There were 600 of them. All belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway’s 9th Parachute Battalion, and were cramped aboard thirty two transport planes winging their way over the English Channel on this momentous night of June 6, 1944. They’d gone over their assignment during maneuvers, studying maps, and photographs and replaying everything they could remember More »
PP-19 Bizon: Scorpion Of The Motherland
Submachine guns had been Russia’s forte’ during the Second World War, when several million copies were produced of the PPSH-41 and PPS-43 variants. With millions available, tactician’s found that employment of such weapons spurred creation of a new doctrine of warfare, where firepower was favored over accuracy. This innovation would peak with the development of the More »
The De Lisle Carbine: Forgotten Reaper
British Air Ministry engineer William Godfray De Lisle came up with the concept of an integrally suppressed rifle while working at home in 1942. He created a prototype chambered in .22 caliber and based on a Browning semi-automatic rifle to hunt small animals for food. After much success, he realized the extreme quiet of the More »
When Recon Team Python ruled the Valley of Death
Situated in the northwestern portion of South Vietnam, along the border with Laos, lies the A Shau Valley. At 25 miles long and one mile wide, A Shau the valley consists of tall and thick elephant grass flanked on either side by steep mountain ranges, dense with jungle, that rise between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. More »
SMAW: The Big Stick of the Corps
Israel’s B-300 provided the basis that evolved into the SMAW (Shoulder launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon), first fielded by the United States Marine Corps in 1984. Versatile, with a lot of punch as a support weapon, seven years later it saw first combat during Operation Desert Storm, and proved even more useful since the War on More »
The VSS Vintorez: Whisper Of Spetsnaz
As the Sochi Olympics in Russia approaches, there is sure to be one firearm finding employment behind the scenes against known and perceived threats wanting to interrupt Vladimir Putin’s showcase to the world. It’s an unusual looking selective-fire weapon called the VSS (Vintovka Snayperskay Spetsialnaya), or Special Sniper Rifle. In use since 1987, the Vintovka More »
The Terrible Ones: South Africa’s ’32 Battalion’
I had followed 32 Battalion’s exploits throughout the 1980s in Soldier of Fortune magazine when they embedded journalists to go on missions and conduct interviews with the fabled unit. I remembered reading about their effectiveness in the field against their primary enemy at the time, which was communist Southwest Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, a More »
The MG-3: The Old Wolf That Still Growls
By the end of the First World War, rifle caliber machine gun could be defined in two categories. One was the tripod mounted water-cooled Maxim/Vickers series, of German and British origin whose effectiveness was best used in static or fixed positions along with plenty of support. The other was the relative newcomer, the air cooled More »
RPG-7: The Devil’s Lance
Apart from the AK-47, no other weapon has graced the world’s television screens more in modern times, than the RPG-7. Officially known in Russian as the Reaktivnoi Protivotankovii Granatomet (Hand antitank granade launcher), the slender hollow tube with its conical rear and oversized diamond shaped warhead continues to play just as an important role in More »
Knife of the Elite: Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knives
Municipal Policemen William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes had no idea that the knife they designed in pre-war China would go on to be adopted by elite fighting forces, and become world famous. Called the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife, their design featured a dagger shape with a grip style commonly found in fencing foils, and was purpose built More »
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