Submachine Guns

Submachine Guns

4K badge
Subscribe Share
Submachine Guns
  • Steyr's Take on the Uzi: MPi-69 at the Range

    I expected the MPi-69 to be a rather difficult gun to shoot well, with its very simple construction and wire stock, but I was pleasantly surprised on the range. The rate of fire is quite low, and it was easy to hold on target. Furthermore, the intent of the cocking handle locking piece became cle...

  • Germany Adopts the PPSh in 9mm: the MP-41(r)

    During World War Two, both German and Russian soldiers often thought that the other side's weapons were better than their own. In particular, both sides often preferred their opponents' SMGs. In late 1941, a group of German officers formally requested that Germany simply copy and produce the PPSh...

  • Engineer's Delight: Stemple 76/45 Becomes the Stemple Takedown Gun

    The saga of how the original Stemple 76/45 became the Stemple Takedown Gun is a fantastic story of engineering design choices.

    Essentially, John Stemple began by building a rather crude copy of the Swedish K in .45 ACP in the mid 1980s, called the Stemple 76/45. He produced and registered 2,0...

  • BRP Recreates a Classic: the Stemple-Suomi

    When the Stemple STG-76 was designed, it used internal parts from the Finnish kp/31 Suomi submachine gun. Since the whole point of the Stemple was to have a modular and interchangeable gun, it would make sense for BRP to make a version that duplicated the Suomi as closely as possible. This is esp...

  • Ian Takes the Pepsi Haaste: Suomi vs Stemple-Suomi

    Yesterday we took a look at the Stemple-Suomi on the bench - today it's time to find how similar it is in handling to the real thing! I have a Danish M41 Suomi, a Stemple-Suomi, and a couple of 71-round drums all ready to go...

    The result? The Stemple pattern is virtually indistinguishable fro...

  • Stemple/BRP STG-76 "Heavy Submachine Gun" at the Range

    Having spent quite a long time yesterday exploring the origins of the Stemple/BRP STG-76, I figured I should take it out to the range. So, let's see what sort of groups I can make with a bipod-mounted open bolt 9mm...

  • Danish M1941 Suomi SMG

    When the Tikkakoski company bought the rights to produce the kp31 "Suomi" submachine gun in the 1930s, they attempted to make a bunch of export sales, although none were very successful. By the late 30s more countries were interested, but by that time Finnish military needs took precedence. While...

  • Vietnamese MAT-49 in 7.62mm Tokarev at the Range

    While I have filmed a MAT-49, I have not had a chance to actually try one out at the range until today. But today I don't just have a normal example; I have one rebarreled to 7.62x25mm Tokarev by the Vietnamese! So let's see how it handles...

  • PAWS ZX-7: An American Sterling in .45 ACP

    An American entrepreneur named Bob Imel found the Sterling SMG particularly interesting, and wanted to import them into the United States. He reached out to Sterling in 1967, but was unable to work out a deal before the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibited importation of machine guns. So instead, Imel...

  • Agram 2000: Croatia's Gangster Gun

    The Agram 2000 was originally developed in the 1990s in response to a Croatian Army need for a submachine gun during the Independence War. It is a closed-bolt, hammer-fired, simple blowback submachine gun. The initial prototypes used a top folding shoulder stock, but the production model omitted ...

  • Story of the Alar: A Simple Student-Made SMG

    The Alar is an interesting very rare Croatian domestic SMG. It is called the "Alar" after it's designer, Stipe Alar. He first came up with the design in 1971 and built one illegally - which resulted in him going to prison for a time. When the Croatian Homeland War broke out and guns were urgently...

  • MAC/Skorpion Hybrid at the Range: the Alka M93

    The Alka M93 was a very simple SMG made by IM Metall (which later became HS Produkt) during the Croatian Homeland War. It is essentially a MAC M11A1 with a long barrel and a vz61 Skorpion stock, feeding 9mm ammunition form MP40 magazines. I did a video on this piece previously, but on a recent vi...

  • When MAC-10 Meets Skorpion: Croatia's Homeland War ALKA mod 93

    The ALKA model 93 is one of the nicest of the several dozen simple SMGs made in Croatia during the Homeland War of the 1990s. It was produced by the IM Metal company (later renamed HS Produkt) starting in 1991, was formally adopted by the Croatian armed forces in 1993, and produced until 1994 or ...

  • Crogar M91: MP40 Meets Yugo M56 in the Croatian Homeland War

    SKM was a small industrial manufacturing company in Croatia that began making submachine guns in 1991 to equip Croatian fighters in the Homeland War. Their product was the M91 Crogar, which is a selective-fire, open bolt SMG chambered for 7.62mm Tokarev. It uses the magazine from the Yugoslav M56...

  • Chang Feng CS/LS 06 - China's Take on the Helical-Mag SMG

    The Chang Feng is named for the company that developed it, the Chongqing Chang Feng Company Ltd in (you guessed it) Chongqing. It was designed by one Qing Shangsheng, who had ample prior firearms design experience (including the Type 64 and 67 pistols and Type 80 SMG). The design is based around ...

  • The CZ-2000 as a 9mm SMG Prototype

    There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. The Russians made the Vityaz, the Hungarians made the KGPF-9…and the Czechs actually made a version form the CZ-2000. This was the attempt to make a 5.56mm AK family of rifles form the roots of the...

  • Fun Time at the Range with a Skorpion Evo 3A1

    Today I'm taking a Skorpion Evo 3A1 out to the range...let's see how much fun it can be!

  • Ladislav Findorak's Prototype Lever-Delayed PDW

    This really neat compact PDW prototype was developed by Ladislav Findorak in the 1990s for a Czech military program, although nothing was adopted as a result. The lever-delayed system allows it to have a much lighter bolt and carrier than a typical blowback action, while also remaining very compa...

  • FNAB 43: From WW2 Italy to Algerian Independence

    Designed and manufactured by Fabbrica Nazionale d'Armi di Brescia (National Arms Factory of Brescia) in northern Italy, for use by the RSI and German military forces (as well as some partisan units). They were produced in 1943 and 1944, and only about 1,000 were made (all with serial numbers in t...

  • Gnome et Rhône R5: A Foiled Communist Arms Plan

    The R-5 was a French-made copy of the Sten produced after the 1944 liberation of France. It was built by Gnome et Rhône, a French company best known for making aircraft engines. The Sten was familiar to French forces, as many had been supplied as military aid to the Free French as well as Resista...

  • Croatian HS-91: A Mystery Hybrid of M56 and PPSh-41

    The HS-91 is a Croatian-made submachine gun form the Homeland War period of the early 1990s. This is the only example known, and it was seized well after the war by the Croatian Police (and currently resides in the Police Museum in Zagreb). Nothing is known about the details of its origin or prod...

  • Nicer Than It Looks: Yugoslav M56 at the Range

    The Yugoslav M56 is a hybrid of the MP40 general design with the Soviet 7.62x25mm Tokarev cartridge, and a gun whose practical shootability is surprisingly better than its looks would lead one to expect. This is largely the result of a very long receiver tube, which ensures that the bolt does not...

  • Denmark's Post-WW2 SMG: the Hovea m/49

    The Hovea m/49 was adopted by Denmark, but was originally designed by Huqvarna for Swedish military trials. The first 10 prototype were made in 1944 and competed against the Carl Gustav Stads design - which ultimately won and was adopted by Sweden as the m/45. Both designs were very similar; simp...

  • The *very* wonky Finnish submachine gun: The Jatimatic

    You might recognise this wonky weapon from films and games. In reality only around 6000 were ever made and it was never adopted into service by any armed forces. This rare gun gives us a fascinating insight into one design that tried to solve the issue of recoil reducing accuracy.