Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
There were also enough of them available in the US during the 1970s/1980s for them to appear, highly modified, as weapons of the Rebel Alliance on the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back movie.
|
Good eye. I'd noticed other examples of RW weaponry used in the original trilogy, but not that one. The ones I recognized where the Sterling SMGs used by the Storm Troopers, the MG34 used by Stormtroopers and IG88, the Mauser pistol upon which Han Solo's blaster is built, and the Luger Leia carries in Return of the Jedi.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
The StG44 may even have made an appearance in the Western Desert with the DAK, there's one on display in the El Alamein War Museum (although knowing how little effort is actually made by the Egyptians to research WW2, it's also possible that the example on display came from a post-WW2 North African conflict).
|
I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that several hundred StG44s were sold to Syria in the '50s or early '60s (from stocks captured by the Soviets?), but I can't find a reference in any of my books. I did find a color plate in a uniform book of a Cypriot EOKA fighter carrying a StG44 in 1956. I've also seen a couple in photographs of African guerrillas in Angola, Mozambique, and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe from the '60s and '70s. It's crazy how far and wide weapons- especially relatively rare ones- were proliferated during the Cold War.