The weapon I'm thinking of.

I need some help, I remembered seeing a picture of a rifle that had some kind of mirror mounted on top of the barrel and the barrel was curved downward. It seem that it was invented during WWII. I wanted to know what the weapon is called and what was its purpose.

Yes, it is called the Sturmgehwehr, obviously it was a German weapon in WW2. The "curved barrel" was an attachement, used for soldiers to shoot around corners. The idea never took off except for tank crews who used it to shoot Russians who tried to set the tanks on fire.

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[edit on 1/8/2006 by Night]

I bet that thing chewed through barrels quickly!

We now have optics that will do the "around the corner" , kinda cool.

Roper

Thanks for the info Night. However I was hoping for a pic of the actual weapon with the curved barrel. I'll try to keep looking for it.

I couldn't find one! Good luck on your search lol.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Thanks for the info Night. However I was hoping for a pic of the actual weapon with the curved barrel. I'll try to keep looking for it.

Well, you didn´t ask for any pics

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This is the Stg.44 with a "krummer Lauf" extension attached (often pronounced "Krummerlauf", but that is incorrect). The rifle itself is absolute standard with no modifications.

The krumme Lauf can be attached via this locking system, it features sort of a directional muzzlebrake to counter the unnatural recoil of the gun.

Once the technical challenges with the barrel itself had been solved, several periscope-like sighting systems on the basis of prisms were developed. The first pic in this post shows an earlier version while this one shows a more thoroughly finished product.

In the end there were two krummer Lauf production versions for the Stg.44 : the earlier depicted 30° version with prism sight, and a 90° version for fixed use on pillboxes, bunkers or tanks. Again, note that the whole system is only the curved barrel, the rifle itself remains unaltered as can also be seen here.

It is not a secret that curved barrels haven´t been exactly en vogue at any point in time in any armed force since then. But nevertheless, people in the right positions back then were so convinced of this new niche design that the demand was significantly higher than production capacities. Or alternatively:

The Germans intended to eventually arm every soldier with a submachine gun outfitted with a 30-degree bent barrel and Zeiss sight. The combination of the machine pistol's firepower and the Krummer Lauf's around-the-corner capability would have been devastating in European street fighting. In testing the 30-degree model, Captain Sharpe [of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps] observed that it "shot perfectly. At 100 meters this author could place four out of five shots in a letter-head size target....Had these [Krummer Lauf devices] ever gotten into full production and distribution, they would have cost us many thousands of casualties."

source

There were "krummer Lauf" projects for the MG42 and the MP40, too.