A well-known propaganda photo of German Fallschirmjäger charging from a DFS 230 glider upon landing. The DFS 230 was a Luftwaffe assault glider, developed by the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight). Hans Jacobs was the lead designer. It was intended for paratrooper assault operations, carrying ten soldiers with equipment or a payload […]
We’ve been looking at HK’s 5.56mm rifles and submachine guns lately, but let’s now turn our attention to the heavy-hitters of the family, the 10- and 20-series light machine guns. A popular concept in military firearms design, development and adoption from the 1950s up to the early 1980s was the idea of modularity […]
We hope you’re enjoying our little trip down Memory Lane with a look back at HK’s 5.56mm weapons platforms from the 1960’s up to the 1980’s. Today we’re going to take a closer look at the baby of the family at that time – the short barrelled HK53 “submachine gun”. A submachine gun in 5.56x45mm […]
If you follow our friends at Soldier Systems Daily you will have seen quite a bit of coverage about the Australian movie “Danger Close” when it was released last year. In case you didn’t get a chance to see it in a cinema, it is now available on Amazon Prime – just the thing to […]
If you enjoyed the recent video from ‘Forgotten Weapons’ about the HK33, then you might like this one on HK’s follow-up on that 5.56mm platform – the G41. The G41 is a 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifle introduced in 1981 by Heckler & Koch to replace the HK33 by providing a more modern weapon compatible with […]
With the recent hype and hysteria over a possible war with Iran, the publication of this new book in Osprey Publishing’s RAID series is a pertinent reminder of another time that the US seemed to be on the verge of war with Iran. After Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in February 1979, he was admitted to […]
Introduced in 1968, the HK33 was Heckler & Koch’s adaptation of the roller-locked, delayed-blowback operating system to the 5.56x45mm / .223 Remington cartridge. In addition to the standard full-length rifle (with a 15.35 inch barrel), a shorter version was made as the HK33K (with a collapsing stock and 12.4 inch barrel). HK also made a […]
Over the past couple of months Britain’s Royal Marines have been training across a wide spectrum of Arctic warfare scenarios. This training has been capped off over the past week and half with the exercise “Cold Response 2020”. After it was announced just over 3 months ago that the Royal Marines would be undergoing a […]
A 173rd Airborne Brigade Sky Soldier prepares to board an aircraft prior to conducting a tactical parachute jump. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ryan Lucas […]
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