Pyro Paul said:
the current smallest rail gun in existance is the 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun which is mounted on an experimental destroyer. examples provided above are of a coil gun. not nessairally the same thing.
Of course it isn't, you don't build a weapon that massive without first making dozens of prototypes, and BAE Systems' prototype has yet to be mounted on anything. The first railgun was made in 1918, and since then dozens of them have been built from the 90mm version made by DARPA to the Yugoslavian 9 kilojoule gun made in 1985 to workbench models made by university students that are perhaps a couple of feet long.
Here's a particularly tiny one [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMUErwcuBf8&feature=related].
TheParagon said:
EDIT: When I say 'produced' I am referring to a weapon manufactured by an established firearms manufacturing firm. There have been a number of 'home-bench' and small firm (essentially still home-bench, in most cases) .50BMG projects, dating right back to the 90s. I recently found a .50BMG revolver project from a small Midwestern-US firm, but very few details - if anyone knows something, that'd be interesting.
Probably the most well-known .50 BMG handgun is the Maadi-Griffin [http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/airborne_combat_engineer/2005/01/the_maadi_griff.html], a single-shot bolt-action the size of a carbine designed by a mildly crazy Mormon survivalist named Bob Stewart. The idea was to produce a low-cost kit which was not technically a gun; with some machining work by the buyer, it could be assembled into a .50 BMG weapon with no serial number. Presumbly for firing at them pesky black helicopters coming to take away your freedoms. It's believed that about 500 kits were sold total and about 200 more confiscated by the ATF, and 700 isn't a bad production run for a garage gun.
This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_XX2lIT1tQ] is a joke video with a real Maadi-Griffin. Watch how he can barely hang on to the damn thing, and how he's trying to stand back from his own hands while firing it. Most Maadi-Griffins that are actually registered are classified as short-barrel rifles, but with the stock removed (as it is in the links) you can more or less argue it's a handgun.
I think I know the revolver you're thinking of (this [http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v453/GMCMA/Other%20stuff/50calhandgun.jpg]); if so, general opinion seems to be it's a Photoshop, or at best a display gun that isn't designed to actually be fired; there's no way to reach the trigger with the holding hand, for a start.
Large calibres are the firearm version of Rule 34, really; if you can name it, someone out there is trying to make a handgun that can fire it. I'm waiting for someone to show me a shot of something chambered for an even stupider cartridge like 20mm Hispano.
brtshstel said:
What are the key differences between the Grewehr 41 and the Gewehr 43? What was the key advantage the latter had over the former that allowed it to be chosen by the Wehrmacht?
The G41 used a hideously unreliable "Bang" gas-trap that was prone to fouling and corrosion, and had a non-detachable magazine loaded using stripper clips; hardly a good arrangement for a semi-automatic. The G43 replaced the whole mess with a much, much better gas system copied more or less directly from the Soviet SVT-40 and had a detachable magazine; it was simpler, cheaper, faster to manufacture, and even somewhat lighter than its largely useless predecessor.
So the key advantage was "not being shit."
brtshstel said:
is it true the US Marines used the M1903 Springfield as an infantry rifle before getting their issue of Garands in the early days of WWII?
While videogames would tell you the Springfield was only in the hands of snipers, it was actually issued in substantial numbers alongside the M1; US Marines were using them during the battle of Guadalcanal (42-43).
Stickyreiss said:
I agree with you, just gonna add, looks like it was heavily influenced by the FN Herstal FAL
That's hardly surprising, since the AK-5 is a variant of FN's FNC assault rifle.
EDIT:
Sn1P3r M98 said:
I have a question. I know that the AK74 is chambered in 5.56 russian, but what is the AK-101 chambered in, and how does it compare to the AK74? They look awfully similar if you ask me
The AK74 is chambered in 5.45x39mm, AK-101 in 5.56x45mm NATO. The difference is largely that the AK-101 is designed for export to countries outside the former Soviet Bloc who use NATO ammunition.
