Forgotten Weapons

Forgotten Weapons is the blog and video series of mechanical engineer Ian McCollum, in which he takes a look at obscure and unusual firearms.

His YouTube channel is here and his blog can be found at forgottenweapons.com.


 * BFG: A few real life examples, such as the Chinese "Jingal" guns intended to be balanced on fortification walls,4-bore rifles meant to stop a charging elephant, and Lahti anti-tank rifle.
 * Cool Gun: Naturally.
 * Couldn't Find a Lighter: An interview with flamethrower expert Charlie Hobson includes this as a question. Hobson replied that he has done it with propane torch ignited flamethrowers when he used to smoke, but he notes the chemicals involved in period igniter cartridges would make this a bad idea when using one.
 * Gun Accessories: An entire category of weird ones like the "Krummlauf" curved barrel attachment.
 * Gun Porn
 * Grail in the Garbage: The Volkssturm VG-5 is one the most valuable non-automatic rifles of World War II because it looked like garbage and nobody brought them back as trophies, compounding their low production and rare use against Americans.
 * I Am Not Left-Handed/Self-Imposed Challenge: Ian has run some seriously outdated firearms through competitive shooting courses (particularly in Spin-Off InRange TV) such as running a a World War I clip fed pistol in a pistol match. The handicap of his weapon choice obfuscates the fact that he's actually quite skilled at shooting and is fully capable of placing without this handicap. He has warned in multiple Q&As that an inexperienced shooter should not to try such a thing as the handicap will kill any fun if you're not. (Despite the trope name Ian actually is left-handed, and will mention when the oddities he handles were not designed with left handed users in mind.)
 * Nice Hat: Ian has a large collection of military surplus and reproduction hats.
 * Older Than They Think: Several firearms concepts appeared before they made it big yet never quite took off. An intermediate cartridge, select fire, man portable rifle ("Assault Rifle") in... 1917?
 * Rare Guns: In his videos on the SPAS and the Jackhammer Ian notes they are largely known for their appearances in video games
 * Reliably Unreliable Guns: The most frequent reasons featured guns were forgotten is exceptionally poor reliability and/or safety.
 * Ian notes that however rare it actually happening was, the possibility a turret revolver would shoot its wielder if the percussion caps chain fired was enough to make all attempts flop.
 * Unlike many unreliable guns that never took off, the L85A1 was adopted by a major power despite all of its flaws (which were covered up by the British)
 * Running Gag: Ian pulling out a rare but well known weapon (often a rare variant of a common one so it's still useful) to use as a size comparison for particularly small or large firearms.
 * Wall of Weapons: Ian notes his dad (who literally wrote the book on Arisaka collecting) had one of all Arisaka variants, which showed the slow degradation of features and quality as the war progressed. Ian credits it with inspiring his passion for firearms.
 * Ian has since gotten his own.