The Weirdest Weapons of the Ukrainian War
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- Discover the weirdest weapons of the Russo-Ukrainian War! From the legendary Maxim Gun's comeback to the mysterious origins of MP40, Thompson, PPS, and F2000. Plus, witness the deadly RPG Mortar in action!
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The Quad barrel Maxim is the most Warhammer 40k looking thing I have ever seen in real combat.
Do you want waaaah cos that’s how you get waaaaah
And used to shoot down flying robots!
level 3 turret
*Ork looking thing* fixed it for you
Its nothing new since the Soviet Army used a Quad maxim gun for AA purposes
The suppresser was actually invented by the son of the Maxim gun inventor, so them being used together is actually fitting.
A cultured gentleman I see!! 👏🏻
No, it's not just 'the suppressor' it's The Maxim Silencer. It was a byproduct of him designing the automotive silencer ( or as we in the US call it, a muffler), and the entire reason calling them silencers is not a misnomer in the same vein as kleenex.
Yeah it's weird that suppressers /silencers are seen as such a modern thing when they're basically just a tube filled with baffles /compartments to contain the gasses that cause a lot of the sound.
I believe the first production silencers were actually made for lever action hunting guns, and were mostly intended to protect hearing, not be sneaky
@@restitvtororbis5330 it's because they were in a civilian sense 'lostech' because of the gun control act of '28 imposing fees for registration that were at 200 bucks dramatically more than the 5 dollars they cost to buy the suppressor at the time, resulting in most of the pre-existing ones getting scrapped. That's roughly 3600 and 90 dollars buying power today respectively, btw. It's a thing I wondered about for years before Gun Jesus did a vid on one that survived stating the obvious, resulting in a handprint on a forehead from yours truely. Very obvious in retrospect, lol.
if it shoots a bullet, its useful
A four-pack of Maxim machine guns mounted to a swiveling stand in Ukraine, shown off in a TikTok video from a user whose handle ends in 69 is going to be one of the defining relics of the 2020s.
😂😂😂
Now just get that quad maxim mounted to some sort of radar directed AA system on a T-55 chassis, and we’ll really have something.
Yep 👍 it'll be one of the first things to get pulled from the rubble by visiting species.
Wait...... What do you mean by 69?
HAHAHAHAHA, fuck man this is hilarious XD
The Maxim machines guns used by Ukraine are most likely chambered in 7.62x54r, the oldest metallic ammunition cartridge still in service. It's still used by Russia, which means there is still a large stockpile of the ammunition in circulation. This makes the use of the Maxim by Ukraine a little more understandable.
The guns are PM1910's, and are definitely chambered in 7.62x54r, since they were never manufactured by Russia or the Soviet Union in any other caliber.
@@danajorgensen1358 PM1910/30s. Most of them have the enlarged water port (that allows you to shovel snow inside) and the optics rail that you see on the 1930s modification.
Really makes you realise that every factory could close tomorrow....... we could fight many wars with what we've got 👍
@@adamfrazer5150 Not really, Ukraine has been blowing through everything everyone has sent at a prodigious rate. And everyone that sent ammunition to Ukraine has sent about 20 percent of their stockpiles. As it is, a lot of European nations are going to be spending the next 20 years replenishing their artillery stockpiles.
@@alexwalker2582 appreciate the knowledge man 👍 grateful for insight 🍻
Just a correction, at 15:45 the rpg being fired indoors is not an improvised mortar round, it is rather a standard RPG thermobaric round. The straight sides are clearly visible where the mortars are, well, motar shaped.
looks more like a PG-7L but I may be wrong, do you know exactly which thermo round it is because it definitely isnt a TBG
I know theyvlikely dont care but aren't thermobaric rounds on a no no list
@@dmh101 nope
Isn´t it kind of insane to fire a thermobaric charge like 10 meters in front of you in a closed environment?
@@KokosNaSnehu2 very
The Thompson sub machine gun was a mass manufactured weapon sold openly to the civilian market for nearly 70 years. Semi automatic legally compliant versions are still available. The US military is also known for leaving behind a lot of gear when they leave a conflict zone. Someone somewhere has been selling them by the bushel to anyone that wants them for decades.
And a lot got sent to the across the pond for the lend-lease of WW2
When Wagner took the salt mines near bahkmut, they had Thompson's in wooden crates stalked 20ft high like 50 yards wide I said omfg you know what an American would do to get one of those original bad boys
@@javiermartinezjr8849when I saw that video I damn near had a heart attack can I have at least 1😢😢
The Soviets also copied them and used them until the mid 1960s. China captured a tonne of them from the soviets during the Soviet/Cino war of 1960.
*stacked sorry my settings are in Spanish so when I type in English "spell.check" goes coocoo
We have also to remember that after the Vickers gun a Maxim variant was retired from UK service some soldiers tried to"break"one with overuse they failed as the design absorbed over 1 million rounds firing continuously
Overkill
Yes.
Any body that thinks a Maxim gun is a joke knows nothing about fire arms.
@@owensthilaire8189 as long as a Maxim of any sort whether Vickers,Maschinengewehr 08 or other including the 1 pounder pom pom a maxim type gun firing a 454g shell has a man to fire it,men to feed it ammunition and water to keep it cool it will fire
And when the armourers pulled it down afterwards all parts were within spec. Obviously, it had gone thru a lot of barrels but the rest was hardly worn at all. BTW. it was 5 million rounds:
Obsolete or not, there was strong attachment to the Vickers. Many felt, why get rid of something so good? As if to prove a point (and also to use up the Mk VII ammunition still in the inventory, which was no longer approved for Service use), the most exhaustive trial probably ever fired from a Vickers took place in 1963 at Strensall Barracks in Yorkshire, England. Five million rounds were fired from a single Vickers which was kept in constant use for seven days and seven nights.
British Army Sergeant T.R. Ashley was one of nine armourers involved. At the time he was in an 18-day Vickers course at Strensall Barracks. As related by Sgt Ashley to Warren Wheatfield of Sudbury, Ontario.
.. First day, gauging limits and setting the gun up. (We spent two days hand filing feathers [the square projection] on cross pins to close tolerances so guns and tripods could be assembled without play!) at the end of the day, the instructor told us to draw out one of the guns that we had been working on, [and] one of the lads pulled a gun out of the rack. We were told that this gun was to be fired for the remainder of the course, day and night.
The gun, stores spares, etc, were put onto an Austin Champ and driven onto the range. We mounted the gun onto a tripod in a gun pit. A 4-ton Bedford had been unloaded with ammo. There were stacks of ammo, after cans and barrels. (We had to pack all the rear groove with asbestos oiled string!) The 2 man crew was relieved every thirty minutes. A third body shovelled empty cases from under the gun with a malt shovel and threw the empty belts clear of the pit. We never heard the gun not firing in anything but the shortest time while the barrel was replaced (every hour). The gun fired 250-round belts without stopping: not in 20, 50 or whatever bursts, but straight through: we could hear it rattling away from the lecture room/workshop, and went to see it between work.
At the end the gunpit was surrounded by mountains of boxes, belts, cases, debris; a large cleft had appeared in the stop butts where the bullets had destroyed the butts. We took the gun off it's tripod and back to the workshop. We inspected and gauged. No measurable difference anywhere. It had eaten barrels, they were changed every hour to 1½ hours, but mechanically [the gun] was unchanged. It had consumed just under five million rounds of .303", non-stop (my notes were for Mk VII, not Mk VIIIz, so I presume zones etc were for Mk VII).
That episode was to show nine armourers the ability of the hallowed Vickers. Only after an excellent course result did my Staff Sergeant boss let me work on our battalion guns, which had smooth waterjackets..
Quoted verbatim from the first edition of "The Grand Old Lady of No Man's Land" by Dolph L. Goldsmith (Part III, Chapter Seven, pp 188
The Vickers was used to 'dispose of' a stockpile of '303' after we had gone over to 7.62x51. This was at Strensall barracks in 1963 & it was FIVE million rounds. A 250rd belt at a time & other stops to change the barrel after it wore out. It took a week and the weapon was still perfectly serviceable after they were done.
I'm pretty convinced that the majority of the Thompsons in this conflict as well as the random conflicts around the world are from lend lease stockpiles. There was a video put out by Wagner after they secured the salt mines at Solidar and were showing off a massive stockpile of old weapons. A salt mine is probably one of the best places to stick a stockpile of old weapons you don't care about enough to climate control, and it seemed like the mine had just been accumulating crates of weapons for decades. The reason this pretty much convinced me about the source of the Thompsons is because in the video the cracked open an old crate that was filled with pristine condition Thompsons and even had the lend lease supply paperwork laying right inside. I don't see any reason for it to be fake, and don't know where else they would have gotten so many mint condition Thompsons (each one would be worth 10s of thousands at auction in the US) so i believe the Thompsons around the world have probably just been drip fed by arms dealers ever since the fall of the soviet union.
I believe the video was featured on The Armorer's Bench TH-cam channel (he covers all the random weapons found in the war)
Well said. I agree.
The Thompsons in the video seemed to be coated with grease also, probably as a preservation method.
There’s a video on here, I believe it’s something like “Arms Stockpile in Ukrainian Salt Mine”, by High Caliber History that covers this also. Be sure and read the comments, one of them details his trips trying to by weapons to resale. An ak47 for $20.00 is mind blowing!
I agree, just got done saying so to a guy saying “the company (auto-ordinance) probably sold them overseas for decades”
Saw that video and almost cried, I would give anything to have a mint condition Thompson. Very cool find
0:45 - Chapter 1 - The maxim gun
3:50 - Chapter 2 - The MP40
6:25 - Chapter 3 - The thompson
8:20 - Chapter 4 - The PPS
11:50 - Chapter 5 - The F2000
14:05 - Chapter 6 - The RPG
Please never stop making videos, I don't want youtube without you Simon you're the og man.
Agree
Always a good time with this guy.
One of those people who can make anything interesting
Seriously. Because of this man, there is always something new and interesting to watch on yt.
He's a great man
Maxim provides long continuous fire. No other machine gun can still provide this without changing the barrel. On stationary positions and on armored vehicles, the maxim shows itself excellently.
Thank you for repeating what was said in the video
Saw a burned out one mounted to a T34 the other day... the T34 was in modern Russian markings.
@@Rubix003link?
@@UTubeRepossessions People seem to be making a lot of comments before watching the video at all.
1:45 "This left 35 maxims in Ukraine"
The figure is 35.000 maxim guns
Thompsons were sent to the Soviet Union as part of the lend lease during world war 2. I believe it was Wagner who discovered a huge Soviet arms storage center near Soledar that had brand new Thompson in crates.
BTW, 15:44 that's not a mortar, that's an RPG anti-tank PG-7VL (ПГ-7ВЛ) round.
glad someone caught it, or i was gonna point it out.
Good video. The real story is how little small arms technology has changed over the last 100 years. While plastics/polymers have replaced wood and supplement metal, the basic mechanism of machine guns and pistols is the same. The AK and AR15/M16 rifle designs also haven't changed much since the 1940s/50s.
in many ways, they just can't get much better.
the main points of small arms for militaries are
-cost
-weight
-reliability
-lethality
while you could theoretically pour trillions into building a coil gun that fires micro missiles, you very quickly screw over cost, weight and reliability for very little increase in lethality when a regular bullet will kill a person just fine.
The real big change for infantry will be getting all troops networked with real-time info being fed to AR visors or built into their optics. Like a video game, soldiers will be able to know exactly where their allies are, ping enemy positions, or even have their weapons auto-correct their aim for them.
@@AirLancerVATS when?
I no longer watch the history channel now. These videos are so much more informative and entertaining. 👌
On Lindybeige's channel he interviewed a British volunteer whose unit was given a case of guns right at the beginning. It was three FH-FNC rifles and the rest were Vz61 Skorpion machine pistols. Like any national crisis any guns get broken out.
That's one hell of an eco round...
The F2000 was an excellent rifle, imo only held back by the rather lackluster trigger. Honestly if companies spent more time working on their triggers bullups would be infinitely more likely to be adopted.
you missed the granddaddy of all assault rifles - the STG44/mp43/mp44. its been dragged back out of random storage warehouses as well
Ikr? Wtf.
I happen to know that at least 1 farm in Ukraine is being defended with a bow and arrows. A person I know from a local midevil battle reenactment club was visiting her grandparents farm in Ukraine when Russia attacked. She is not going out of her way to fight, but is using her bow to help if Russian forces are near the farm. She is also a 5 time local archery champion, so she knows what she is doing.
But im guessing it doesn't count here as it is not in military use, and she is staying near the farm.
The Thompson has been making guest appearances in just about every war fought in the last 100 years. Between 1921 and 1945 there were nearly 2 million Thompsons produced. Thompsons were used in the 'Banana Wars', South American conflicts, African wars of independence, various Asian conflicts including the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Etc., etc, The Thompson, like the Mosin, is one of those weapons that fights against itself being used by both sides in a conflict and it wins every time.
Some of the Thompsons showing up have Soviet markings from the 1950s...
"...and you know that something is crude when an AK seems advanced by comparison" That line killed me.
Also, the "RPG Mortar" has something that a normal mortar doesn't have. Anti-Tank rounds. The mortars have a wide range of types of ammo but nothing that can damage a medium to heavy armored vehicle. RPG mortars, on the other hand, have both AP (Anti Personnel) rounds or HE (High Explosive) rounds, which are the only type of ammo that a mortar has that can inflict damage, and AT (Anti Tank) rounds. Granted that an AT round to be effective needs to land on the target but although it's small, the chance is there, plus, AT rounds should be very good at damaging fortifications, especially concrete (which are impossible to repair during combat).
The CZ Bren 2 has been performing well on the battlefield (not a surprise). That will surely mean a cost bump for us consumers here in the states on that particular rifle. The bren 2 runs a carbon poly lower and is very modular
Garand thumb just did a video talking about the bren 2. Thing is a great rifle apparently
@@ljguitarwizardyeah I saw that too, and from all apparent appearances, indeed it does seem to be quite a weapons platform to not only be reckoned with, but also in fact worth checking out.... Also heard mention of its use in the current Ukrainian conflict, although my best guess would be in rather very limited numbers. I could be wrong tho
Seen photos/videos with stg-44s, ppsh-41s, mosin nagants,Kar 98k, among others. Ukraine is a collectors paradise right now
I see on Twitter the Mosin Nagants are making a comeback. Poor 3rd tier troops getting thrust into front line units with bolt actions.
Prigozhin, in one of his many rants calling for more ammo, also displayed entire crates worth of M1 Thompsons in a warehouse, supposedly in Bakhmut. So there are more out there.
The massive caches in Soledar had a weapons cache and repair workshop
If a weapon could kill in 1898 it can still kill today
Nothing bizarre about the Maxim being used. Great weapon for an emplaced MG, perhaps even better suited than some more modern counterparts for sustained fire.
Also design wise it's only a few years before Browning's M2 .50 Cal which is commonplace.
Maxim designed his gun in 1888; Browning's first adopted prototype for his .50 caliber machine gun wasn't built until 1922 (and the cartridge itself didn't exist until 1921). So your "few years" is actually more than three decades.
This. It was apparently used quite heavily in the defense of Bakhmut, where Russia was using their human wave attacks. Just so happens that those kinds of tactics were what the Maxim was originally designed to counter.
@@Big_Red1 Battle of the Somme anybody? That is precisely how the First World War turned into the meat-grinder it was. Charging a strong point armed with Maxim guns in a human wave... *Shudders.*
The Browning M2 is already a century old, considered a relic or classic. And I wouldn't be surprised if decades/centuries from now there will be Ma Deuce variants protecting lunar or planetary colonies.
Simon you forgot to mention that bolt action rifles like the mosin-nagant and the kar98 are used in that conflict.
There are even raports that in this modern brutal trench warfare ww1 type inprov melee weapons like clubs and axes are used.
We're going back aren't we
You said the Ukrainians only have 35 Maxims. In truth they had 30,000 of the 1910 Russian made variant before 2014 per Wikipedia. That is the one they are using nowadays. Very interesting video. Thank you.
I think he meant to say 35,000, but dropped a word. Even pros make mistakes.
Had*
@@I-HAVE-A-BOMB Had* is irrelevant in the face of the 30,000 1910 variants that they have (had). Just a Maxim by a different name. Thanks for the reply.
They inherited 35,000 from the Soviets. Surprised we don't see them on armored vehicles attacking trenches. Would be superb in that sustained fire role. But those wiley Ukrainians love those M2 50 cal machineguns better.
@@donwyoming1936I'm not sure how well the old water jackets and fittings would like vehicular use. Without water the skinny barrels burn up fast.
I think a weirder makeshift RPG rocket i've seen is one i saw in a video of from the Ukrainian side is where they converted a fire extinguisher cylinder into a RPG HE rocket. The fire extinguisher cylinder that was used wasn't one of those small home ones you can hide in a cabinet, it was one of those larger ones. It was a big boom, lol.
Yeah that was the the Chechens fighting for Ukraine. Pretty dope
Yhup. Saw those in Chechnya
Link?
Hopefully for a part 2 because they’re so many weapons that are so underrepresented in this video, like the Russian Shak-12
Brandon Herrera has done 4 videos so far on the subject. th-cam.com/video/9vvhrnMg7QE/w-d-xo.html
One advantage he has over a lot of other people talking about it is he owns many of the weapons being discussed and can give the viewers a closer look at them to compare with what is in the photos.
6:47 Also worth noting some downsides, which I find interesting on the Thompson:
- It's heavy af at 10lbs, helps with recoil a little bit, but very much wouldn't want to carry this anywhere.
- Bolt mass is high, so when triggered - gun jumps forward and off target. First round very likely to miss (even at 25m).
not bad in full auto, but single shots are *very* difficult.
- Trigger sucks (but might have been my specific Thompson, they are old afterall), again not as bad for full auto - but single shots are hard.
- Ammo is pretty heavy (.45 ACP) for a pistol cartridge. Even modern 5,56 *rifle* rounds are lighter.
- Ammo has bad ballistics - the .45acp drops like a rock. Even for a pistol cartridge. (look at charts, it's like 8" @100yds)
Otherwise a fantastic *looking* weapon! The aesthetics are wonderful. Very iconic :)
(but in reality you would ditch it for a PPSH41 or *even a Stengun* very quickly. At least in my experience in firing PPSH and Tommy, both full and semi).
8" @100 yards is insane drop, wow lmfao, never knew it was *THAT bad!* 😵🙃
Totally Disagree. I love the Thompson. Everything about it feels so solid unlike an original Sten that feels like I could break it if I sat on it. For me, at 6ft 210 lbs I don't find it particularly heavy. Compared to a modern AR yeah but the construction and technology is totally different. The ammo can be heavy if using the .45 ACP But they come in many different calibers. Mine is a 9mm and It feels fantastic. This isn't a single fire marksman weapon. IMO Its ability to walk shots on target reliably is more valuable than the pps trying to fly out of your hands
@@HeadCannonPrime Also a good perspective
And .45acp doesn’t achieve improved velocity from its longer barrel. It only gains like 50fps from a 16” barrel vs a 5” from a 1911…… in comparison the 9mm gains like 300+ FPS. 1,100 to 1,400 FPS. Probably the round commonly chambered in WW2 era SMG’s that is improved the most is the 7.62 Tokerav that (diff countries ammo velocities varies) goes from 1,400-1,800fps. Aluminum core SMG specific ammo is especially hot.
The pps43 is another submachine from the era of the sten that surpassed the Thompson in many ways. It had less parts, and larger components so it was less fragile and easier to maintain. The pps43 had a significantly longer range compared to the 45 round, a folding stock for transport/vehicles, and more controllable rate of fire
One thing which is kinda cool about this is the possibility of current arms manufacturers potentially take a second look at these "dated" designs.
True. Some designs just work.
new watercooled MG could be a thing.
I'd be happy if they brought stripper clips back to modern rifles.
Fun fact: the image in 8:21 is of Lauri Törni, later known as Larry Thorne, sometime during the Continuation War.
0:42 the Maxim gun
3:42 the MP40
6:18 the Thompson
8:16 the PPS
11:46 the F2000
13:58 the RPG mortar
The Maxim is just.. a perfect looking machine. But that quad maxim in od green? Beautiful!
I've also seen Mosin-Nagant sniper rifles in some videos, as well as the SVT and SKS. Such weapons can be useful, particularly for equipping irregular units, such as the territorial defense.
Interesting note about the Maxim - It was first designed and built before the advent of smokeless powder.
Imagine the smoke clouds from running a 100 round belt 🙈
I believe there was actually a WWII arms cache found in Ukraine by the Russians around April of this year. Inside were crates of Thompsons, DPs, and Maxims that had never been issued.
In Soledar I think
Most submachine guns are usually produced in such numbers that them showing up in Ukraine or any other conflict is not all that surprising. (I will add that besides the PPS, the PPSh-41 has seen heavy use in Ukraine. Both are liked in the short range room clearing and trench cleaning missions.)
The RPG/mortar combo is a bit of an odd one. One of the video clips you had (the launch in a building) looks more like a normal AT RPG than a mortar combo. The other ones were definitely mortars, and definitely odd.
One that seems to have missed the cut is a modified Kord 12.7mm machine gun modified with a shoulder stock and fired from a bipod. This was seen in the early days of the war. A DP-28 with optic has also been seen in use.
The SVT is kind of unexpected, however the StG-44 has been used and is even more unusual. Both were made in very limited numbers and are usually in a collection.
Another point to note, When Prighozin's Wagner Group captured the weapons cache in Soledar Mines, Their were boxes of Brand new, still individually wrapped Thompson Submachine guns with the Drum magazines found there, among many other strange caches. Brand new Mosin Nagant Rifles, Busted up AK's, Brand new AK's, RPG's among many others.
I prefer the fully automatic dual wield tactical assault shovel.
Lol comment + avatar and username = gold 😅
the Quad Maxim is dope as shit lol
The moison nagants were designed in. 1891 Still in use in Ukraine..
fantastic rifle as well. You can do anything with it including hunting.
It is another rifle you see in just about every conflict still.
They found a few crates of thompsons still in wax paper in Bakhmut - unopened since the original lend lease 80 years ago.
Hate to think how much they'd be worth now, they were mint condition.
Also, a few honourable mentions - the mosin nagant has been very commonly found. Plus the M14 - stored by the Us in the 60's, modernised later on, given to Estonia when they broke free from the soviets and were desperate for arms, and now found fielded by many in Ukraine, 70 years on.
Was soledar not bakhmut they were stored in the salt mines and captured by wagner.
The M14s aren't very popular, and typically given to western volunteers. Unreliable in the mud, not particularly accurate rack grade rifles, and you're lucky to get 2 magazines for it.
100 others already posted this
A lot of these old guns are 'peak firearm.' The best you can get out of a certain paradigm without adding complexity.
Modern weapons are more effective in absolute terms but more complex and hard to maintain.
That's not exactly true
Simon, I know you're not a huge firearms person( allegedly 😉) but I appreciate you diligently doing your research and taking the time to pump out so many high quality videos. Thank you, fact boy!!!!
The most crazy mount I've seen from this war, was a twin maxim mount commented to a ir-guided autimatic fire control system. That's 1880's high tech paired with 2010's high tech.
Here's the thing with any firearm made from the 1870's onwards. They are accurate, hard hitting and reliable. Anything before that and you lose at least one of those qualities (sometimes all of them). The three things they lack are ease of maintenance, high rate of fire and easy access ammunition (usually, at least). They also can't be fitted with modern sights, flash suppressors or stabilisers*.
(*unless, like in the video, they are. Which to me is even more crazy, in a cool way)
In bulk, they are truly obsolete. But in small quantities for limited purpose? They get the job done. A trained and motivated soldier with a bolt action rifle from the Victorian era will deadly effective still. A conscript with an AK is potentially useful - but also just as likely to drop said AK and run away. Only on peer vs peer are the older weapons at a real disadvantage.
Ukraine simply has such a large range of guns to choose from that soldeirs get to chose from what they can find. All of Ukraines elite units use m4s now and a lot have some dope builds. Other volunteer corps that have been integrated into the army such as the 3rd assault brigade use pretty much just ak's. But because the 3rd assualt brigade are some of the most experienced fighters in Ukraine have have been taking the flanks of bakhmut pretty much all of their men use sick ak builds because they captured so many guns they either chose one they find is cool of the collect attachments. They pretty much all run supressors and red dots. Some even with some crazy thermal sights. I even saw a supressed rpk with an extended mag and a adjustable stock and best of all a huge infrared scope. Anything like a pkm with a infrared scope is the scariest shit.
Studies of the 70s wars in Africa showed troops with M1 Garands could hold their own against troops with AK-47s. Bolt actions, not so much. But a good semiautomatic was enough.
The most unexpected one I've seen is the StG-44. Like that's... lmao. Who the heck is making 7.92x33 ammo that's easy enough to get to feed a military weapon? Hard to believe there was much around. I've seen PPSh-41 as well, and some other older ones, but man that StG-44 was the most surprising. That is some boss sh!t though.
For real tho, and an even better, more astute point you made with regards to keeping the bitch fed well enough with that (extremely unique, and nowadays highly RARE) specific ammunition... And yes, rather exceptionally fuckin badass
The Russians captured millions of rounds of this calibre after the war and squirrelled it away for a rainy day. Many of those stores were in Ukraine so the Stg44 is seen quite often in use by 2nd and third line troops….
@@martinchapman1038 Ahhh yeah that makes sense. Didn't realize that stuff would still be sitting around but I guess it isn't that surprising. LOL I still think it's totally chad to find an StG-44 in that conflict
I forget the country
One of the Yugoslavian nations
Brandon Herrera’s been covering the weird weapons of the Ukraine War for several months. He has a few videos about them.
So... about the Thompson... they were extremely sought after in the Korean War. They were seen as the most reliable firearm of that war, at least by the U.S.
Our soldiers would put Thompsons to use any time they could get their hands on them.
What does that have to do with the Thompson’s found in the video? Or any of the Thompson’s in Europe?
The Thompson almost certainly comes from Lend Lease. Despite its opinion among computer gamers, it is a heavy and cumbersome weapon. The Soviets put it in storage immediately after receiving them - small and frail undernourished Soviet conscripts simply could not carry it with any degree of combat effectiveness. The only WW2 place it was appreciated, was Yugoslavia, where people tend to be tall and strong. Plus the PPS is lighter, easier to use, especially on fast magazine changes and uses lighter ammo, yet of roughly the same kinetic energy - the old velocity vs bullet weight scheme. I shot both these firearms in competition and the PPS is simply better. Its only weakness is the lack of semi-auto functionality in the original military configuration. Yet both fire from open bolt, so their semi-auto accuracy is questionable anyway. It is the only area where the weight of the Thompson gives it some advantage.
With the prices of and demand for Thompsons in the US, it is unlikely the Ukrainians bought them on the international market. It is the other way around - Ukraine and their WW2 caches is a significant source of the Thompsons for the European civilian market.
Don’t talk about what you don’t know
@@tomhenry897 I am a big fan of American guns. From Sharps through lever guns, SAAs and 1911 (work of a genius, still relevant after 110+ years) to the AR-15. Yet the Thompson stands out as something odd. The Blish-lock system is based on a nonsensical theory (friction means wearing of the parts involved with use) and turns out to be nothing more than a poorly designed delayed blowback (with a weak brass part). The mag release looks like something from the 18th century, mag rails provide no self-righting, requiring very precise manipulations on change. I shot a borrowed Tommy gun in competition twice (with good results) yet did not become a fanboy. The 1911 is still the base for semiauto pistols. The Tommy gun has no following in the design of modern submachine guns and PCCs. For me it is in the category of gizmos like the Luger Pistol. Somewhat innovative in its day, yet making no sense in the long run.
I'm pretty sure most every modern conflict has had people using WWII era weapons
To be fair, the M2 browning predates WWII.
Hello Simon and, as usual, thank You for a nice and informative video.
One question though: 8.25 in, on the video (About the PPS), there is a picture of soldiers. Isn`t that a Finnish lieutenant on the picture or am I wrong?
This is just like a pic of Lauri Törni, a famous Finnish soldier, who served as officer in 3 armies! He is the man, the myth...
Please, respond and send the picture, if possible.
Keep up the good work.
from a Finn in Diaspora
I think it's him, yes. 8:22
@@sandybarnes887 Hi.
How do You, know that??
There are few people in Finland(!), who knows anything at all, about this topic!
Would be nice to have Your answer, I am, if not a fan, but, like to know about history and some key characters in it.
Waiting for reply
outsider
@@outsider7658 I actually don't know that. Passing along a comment I saw and showing you a period doesn't create a timestamp, a colon does 🙃
@@infernalstormrider Hi.
How do You, know that??
There are few people in Finland(!), who knows anything at all, about this topic!
Would be nice to have Your answer, I am, if not a fan, but, like to know about history and some key characters in it, since I have my "roots" in Karelia.
Lauri Törni, officer of 3 armies, highly decorated. Finally, Major in Green Beret´s
Waiting for reply
outsider
I saw a video with Prigozhin showing off crates of Thompson sun machine guns. They were locate in a warehouse, I think he claimed in Bakhmut. He stated they were Lend Lease weapons that had never been issued.
Quite surprised you didn't mention the trend of zip-tying RPG7 rounds to drones and flying them into enemy tanks.
I'd be happy with any weapon when I need it. I don't care what century it was made, as long as it protects my land, relatives and me. Greetings from Ukraine!
Well the Ukraine defenders have loads of weapons to chose from. A lot of experienced units and special forces like SBU and kraken use some really nice M4 builds with cool attachments and even some hk416s. The elite unit 3rd assualt bittalion pretty much get to chose what they want to carry because they are constantly storming positions on iether side of bakhmut they have a insane flow of captured weapons which they either use or use their attachments. They all use aks but they are all really nice builds with all the attachments. At the end of this war there will be a huge circulation of guns and equipment due to the ammount they have captured
Slava Ukraini
As son as you started discussing antique weapons I expected the MP40 and the PPS to show up. I was wondering if any of the World War II era Finnsh Submachines had appeared in the Ukraine but I guess not.
Not really the same gun, but plenty of PPSh-41s, which was influenced by the Finnish submachine guns.
In clarification, the Soviets never really did use the Thompson submachine guns from the Lend-Lease program mainly due to its .45 ACP cartridge which is not a common caliber in Europe. Hence, probably why we are seeing them alot recently since alot of them were from storage.
If it works, it works. Remember the Colt .45 works great even today. Also, not idea if this is somewhere else in the comments, but the Thompson is not a "machine gun" it is a submachine gun as it fires pistol rounds.
I think the available ammo for many of the weapons types plays a big part in their use. I've also seen some footage of Mosin Nagant's and PPSH and Russian soldiers being captured wearing WW2 era uniforms. Not sure how credible it is, but it does paint a picture if this would be a widespread thing.
Those videos apparently were mainly from the Donbas militias early on in the war. Don't remember seing the PPSH, but I have seen Mosins, and those would also make sense as civillian hunting weapons.
another reason so many old WW2 weapons are being used in Ukraine is because they’re old heirlooms left by veterans of WW2.
For example, a Ukrainian soviet soldier in WW2 might’ve been given a tommy gun as part of the lend lease program, and thus he held onto it after WW2 as both a souvenir but also so he had a weapon immediately to hand in case another conflict started. It then remained in his family until the modern day where his grandchild or another relative decided to use it as they volunteered to fight, or they donated it to the Ukrainian military.
In countries such as Switzerland and Finland, it is actually recommended if not required that active service personnel and reservists must own a firearm so they can almost immediately start fighting in the event of a conflict so the military doesn’t have to waste time equipping an influx of volunteers and conscripts
Before war you can bought PPS, MP40, TOMY GAN, AKM, AKMS(only semi trigger and you can't made shot with compound carbine butt) in gans shops. Same people bought this carbine, but now in Ukraine big problems with amo 45ACP and 9x21. In Ukraine army 5,45x39 is more common than 7,62x39. Now in Ukrainian gans shops 223Rem cheaper than 7,62x39.
Ukraine had a lot of MP40s because they were issued with them by the Germans they'd sided with. Their Galacian division avoided war crimes trials and became the core of the new Ukrainian Army. Many Ukrainians, especially in the West sided with Germany during WW2, and were implicated in many attrocities against Polish, Jewish and Russians. This is all part of the problem with Banderas and Ukraine's alternative red and black OUN flag, which was and sadly still is part of Ukraine's ultranationalist movement.
@@brolohalflemming7042Good fairy tale🤣 I think you Russian bot, if you just love Russian culture, my condolences. The court in Nuremberg did not recognize the evidence of involvement of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the crimes of the Nazis. Bandera was imprisoned after he proclaimed Ukraine's independence in Lviv. He stayed in prison almost until the end of the war. Why does everyone forget that the organization of Ukrainian nationalists was divided into two camps of supporters of Stepan Bandera and Petro Melnyk. Petro Melnyk himself collaborated with the Nazis! Good luck
Don’t know what your talking about
You know nothing
There was video of Prigozhin in Soledar, I believe, cracking open caskets of Thompson's. They definitely appeared to be left from WW2 storage. There were massive stacks of these caskets there.
Thank you for not taking any pot shots at my 2A right as a U.S. citizen! Thumbs up!
This was great! I love these sorts of videos, updating us on the conflict and then displaying the ingenuity and determination of Ukraine, using anything they have without a care for age or cool factor.
Seeing the Maxim was a treat, and the Thompson! Oldies but goodies indeed!
Is it just me, or does that beard just keep getting larger? Tell the truth, Simon, it's a symbiont isn't it? You're the hirsute version of Venom, and you have to feed that thing boxes of Magic Spoon cereal to keep it under your control...
Having fired several Maxim Machine Guns here in the US, in a variety of calibers, including 7.62x54r, other than the weight, I would not feel under-gunned at all. The Maxim seems to balance a relatively modest cyclic rate, with the ability to lay down ‘cone of fire’ at some pretty impressive ranges. Nice report. Thank you for sharing. Happy Holidays!
That soldier firing the RPG indoors is a Modern Warfare player for sure
The maxim is near literally bomb proof. I heard of a trial where the British tested one by holding down the trigger for 7 days and nights straight, using a vast team of people to bring ammunition, clear spent cases, keep the water full, etc. After a week they disassembled it and measured all the parts; it was still good as new.
A Vickers Gun. Slightly improved variant essentially.
I like your channel but like New Yorkers I was born in California I can't understand how you pronounce English language or how people in New York pronounce the English language.
We still have a schmeisser MP40 had a couple of Thompson's that my dad got in Germany. It was a ton of paperwork to keep them when he died but it was worth it.
Both of those weapons are great for clearing trenches and close-in fighting so I'm not surprised they're still around.
Maxim has massive issue fighting in the cold. The water will freeze inside the gun rendering it's useless
Simon, I may have a portion of the answer to "how they got there" and I have questions of my own your researchers might make a great follow up from; all through the region Bahkmut and Soledar are in, there are salt mines. Some of these mines were up and running when the Crusades were being fought, I believe. But they are still there- look for info on the "largest underground performance hall in Europe"- and they run for miles, literally miles, with wide points where a salt dome are, super rich in pure salt was found. In the US we are using empty salt domes in our South East to store the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in. Back to Ukraine; those mines were reportedly used as weapons depots from before WW2- storage of a lot of weapons that "washed up " in Ukraine often found a home there. What I found started from research on Ukraine's resources- and then the Bahkmut conflict was in it's late stages and a picture surfaces of Prigozhin in his full battle rattle, holding a perfect Thompson machine gun; the caption said they had just "liberated" the mine and found all these weapons, among them three cases of new Thompson MGs. In the came picture is a large room stacked to the ceiling with boxes. Lots of munition looking boxes. Very few present generation weapons- other than a recent but very broken sniper rifle and similar. Comments in the article make it appear the felt someone was "keeping" that storage and that several specific areas were completely cleaned out.
So where in the southeast US are these (now empty & apparently repurposed) salt mines you speak of??
The Tommy gun is iconic.
Everyone who knows anything about firearms. Knows what it’s capable of.
Based on the number of available weapons you stated, and the variations we see in this photo shoot, I give you credit for cheering the brand.
One reason the PPS -42/43 was worth holding onto was that armored troops preferred it as a bailout weapon as it had a folding stock, making handy inside a tank and taking up less space than the wooden stocked PPSh-41
supplying with ammunition to the right units must be a nightmare
A small correction regarding the FN F2000 Standard model rifle. The optic is not integrated. It is mounted to a Picatinny rail on top of the rifle's receiver, with a protective shroud that covers it. The shroud can be removed from the optic, and the optic can be removed from the rail, and the rail can be used for mounting other optics and accessories. If the Ukrainians want to "convert" their Standard models to a near identical equivalent of the Tactical model from FN, they easily can.
So, them having gotten the standard models from Belgium almost certainly had nothing to do with Belgium not wanting to give up their "best stock" (presumably meaning the Tactical or Tactical TR models of the F2000), and instead had to do with the fact that they were able to send "out of the crate" optically sighted rifles, rather than rifles with rails and iron sights, that would then also need additional optics to be sent, and then dinked around with to get set up to be 'on par' with the Standard model, and all the associated additional time, effort, headache, and additional logistics involved in that, and so on.
The choice to send Standard models seems entirely pragmatic, and given the situation on the ground in Ukraine, it is eminently the most practical and sensible immediate choice of the two options. And, the Standard model was quite likely the preference, possibly even the choice, of the Ukrainian military over the Tactical or Tactical TR models.
The water cooling feature makes the Maxim an amazing platform weapon with supporting ammo loading and several covering gun positions including snipers and RPG.
10:40 This doesn't mean what you think it means.
Governments and their militaries buy or make equipment in very large quantities, for simplification of ordering, manufacturing, and distribution. This uniformity serves many purposes, but ease of distribution is at or near the top of the list.
So if you're issued (or if you find) a weapon like the PPSh, then you are going to put the magazines for your weapon into whatever pouch is available. For this SMG, you could fit two, maybe three PPSh magazines in the pouch designed to hold one or two AK-47 or -74 magazines. So that's what you do.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, I carried things in pouches that weren't specifically designed for what I was carrying in them. And so did everyone else who needed to carry their odds and ends.
So, for someone to say with any sense of certainty that just because the soldiers don't have pouches specifically designed to carry the magazines of an outdated weapon system, these soldiers couldn't possibly be using such weapons is absolutely ignorant.
It's as if your researchers are familiar only with Call of Duty specifications. And so they think that, in the real world, (where losing means dying rather than restarting your attempt with a fresh life at the latest checkpoint), you can't possibly carry this object unless you have the other objects that match it. Well, guess what, geniuses:
You can pick up and carry ammunition for any weapon, regardless of the weapons you are carrying. You don't have to drop either your AK or your secondary weapon (usually a pistol) in order to pick up and carry a couple of boxes of ammo for a shotgun, or for a machine gun, or wtvr.
This truly is a ridiculous proposition by someone who clearly has no clue about what happens in the real world, especially when the other team is going to kill you if, when, and as it's possible to do so.
Mr Whistler you sir do a great job at what you do and thank you for the educational and entertaining videos all these years...this one was great thank you
In a war that brought back trench warfare, the Maxim isn’t so out of place.
Gotta love the “expert” calling an akm an Ak47
Given the Brits fired a Vickers for a week continuously in shifts and the darned thing was still functional at the end of said week, I'm not surprised the Maxims (the Vickers HMG being a refinement of the Maxim design) are still holding up well. It's an incredibly reliable gun if used right.
Water Cooled Barrels have amazing records of longevity. A group of four Vickers reportedly fired over a million rounds in a weeks time during The Battle of The Somme.
@@fiftycal1 That would not surprise me at all.
The firing I was referring to was a test done in 1963:
"In 1963 in Yorkshire, a class of British Army armorers put one Vickers gun through probably the most strenuous test ever given to an individual gun. The base had a stockpile of approximately 5 million rounds of Mk VII ammunition which was no longer approved for military use. They took a newly rebuilt Vickers gun, and proceeded to fire the entire stock of ammo through it over the course of seven days. They worked in pairs, switching off at 30 minute intervals, with a third man shovelling away spent brass. The gun was fired in 250-round solid bursts, and the worn out barrels were changed every hour and a half. At the end of the five million rounds, the gun was taken back into the shop for inspection. It was found to be within service spec in every dimension."
That's taken from the Popular Mechanics article 'Forgotten Weapons: The Vickers Gun Is One of the Best Firearms Ever Made' by Ian McCollum, published 16 of January 2016. If you search the article name you should get a link to it (I'd share it here but TH-cam tends to ban links).
More gun content please as a og fan of forgotten weapons I'm loving this video! Thank you
These may be weird, but the age really doesn't have much to do with how well they work. On a brand new, front line US tank and some other vehicles, is a .50 M1 Browning, that was put in service right after WW1. It was designed to shoot down biplanes. It's still effective. Current issue to some US special units is probably still the Colt 1911, another Browning design, which dates back to, wait for it, 1911. And the Thompson wasn't dropped from service because it wasn't effective, but because it was expensive to manufacture, and a bit heavy. Even the F-16, a front line fighter, first flew in 1974. Almost 50 years ago! That is amazing.
Maxim guns on the back of pickup trucks have been used with great effect to shoot down Shahead drones. Soviet era radars have trouble lcoking onto the drones because they are so small, this means they can track them but it is hard to hit them with S-300 and it is not cost effective so instead they direct Maxim teams to the area the drone will be and they then shoot it down.
Love to see drone hunters with the Maxims and the MG3s. They really do work rather well when paired with search lights.
Wanger has posted that Bakhmut has a large storage of WW2 weapons and some more modern damaged weaponry in its mineshaft. This shows Ukraine has not been forced to use a lot due to the fact there are hundreds of untouched crates with some of the same weapons you have shown today that are still stored down in there. I do not have access to Russian channels due to the fact that I live in the USA and these channels are getting blocked, so I've had to use semi-reliable sources to find parts of the original video from the Wanger PMC and this was a while ago when Prigozhin visited the mineshaft.
Don't forget the Mosin Nagant 91/30 bolt action rifles and the DP-27 "Stalin's Record Player" light machine guns.
I just knew that the Maxim Gun would be on this list. So old yet still effective at putting down a high volume of covering fire.
The dude firing the rpg inside the building, with a wall RIGHT BEHIND HIM, is gonna have a real bad headache for a while.
No weapon is ever truly obsolete in the hands of one who knows how to use it.
Those 1921 Thomson Sub Machine Guns were designed and sold the American civilian market. The ones sent to the UK often came as part of the accessories in the Sturat Tank. The ones sent to the Soievt Union by the USA and UK included from 1939 -1941 at least were the military versions of the Thomson SMG. A different, less complicated model.
How many ad segments do you need on a single 15min video?
Yes
That RPG being fired in the stairwell 😂😂😂 dude probably had instant regret
The models of Thompson sub machine guns shown ARE of the types that would have been part of the inventory basic issue kit included in many US Lend/Lease vehicles sent to the USSR during WWII. They were removed from the vehicles and placed into storage as the Soviets preferred their indigenous sub machine guns for issue.
Most of the MP40 9X19mm SMGs are converted from semi-autos that are MADE in Germany. The company makes a wide selection of German WWII guns. They recently opened a branch in the USA to make them as they can't be imported due to the ease of full auto conversion. Which is WHY they are being used, they're new, available and WORK!
There was a huge cash of weapons stored in the salt mine of Soledar.
I have seen a movie of Wagner mercenaries opening chests full of Thompson submachine guns!
There were also German StG44s there...
About mortar ammo fired from RPG: They are used because original RPG munituons are designed to penetrate armored vehicles from relatively close distance (800m) which nowdays is not possible in most cases because of increased range of tank fire and active armour. So PRGs nowdays are mostly used to attack infantry, but original cumulative ammo create too few shrapnel, unlike mortar mines, specially designed to destroy infantry
You left out the FNC, BREN 2, FNFAL, HK G3, PPsh41, and the stock piles of WW2 small arms under Bakmut.
The bren 2 has been stellar on the battlefield. No surprise there considering it's a CZ but it's still interesting