The Z45 was a submachine gun designed during World War Two by the Start firm in Eibar, Spain for export sale to Germany as well as domestic Spanish use. It was heavily based on the MP40, including the same stock, telescoping mainspring guide/cover, and disassembly method as the MP40. To this, how...

In the 1960s, the Sterling company began to worry about the prospects of continued sales of the Sterling (Patchett) SMG, especially in light of new competitors like the H&K MP5. Its chief design engineer, Frank Waters, created the S11 as a gun to replace the classic Sterling. The S11 was based on...

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 ...

The Viper Mk I was an experimental submachine gun developed in the UK for use by military policemen in post-WW2 occupation West Germany. It was a simplified Sten gun (full-auto only, without the semiauto option normally included in the Sten trigger mechanism) put into a wooden housing. It was int...

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 eventua...

H&K introduced the UMP (universal machine pistol) in an effort to attract sales from American law enforcement by offering a modern submachine gun in .45 ACP and .40 S&W calibers. The MP5 was and remains an extremely popular SMG, but it has never been made in .45 caliber, and that was seen as a po...

My MAS 38 submachine gun is finally running properly and with the 7.65mm French Long ammunition now being made by Steinel Ammo, I can finally take this out to the range! What to shoot at?

A spinner, naturally.

In 1949, North Korea began production of a domestic copy of the Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun. Designated the M49, it used a blend of Russian and Chinese characteristics, but was mechanically identical to the standard model, distinguishable only by its markings and its slightly oval-shaped stock ...

John L. Hill was a World War One fighter pilot who went into the oil and gas industry, and enjoyed tinkering with guns in his free time. In 1949 he got an idea for a new style of magazine and feed system, which he developed and patented in the early 1950s. Hill’s intention was to create a submach...

We have previously looked at the original MP-18, the System Schmeisser improvement, and the followup MP-28,II design on the table - but we have not taken the MP-28 out to the range. So, that's what we are doing today - how does it compare to its Schmeisser-magazine predecessor?

There are a fairly wide variety of silenced Sten guns that were made during World War Two, because many were needed for small Special Operations Executive missions. However, the British Army did also formally develop and adopt such a weapon. It was initially requested in 1942, with the first tria...

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Want early access to our videos and be entered to win a monthly raffle?! Considering giving to our Patreon. Link below! https://www.patreon.com/legacycollectibles Check out our Podcast "Flak & Fubar" https://flakfubar.buzzsprout.com/ Legacy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legacy_collectibles...

Want early access to our videos and be entered to win a monthly raffle?! Considering giving to our Patreon. Link below! https://www.patreon.com/legacycollectibles Check out our Podcast "Flak & Fubar" https://flakfubar.buzzsprout.com/ Legacy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legacy_collectibles...

Want early access to our videos and be entered to win a monthly raffle?! Considering giving to our Patreon. Link below! https://www.patreon.com/legacycollectibles Check out our Podcast "Flak & Fubar" https://flakfubar.buzzsprout.com/ Legacy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legacy_collectibles...

Want early access to our videos and be entered to win a monthly raffle?! Considering giving to our Patreon. Link below! https://www.patreon.com/legacycollectibles Check out our Podcast "Flak & Fubar" https://flakfubar.buzzsprout.com/ Legacy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legacy_collectibles...

The M50 was one of a series of submachine guns developed and marketed by the Danish Madsen company after World War II. The first was the M46 (1946), followed by M50 and the M53. Each version was progressively a bit better than the last, but they never sold particularly well because of the easy an...

I have read much about the Australian dislike for the Austen submachine gun, but until now I never had the chance to actually try shooting one. I did not have very high expectations, but the gun is actually pretty darn reasonable! It doesn't climb like I expected the stock would cause it to, and ...

The Czech Samopal vz. 26 was one of a family of submachine guns (the vz 23-26) that pioneered the use of bolts telescoped out forward over the barrel, allowing guns to have much better ratios of barrel to receiver length than before. The guns actually have quite a few interesting mechanical detai...

The Walther MP was an all-stamped submachine gun developed in the late 1950s, and available in long (MPL) and short (MPK) versions. It is an open-bolt, blowback design, but uses a somewhat innovative bolt in which most of the mass is located above and in front of the chamber, to reduce bolt trave...

We had the chance to shoot a couple of the lesser-known submachine guns used in World War II, a German MP41 and an Italian Beretta 38/44. Both are pretty typically submachine guns, firing 9mm Luger from open bolts with fixed firing pins and simple blowback actions. They both have solid wood stock...

The Australian-designed Owen submachine gun is a weapon with quite a story behind it. The Owen is arguably the best subgun used during WWII, and also probably the ugliest. Its mere existence was a drawn out struggle between the inventor and manufacturer and the Australian Army bureaucracy, and ye...

This weekend we took a look at a Beretta 1918/30 carbine, as well as a couple later Beretta SMG bolts. The 1918/30 is rather unusual in that is was designed specifically as a semiauto firearm, and uses a hammer mechanism instead of the much more common fixed firing pin setup generally found on pi...