Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Mar 2017The M2 Carbine was a mechanically simple modification of the M1 Carbine to allow fully automatic fire. The fire prototypes of the M1 Carbine had actually been selective-fire guns, but that requirement had been dropped by the time the Winchester design was officially adopted as the M1. It was a feature quickly requested by troops once the Carbine entered active service, though.
In 1944 the US Army acknowledged this, and introduced the M2. A total of 217,000 were manufactured at the end of WW2, and did see limited service on Okinawa — and then extensive use in the Korean War and Vietnam War.
The M1 Carbine has long generated controversy among those attempting to rigidly define its role, as it falls awkwardly between the notion of submachine gun and assault rifle, firing a cartridge that is clearly more powerful than a pistol round but equally clearly less powerful than an intermediate rifle round. Its originally intended role was as a personal defense weapon more effective than the 1911 pistol, and in service it always scored high marks for handiness and poor marks for combat effectiveness. The opinion of soldiers using the Carbine in either its M1 or M2 form was very much dependent on what role they expected it to serve.
In my opinion, its light weight and stock design make it a sub-optimal submachine gun, and its light cartridge makes it a sub-optimal assault rifle. But if you need a light and handy carbine to carry a lot and only use in emergencies, it is hard to beat for its time.
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January 16, 2021
M2 Carbine: Assault Rifle or Submachine Gun?
December 8, 2020
Schmeisser’s MP-18,I – The First True Submachine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Aug 2017When Germany began looking in late 1915 for a new weapon ideally suited for the “last 200 meters” of a combat advance, Hugo Schmeisser’s blowback submachine gun would prove to be the weapon that would set the standard for virtually all submachine guns to come. It was a fully automatic-only weapon with a simple blowback action and a rather slow 400 rpm rate of fire. Although relatively heavy, the only real shortcoming of the MP18,I was its use of 32-round Luger snail drum magazines, which was dictated by the German military. These magazines were unreliable and difficult to load, but they were already in production and were a reasonable logistical answer in a time when material and production shortages were an endemic problem in Germany.
The MP18,I managed to see frontline combat only in the closing few months of World War One (50,000 were initially ordered, 17,677 were produced before the Armistice, and only an estimated 3,000 actually saw frontline combat use). During that time, however, it made a significant impression, easily convincing anyone with an open mind that this new type of weapon would play a major role in future wars.
After the end of the war, the Germany Army was prohibited from using submachine guns, so most of the existing ones (including the example in today’s video) were transferred to police organizations instead.
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September 21, 2020
The Iconic “Burp Gun” – Shooting the PPSh-41
Forgotten Weapons
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The Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun is most distinctive for its very high rate of fire — approximately 1250 rounds/minute — and large drum magazine. What may come as a surprise to those who have not tried it is how this very high rate of fire does not actually make the weapon difficult to control or hold on target. In fact, the PPSh-41 is an easier SMG to shoot effectively than the later PPS-43, at least in my opinion.
The Soviets and the Germans made quite different choices in magazines and rate of fire with the PPSh and the MP40, but both turned out to be very good submachine guns. The glaring weak point of the PPSh are its magazines, and the difficulty in finding a drum that would run reliably in this particular example is why today’s shooting session is done with one of the 35-round stick magazines instead.
Thanks to Marstar for letting me examine and shoot their PPSh-41!
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September 5, 2020
Chinese 7.62mm Sten Gun
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Published 13 May 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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During World War Two, Canada supplied some 73,000 Sten guns (made by the Long Branch arsenal) to Chinese Nationalist forces in an effort to help them fight the Japanese. These Stens were standard MkII pattern guns, chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, many of these were eventually converted to 7.62mm Tokarev ammunition, especially after the victory of the Communist forces over the Nationalists. The conversion involved a new barrel and new magazine and magazine well. The 7.62mm barrels were typically longer than the original ones, and the magazine of choice was that of the PPS-43. Some were done by installed a magazine adapter into the original magazine well, and some (like this one) were done by cutting off the original magazine well and replacing it with a new one. In addition, some Sten guns were made domestically in China, both in 9mm and 7.62mm. The 7.62mm Tokarev cartridge was popular both from Russian pistols and submachine guns and also from China’s long military use of the dimensionally-identical 7.63mm Mauser cartridge in C96 pistols.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this interesting submachine gun! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:
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June 18, 2020
Shooting the Thompsons: Comparing the 1921, 21/28, and M1A1
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Having gone through the whole series of Thompson submachine guns, now it’s time to take them out to the range! I was quite curious to see how the different variations would handle side by side, since they have several significant differences. The Cutt’s Compensator and the changing rate of fire can both be expected to have a noticeable impact on the shootability of the guns.
I went in expecting to prefer the World War Two M1A1 pattern, and was rather surprised to find myself actually liking the 1921 model best. Its very high rate of fire actually worked very well, with less noticeable vibration and sight disruption than either of the other types. Its sights are close to useless, and it is both heavy and awkward to handle — but I can see why it developed the following it has!
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June 14, 2020
The Iconic American WW2 Thompson: the M1A1
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While the US Army was satisfied with the Thompson as a fighting weapon in World War Two, it was most certainly not happy with the gun’s exorbitant price tag. The Thompson was a very expensive gun, and the Army wanted to see that change. In March of 1942, engineers at the Savage factory submitted a simplified version for Army consideration, and it was accepted and adopted the very next month. Savage would transition from M1928A1 production to the new M1 pattern in June and July of 1942.
This new M1 Thompson had eliminated at last the unique and unnecessary Blish lock system in favor of a simple blowback action delayed only by bolt mass. In addition to greatly simplifying the production of bolt components, this also allowed the receiver internal shape to be much simplified. A further simplification would follow shortly, as the hammer and floating firing pin were replaced by a fixed firing pin milled into the bolt face in October of 1942 – this new type being designated the M1A1. Another 715,000 M1 and M1A1 Thompsons would be produced by Savage and Auto-Ordnance by February of 1944, when the Thompson was finally replaced by the yet cheaper M3 “Grease Gun”.
This is the fourth in a 5-part series on the development of the Thompson…
Note: I refer to the M1A1 in this video as a transferrable gun; it is actually a pre-May dealer sample. Sorry!
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June 11, 2020
World War Two Heats Up: The M1928A1 Thompson SMG
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Published 11 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/worl…
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By 1939, Auto-Ordnance was thoroughly bankrupt, having about $400 in assets and a debt of more than $1.2 million to the estate of the late Thomas Ryan, it’s original financier. Ryan had died in 1929, but the company shareholders had prevented his estate from forcing the sale of the company for a decade. In 1939 they could hold out no longer, and the company was sold to one Russell Maguire, a high profile corporate raider.
Maguire, however, saw the potential of a submachine gun company on the brink of a new world war, and negotiated a contract with the Savage Arms Company to begin new production of Thompsons (the original Colt guns from 1921 having finally all sold). Orders began to come in from Europe, and new Model of 1928 Thompsons were sold to France, Sweden, and most substantially, the United Kingdom. The US military would also start buying Thompsons in quantity (designated the M1928A1), but the UK orders (paid for in bullion) were a massive source of profits for the company.
Auto-Ordnance would roll some of these profits back into the company, buying an old automotive brake factory in Bridgeport Connecticut and tooling up their own production of receivers and trigger frames to supplement Savage’s production. A number of changes were progressively made to the guns to simplify and speed up their manufacture, including smooth barrels, stamped ejectors, vastly simplified rear sights, and horizontal front grips. By the time the M1928A1 was replaced by the M1 Thompson, more than 1.1 million had been made by AO and Savage combined. The Thompson had at last found it’s purpose!
This is the third of a 5-part series on the development of the Thompson…
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June 8, 2020
The Marines’ First SMG: 1921/28 Thompson Gun
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Published 9 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the-…
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The USMC had acquired a few hundred early 1921 model Thompson submachine guns in 1926, and prompted the US Navy to formally test the guns. The Navy requested a reduction in the rate of fire, in order to improve controllability and reduce ammunition consumption (20 round magazines go quickly at 900rpm!). Auto-Ordnance happily complied, and Oscar Payne returned to the company on his spare time to modify the gun. He did this by adding a substantial amount of mass to the actuator, and was able to reduce the rate of fire substantially. The Navy subsequently ordered 500 guns, designated the Model of 1928.
Since most of the original 15,000 guns made by Colt were still in inventory, Auto-Ordnance simply overstamped the “1” at the end of “1921” with an “8” and put the new heavier bolt assemblies in the guns, leading to the collector term “21/28 overstamp” for these Thompsons. The lower rate of fire would become the new standard for the Thompson.
By late 1928, only about 6,000 Thompsons had been sold, and by the end of 1938 10,300 had been sold. Of these, about 1500 total had gone to the US government, about 4100 exported, and the remainder to American police and security agencies. Times were not good for the Thompson — it was an expensive military weapon without a war that needed it. Despite the gun’s huge notoriety, it was actually not used in particularly large numbers by the motor bandits of the 20s and 30s, nor in great numbers by the police. While the FBI did purchase Thompsons, they only bought 115 in total, and not until 1935.
This is the second part in a 5-part series on the development of the Thompson…
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May 8, 2020
Weapons as Political Protest: P.A. Luty’s Submachine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Aug 2017Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:
http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9…
Phillip A. Luty was a Briton who took a hard philosophical line against gun control legislation in the UK in the 1990s. In response to more restrictive gun control laws, he set out to prove that all such laws were ultimately futile by showing that one could manufacture a functional firearm from hardware store goods, without using any purpose-made firearms parts.
Luty succeeded in this task, designing a 9mm submachine gun made completely from scratch with a minimum of tools. In 1998, he published the plans for his gun as the book Expedient Homemade Firearms. Luty was not particularly discreet about his activities (actually, he was quite outspoken…) and was eventually caught by the police while out to test fire one of his guns, and arrested. He was convicted, and spent several years in prison. He continued to pursue a gun rights agenda after being released, and was facing legal trouble again when he passed away from cancer in 2011.
Several of Luty’s submachine guns are still held in the collection of the Royal Armouries’ National Firearms Centre, including the one that led to his original conviction. Many thanks to the NFC for allowing me to bring that weapon to you!
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March 24, 2020
Thompson 1921: The Original Chicago Typewriter
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Published 6 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/thom…
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The first prototype Thompsons submachine guns (and it was Thompson who coined that term, by the way) were produced in 1919 and dubbed the “Annihilators”. The gun was intended to be a military weapon to equip American soldiers in World War One, but by the time the gun was developed the war had ended. Still, Thompson and his Auto-Ordnance company contracted with Colt to manufacture 15,000 of the guns. These were the Model of 1921, and they were marketed to both the US military and as many European armies as Thompson and his salesmen could reach. They found few takers in the climate of the early 1920s, however, and sales were slow.
This is the first in a 5-part series about the development of the Thompson, concluding with a trip to the range to fire three different patterns side by side…
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March 9, 2020
British Submachine Gun Overview: Lanchester, Sten, Sterling, and More!
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Mar 2017Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:
http://armamentresearch.com/british-sub-machine-gun-development-an-overview/
Great Britain was one of the few countries that went into World War Two with virtually no submachine gun development. Not every country had an issued SMG by 1939, but virtually everyone had at least been working on experimental concepts — except the British. It was only with the outbreak of hostilities that the need for such a weapon suddenly became apparent and its acquisition became a military priority.
This was solved by acquiring and copying the German MP28/II, which was quickly followed by a simplification program that would lead to the MkI, MkI*, and ultimately MkII and MkIII Sten guns. The Stens were truly exceptional studies in simplification, getting down to a mere 5.5 man-hours of production time. Only after the threat of immediate German land invasion had subsided was the Sten allowed to become a little bit user-friendly, in the MkV guise.
At the end of WW2, the British were finally able to scrap the Sten (known to be a compromise gun all along) and replace it with something with more finesse. Tests were run on the MCEM series, on BSA guns, on interesting prototypes like the double-stack-magazine Vesely V42 — but it was George Patchett’s much improved Sten which would be chosen and come to be known as the Sterling SMG (named after its manufacturer).
A couple of corrections to the video:
— The MP28 was designed by Schmeisser, not Bergmann.
— The MCEM-2 was designed by Polish engineer Lt. Jerzy Podsendkowski. The -2 version of the MCEM was completed during WW2; it was the -4 and -6 versions that were post-war.
— George Lanchester was chief engineer at Sterling and ran the Lanchester project, but was not actually the lead designer himself.
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February 5, 2020
Suomi m/31: Finland’s Famous Submachine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Sep 2017For some great firing footage and an assessment of the m/31 in practical terms, check out today’s video on InRangeTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJMv…
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Designed by Finland’s most notable arms inventor, Aimo Lahti, the m/31 Suomi submachine gun is an iconic weapon of the Winter War and the Continuation War. It is a first-generation submachine gun with a heavy milled receiver and very well-fitted parts — enough so that a series of vent holes were put in the end of the receiver tube to prevent air compression during the firing cycle. The gun is overall quite heavy (4.7kg / 10.4lb) and has a high rate of fire (~900 rounds/minute). It originally used 50-round quad-stack magazines and 71-round drum magazines, which allowed a shooter to exploit the high rate of fire without constantly having to change magazines.
The quad-stack magazines were eventually found to be insufficiently reliable, and were retired. The drum proved to be quite good in use, although quite awkward and bulky to carry (note that Finnish troops had no specialized pouches for these drums). The drum design would be taken by the Russians (handed over by a defecting Finnish officer, apparently) and copied for use in the Soviet PPD and PPSh submachine guns. In the 1950s, a simple double-stack 36 round magazine was developed and became most popular.
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January 25, 2020
Swedish K: The Carl Gustav m/45B and the Port Said
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During the 1930s, Sweden acquired an assortment of different submachine guns, including Bergmanns, Thompsons, and Suomis. As World War Two progressed, they decided that they really needed to standardize on a single caliber and model of gun, and requested designs from both the Carl Gustav factory and Husqvarna. The Carl Gustav design won out, and was adopted as the m/45.
It was a very simple open-bolt, tube-receiver, fixed-firing-pin design chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition. The original guns were built around Finnish Suomi magazines, both 71-round drums and 50-round “coffin” mags. After the war these were replace by a new 36-round traditional box magazine, and magazine well adapters were fitted to the guns which precluded the use of the larger mags. The new magazines were much more convenient to carry, less expensive, and more reliable.
The name “Swedish K” comes form the full designation: Kulsprutepistol m/45. The guns were used by American special operations forces in Vietnam until the Swedish government stopped export sales to the US, at which point the Navy commissioned Smith & Wesson to produce the Model 76 submachine gun (essentially a copy of the m/45). The design was also licensed by Egypt, which also licensed the AG-42 Ljungman rifle at the same time. The Egyptian copy was called the Port Said, and shows the features fo the original Swedish m/45 pattern, where the guns in Swedish service were mostly updated to the m/45B pattern.
Photo of m/45C with bayonet from: http://www.gotavapen.se/index_eng2g.htm
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January 20, 2020
Lanchester MkI: Britain’s First Emergency SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Sep 2017Sold for $16,100 (transferrable).
The Lanchester MkI was the first British effort to produce a domestic submachine gun during World War II. The British military had rejected these types of arms as “gangster guns” prior to the war, and did not see them as useful in a military context. Well, that opinion changed rather quickly as they watched the German blitzkrieg sail through continental Europe.
The very first solution was to purchase Thompson SMGs from the United States, but these were extremely expensive weapons, and not a suitable long term plan. The next solution was to reverse engineer a pair of German MP28 SMGs captured in Ethiopia. This was done by a Sterling company engineer named George Lanchester, and it was a successful project. Both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force purchased the guns (although the RAF would cancel its order later, and the guns would pretty much all go to the Royal Navy).
Mechanically, the Lanchester is a very close copy of the MP28, with a few stylistic changes. These include the use of an SMLE pattern stock, the addition of a bayonet lug for a 1907 pattern bayonet, and the use of brass or bronze for the magazine housing instead of steel. The original MkI Lanchesters were select-fire, with a lever to allow semi or full-auto fire. This was removed with the simplified MkI* pattern, however.
The Lanchester would be quickly followed by the Sten gun, which offered much cheaper and faster manufacture, and the British Army would use huge numbers of Stens. The Lanchester would stay in service for decades after the war, though, serving on many naval vessels in British service and with other nations when British ships were sold as surplus.
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December 28, 2019
Shpagin’s Simplified Subgun: The PPSh-41
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After making the decision to mass produce a submachine gun, the Soviet Union adopted the Degtyarev PPD-38 and PPD-40, but this design was too expensive for the huge scale of production that the USSR intended. A new design was needed, and was put into development almost as soon as the PPD was entering production.
Shpagin won the design competition with the PPSh-41, a weapon which required virtually no lathe work at all. It was assembled from a combination of heavy-gauge stampings and simple milled parts, and it fit the Soviet requirements quite well. Shpagin retained the high rate of fire and large drum magazines from the PPD, and even had a semiauto selector switch in his submachine gun, a bit unusual in a weapon intended for minimum expense.
The drum magazines proved to be the weak point of the design, being only somewhat interchangeable between weapons and being rather complex to manufacture as well as bulky to carry and fairly easy to damage. A 35-round box magazine was introduced later on which ameliorated some of these issues, although not all of them. The PPSh-41 would go on to be deemed itself too complex, and supplemented by the PPS-43 submachine gun, although it was never fully replaced during World War Two. In addition to Soviet service, it would be copied and manufactured by several other nations.
Thanks to Marstar for letting me examine and shoot their PPSh-41!
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