Who’d have thought Turkey had the No.2 largest submarine fleet in Europe?
Winston Churchill must be spinning at about 3500 rpms at this point. HMs submarine forces are tied in third place (hull-wise) with France and Greece.
Image via Navy Graphics:
Monthly Archives: November 2015
Atomic Age bolt-gun: the Madsen M47
Just after World War II, with the world awash in new semi-auto and select-fire rifles and submachine guns, one European company decided it was a good idea to attempt to sell a dated, but excellent, bolt-action infantry rifle.
Who was Madsen?
In the 1890s one Captain Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen, (who later became the Danish Minister of War) founded the Dansk Rekyl Riffel Syndikat A/S, or Danish Royal Rifle Company in Herlev near Copenhagen, which more commonly carried his name, Madsen. The company’s signature product was the M1896/03/21/50 Madsen light machine gun, which still sees use around the (third) world today.
We’ve talked about this bad boy before…
On top of this, the company made a line of Schouboe pistols in numerous calibers– some of which in .45ACP even competed against the Colt M1911 in the U.S. Army pistol trials. Speaking of which, Madsen even submitted a novel .30-06 recoil operated infantry rifle to the U.S. Army for testing in 1903, though the five prototypes, still in Springfield Armory’s museum, were prone to jam with the big aught-six.
Then came the more successful 20 mm AA Machine Cannon M/38– which zapped a number of hapless German Panzers in the country’s one-morning’s combat against the Nazi invaders in 1940 and then was captured and used by the Germans themselves on the Eastern Front.
These big truck-mounted 20mm guns were among the first “Technicals” and caught the Germans by surprise.
Although the good Mr. Madsen passed on in 1917, his company survived through both World Wars in 1946, rising from the ashes of German occupation, attempted to rechristen their line with an updated version of their famous light machine gun (which was bought in small numbers by Portugal) as well as three new weapons.
The first of these was the 9mm M/45 submachine gun. This open-bolt burp gun ripped out 9mm at 850 rounds per minute. Using the same standard 50-round magazine as the Finnish Suomi, they were not successful.
Then came the simpler M46/50/53 series of 9mm submachine guns that garnered a number of international sales across Central America and Southeast Asia and is still produced under license as the INA Model 953 in Brazil.
While the first two new entries were forward thinking, the third gun was something of a throwback to an earlier time.
Enter the M47…
Read more in my column at Firearms Talk
Somewhere on Ft. Drum…
On Saturday May 14, 2011 while doing a combat patrol with my unit, 10th MTN 4th BDE 2/30th INF Charlie Co 4th Platoon 2nd Squad. We encountered a group trying to set up for an ambush for 1st squad. We were located in a small village called Kashmiry Pain near our COP in Baraki Barak Logarithm Province. Our sniper team saw two motorcycles carrying two Taliban with PKM machine guns. They didn’t see us so we set up for an ambush. Once they set up we opened fire killing a few guys. While checking one of them, he woke up so I jammed my knife in his chest and the tip broke off. Then he was shot in the face. I was surprised to see my knife broke. But it makes a good story. Climb to Glory Spc. Josh Michael
H/T U.S. Army WTF
That’s one muddy cat
Aleutian Islands Campaign, June 1942 – August 1943. Track at Amchitka on the Heavy Side. A U.S. Navy Consolidated PBY “Catalina” long range flying boat, raises, a veritable cloud of mud as it comes to rest on the muddy landing field at Amchitka, American advance base in the Aleutian Islands, June 23, 1943. U.S. Navy Photograph. Photographed through Mylar sleeve.
The Secrets to a Better Follow up Shot
Spending lots of time on the range this week with a lot of novice shooters. Here is a guide I put together to help them, maybe it can help others too. -Eg
The earliest Western example of a repeating firearm is a revolving arquebus, produced by Hans Stopler of Nuremburg in 1597. While I can’t tell you what Hans did two days after that invention, I am willing to bet that the first day after he invented it was dedicated to finding out how to come up with a faster follow up shot. As technology and our knowledge of firearms manipulation has evolved over the years, so has the techniques to get that faster, more accurate, follow up shot. These techniques can be divided into learned physical training, tactical foundations, and firearm modifications.
Physical Training
Before you move into manipulating any firearm, be sure that you are physically capable of its safe handling.
1. Do not limp-wrist your firearm. If you notice lots of failure to feed malfunctions while shooting a semiautomatic handgun, odds are you are limp-wristing. If you have a solid, stable grip on your firearm and are still seeing this problem, then you may need to work on your grip strength. This can be done through any number of grip exercisers available over the counter. These work by exercising the specific contracting muscles in your hand, wrist, and fingers, providing an increase in overall strength to those targeted areas. Remember, this in only a basic step, your primary areas of concern for in tactical foundations and firearms modifications.
Tactical Foundations
Now that you are sure you can hold and handle your firearm properly, work on the tactical foundations. These can be done in both safe unloaded dry firing and in live safe range practice.
1. Proper grip is possibly the most important foundation in firearms accuracy and manipulation. A good, safe, two-handed grip that is solid is fundamental. Most shooting doctrines advocate that the shooter should not force the firearm into one hand or the other, ideally keeping the weapon balanced with about 50% of the weight on each hand. Alternatively, some grips use a 60/40 balance but no more. Steady and reliable control of the firearm does not need a death grip or arms that look like Lou Ferigno. It needs firm and natural control from both hands, ideally with thumbs towards the target, with no ‘tea cupping’ tolerated.
2. Proper stance is right behind having a proper grip in your foundations. The most correct stance has been a matter of firearms writer’s articles bread and butter for decades. There are schools of thought that only the isosceles stance is the one to use. Just a large a group will preach that only the weaver and its modifications can be the one true stance of all ‘real’ shooters. No matter what stance you prefer, the best one is the one that makes you feel comfortable. Range practice with several different stances and evaluating the effects of each downrange will help you decide. Be able to move in your stance with multiple targets. You should be able to move to the left, with your left foot or to the right on your right foot and keep your sight picture stable. This only happens with a proper stance after the correct grip is obtained.
3. Sight alignment is essential in any aimed fire, and all fire should be aimed. Anyone can blaze away and empty a magazine in seconds, but are they actually hitting anything? Keep your eye on that front sight. Remember, it is impossible to keep the target, the rear sight, and the front sight all in sharp focus at once. Your front sight should be clear while the rear sight and properly identified target is slightly fuzzy. Once your first round fires, the sight will move, realign it as fast as possible and take your second shot as soon as the firearm levels back out and you have reacquired your target.
4. Trigger control will help any shooter tremendously throughout their shooting career. A steady and slow squeeze to the rear on the trigger with a proper sight alignment, stance, and grip should not move the muzzle of the firearm even slightly. The best way to judge if your trigger control is a problem for you is in dry firing. Take a safe and unloaded firearm and squeeze the trigger. If you are moving the firearm, you are pulling your muzzle off target. When making rapid follow up shots, many shooters forget this fundamental and slap the trigger to get that fast second shot. Always squeeze, never slap or your rapid-fire group will be all over the place. If your follow up shots do not have the same level of calm control that you showed with your first, slow it down and look at your trigger control.
5. Trigger reset, especially on double action firearms, is a pitfall that many shooters never even think consider. On the first shot of most DA/SA firearms, the trigger will have a much longer radius of movement and heavier breaking point. Once the shot has fired and the slide has cycled the trigger needs a much smaller movement and less pressure to fire since the hammer or striker has now been fully cocked by the recoil of the slide. Practice firing taking full advantage of this. Think of it as bang (let out trigger until you feel it click) bang (let out trigger until you feel it click) bang… instead of bang (let your finger all the way back up) bang. Once you figure this out, it makes your follow up shots cake.
Firearms Modifications
With you being fit enough to hold and fire your firearm, and having all the tactical foundations laid, there are some firearms modifications that can help speed up your follow on shots. It can be argued that if you have extra funds for your firearm that these should first be used in extra ammunition, range time, and training opportunities rather than in modifications. However, once you have the basic tactical and physical foundations, firearms modifications can help shorten your time between follow up shots further.
1. Recoil buffers have long been sold for semiautomatic handguns, shotguns, and rifles/carbines. These range from $7 small plastic cutouts the size of a dime, to 11-ounce heavy stainless steel tungsten buffers for AR-10s’s that can cost $135 or more. These buffers have been around for decades with mixed reviews. However, if you are trying to shave off microseconds and the buffer does not interfere with the mechanical reliability of the host firearm, they are an option.
2. Compensators and recoil reducers can be added to all three firearms types: shotguns, rifles, and handguns. Do not confuse a flash hider with a compensator/recoil reducer. A flash hider simply shields the muzzle flash but does not necessarily modify felt recoil. The reason for a flash hider is to reduce the dust and flash signature, such as on military style rifles, as seen from your target’s point of view– not to help the shooter. Compensators and recoil reducers direct the gas escaping from the muzzle, typically upward and outward, forcing the muzzle not to climb as much as normal. This helps regain sight picture and faster and enables a more rapid follow up shot. However these compensators, since they do project the muzzle gasses outward are decidedly unfriendly to bystanders and extra care is needed when on the range as well as in real life tactical scenarios.
3. Ammunition selection is important in factor in preparing for a quick follow up shot. Smaller caliber rounds in heavy platforms, such as heavy barreled .22LR pistols, pistol caliber carbines etc. have long been seen as causing an almost unfair advantage in rapid-fire situations. In situations where caliber cannot be changed, the ammunition itself can be downloaded. In recent years law enforcement agencies around the country have switched from standard buckshot and slugs to specially developed reduced recoil rounds. For decades, competition shooters have relied on wadcutters and other low-powered target rounds to speed up their shooting. Manufacturers such as Remington and Federal are now producing an ever-expanding field of reduced recoil ammunition that is still viable for defensive purposes. For example, if a .357 wheel gun user wants to shave an extra half second off their follow up shot, they can switch to Federal’s Premium Personal Defense Reduced Recoil 38 Special 110-grain Hydra-Shok that still has 244 ft-pounds of energy on target which compares nicely to the same company’s 129-grain +P loading’s 258 ft.-pounds.
4. Modern engineering improvements on firearm designs should be evaluated for their increased availably in reducing felt recoil, which translates into faster follow up shots. In handguns for instance, the .380 subcompact has been around since 1908 arguably. However new designs such as the Keltec PA3T and the Ruger LCP use a locked breech design when helps reduce muzzle flip over legacy platforms like the Walther PPK and FN 1922. The opposite can be seen in shotguns where new design inertia drive shotguns, being more advanced and easier to clean, actually have more recoil than 1960s era gas guns. In modern sporting rifles (.223/5.56mm AR platforms) piston rifles are all the rage, however mid-length direct impingement gas operating systems usually have a shorter linger time than long piston rifles, which of course can translate into a faster follow up shot.
5. National match and competition triggers with a short reset can also help with rapid shooting. Use that front sight, even at close range.
It sounds like a lot, but the follow up shot you perfect is one you can be proud of and just may save your life one day.
Is that a banana torpedo in your shed, or are you just happy to see me?
One funny looking crab pot
A Kongsberg Remus model UUV operated by Boeing conducting ‘sonar tests’ for the Big Blue popped up by a waterman’s boat in the Chesapeake so guess what he did…
“It was super foggy the day they discovered this thing,” Laurie Haas said. “They almost hit it with the boat.
“They didn’t know what it was because it was such a bright color yellow.”
Figuring the object was valuable, the crew pulled it onto their boat to see if they could reunite it with its owner. Davis Haas stashed the drone in his shed back home.
“I couldn’t wait to see it when I got home,” Laurie Haas said. “This was the catch of a lifetime.”
Of course Boeing chopped chopped over to them when they found out.
Here’s pictures of a Slocum Glider and a Sea Lion that I came in contact with a couple years back. They are marked up pretty good with ‘If found’ labels.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of C. LeRoy Baldridge
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of C. LeRoy Baldridge
Born May 27, 1889 in Alton, New York, Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge was a gifted artist even as a youth. Accepted at age 10 as the youngest student at Frank Holme’s Chicago School of Illustration, he paid his way through the University of Chicago painting signs and selling sketches, graduating in 1911.
About that time he joined the Illinois National Guard as trooper in the Chicago Black Horse Troop, 1st Illinois Cavalry Regiment and, like all the other mounted units of the U.S. Army and reserves, was called up in 1916 and rushed to the border with Mexico following the attack on Columbus by Pancho Villa’s raiders. Once demobilized, he sought adventure in Europe and, as the U.S. wasn’t in the war just yet, enlisted as a medical orderly (stretcher bearer) with the French Army.
When the Americans did go “over there” Baldridge was able to transfer to the AEF but, instead of using him as a cavalryman or corpsman, Pershing used him as a member of the growing number of war correspondents. Roaming the Western Front embedded with the doughboys, he made hundreds of sketches from the front line. He even bumped into his old mates from the Illinois National Guard who had left their sabers behind as their regiment had been rechristened the 124th U.S. Field Artillery and saw the elephant at St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and the Lorranie.
This immense body of sketches appeared back home in Leslie’s Weekly and Scribners while the troops he covered saw them in Stars and Stripes. He remained in Germany into 1919 with the army of occupation.
!["Along the Rhine; To Make Sure He [Prussianism] Stays Down." Illustration by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge. The Stars and Stripes, December 13, 1918, p. 4, col. 4.](https://i0.wp.com/laststandonzombieisland.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/make-sure-he-stays-down.jpg?resize=519%2C536&ssl=1)
“Along the Rhine; To Make Sure He [Prussianism] Stays Down.” Illustration by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge. The Stars and Stripes, December 13, 1918, p. 4, col. 4.
An idealist who once said of war, “If only I can make the public see what war is – what a dirty, low thing it is, and how brutal it makes men, fine clean men – then they’d fight to the last ditch for the League of Nations,” Baldridge was a champion of peace in the 1920s and 30s, leading a small and controversial segment of the American Legion.
He co-founded and later led the New York-based Willard Straight Post of the American Legion who took what was seen then as a leftist and downright pacifist attitude towards war. The post was later investigated in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
During this time he roamed the Earth with his wife, producing hundreds of works for books and magazines alike, bring the world back to readers in the U.S. the way a camera never could.
During WWII he helped illustrate and produce a series of Pocket Guides to West Africa and Iran for the War Department as well as lending his brush to war loan art.
Once his beloved wife died in 1963, Baldridge began something of his own quiet decline.
The end of his career saw him in the desert, painting haunting landscapes in which people seem far off and in a dream. No more trenches. No more machine guns. Just high desert and adobe for as far as the eye can see.
One summer afternoon at his Santa Fe, New Mexico home in 1977, he ended his own life with a pistol he had been issued in World War I while “with the Yanks.”
His work is celebrated extensively by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, to which he made large contributions while smaller collections exisit at the Smithsonian, New Mexico Museum of Art, and Fisk University.
Baldridge’ old unit remains as the 106th Cavalry Squadron, part of the 33rd Brigade Combat Team of the Illinois Army National Guard.
Thank you for your work, sir. May you find peace.
The PPS Submachine Gun: The Leningrad typewriter
You are a 29-year old mechanical engineer and the city you live in, the second largest city in the country, is besieged by enemy troops. The defenders need a simple gun that can be made quickly but is still effective. You are Alex Sudayev, its 1941 Leningrad, and your solution is the PPS.
Born in battle
In 1941, the Soviet Red Army was the largest in the world but found itself far outclassed in terms of weapons, leadership, and tactics when Hitler launched his immense invasion of the Soviet Union in June of that year. Within weeks, the German Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad and placed it effectively under a siege that would last some 900 grueling days. Civilians drafted right off the streets were augmenting the defenders of the city but they needed weapons faster than you could say bad borscht.
Alexey Ivanovich Sudayev at the time was an engineer working inside the city. Taking the PPSh-41 submachine gun design of firearms legend Georgi Shpagin, he reworked it. Whereas the 41 used a heavy, carved wooden stock, and required nearly 8-hours of machining per weapon, he produced a simplified blowback weapon that fired from an open bolt and could be made in just 2.7-hours, using half the raw steel as the PPSh-41, and best of all, no wood.
Dubbed the Pistolet-Pulemet Sudaeva model of 1942 (PPS-42), the gun was rushed into production locally.
Design
Sudaeva’s gun was a rough looking piece of work cut from a sheet of basic stamped steel and of blocky construction, with an upper and lower receiver that hinges open. Its bolt was simple and the cocking handle placed directly to it, reciprocating the whole time the full-auto only weapon fired. To keep the rattling of this open bolt from cracking the stamped steel receiver, a simple leather recoil buffer was installed.
Weighing in at 6.5-pounds, it was 35.7-inches long with its stock extended. With its folding metal stock collapsed atop the gun it was a very compact 25.2-inches long. A 10.7-inch barrel proved accurate enough for spraying Nazi storm troopers and was enclosed in a square barrel shroud with air holes for cooling. The gun used a 35-round detachable box magazine with a very slight banana curve to it to feed the weapon with 7.62x25mm Tokarev pistol cartridges at a rate of 600 per minute.
field stripping the pps is simple
The gun fieldstripped incredibly easy: dropping the hinged lower away from the upper and removing the bolt and spring, it could be taught in about 30 seconds. This made the gun perfect or issuing to a conscript that up until yesterday was a student, factory worker, or farmer. Give em a uniform, a PPS, and some bullets and send em to the front to fight the Fascist invaders. Of course, often the front could be just two blocks over, which made transport easy.
The Soviets loved the design and after some 45,000 of the PPS-42 were made, while a gently finished version, the PPS43 was put into more widespread production. The PPS-43 was about an inch shorter in all of the dimensions and used a chrome-lined barrel that was good for up to 20,000 rounds of corrosive ammo.
Use
The PPS became the standard sub gun of the late war Soviet Army. The gun was a good two pounds lighter than the PPSh-41, and almost a foot shorter, which made it a better fit for tank crews and vehicle drivers. Also, being cheaper, faster to build, and using fewer materials helped in its choice for adoption.
The pps was the soviets favorite sub gun in late World War Two
In possibly the most famous Soviet image of the war, a young Red Army soldier is seen raising a flag over the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin in 1945—with a PPS slung over his back. The image is seen as the Russian version of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and the PPS was there, front and center.
possibly the most famous image of a soviet soldier in wwii and he has a pps
Sadly, Sudaev died in 1946 just before his 34th birthday, and his gun was already being phased out in favor of the newly introduced AK-47. Like the PPS, it was simply made of steel stampings and later AKMS models carried a very similar folding stock. Even while the Soviets started to withdraw the gun from their service, they shipped machine tooling and expertise abroad to allies to help them make their own versions of the Leningrad typewriter. In Poland, it was put into production as the PPS wz.1943/1952 and continues being churned out by Radom to this day.
The pps lived on in asia as the type 54
In Red China, the PPS43 became the Type 54. GIs fighting in Korea encountered this dreaded Asian burp gun and also in Vietnam where it’s service spread for generations out over a 30-years. As such, these guns are still quite often seen in the hands of guerilla types and drug-runners throughout the jungles of South West Asia to this day.
If you watch enough footage from conflicts in the Third world, you will see the PPS popping up everywhere from the Ivory Coast to Thailand and everywhere in between. They are rusty and crusty, but they still work.
PPS in Africa
Fighters loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara celebrate in the main city Abidjan, April 11, 2011. Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by opposition forces on Monday after French troops closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker for the past week. REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun
A soldier of the United Nations Mission in Ivory Coast (MINUCI) inspects weapons handed in by soldiers of the New Forces (FN) on June 15, 2010 at the military camp of Korhogo during a ceremony where the former rebels started joining the army. AFP PHOTO / SIA KAMBOU (Photo credit should read SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)
Collectability
The PPS43 is one of the great bargains today in terms of affordable surplus guns that are both historical and shootable.
These guns, crazy cheap on the surplus market, were imported off and on into the US Pre-1986 and a number of full-auto originals are floating around. They proved popular with Hollywood prop houses in the 1980s and 90s, with a handful being visually mocked up to resemble the more popular (and much more expensive) Heckler & Koch MP5. Other non-working models were mocked up for movies including the Mel Gibson Vietnam epic, We Were Soldiers and are available for collectors out there for under $400.
PPS dummy gun used in We Were Soldiers
Radom in Poland makes an almost perfect semi-auto pistol version of the PPS43 that is currently being imported. Dubbed the PPS43-C, it still has the 10-inch barrel and folding stock—but its tack is welded to keep it from being classified as a SBR.
New made ppsh43 PPS-43 pps subgun carbines semi auto
This is one of the few subguns that are still widely available in torched kit form for cheap. Sportsman’s Guide , MGS, Centerfire Systems, and others stock these for about $80, which makes the likely hood of a getting a kit and doing a reweld well within reach of the common hobbyist. Remember to keep your ATF regs in line, as you do not want to make an illegal machine gun. There are many pistol builds out there with new receivers and no buttstock as well as 16-inch barreled carbines made by Wiselite, and others.
It makes a great starting point for an under $600 SBR build as well.
Safety and known issues
The leather buffers on these guns are problematic and, while you can always create your own if the going gets tough, it may be wise to pick up several ‘OE’ models while you can and store them in a clean dry area for when the Germans come. Keep in mind these should be inspected and replaced every few hundred rounds or so. It’s a good idea to have enough buffers in stock to get you through the ammo you have on hand at least, so get in touch with your buffer math each time you buy ammo.
Speaking of bullets. Ammo used to be crazy cheap for these guns, running about $75 a case on the surplus market just a couple years ago, but today tends to go a little higher. There is still a good bit of Polish and Bulgarian bulk floating around for now. New made Sellier & Bellot production go for about .50 cents per round, which will keep you from burning through a whole lot.
No matter how many Germans are surrounding your city.
Weird but functional enough for 100+ years of service
Ian from Forgotten Weapons takes a look at the curious inner workings of a Danish Madsen light machine gun. Its an oddball falling block action that originates from the gas lamp era. Oh, and the neat thing, is the gun he is looking at is was made in 1950. Yup, even with such designs as the MG42 and Browning M1919 out there, the Madsen was still in production that late.
More on the Madsen from an earlier article I wrote:
Designed in 1896 in Denmark, the Madsen Light Machinegun has served dozens of countries in more than a hundred years of warfare from 1904 to the present day.
The Madsen Light Machinegun was developed in 1896 in Denmark by Captain W. O. Madsen of the Danish artillery and adopted by the Danish Marines in 1897. Originally a sort of assault rifle it was perfected into the final design as a light machine gun in 1902.
It served with the Danish military for more than fifty years, only retiring in 1955. When Hitler’s Germany invaded the country on April 9, 1940 they fired to preserve Denmark’s honor in the Danish military’s hopeless one-day defense of their country. Ordered turned over to the Nazis these same weapons served Hitler throughout the Second World War. The odyssey of the Madsen Light Machine Gun however, is even more complex that this one chapter.
The Madsen Company early on won a large foreign contract to Denmark’s Baltic neighbor, Russia. Imperial Russia, rich with gold due to being a huge exporter of grain, but poor in industry, was forced to buy many of its most sophisticated weapons overseas. The Tsar, Nicholas II, was a son of a Danish princess, bought several items, including naval vessels (his own yacht, the Standart— officially an auxiliary cruiser– was Danish built) and small arms from non-aligned Denmark.
Bought in numbers by the Tsar for the military buildup in the Russian Far East, Madsen machine guns were used in 7.62x54r caliber by Cossack light cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Russian Madsens continued in active service and were seen often in World War One and in the subsequent Russian Civil War by dozens of end users.
The guns made an early appearance in Mexico’s series of civil wars, shown here in 1913 in the hands of military school cadets
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany also bought a number of Madsens from Denmark, chambered in 8mm Mauser. These weapons served alongside overly complicated Mexican Monodragon rifles in early German scout planes and balloons in the aerial war in World War One. Germany also created the first light machine gun units, called Musketen Battalions, based on the Madsen in 1915.
German soldiers with Madsen machine guns 1915
The Musketen Battalions carried as many as 150 of the weapons which provided an amazing suppressive fire capability. Latin America was a huge customer of the Madsen.
Soldiers, possibly Czechoslovak Legion, using a Madsen machine gun note french Adrian helmets
The new countries of Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Poland, and Estonia, who emerged from the wreckage of that war, used captured stocks of those old Tsarist weapons into the opening stages of WWII against both German and Soviet invaders.
Countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador bought the light machine gun in a multitude of calibers. They saw combat in the Chaco War (1932-1935) between Paraguay and Bolivia, and untold coups, insurgent operations and civil wars.
Short barreled Madsen light machine gun, a Danish manufactured weapon used in the 1930’s and 40’s in the Dutch West India Colonies
Portugal used the weapon in their wars in their African colonies of Mozambique and Angola and left enough behind there to ensure that they pop up all over the continent.
Two members of the 4th special hunter company manning a Madsen machine gun. By then somewhat of an antique, in 1970s Angola. Observe how the little pooch is completely unconcerned with the development.
When Denmark was liberated after World War II they began exporting the Madsen again and continued production of the slightly modified weapon as late as 1957. Dansk Industri Syndikat A.S. produced weapons as late as the 1970s. Their wares included the ubiquitous Madsen Light Machine gun, the Madsen model 50 submachine gun which was also very popular in Latin America and Africa, and a number of bolt action rifles that also saw service in such countries as Colombia and Bolivia.
They are still to be encountered in trouble spots around the world. The fact that no spare parts have been made for these weapons in over fifty years attests to the machine gun’s reliability. The Madsen was recently pictured in use with the Brazilian military police during battles with drug gangs in 2013.
Madsen still giving a strong showing with Brazilian special police in 2013
SPMAGTF-SC, its a wrap
U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Southern Command stood up in March and deployed to Central America in June. Built around just 250 Marines and a quartet of four CH-53E Super Stallion Helicopters, they deployed to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize.
Now, after six months downrange in a very interesting deployment, they are coming home.