There are few firearms more quintessentially British than the Webley revolver and a Lee-Enfield rifle. Today, we’re going to take a look at the Webley MkIV, adopted by the British Army right at the very end of the 19th Century. Entering service in October 1899 [Read More…]
This is a neat old photo of World War I era soldiers relaxing in a library at a YMCA. It’s clearly a staged photo, but still cool nonetheless. All the natural goings-on in a library are shown via the soldiers: one reading a book, one reading a magazine, one [Read More…]
Taken on May 16, 1919, this US Signal Corps photo shows a new potential mode of transportation in the immediate WWI era. What is believed to be a Columbia brand bicycle has been outfitted with a metal scabbard of sorts – complete with ‘US’ embossing [Read More…]
If you love history and old firearms there are a few YouTube channels you probably follow. For many, two of those will definitely be Forgotten Weapons and C&Rsenal. Ian, Othais and Mae have come together to put seven original World War One vintage light machine guns [Read More…]
British historian Stephen Wisdom has built a full-scale replica of a World War One tank from fibreglass and wood. The recreation of a French Renault FT light tank has been built for the American Museum in Bath, UK. Wisdom built the fibreglass tank around a wooden frame [Read More…]
We often wish old firearms could speak, share their stories and tell us what they’ve seen. Well a Smith & Wesson revolver, recently acquired by Britain’s National Army Museum, has a hell of a story. The National Army Museum in London, announced this week that a [Read More…]
Looking like the bizarre lovechild of a bolt-action rifle, a boat oar, and those weird prop rifles from the original Planet of the Apes movie, the Thorneycroft Carbine is one of the unsung “firsts” of the 20th Century. Specifically, this British [Read More…]
Episode 65 of C&Rsenal’s landmark rundown of the weapons of the Great War covers something very, very special – the Pedersen Device. John Pedersen’s ‘device’ has an almost mythical reputation as a World War One wonder weapon that could [Read More…]
If you’re not following both C&Rsenal and Forgotten Weapons you are missing out on some of the best gun history videos around. With C&Rsenal’s current World War One focus, systematically working their way through the weapons of the Great War, and [Read More…]
Every year, the historical firearms reviewing wizards at C&Rsenal create a high quality educational firearms poster. [Note: This fund-raiser expires on Wednesday, December 6th 2017]. This is the 4th-such poster produced by C&Rsenal, two having been done for [Read More…]
In this fourteenth installment of Personal Defense Weapon Calibers, we’ll be looking at a highly minimalist incarnation of the PDW/SMG round: The 7.65x20mm French Longue. The story of the French Longue begins with the US entry to World War I and the brilliant [Read More…]
Ok, the title is just a hair “click-baity”, but the quality of the information and work put into by C&Rsenal is well worth one’s time. Over the last two years, Othias and Mae have been working to catalog the absolute plethora of weapons used in The [Read More…]
In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers. Today our subject is one of [Read More…]
Drones are a huge boon to the filmmaking world. Coupled with high-quality small cameras, drones can and do capture breathtaking footage of the world’s modern-day events. I would say there has not been a writer’s event that I have been to where there has not [Read More…]
In World War I, the Germans developed a secret technology that helped them dominate the skies during 1915 and early 1916. The tech? A device that synchronized the firing of a machine gun with the rotation of an aircraft’s propeller, allowing accurate low-mounted [Read More…]
There must be something Italian in the waters. Berettas seem to be popping up all over the place, this time the progenitors of the US M9 Service Pistol. C&Rsenal (a clever name for a Curio & Relic YouTube channel) has their hands on two rare service pistols from [Read More…]
In the early winter of 1918, it seemed as though the Boche wouldn’t stop, and the war was sure to continue on into 1919. New, secret weapons were needed to complete the victory over Germany, and one of these was John Pedersen’s “device”, [Read More…]
These days, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time at the dawn of the smokeless powder era there was a huge variety of bolt-action repeating rifles being developed to re-arm the military powers of the world. While the Mauser 98 and its progeny eventually took [Read More…]
One of the early automatic rifles that has caught my interest for several years going now is the Winchester Machine Rifle, also known as the Burton Machine Rifle or the Light Machine Rifle. The Burton – as I’ll call it for the purposes of today’s post [Read More…]
One of these days, when I have enough money, I’m going to start investing in old firearms (but the new ones are just so darn cool, too…). Tempting us poor commoners again is Ian at Forgotten Weapons, this time with a German compact handgun commonly known as [Read More…]
C&Rsenal is at it again, continuing their coverage of World War I weapons turning their attention to the British Pattern 14 rifle. With over 1.2 million built, the rifles served the Empire admirably and would later go on to serve as the inspiration for the US M1917 [Read More…]
The classic American M1917 revolver was a much needed answer to a very evident problem: not enough standard issue .45acp 1911 pistols to go around. Smith & Wesson and Colt both produced these revolvers at the request of the US Government, and they served in at least some capacity until Vietnam. [Read More…]
A trend towards ever more powerful and longer-ranged ammunition was cut short by the realities of the First World War: Technologies not previously invented or accounted for, such as the man-reaping machine gun and the portable infantry mortar, made the existing infantry [Read More…]
The paradigm was established by the 1870s: Future infantry combat would focus on a combination of entrenchment, and long-range concentrated fire from well-drilled units to defeat the enemy beyond his own effective range. The arms race for a smaller-caliber, [Read More…]
The gear of the US infantryman during World War I was some of the best in the period, from the ammunition pouches, to the uniform, and the rifles. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has taken a reproduction uniform and an original M1917 rifle and M1911 handgun out to the [Read More…]
Arcane Teutonic space magicks gave Imperial German assault troops the advantage in trench warfare during the first Great War, as the Kaiser’s sturmtruppen made deadly use of Arch-Industriemage Georg Luger’s fearsome Lange Pistole 08 “long [Read More…]
One of several interesting automatic individual weapon designs from World War I, the Winchester Machine Rifle was a concept for a dual-purpose anti-observation-balloon/ground weapon that featured several concepts that, for better or worse, were definitely ahead of their [Read More…]
While the base principle of how a bolt-action rifle functions has not changed since its invention, its always fun to see the individual takes that each designer uses when creating a rifle. The rifle served in multiple wars, principally to great acclaim in World War I. [Read More…]
I recently gushed on what I consider one of the best YouTube channels out there *that is not guns-only, but is highly correlated. The Great War is a fantastic project documenting World War 1 week by week exactly as it happened 100 years later. We’re about two [Read More…]
This week, C&Rsenal takes a look at the Italian Bodeo revolver, an interesting transitional type that served all the way through the 1960s. Today, the revolver is a gun that has been virtually perfected for well over a century. While it may seem like this was always [Read More…]