I wish a Merry Christmas to all wwiiafterwwii readers, a few days early. Below is a Christmas card of the British XII Army of 1945, the first peacetime Christmas which Great Britain had since 1938.
Tag: rifles
how Interarms brought WWII Soviet weapons into “red scare era” America
This is a look at how Mosin-Nagant rifles, the USSR’s main longarm of WWII, came commercially into the United States at the height of anti-communist sentiment.
(Soviet soldiers with Mosin-Nagant rifles during WWII.)
(A “sign of the times”; a typical 1950s disclaimer for Mosin-Nagants being sold commercially in the United States)
Sherman’s last ride
The USA’s M4 Sherman tank of WWII had a long career after that war, seeing service with numerous armies in several conflicts around the world after WWII. The last active user was the South American nation of Paraguay.
(Sherman Repotenciado of Paraguay’s Regimiento Escolta Presidencial; by 2018 the final active-duty unit anywhere on Earth still using WWII Shermans.)
the MAS-36 in Burkina Faso
France’s WWII MAS-36 rifle served in a number of francophone African nations after WWII. This is a look at one of the more obscure, Burkina Faso.
(French soldier with MAS-36 rifle during WWII.)
(Upper Volta army soldiers with MAS-36 rifles during 1976.)
WWII firearms in the FOMCAT
I don’t know how many readers have an interest in military bureaucracy. Probably not many.
This is a look at how WWII-legacy weapons were cataloged in the Foreign Materiel Catalog, the FOMCAT, a now-forgotten US Army publication of the Cold War era.
WWII weapons in the Indonesian Independence War
From WWII’s end in 1945 until 1949, pro-independence Indonesians in the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands military fought a conflict which saw a huge variety of WWII weapons, both Japanese and Allied, in further use.
(A WWII Dutch M.95 rifle rechambered to .303 British by Indonesia during the 1950s.)
(Kawasaki Ki-48 “Lily” bomber of the Indonesian air force during the late 1940s.)
(Indonesian troops with Arisaka Type 99 rifles during 1949.)
how the WWII StG-45(M) became the CETME, which became the G3
The Spanish CETME is a well-known Cold War assault rifle, and the West German G3 even more so. It is less known that both trace their lineage to a WWII German assault rifle which did not see combat.
(The WWII German StG-45(M) assault rifle.) (photo via Forgotten Weapons website)
(Spanish soldier during the 1950s with a CETME Modelo A, the StG-45(M)’s postwar “child” firing aluminum ammunition.)
(The Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62 NATO descendant of the two above firearms. This particular one was used in a shootout with Kenyan police in February 2022.) (photo via Nation newspaper)
WWII tanks in the Soccer War 1969
Depending where a person might be reading this, the 1969 conflict between El Salvador and Honduras is called Guerra de las Cien Horas (100 Hours War), the Fútbol War, or the Soccer War.
Beyond the (often incorrect) cause cited, this war is famous for the dogfights between Mustangs and Corsairs. A quarter-century after WWII ended, this would be the final time that WWII fighter planes would ever meet in the skies anywhere.
(Honduran Corsair)
(Salvadoran Mustang)
By now the air aspect of the conflict is beaten to death; indeed there are entire books covering it. On the other hand little is usually said about the war’s ground fighting, which included WWII-vintage M3 Stuart tanks.
(Salvadoran M3A1 Stuart tank parading a captured Honduran flag during 1969.)
WWII weapons in Panama
Many Americans of a certain age consider Panama only as the bisected nation on either side of the now-defunct Panama Canal Zone, while a younger generation only recalls it as one of the USA’s “regime change” operations.
Panama, the independent nation, once had its own small army which used WWII arms long after WWII.
(Panamanian soldier with WWII M1 pot helmet and M1 Garand rifle, in tear gas mask during a 1968 coup.) (photo via Bettmann images)
(Within this mountain of Panamanian weapons captured during 1989, is a WWII M1 carbine and M1928 Thompson submachine gun.)
(WWII American M1 pot helmet of the Panama Defense Force’s (PDF) military police captured in 1989. During the 1980s the PDF had reconditioned some of these old helmets with new suspensions, even as kevlar helmets entered the army.)
WWII submachine guns at “Gun City, PRC” 1950 – 1956
Bei’an in northern China was for many years “Gun City, PRC”; churning out huge numbers of cloned WWII-era firearms before switching to China’s clone of the AK-47.
(American soldiers examine a captured Type 50, the Chinese clone of the WWII Soviet PPSh-41, during the Korean War.) (US National Archives photo)
(This monument in modern Bei’an honors the 9,006,116 guns made at Factory #626.) (photo via Xinhua news agency)
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