Vz. 24

The vz. 24 rifle is a bolt-action carbine designed and produced in Czechoslovakia from 1924 to 1942. It was developed from the German Mauser Gewehr 98 line, and features a very similar bolt design. The rifle was designed in Czechoslovakia shortly after World War I, to replace the Vz. 98/22, also a Czech-designed derivative of the Gewehr 98. The vz. 24 featured a barrel which was shorter and considered more handy than the Gewehr 98 barrel. The vz. 24 was chambered in 7.92×57mm Mauser like its predecessors. Throughout the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Czechoslovakia exported hundreds of thousands of vz. 24 rifles to various countries across the globe, with variants chambered in the original 7.92×57mm Mauser, 7×57mm Mauser, and 7.65×53mm Argentine. These included contracts for several South American countries, most of which were 7 mm or 7.65 mm guns. Around 40,000 rifles were sent to Spanish Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 200,000 rifles were purchased by China, seeing action in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which became part of World War II. Iran purchased vz. 24 rifles, along with two other variants, through the late 1920s and 1930s, and later produced their own copies in the late 1940s. Germany acquired hundreds of thousands of the rifles in 1939 when they occupied Czechoslovakia and pressed them into service under the designation "Gewehr 24(t)"; during the occupation, production of the rifles continued until 1942, when the factories were converted to the German-designed Karabiner 98k. During this period, several hundred thousand rifles were also built for the Romanian Army. Vz. 24 rifles saw extensive service during World War II in multiple theaters, predominantly with the German and Romanian armies on the Eastern Front. Lithuanian vz. 24s, which had been captured during the German invasion in 1941, were later seized by Soviet forces, who in turn used them to arm the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War in the 1960s.