Did You Know That CZ’s Flagship Factory was Built to Make Machine Guns in the 1930s?
I recently had the honor of visiting CZ’s historic European factory and found its roots ran back almost 90 years and its first product was for the Czech Air Force.
Located in Uhersky Brod, in today’s Czechia, the Czech Republic, CZ’s current factory opened on June 27, 1936. Constructed some 200 miles east of Strakonice, where Ceska Zbrojovka then had its main operations, the move came as part of an initiative to shift firearms production farther away from the tense border with Hitler’s Germany.
Uhersky Brod, which today is just a few minutes’ drive from the foothills of the Carpathians and the border of Slovakia, in 1936 was well into the interior of Czechoslovakia. It was an old fortress town, a walled city, that dates to at least 1275. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
And it remains a beautiful town today. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Although one that has seen war, occupation, and resistance. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The new facility’s dispersed original layout, built near the town’s railway station, was even intentionally made to mimic residential and light industry buildings (i.e. garages and carpentry shops) from the air, arranged in line with city streets, complete with trees and greenspaces that you would expect in a small mountain town.
You can still get a feel for the old “Mainstreet CZK” layout of the factory when visiting CZ today
Part of the modern factory’s layout these days is a protected gun vault, which holds both CZ’s current production wares and some of their historic guns. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Sharp-eyed gun nerds will immediately spot the Sa vz. 58– the Czech Kalash that isn’t a Kalash– as well as the Sa 26 (vz. 48b/52) sub gun without which the UZI may never have been born, along with the Sa vz. 61 Skorpion machine pistol and the chromed out public duties vz. 52 rifle, but how about the machine gun at the top?
Oh yes. Meet the Letecky kulomet vzor 30, or “Aircraft machine gun Model 30,” chambered in 7.92x57mm (8mm Mauser).
This was the first gun CZ was set up to produce in Uhersky Brod, and it went on to arm just about everything in the 1930s Czech Air Force that had wings in at least three different variants.
And, ironically, the Germans ended up with it in the end, with the Luftwaffe using them in both secondary ground defense and a light AAA role.
More in my column at Guns.com.
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And in addition to world-class small arms, let’s not forget CZ as maker of world-class off-road motorcycles in the post-WWII era. CZ earned 7 World Motocross championships in the 1960s alone.