World War II Database

Country of Origin	Czechoslovakia
Type	Machine Gun
Caliber	7.920 mm
Capacity	20 rounds
Length	1.150 m
Barrel Length	672.000 mm
Weight	10.500 kg
Rate of Fire	500 rounds/min
Range	1.000 km
Muzzle Velocity	744 m/s

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe ZB vz. 26 light machine guns were developed by the Czechoslovakian firm Zbrojovka Brno starting in 1923, with the research project headed by Václav Holek. After production began, they equipped the Czechoslovakian Army. The design was sold to other nations, including 30,249 weapons to China, whose troops used them against Japanese attacks as early as 1932. After Germany annexed Czechoslovakia, these weapons continued production under the new designation MG 26(t), and were widely used by German Waffen-SS troops early in the war. Only a small number of them were assigned to German Army units. The direct successor design, ZB vz. 30 machine guns, were produced under the German designation of MG 30(t). Of the ZB machine guns built during the war in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, 20,000 of them were exported to Axis-friendly Spain.

The ZB vz. 26 design was exported to Britain in the 1930s as the basis for the Bren gun. While ZB and Bren weapons fired different ammunition, these two weapons were otherwise nearly identical.

During the Korean War, Chinese communist forces used many captured ZB vz. 26 light machine guns against forces of the United Nations. In the Vietnam War, Communist China provided a number of them to North Vietnamese forces.

Sources:

Neil Grant, The Bren Gun

Wikipedia

ww2dbase

Last Major Revision: Apr 2010

ZB vz. 26 Machine Gun Interactive Map

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