Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
Royal Army Museum in Brussels,
part of the War Heritage Institute of Belgium.
And we are taking a look at some of the really rare
and exotic firearms from their reference collection.
Specifically today we have an FNAB 43.
This is a late World War Two Italian submachine gun
that has all sorts of interesting elements to it.
So, FNAB stands for
I'm not even going to try and pronounce the Italian.
National Arms Manufacturing of Brescia.
These were manufactured in '43 and '44, and only 1,000 of them were actually made.
There are a lot of sources that say that production was something like 7,000,
but every known ... example that I've seen reference to is in the 5,000 serial number range.
And I think that really points to there only being 1,000 of these guns ever made.
Now mechanically, this is a ridiculously complicated and expensive gun to be making in 1943 and 1944.
Its closed bolt, lever delayed, select fire,
all sorts of complicated mechanical things inside.
Folding stock, folding magazine well, you name it.
They did at least use a common standard magazine,
and that is the Beretta 38 magazine which is a fantastic magazine design.
So at least they didn't have to redesign that.
But there sure was a lot of money spent making these guns.
Now, this particular one has another element of interesting story to it.
Which normally I would talk about at the end, but you're going to see it in the markings.
So I'll tell you right now, this gun actually went to Algeria.
It was used by the FLN, one of the independence groups in Algeria.
And a number of FNAB 43s did get into Algeria, and nobody appears to be really sure how.
But the markings on this one have been all ground off and faked
to look German, or at least to not look like the original FNAB 43 markings.
So that also explains why this is a deactivated example, deactivated by Saint-Étienne in France.
It came back from Algeria at some point, wasn't legally registered, and got deactivated.
At any rate, let me show you the insides of this thing, because it's really cool.
It can be a really compact package here when all folded up.
This weighs in, by the way, at about 7.2 pounds, that's 3.25 kilograms.
So a little bit heavy for its relatively small size.
But we have a folding stock, folding mag well.
In order to unfold the stock you pull it forward,
you can see back here it ... unlocks there from the stock lug.
Then it can rotate around and lock into place there.
Worth pointing out that it is not centred.
In fact, the butt plate is also not centred.
They just stuck it off on the right side of the gun, and were happy to leave it there.
Kind of curiously, the sights appear to me to actually line up
better when shooting this left handed than shooting it right handed.
The folding magazine well does not have a positive latch,
it's got a spring detent right here, and a latch on the bottom of the barrel.
And so the magazine well (even if there's no magazine in it) ... snaps into place right there.
And to deploy it you just pull it back.
To fold the magazine well, you've got this big lever here that unlocks ... it.
The magazine release is also located on the back.
This is the 20 round Beretta mag,
Beretta obviously made 30s and 40s as well, and they all work in the gun.
We have a muzzle brake out here built in, that's sort of reminiscent of a Papasha 41
or ... actually sort of a Beretta 38A as well.
Sights are just a barleycorn front and a rear V-notch.
The front sight is windage adjustable, the rear sight is completely not adjustable.
And ... this is a closed-bolt gun.
Now this originally would have said FNAB 43
or actually it's spelled out,
The markings have actually been milled out, as you can obviously see.
The serial number originally was down here, this serial number has been obliterated.
It looks like it's been welded up, then ground down.
And then these markings are sort of fake markings
just to disguise the origin of the gun,
make it look maybe German, maybe, maybe French - kind of a mixture there.
Maschinen Pistole
So these are from its little exploration over to Algeria.
We have two selector levers on the gun.
The one up at the front here is safe and fire: S and F.
And those markings are intact because they don't really say anything.
The markings back here, this was full-auto and semi-auto.
And those were actually fully marked in Italian, so
And because they were in Italian, those markings have just been milled off,
again because of, or during, this thing's little jaunt over to Algeria.
You'll see when we take it apart, the bolt face has been cut at a 45 degree angle,
and the firing pin hole welded, and the barrel has been plugged.
And that was all done by Saint-Étienne as a deactivation process.
And then this serial number was applied by Saint-Étienne as part of that process,
because the gun otherwise wouldn't have had a serial number.
So disassembly: we're going to start
by removing the recoil spring, which is this threaded plug.
Which is kind of an unusual way to do a recoil spring on a submachine gun.
So, that comes out.
Then we can take off this top cover.
Now when the recoil spring is in the gun, it's running in this bottom channel in the receiver.
So this is very much a solid milled receiver, you can see all the milling marks in there.
We can take the bolt out by simply (there we go),
pulling it back and lifting that whole assembly out.
As this has a rather short bolt travel,
there's also a leather pad at the back of the receiver to absorb the impact of the bolt.
I suspect that this is probably a fairly bouncy gun to shoot,
even if it does have a relatively low rate of fire,
because I suspect that that bolt's hitting that leather pad at a fairly high velocity every time.
And before we look at the bolt, I want to show you a couple of things here.
That is your firing sear, when I pull the trigger that presses up.
Remember that this is a closed-bolt gun, so the bolt is already forward
and a round is already chambered when you pull the trigger.
And all that needs to happen is for the firing pin to snap forward.
This is our semi-auto disconnect.
So when I pull the trigger
(you can see the sear there), when I drop this,
which is to say when the bolt comes back and pushes it down, that firing sear drops.
And in this system, when that drops it means it's no longer going to actually fire the gun.
So, semi-auto disconnector, right there.
As I said, the front face of the bolt has been ... partially cut off, and has been welded up.
This would originally be square up here.
And that is what actually fires it. So when this gets pushed up,
the firing pin here is going to snap forward, like that.
Obviously it doesn't protrude out because the hole's been welded up,
but that has fired the gun.
Now this whole thing is going to try to move backward as recoil pushes it backward.
These levers at the bottom here catch on the receiver,
and they force ...
(there we go), they force this block of the bolt to go backwards
before the front end of the bolt can move.
So before it can extract the cartridge from the chamber, while pressure is still high,
this mass has to be ... accelerated backward against the recoil spring,
because that actually re-cocks the thing as well against the firing pin frame.
That re-cocks it at the same time.
Once this lever is fully horizontal ...
like that, then the whole thing can travel backwards.
Now you recall that the recoil spring was in this channel under the bolt.
Well, that little tail is being pushed on by the recoil spring sitting under the bolt.
So when it moves backward, that's how it's compressing the recoil spring.
There is an interesting additional safety here
to prevent this from firing when the bolt's out of battery, and that is this lever.
If that lever is not pushed up, the gun can't fire.
So right now, got nothing.
If I have the bolt here, where it's not fully closed, pushing this up does nothing.
It's only when that lifts up that then it can fire.
So we have an out of battery safety on this, which is nice.
Now I can pull this stirrup off.
There we go. And then that allows me to remove the weight from the back of the bolt.
And then you've just got your actual front end of the bolt, and the accelerator lever.
That is a really overly complex submachine gun,
as I said, for the latter half of World War Two.
There is not really anything that this does that a Beretta 38 doesn't do just as well,
and probably a bit cheaper.
These are also sometimes called "Zerbinos", named after the ... the Italian RSI Minister of the Interior,
who ended up being associated with their manufacture and use.
They were used by the RSI and by some partisans in Italy towards the end of World War Two.
So they did see combat use there, in addition to this interesting side trek into Algeria.
They are reportedly a pretty decent gun.
I expect they're probably very pleasant to shoot.
Rate of fire is apparently only about 400 rounds a minute,
which is really nice and slow for a gun like this.
And it's certainly very compact, especially with the folding magazine well.
The folding stock is pretty awful and not very stable at all.
How much of that is wear from this particular example having been all over the world
I have no way to say.
With only 1,000 manufactured, and plenty of them lost in Africa and in Italy,
needless to say they are very rare today.
So a big thanks to the Royal Army Museum here in Brussels
for the opportunity to pull this out and show it to you guys.
They have a fantastic collection here on display of uniforms, small arms,
large arms, there's a bunch of artillery and some vehicles as well on display.
So if you ever have the chance in Brussels, I would highly recommend
taking a day to stop by and check out the museum.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.