Brassey's essential guide to military small arms : design principles and operating methods

This work deals with the classification, construction, design and theory of different kinds of small arms (hand-firing weapons, heavy machine guns and small-calibre automatic cannons).

It provides the necessary knowledge and information to designers, workers in research and development, students at military colleges and all those with an interest in firearms.

Introductory chapters give basic information about the history, task and utilization of automatic small arms, about the properties of cartridges used and about the basic arrangement of small arms.

Subsequent chapters deal with the individual components and mechanisms of automatic weapons (barrels, breech systems, systems of weapon drive, high rate-of-fire weapon systems, feeding of cartidges, springs in weapons, firing and trigger mechanisms, extractors, ejectors buffers, safety arrangements and cocking).

The special theoretical problems of automatic weapons dynamics are discussed and the procedure of the research development and beginning of production of automatic weapons explained.