JEWELS FOUND IN THREE YUGOSLAVIAN MUSEUMS

SAR Staff — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:19:53 +0000

By Dan Shea

Above: The Monument to the Unknown Hero on Mount Avala outside of Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The monument sits on top of the highest mountain in the area, and there is a 360 degree panoramic view of the Serbian countryside. At the end of World War One, the new King of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes built this monument to all soldiers of all sides who were lost in that epic war. There are several sections visible that took direct hits from the German cannoneers doing target practice from the valley during World War Two. Legend has it that their officer was educated about such things, and knew this monument was to all lost soldiers, so he stopped the gunners before they could do more damage.

During the Living History class in Serbia, we spent some time in the Fortress of Kalamegdan Museum. Aside from the live fire of machine guns and cannons, this was a highlight of the tour. More information on Living History can be found at www.livinghistoryserbia.com . This brought up some of the other very interesting displays in the main areas, and the back rooms of some Serbian museums. We decided to bring you some of the special items we found. – Dan

The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

During the 150th Anniversary of the factory at Zastava, SAR Expeditionary Force members Dr. Philip Dater and Dan Shea were invited guests, along with the main guest, General Mikhail Kalashnikov. The General has a long-standing relationship with many of the designers and engineers at Zastava, where many of his designs have been manufactured. We were fortunate to have a number of conversations with the General, and to tour the Zastava Historical Museum with him. The museum curator at “The Old Gunfoundry” is Mrs. Radmilla Milivodevic. She gave several tours while we were there, and we were impressed with the displays and her knowledge of the history represented there. As an American, I found it interesting to see the displays that represented late 19th Century and early 20th Century technical manufacturing information exchanges between the Yugoslavs and the United States.

The Old Gun Foundry building that houses the museum at Zastava Arms.

The museum itself is located in the old gun foundry building, where cannon were made in the early days. The building itself is a testament to that new industrial architecture at the turn of the last century. Our interests were in two main places. First, the main museum display floor, and second, there were back rooms and upstairs rooms that held the specimens not ready for display. Any visit to Zastava should include a tour of the museum, if it can be arranged.

Among the cannons and machines in the main display area, we find the World War I display with 1914 Hotchkiss Machine Gun, 1907/15 St. Etienne Machine Gun, 1909 Serbian Maxim Machine Gun, and the MG08 Maxim Machine Gun on its sled mount. The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

General Mikhail Kalashnikov, twice awarded the medal of the people in the USSR, designer of the AK47 style weapons system, among many others, sits and talks with one of his protégées, Colonel Marinko Petrovic. Col. Petrovic was the director of Zastava at the time of the 150th Anniversary celebration. Col. Petrovic started in Zastava 1978 in Design, one year in control of the ballistic laboratory doing measurements using the Hewlett Pressure & Vibration Analyzer, and then he worked on the 30mm Universal cannon dynamic analysis and conception. He began work on the development of small arms. His first job was mastering the products and licensing for the tank machine guns NSV and PKT. Zastava purchased the licenses for the tank and two guns. Next was the M84 PKM project. Then the M91 Sniper rifle and the Master FLG, the 9mm Kalashnikov variant covered in previous issues of SAR. With his team, he developed many of the Yugoslav variants of the Kalashnikov, and finally he led the M21 project – Yugoslavia’s entrant for the Soldier of the Future to use.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Serbian Chauchat. This is a Model of 1918 in 8mm Mauser, using a magazine very similar to the US .30-06 Chauchat magazine. These were bought by the Serbs in World War I. Note the placement of the vertical hand grip behind the magazine. The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

Prototype submachine gun from right after World War II that we found in the upstairs racks at Zastava. Inscription plate says that this is a Gift to Voja Niketic, Major Director, 29 April 1945. The crest is Yugoslav, from date of the founding of the group, 29 November, 1943. The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

The Fortress of Kalamegdan

Long time SAR readers will be familiar with the Fortress of Kalamegdan from previous articles, but for this tour we had some special items brought from the back room. Kalamegdan dates back to the Roman times, and has seen many wars, and many masters. The museum there is one of the finest in the “Old World” and the displays cover the Bronze Age through the fighting in Kosovo.

Branka Milosavljevic, Senior Curator at the museum at Kalamegdan, was our tour guide. Her specialties are in the earlier eras, but she was well versed in the modern weapon displays and, with firearms author Branko Bogdanovic and Living History leader Mike Hajducovic, we had a wealth of information presented to us. Around every corner were new, interesting displays, and the Serbian penchant for powerful sculptures were evident throughout. Two items of note other than Tito’s statue, were the “Call to Uprising” by Vojin Bakic from 1953, which is a powerful sculpture of a man calling for the fight against the Nazis, and Nandor Glid’s “Capitulation of Italy” from 1960. In the latter sculpture, Glid uses parts of Italian machine guns, rifles, bayonets, mortars and the other accouterments of war to create a wall sculpture that is intriguing and speaks of the end of the war.

“The Target” by Valerij Mikiele (Croatian) in 1969. This sculpture is in memory of the massacre at Kragujevac in October of 1941. The Nazis in the area had problems with the local partisans, and they decided to have retribution. For each Nazi soldier killed by the Yugoslavs, 100 Yugoslavian men would be executed, and for every Nazi soldier wounded, 50 Yugoslavian men would be executed. After a Nazi group was attacked, the Nazis went looking for revenge. First they took all of the known communist men, then workers, and finally, 300 boys from the local high school. They staged them out to a factory/warehouse, then took them out to a field and executed them – all told, 7,000 at once. Mikiele expressed the agony of the people of Kragujevac in this sculpture. There is a museum in town devoted to this sad event, but “The Target” is at the Zastava museum, and it is a striking, powerful sculpture.

We were allowed to work through the displays of the museum at our own pace, and many items of interest were noted. I found that Tito’s Savage 1928A1 Thompson serial number S-195622 was of as much interest as the Colt Thompson that was displayed with no access to the serial number. We plan to get that information and send it to Thompson Historian Gordon Herigstad for inclusion in his new updates.

Displayed with other modern weapons, the Serbian M55A3B1 three barreled 20mm Hispano style gun dominates the room. There is also an M53 8mm machine gun on tripod, and the M57 shoulder fired rocket propelled grenade launcher. The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

Early on, Yugoslavia was a hotbed of grenade design. The new style fuze is the core of the system, and the standard fuze was called the System Kragujevac Model 1898. The box-like Model of 1912 was one of the first Serbian grenades used as a defensive hand grenade in the earliest parts of the war with the Turks that preceded World War I. On the 1912, the total weight was 820 grams with the weight of the explosive being 250grams. The fuze times at between 3 to 6 seconds, not leaving much room for “counting the fuze out” before throwing. Shown here is the 1912/25 model fuze. The small “egg” type grenade is the M1925. The Old Gun Foundry at Zastava

Powder Springs MAC11A1 .380 from Kosovo, it was captured from the Albanians by Serb forces, and had the suppressor with it. There were many weapons shown that were captured from the Albanian (Muslim) forces in Kosovo, including SIG sniper rifles and some Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber rifles. The Albanians illegally obtained many weapons in the US and Europe to smuggle in to fight the Serbs. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

1907/15 St. Etienne machine gun. The exterior of this weapon was in a lightly pitted condition, but when we opened it up, the internals were perfect and well greased. The reverse recoil ratchet can be clearly seen on the inside, which is the mechanism that allows for the unique “forward recoil” of the St. Etienne system. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

There were 250 7x57mm Maxims made for Serbia. Most of these went to the French during the early years of World War I in 1915-16. This was at a point where the Serbs considered themselves allies of the French – changing only recently during the NATO bombings, where the Serbs covered the French statues with symbolic black draping. Most of the Maxims were provided by the local people in a town who raised money to supply their local unit with some real firepower. This example was in excellent condition. The Cyrillic inscription translates to: “People of Nis District to their brave infantry regiment, the Prince Mikhail”. We took the lock out of the gun and found it to be a fully functional 1909-style Maxim lock. It appeared that if we had a belt of ammunition, we could have fired this Maxim. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

From the back room came an interesting Lewis gun. As soon as we saw the “Castle” type pan, we were thinking “Dutch Lewis.” This seemed an odd gun to be in Yugoslavia, but further examination by Branko Bogdonavic turned up the marking “Hembrug 1924.” This, plus the unique pan and stock mark these as the Lewis Model of 1920. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

The UD42 submachine gun was issued by some of the special operations groups in World War II, and this example was represented as being from the OSS. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

Richard Graham examines a German quad MG setup. Behind him is the hull of the boat used by the first rebel groups coming to attack the Germans. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

SAR Technical Editor Dan Shea examines the 1915 Villar Perosa in 9mm Glisenti. This is kept in the back room of the museum and was brought out specifically for the attendees of “Living History” to examine. Dan spent the rest of the trip looking for the Italian 1915 bicycle that would have been used for a mount. Somewhere, in the mountains of Yugoslavia, is the bicycle that this gun was mounted on. It would be the Holy Grail of bipods to bring to the line at Knob Creek. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

In 1809 at the Battle of Chejar near Nis, the Serb commander was losing his battle and blew up the trench they were in. This killed all of the Turks and his own men. The Turkish commander beheaded all Serb bodies, and put 592 skulls into the walls of a tower he built on the site to warn all Serbs for the future what would happen to them if they fought the Turks. This reproduction of the wall is in Kalamegdan. There were chilling displays all through the museum showing the horrors of the five hundred year Turkish occupation. The Serbian response to this? “It took us five hundred years, but we got rid of them.” The Fortress of Kalamegdan

In the museum section on modern fighting, there is a display showing what is clearly part of a US made Cluster Bomb. The caption says that these are forbidden from use, yet, 2 containers were dropped on 7 May 1999 in the South East of Nis city. There were 17 dead from the attack. The Fortress of Kalamegdan

Light Portable Rocket System PVO-S-2M Bottom: Light Portable Rocket System “Needle” The Fortress of Kalamegdan

Military Museum at Kacharevo

Approximately 40 kilometers North-East of Belgrade is the Military Museum at Kacharevo. This facility is closed to the public, only opened with special permission from Army Headquarters. Colonel Makitan was in charge but he recently retired. A life-long martial arts devotee and sensei of the local dojo, Colonel Makitan had a love of weapons that showed in the displays he and his staff put together. We had a brief amount of time to visit, and found some interesting items. There was a Powder Springs marked M11A1 .380 caliber submachine gun in a glass case, with a leather magazine pouch holding six original magazines. This was credited with being from the special police units in Belgrade. Each room of the old military building had a different theme, and the long main room had rifles through mortars and larger.

One end of the main hall was devoted to Yugoslav small mortars and had every Yugoslav model in 60mm, 81mm, 82mm. The 120mms were represented as well, but outside. Each mortar had the issue tools and accessories with it. A very good training set up. Military Museum at Kacharevo

While the rest of the Communist Bloc was working with the RPG derivatives, Soviet style, the Yugoslav military had the M57 launcher. Here are two pristine examples of the M57A2 with optical sights, leather pouch, and cleaning rod. These launchers occasionally show up at western shows as displays with large holes in the sides. These are now obsolete. Military Museum at Kacharevo

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V9N2 (November 2005)

"Old World" – Small Arms Review

JEWELS FOUND IN THREE YUGOSLAVIAN MUSEUMS