{"id":27476,"date":"2025-07-28T07:47:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/28\/zk-381-czech-pre-war-prototype-battle-rifle-2\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T07:47:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:47:37","slug":"zk-381-czech-pre-war-prototype-battle-rifle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/28\/zk-381-czech-pre-war-prototype-battle-rifle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ZK 381: Czech Pre-War Prototype Battle Rifle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mejs-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"autoplay\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/P7c7Xwqugjs?controls=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>All the best firearms history channels streaming to all major devices! Join today and get a week free:<br \/>weaponsandwar.tv<\/p>\n<p>The ZK-381 was designed by Josef Kouck\u00fd, his first design of 1938 (hence 381). This is one of the last of the Czech pre-war self-loading rifle projects, of which there were quite a lot. It uses a tilting bolt and a short-stroke gas piston, with ZB26 machine gun magazines and chambered for 7.92mm Mauser (although they would have been happy to offer a model in any other modern rifle cartridge). It was tested in the spring of 1938 by the Soviet Union, which liked it enough that they requested a model in 7.62x54R &#8211; and those were tested in November 1938. Ultimately domestic Russian designs were chosen instead, and tests in German, France, Spain, and Italy also led to naught. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the Czech Military History Institute (VHU) for graciously giving me access to this one-of-a-kind prototype to film for you! If you have the opportunity, don&#8217;t miss seeing their museums in Prague:<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vhu.cz\/en\/english-summary\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.vhu.cz\/en\/english-summary\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The best firearms reference books: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.headstamppublishing.com\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.headstamppublishing.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/utreon.com\/c\/forgottenweapons\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/utreon.com\/c\/forgottenweapons\/<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All the best firearms history channels streaming to all major devices! Join today and get a week free:weaponsandwar.tv The ZK-381 was designed by Josef Kouck\u00fd, his first design of 1938 (hence 381). This is one of the last of the Czech pre-war self-loading rifle projects, of which there were quite a lot. It uses a&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/28\/zk-381-czech-pre-war-prototype-battle-rifle-2\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ZK 381: Czech Pre-War Prototype Battle Rifle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":27477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}