[ German L41 Suppressor for the MP40 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to take a look
at another German World War Two suppressor.
This time we have an MP40 suppressor,
and this is actually an experimental pattern.
... Because really all of the MP40
suppressors were experimental patterns.
There were two major designs that were presented to the German military in February of 1943.
And they were made by two different companies, one by Schneider-Opel and one by Arado.
And they worked on fundamentally different principles.
The Arado ones used rubber baffles, kind of like the Russian Bramit suppressors
which they were fundamentally modelled after.
And the Schneider one used a stack of
what we would consider today more traditional, conventional metal baffles.
In addition, the Schneider one was quite a lot longer
than the Arado prototype or experimental pattern that we have here.
Now, there were a couple of issues with putting a suppressor on the MP40.
On the one hand the MP40 has a threaded barrel.
So you would think that this is going to make the process far easier
than the esoteric clamp-on mounts that they had to use
for rifles like the K98k that had solid muzzles.
Well, the problem was the muzzle threading on the MP40
was originally only intended for a blank-firing adapter,
and it didn't really matter how concentric that threading was with the barrel itself.
Obviously it had to be close, but there wasn't really any specific
accurate tolerance requirement for that threading.
This is kind of similar to the issue that they ran into with the ZF-41 snipers
where the optics rail was mounted on the rear sight block.
Well, on the K98k ... having the side of the rear sight block parallel to the ... bore
wasn't important for any particular reason when they were making the gun.
So they didn't have any particular tolerance requirement for that measurement.
Thus when they go and make that the base for an optical sight,
they have a significant problem with rifles
that simply can't be zeroed because they are too far out of spec.
Same thing happened here. When they initially tested these suppressors
with slightly larger than 9mm exit diameters on the suppressor, which you would expect.
You want that exit hole to be pretty tight around the bullet
to minimise the amount of gas getting out and keep the suppressor quiet.
Well, the problem is MP40 threads weren't all that concentric,
and so they had a lot of muzzle strikes.
As a result, they had to open up the muzzle diameter to something like 11mm.
So substantially larger than the actual bullet diameter.
At any rate, the testing essentially ran intermittently from February,
... the major testing occurred not until December of 1944.
So there is a big gap in between when they are first presented and when they are doing real testing.
So we'll talk about the implications of that, but first let me show you
how this actually works and how they decided to get it mounted on an MP40.
The designation given to this design was L41, all of the German suppressors had "L" numbers.
And there were two different versions of the L41,
an early pattern, and this I believe is the later pattern with the larger exit diameter.
The two Schneider designs (which were metal baffle based) were the L42 and L43.
Now this shares quite a lot ... in common with the L27 rifle suppressor.
They are both the Russian rubber baffle pattern.
You can see this one has a baffle in it that is cut and scored to give the bullet a path through it.
And this will more or less seal behind the bullet
and thus increase the effectiveness of the sound suppressor.
Although it obviously is going to have a significant impact on accuracy
because it will cause bullets to deflect a bit.
Like the L27 this is a left-hand thread,
because when the bullet (travelling through right-hand rifling) hits this rubber
it is going to impart torque on this front cone.
Which if it's right-hand threaded is going to attempt to unscrew it with every shot.
If it's left-hand threaded, as it was, then it will actually
tighten it with every shot which is much more useful.
So originally there would have been two rubber baffles in here.
You can see we have one sitting in the front,
the other one would sit on this surface inside that ring.
They both nest down there in the front of the can.
You've got the two rubber baffles there, and then you just have an open expansion chamber in here.
So really it's a very simple design to make,
much ... simpler than one that uses a stack of specially pressed and shaped metal baffles.
And we still have the tensioning clamp here that you will recognise from the rifle suppressors.
But it's actually sort of for a different purpose.
With the MP40's threaded muzzle you need a way to actually lock the suppressor in place.
And so what they did is they designed this cap that has two little wings on it.
What you do is put those wings here. We are going to start threading this down,
and the suppressor body actually rotates while this can stay in the same place.
Once I get it in that far,
you can see that those wings are holding on either side of the front sight block.
So I can tighten this down all the way.
And then to prevent anything from rotating, I tighten that crank down.
This little screw is what's holding this collar onto the suppressor body.
So if we take the rest of our parts here,
thread them on, that is the ... whole thing
as it would be clamped onto the MP40 for actual use.
And I've loosened this screw. If I just take that screw completely out
you can see how that works. Right there, there's just an open channel.
The screw is going to go through that and hold it in place there.
And there you go, there is the developmental L41 Arado suppressor for the MP40.
It seems to me that the suppressors for the machine pistols, for the MP40,
were really not that high of a priority for the German army.
They certainly shouldn't have been, ... especially by December of 1944
the German army had so many other things that it would have been vastly more useful
to spend money on than testing a bunch of different MP40 silencer patterns.
They shouldn't have even been looking at it at that point.
They were, but they don't appear to have ever actually chosen a specific pattern and adopted it.
Now they did come up with a special subsonic ammunition to use in these guns.
... Essentially because this is 9mm Parabellum, they only had to up the bullet weight a little bit
to get the muzzle velocity below the speed of sound.
They went from 8 grams to 9 grams, which is from a 124 grain bullet to a 139 grain bullet.
That dropped the muzzle velocity to about 1,080 feet per second,
which got them effectively subsonic.
How much of that ammo was ever made I'm not really sure,
because the ... suppressors never really went into service.
Still, very cool to take a look at, very cool to get a chance to see
a developmental German World War Two suppressor.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this. If you did, I have several videos on
Russian and German rifle suppressors from World War Two
that I will link in the end cards, definitely check those out as well.
Thanks for watching.