Can we take a step back and talk about that helmet cannon?!?!?!😂🤣

Curved barrels. They've got CURVED BARRELS!

Some engineer saw that one Tom and Jerry episode and was like “guys, you gotta see this”

Coincidently I just watched a episode Of Mythbusters about this. They used a simple .22 rifle for the test. Surprisingly, it actually worked quite well. Not with a device that clamps on the muzzle, but with a bend barrel that is curved as smoothly as possible. They tried it all the way to 180° (which is admittedly not very useful, unless you want to commit suicide) and it still only lost about 10% of the muzzle velocity of a straight barreled gun. However, they only shot a few rounds each, so it didn't say anything about durability. But it worked.

Wait a minute, there was a helmet mounted cannon?

I bet that if the war had gone on longer, and they had managed to make it “work” in 1946 or so, Hitler would have completely forgotten about it by then. “Mein Fuhrer, I’m happy to report we have completed your order! 20.000 Krummlaufs are ready to be deployed!” “Krum-what??”

Forgotten weapons and Garand thumb both uploading a krummlauf video 17 minutes apart LOL. Time to watch both!

"You couldn't say no to the guy" is 100% the best summary of Nazi-era Germany that I've ever heard.

With Hitler being a veteran of WW1 I'm almost not surprised he thought this would be a fantastic idea.

I wonder if they tried to use the curved device on a MP-38 using the much more tame 9mm pistol cartridge ?

As a German working for the IFZ in Munich, the Krummlauf-Gerät to this Day is really really hard to get proper Documentation on for some Reason. And yeah it definitely was a Folly. I hope one Day we find some Trial and even Battle Reports with it, they got to be out there and since a lot of our Documents were looted after the War and only returned to us in the past 10 Years, we still got Millions of Documents to go through, let's hope there is some more about it and other interesting Items in there. That said, watching this Video i even ended up learning something new! So good Job Ian! Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps

Was just watching Garand’s video. Coincidence?

In the USSR, a curved-barreled version of the Goryunov machine gun was adopted for armored firing points in fortifications (7.62-mm curved-barreled Goryunov KSGM machine gun in a BUK installation). There have been experiments with RPKs to protect the tank from infantry. Even the 82-mm casemate mortar OBK-43. P.S. The F word in the Polenar Tactical video was too much for me LOL

It's interesting that they kept trying to do the curved barrel instead of what the "CornerShot" ended up doing with decoupling the shooty parts from the holdy parts. Like, some sort of "pistol on a stick" with a remote trigger.

I think the fundamental problem is that even if it does work it is such a niche application that nobody is going to bother carrying such a bulky device around when it goes at the expense of carrying ammunition.

Allies defending their decision to test their own version: “Well the Germans wouldn’t waste time and materials developing and manufacturing these if they didn’t work”

Tell us more about the pith helmet cannon...

Reminds me of the flatline barrel I had on my old tippmann 98 paintball gun. Curved up about 20-30* then flattened out for the last 6" or so to induce backspin on the balls. Had to aim low at short range inside of about 10yds. But then they stabilized and gave me an extra 50yds of range over any other paintball gun so I could easily snipe people while they were trying to lob rounds in a huge arch trying to reach me. But their balls would fall short or the occasional ones that made it would bounce off me harmlessly while I could shoot flat and mark them up. Later tippmann came out with the apex barrel that I had on my A5. It was more standard looking straight barrel with what looked like a fat can on the end for the last 6". It had a slider on it for an adjustable hop-up. And could be rotated in 90* intervals. So with it spun upwards to 12o'clock and the hop-up slider maxed out, it operated just like the flatline, but you could back the slider off to eliminate the hop-up effect for closer range so you didn't have to aim low like with the flatline. And the really cool part was you could twist it to either side like 9o'clock or 3o'clock and max out the hop-up and it would put a side spin on the balls so they would go out about 50ft or so and then start curving off to the side to basically shoot around walls. Or flipped down to 6o'clock to drop balls down over the top of cover. It was a very slick setup and worked as well as advertised. Nobody was safe at that point. The tricks you can do when using spherical projectiles..

Today is Forgotten Thumb Day

The timing of the release of this video was BRILLIANT! Just finished the Garand Thumb video, re-freshed my sub list and here is this video. THANK YOU!

I suspect the British officer who first reported this to his commanders asked his men how well it had worked when used against them, and included that detail.

Garand Thumb and Forgotten Weapons on the same topic within just sixteen minutes of each other? My morning is complete

PSA Krummlauf clone set ups when? LoL

As ever, TOTALLY interesting. The guys who wasted their time on this sort of thing were in fact wise enough to see it as a way to stay in a factory and not in some benighted foxhole. So, my argument is that given the military situation from November '44 -- they were the Smart ones. Great Video and Many Thanks Forgotten Weapons

This is no coincidence, ian and mike have been cooking together on these spicy delights. This is like the third video where they covered the same topic, on the same week.

I love the increased cross channel support I've been seeing among the gun guys. I know you've always supported each other, there don't seem to be or have ever been any rivalries for real. That is pretty sweet.

Thank you for clarifying the details on the development on this unique German device.

Great info Ian, thanks for the presentation

Can we get a legit forgotten weapons and garand thumb crossover?

Fascinating content, Thanks Ian.

Thank you for this amazing post, Ian. You're the best comunicator.

This past week has captured the old spirit of FW, which kept me tuning in back in the 2010s - keep it up!

After seeing Mike's video, I'm suprised the Germans tested this thing for groups at 50 meters, he couldn't even get anything reliable at roughly half that (25-30 yards). Equally interesting is how high the Germans had to aim over the target, where in Mike's (very limited) testing it tended to shoot high instead. It's another great example of how you can track Hitler's (and his staff's) ever declining mental capacity throughout the war just by looking at the more insane "Wunderwaffen" ideas being put into production.

I feel like the rifle grenade idea would’ve worked quite well for shooting around corners rather than regular bullets because only the gas has to travel around the bend

What a treat, just watched GTs video and now yours!

Watching this and Grandthumbs is like a full hour of amazing content on an awesome topic🔥

I always learn something new watching your videos Ian

Just the video we needed to follow up GT’s vid, thank you sir👌🏻

While watching Garand Thumbs video i thought "i wonder if Ian ever did a video on this?" Just under the video was this. Thanks Ian for a great video! Answered many questions i had while watching GT's video.

Cool, I saw the Garand Thumb video. The information was useful as I'd never heard of this.

This is one of my favorite videos of Forgotten Weapons.

There was a quote from a judge on Forged in Fire that I like. He said, Don't waste a lot of time on a bad decision.

Great video keep up the good work

There is one of these firearms in the CFB Borden military museum gun collection. It was the version that was issued to the tankers. The museum is open Monday to Friday: 9:00 am -3:00 pm and Saturday & Sunday: 10 am - 4:00 pm.

I'm not aware of any British experimentations with bent barrels but am no expert on the subject. However I have seen photos of a member of the Royal Army Service Corps in the post war period with a Sten Mk.5 with a swivel rear butt stock, the rear sight had a glass prism behind it to allow the shooter to still get a sight picture. It also had a front grip handle added that differed from the standard Mk.5 and I believe also swiveled. Great video by the way! Long time follower and watcher :)

Just saw thumbs video and wanted your perspective. Awesome.

The Allies wound up using German tech to develop space programs. This looks like something the Elbonian Army would pursue.

Also in the Koblenz museum we have a Panther now :D

I remember seeing a History Channel episode talking about the Krummlauf

Never mind the dirt it kicked up the sun reflecting of that big mirror would be my worry.

I'm starting to think this Hitler guy might not have been so bright...

I member back when The History Channel was still showing history on one of their Nazi Wonder weapon shows, Dr. William F. Atwater, a director for a museum, showed an original copy of one they had in the collection. It’s one of those, on paper, sounds neat, but I wanna saw Mythbusters, and Dr. Atwater showed it didn’t really work every time

wow...Ian finally visited the" Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung" in Koblenz, Germany. Absolutely recommendable...it is a comprehensive collection & exhibition of the german Bundeswehr...you find guns & cannons of all kinds but also aircraft, missiles and so on. Don't be surprised, if you go there you'll find the place is really stuffed...and it's directly situated in the Rhine valley...

Well, I see straight path from this idea to the bunker where he offed himself.

Heh, considering it was at a time when the Brits had ideas like a papier mache (yes yes, pykrete) aircraft carrier and tanks like the TOG II or vehicles like the Praying Mantis... pretty much everyone and their mother had insane ideas that surprisingly got to various stages of production. Germans and Brits had some of the more outrageous ones.

WHAT A GREAT DAY TO BE SUBSCRIBED TO BOTH CHANNELS

I just watched a new video by garandthumb on the krummlauf now I'm watching this new video of forgotten weapons about the something. Strange.

A video game named ghost recon 2 had the xm8 series guns with the camera to lean around corners and was a big topic and you could unlock behind the scenes stuff about the program they were trying in the early 2000s. This always reminded me of that how the Germans tried to do something like that. I'm no expert so might have got terms and time period wrong but i remember the game did have them even if it was frictional and system was never used.

Much more effective is what the US (and others, probably) tried to develop with things like the "land warrior" concept. Where you mount a camera to the rifle, and the sight is mounted in the helmet. Can't shoot around corners, but you can hold the rifle around the corner and shoot that way, so kinda the same thing? I do see this as inevitable tech, it's just not quite there yet. Of course, semi-autonomous drones are probably where we are headed. Send the drones in, then pick one and assign a soldier to remote operate it. Your trained soldier isn't exposed to danger, and the drone can do the boring part (getting into position) at least mostly on it's own. Imagine a drone that can fly into a contested area, land, and set up surveillance. It detects possible targets, a soldier gets assigned to the drone, assesses the situation, and can fire whatever ordinance the drone is carrying if it is deemed worth while.

If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Koblenz in Germany, I only can recommend the museum Ian mentioned: "Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung". Entry is cheap and they have a lot of curious weapons.

The idea that comes to my mind is what if the Tank version of this idea was experimented with instead? What if the special tank turret idea was played with more? The tank version, with all of its fixed sights and more durable construction, could have been something used by infantry only in specially built bunkers (not something they would have to carry around, but something that engineers could build for them to man). Like, if on the beaches of Normandy these things were mounted on bunkers to allow troops to fire into places that the machine guns could not without exposing the soldiers. That's the only way I can imagine this idea working at all. Like a lot of "Wonder Weapons" I'm curious what it could have been if it was given more time, effort, and reasonable expectations, but, of course, anyone with the available time, effort, and reasonable expectations wouldn't have tried developing these "Wonder Weapons". Like, what if instead of this just being something that attaches to an existing gun, the gun and cartridge were built around this idea? With a smaller bullet moving slower the damage to the curved barrel would be much lower. If you were going that far, though, could you instead just have an entire pistol/SMG with a short barrel at the top of a periscope? For the Tank version something small could be enough to deal with infantry too close for the mounted machine gun to hit, especially since this device doesn't need to be effective past 200m. For this infantry the same idea I had before applies. Something like this could be mounted on a bunker to fill the gaps that the machine guns can't hit without exposing the soldier. I mean, what is a bunker if not just an immobile tank made of concrete? Again, anyone with the actual ability to develop something like this would probably just develop something else instead. It's just fun to speculate about.

When the US Army Ordnance Museum was still in Aberdeen, they had several examples of the Krummlauf device. Testing reports that I saw suggested that 1) They were hideously impractical, 2) grossly inaccurate, and 3) tended to cause bullets to break up, flinging loosely-aimed fragments in the general direction you were aiming (for certain values of 'aim').

Great video.

Would love to see a video covering forgotten firearm technologies that you think deserve a second look or deserved further development.

You and GarandThumb both released a video about this gun! What the!>!>

lol, the fact that it straitened out the barrel was and engineering hint.

Came straight here from GTs' video! Fascinating weapon attachment.

Honestly, the P-version would have probably been at least as effective, cheaper, and easier to handle inside the vehicle, if they had focussed development on 9x19mm SMG as the host gun. Lower pressure, lower velocity, rounder bullets, and do youbreally care if an FMJ pistol bullet is tumbling when it hits meat at close range? Honestly, you aren't going to be making hits in combat at the outer reaches of the nominal dead zone (say, 50-150 meters) *anyway* . Even a tumbling pistol bullet going subsonic slapoing into an enemy soldier sideways at 50m is still a harder hit than a fragment from a hand grenade at 5 to 10 meters. More than adequate to disrupt a grunt trying to close close enough to theaten a tank with antitank grenades. The idea still generally sucks, and the stuff the Rhodesians tried to protect farm truck convoys (like a daisy wheel of shotgun barrels with a crank handle to fire them in succession) would work better. And before anyone asks, "But what about nearby friendly infantry? Won't you risk hitting them?" Look, if youve got friendly infantry around your tanks as you enter an area where enemy infantry might be, it's those infantrymen who are supposed to keep the enemy tank killer teams off you. That's literally why you *have* an infantry screen. 😅

How is this possible you and Garand release a video about the same subject at the same time

Several decades ago I read an article in a magazine about these weapons. At the time, it was thought they were for shooting around corners of buildings. The battles of Stalingrad were mentioned! Inyeresting that they were for trench or foxholes! In WW1, various nations had a variety of mounts, and periscopes fitted to conventional rifles to allow them to fire over the top of the trench with out exposing the shooter, including a folding rifle stock for the 1903 Springfield. Apparently the latter was never fielded. There is an interresting article in the American Rifleman posted on line on April 5, 2018, "Sniping from below: Periscope Rifles in WW1" by Tom Laemlein

I remember reading someplace that they experimented with all lead bullets to reduce wear on the barrels.

You can tell that Ian, as an engineer, is chomping at the bitt to develop this idea.

Thanks. The only other reference I have ever read about this was in Ballatines History of WWII Infantry Weapons book, 50 years ago.

What do we gotta do for you to collab with the other guntubers?! That would be legendary!

Saw the krummlauf device in a kids book in 1980, Weird and Wonderful Weaponry by Major EN Hebden. Loved that book!

When I was at the Royal Armouries on a research trip back in 2014-15 (I can't remember the exact date) one of the weapons I was allowed to handle was the STG-44, and the Krummlauf attachment. My first observation was 'wow the Sturmgewehr is way heavier that i expected it to be' but on top of that, the STG with Krummlauf attached is so awkwardly balanced, and difficult to aim, that even if technical problems had been solved, I cannot imagine it seeing much actual use under combat conditions.

Question: Is the barrel smooth bore or rifled on these guns. It doesn't make much sense to make the projectile spin, giving it a gyroscopic moment, if you want it to go around a curve.

It's pretty funny that Hitler wanted to make the Sturmgewehr shoot around corners after he didn't want it to replace rifles at all, leading to the deceptive MP 43 and MP 44 designations.

The helmet version would be probably mounted to the recesses of the helmet, which was initially designed for visors.

I like the Finish view of this concept which you can Still Purchase To This Day where it's a site that lets you hold a gun at either a 45° or 90° angle and Accurately still fire it!!! 🤠👍🇫🇮 P.s. Ian had already done a video on it a few years back!

I wonder why they didn't just develop it for the MP 40 to start with? It will be a short range device anyhow and the 9mm bullet is going pretty slow and likely wont cause much damage on the curved barrel. I think the program would work out pretty easy in 9mm.

I had read of those in Phillip Sharpe’s The Rifle in America, published shortly post WWII. Sharpe was entertaining, but not a very careful researcher. He was attached to US Army ordnance late in the war, and described the Krummlauf as having vicious side recoil.

I figured this was coming after Mike dropped the firing video of this.

Wow, I've never been this early to a FW vid.. idk what to do

They have one of these in the Kentucky Military History museum in Frankfort, which is where I saw it for the first time back in 1960. Colonel George Chinn, author of “The Machine Gun” was their curator and in charge of their collection for many years. You should come here and visit them.

I just thought that a Gauss rifle would be perfect for this kind of thing. The projectile would not actually touch the barrel and the electro magnets could just pull the projectile through the curve and out the end. If you just need suppressing fire and not accurate shots, you could do what the ANZACs did in Gallipoli to retreat. Have the guns shooting at the enemy but you are in the trench and using string or something similar to safely shoot. You could use hand periscopes or similar to see outside the trench without poking your head out. There are far easier to do solutions if 100% accuracy is not needed. However if you do, then this is the harder way to get it done. Though I see this as more of a specialist thing. Like one person in a squad would use this to safely scout ahead or take safe shots. Or to just provide covering fire for the others taking regular shots. Sure this has it's uses, but having it on a gun makes it useless for normal shots. Which is most of what needs to be done. One specialty gun per squad would work I think.

Meanwhile Demolition Ranch was able to Looney Toons this concept into working

At the same time garand thumb making video about this topic too

There was an extensive M-1 Carbine display at the Baltimore Antique Arms Shows in 2016. Amongst the flash hiders, grenade launchers, muzzle breaks, and blank-firing adapters, there was a curved barrel attachment (about a 30 degree curve). I can't make out the placard in my picture, so I am not sure if this was a U.S. government experiment, a foreign government experiment, or someone's garage pipe dream.

I vaguely remember seeing something the Australian Army / defence force did an experiment I am not sure if it was just a sighting system, or if it included a curved attachment to shoot around corners, for the Australian version of the Steyr rifle.

I’m sure many years ago I was shown at least one (I recall more than one) of the Krummlauf devices by Herb Woodend the curator of the Pattern Room at ROF Enfield. I may be wrong and my memory may have failed me, but I’m sure I recall one of the guns with the Krummlauf device (or just an angled barrel) was on an MP38 or MP40. Is there any record of that device being tried on the 9mm MP38/MP40 or has my memory failed me? I guess if there was a MP38/MP40 it would be at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, England as the Pattern Room exhibits were all moved there when ROF Enfield closed. If so Johnathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery would know about it 🤔

I had heard about this system many years ago but thought it was for a submachine gun not the battle rifle, learned something new today. When I was a Marine Corps tanker back in the 1970s we were taught that is your tanks were engaged by enemy infantry that you would use your tank's coax machinegun to cover your partner's tank. A sorta I scratch your back, you scratch mine system.

There was an experimental Sten Mk.V to shoot around corners. Instead of bending the Sten's barrel, they fitted a pivoting stock and front grip. Aiming was done through a prism attached the rear sight.

I'd I just realize with addition of this? why didn't they rifled the barrel with that curve to give it more spin and accuracy? like with they did with other barrels like with the flint lock

This "One topic on multiple gun channels at once" should be a regular coordinated thing. Guys, do it!

WW1 Trench warfare fever dream came true?!

This story is a great example of how bad ideas self-perpetuate. Someone has an idea. It might or might not be a bad idea. However, someone in charge hears of this idea and immediately dreams up a much, much worse version of it and demands it be made reality. Now it falls to you to make the bad idea reality, no matter what, because your boss isn't going to listen to reason. Finally, once you produce your best implementation of the bad idea, OTHER people in charge look at the idea and think "Well, they wouldn't have made it if it was a bad idea!" and the cycle repeats.

Hitlers folly (one of many) This channel is meme gold for a reason.

FYI, That "J" is actually an "I", in the older scripts. On the 'I' that hook sits on the standard base line/level as most other letters. The hook on a 'J' goes below the base line, like lower case 'g', 'p', 'q', etc..

When it comes to the British experiments, it's possible we considered the idea at the start of the war when we were still worried about invasion, knowing us some engineer in a shed bolted one together and found out it was crap