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And now for something different. At the start of the 20th century, military strategist were still coming to grips with what the potential was for automatic weapons. This along with the limitations of the technology of the time resulted in some designs that with hindsight were not winners. The Italian Vilar-Perosa is one of those. Firing a cartridge that was less powerful than a 9mm parabellum it was originally assigned to a twelve, no not a typo, twelve man crew. Along with its gun-shield which weighed more than the actual gun it was too awkward to employ at short ranges. Eventually its gun crew size was reduced down to a more manageable size, but by then the Italians realized that if you gave it a normal rifle stock you had.....a submachinegun.
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If you saw Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, when Indie and his dad escape from the zepplin in the biplane on board they get chased by the Lufftwaffe soon after. Indie tell his dad to man the flexible mount machinegun on the plane. For whatever reason they gave the German biplane a Vilar-Perosa, or some cobbled up lookalike, for its weapon! I guess some gun geek had always wanted to use one in a film?
Well not entirely. About the time the Italians were realizing that they had miscast it the Vilar-Perosa and started the process that would transform it into the 1918 OVP. The Germans were beginning to field the Bergmann 1918. Which many people consider the first true smg. But in effect the Italians had done it several years before and just not realized it.
So the pattern (of the action) itself was technically sound, huh?
That kind of reminds me of how the gas action used in the Simonov PTRS-43 anti-tank rifleturned out --- it didn't work out in the PTRS, but Simonov scaled it down a bit and used the same pattern in the SKS-45 (a designation later shortened to simply "SKS").
That kind of reminds me of how the gas action used in the Simonov PTRS-43 anti-tank rifleturned out --- it didn't work out in the PTRS, but Simonov scaled it down a bit and used the same pattern in the SKS-45 (a designation later shortened to simply "SKS").
www.landships.freeservers.com has section called the WWI fighting man which gives a farily good explaination of it. I had run across the weapon years ago doing research for another project, and finally got around to getting back to it. I want to use the weapon in the picture Line of fire which I've already posted the sketch to FA. I guess I just like finding things different than the run-of-mill stuff.
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