, a bipod bearing, and a recoil spring and guide. I lack small muscle skills, and I have a mechanical IQ of about 32, but I became adroit with all infantry small arms. I had no choice. It was either that or my ass. The tricky part of the BAR, I remember, was putting your index finger on the checkered surface of the recoil spring guide, turning and pressing until the ends were clear of the retaining shoulders, and then carefully removing the spring and guide. You never hurried that part. If you let the spring get away from you, the guide would rip right through your throat.”

Ian McCollum from Forgotten Weapons takes a look at another commonly heard story about the BAR in this week’s edition of Weapon Trivia Wednesday:

 

There is an oft-repeated myth that the Army in all its infinite wisdom would issue the BAR to the smallest man in each squad so equipped. Seems like just the sort of thing the Army would come up with, right? Well…it actually was (sort of).

Like so many common myths, there is a grain of truth behind this story. Marine squads before WWII were organized as eight men under a squad leader. When it was decided to add a BAR to the squad load out, it had to go to someone, right? Well, each guy in the squad already had a designated role. So who gets the BAR?

A decision was made that the #7 and #8 positions were most appropriate to replace with the BAR (I think those had been regular riflemen) – so one became the BAR gunner and one became his assistant gunner. Problem solved, now the squad had a BAR and the optimal mix of equipment and combat roles.

The factor that hadn’t found its way into the decision-making process was that the squad had also been organized by height, so the men would look impressive and squared away on the parade ground. Who looks random and jumbled by height on inspection? Certainly not Marines! The #1 man was tallest and the #8 man shortest. Problem solved, now the squad looked good on display.

Of course, when you mix Decision #1 and Decision #2 together in the real world, you get the smallest guy being issued the heaviest shoulder weapon. Whoops.

Thankfully, the modern role of the Automatic Rifleman in the Marine Corps Rifle Squad is based more on proficiency and or seniority within the fire team.

Read the Original Article at Breach Bang Clear

Thanks to Forgotten Weapons and Ian McCollum for Their Awesome You-Tube Channel as Well!

Military Weapons From The Past: Swiss 1893 Mannlicher Calvary Carbine

I have an affinity for Swiss Bolt Actions. The Schmidt-Rubin was one of my first Curio and Relic Firearms and the 7.5×55 Swiss is one the more accurate calibers of the C/R Bolt Actions.-SF

The Swiss were the first country to adopt a bolt action repeating rifle with their Vetterli, and followed this by changing to a straight-pull design in the 1880s. The straight-pull Schmidt-Rubin system was quite good, but one potential flaw was that it was a quite long action. This became an issue when the Swiss began looking for a short cavalry carbine variant to use, and decided that the Schmidt-Rubin action sacrificed too much potential barrel length in a short rifle.

Instead, a series of trials were held to choose a different action for the Swiss cavalry carbine, and many different companies and factories submitted designs. The winner was the Mannlicher straight-pull system, best recognized in the US today by the Austrian Steyr M95. The Swiss adopted a carbine with that exact Mannlicher bolt design as the Model 1893 – it used the same basic motion as the Schmidt-Rubin rifles but was a much more compact action.

Unfortunately, the carbines did not prove a good match for the Swiss service. Swiss troops found them to be overly complex to disassemble and insufficiently accurate (presumably they had been spoiled by the excellent performance of domestic Swiss rifles). As a result, only 8000 of the Model 1893 were purchased, and the design was deemed obsolete in 1905 and replaced by a Schmidt-Rubin design after all (these 1905 carbines are virtually nonexistent today, as almost all were modified to the later 1911 pattern).

However, the 1893 stands out as probably the highest-quality Mannlicher straight pull rifles ever made.

Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons