Bei’an in northern China was for many years “Gun City, PRC”; churning out huge numbers of cloned WWII-era firearms before switching to China’s clone of the AK-47.
(American soldiers examine a captured Type 50, the Chinese clone of the WWII Soviet PPSh-41, during the Korean War.) (US National Archives photo)
(This monument in modern Bei’an honors the 9,006,116 guns made at Factory #626.) (photo via Xinhua news agency)
The last country to produce new Mosin-Nagants was perhaps the most obscure player in Cold War-era Europe, Albania. There a small run of this rifle was made in the early 1960s, a decade and a half after WWII ended and the world (including Albania itself) had already moved on to more modern firearms.
(Albanian-manufactured Mosin-Nagant 91/30 rifle, the final production run of this legendary WWII rifle.) (photo via Armslist website)
(Enver Hoxha, the WWII guerilla who would become Albania’s dictator from 1944 – 1985.)
(Mosin-Nagant M44s being looted by an Albanian civilian during the 1997 chaos.) (Associated Press photo)
The Cold War-era Albanian military overall was a blend of different generations (including WWII) of weapons serving alongside one another.
Since starting wwiiafterwwii, I have wanted to do something on this topic but was unsure how to approach it. I am interested in how WWII weapons performed in battle against Cold War replacements. But also, it is fascinating to consider how they ended up where they did after WWII……how did a Garand built to fight Imperial Japan end up in the Somali desert in the 1970s, or how did a Waffen-SS sturmgewehr end up in 21st century Damascus?
(An ex-Wehrmacht NbW 42 Nebelwerfer with Interarms markings in the 1960s.)
The M33 helmet (more formally, Elmetto Mod.33) was the standard helmet of the Italian army during WWII. It was designed in the early 1930s to replace WWI-era helmets. Made of 1.1mm heat-treated steel, the M33 was said to offer triple the protection of the French army’s then-current Adrian helmet (Italy expected France to be it’s enemy in any future war). All in all, the M33 was effective, comfortable, and economical for Italy to manufacture during WWII. It was a quality helmet.
(Italian troops in WWII wearing the M33 helmet.)
Unlike Germany’s M40 stahlhelm or Japan’s M30-32 Tetsu-bo, the Italian M33 had a generic, nondescript shape and thus it carried no “political baggage” after WWII ended in 1945. It went on to have a long postwar career with the new Italian army, and also saw some overseas usage after WWII.
(Italian army 1970s-vintage camouflage cover and foilage net on a M33.)
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