Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at Movie Armaments Group
up in Toronto, where we are taking a look at the famous Swedish K.
And we're also taking a look at the not so famous Egyptian Port Said,
which is a licenced exact copy of the Swedish K.
Although what's interesting is it's a copy of the early version of the Swedish K,
and thus slightly different, and gives us a really cool insight into
how this gun actually started. So a little bit of background here.
Sweden did have submachine guns going into World War Two, but they didn't have a whole lot.
The first one was the Model of 1937, which was basically a licence built Suomi in 9x20 Browning Long.
Which, because the round was semi-rimmed, the 9 Browning round, had this interesting magazine
that was actually tilted backwards to ensure that the rims didn't stack up and cause rim lock.
Anyway, the Swedes had like 900 of them. Not a whole lot. They augmented that in 1939 with a
batch of 1,800 Bergmann MP35s that they bought from Germany.
... About that same time period they could see war was coming, or by 1939 war was happening. "War Were Declared", as they say.
And they went back and they updated and modified some of their Suomis to chamber them for 9mm Parabellum.
And that was the 37/39.
... In 1940 they acquired a bunch of Thompson guns, I think 500 1928 Thompsons from the United States.
And so by this point they have this real just smorgasbord of different submachine guns.
And by 1944 they decided: first off, they needed more submachine guns.
And secondly, they wanted like something standardised, you know, "Can we combine all of this mess of different things into just one gun?"
So in 1944 they held official trials, and two different factories submitted submachine guns to the trials.
One was Carl Gustav and the other was Husqvarna.
In the end the Carl Gustav gun won and it looks a little cleaner. ... I don't know much about the Husqvarna gun.
It looks lumpy and weird from the outside, a lot of weird projections coming off of it.
I suspect it was mechanically very similar.
The Carl Gustav gun is an extremely simple, open bolt, blowback, tube receiver type of submachine gun.
And it's exactly the sort of thing that World War Two proved was a
perfectly adequate, takes care of everything, sort of general purpose submachine gun.
So the gun went into production in 1945. And there would then be subsequent extra versions, the Models 45B, C and D.
But we should take a look at how they work, although first let me answer one thing.
This is called a "Swedish K" and it's not because it was made by Carl Gustav, because Carl in Carl Gustav starts with a "C".
This was actually called the Swedish K because in Swedish the designation was "Kulsprutepistol",
(I'm probably mispronouncing that.) But it's spelled with a K, which translates into submachine gun, Kulsprutepistol m/45.
And a lot of people who don't speak Swedish just shortened that into, "Ah, it's Swedish, it's that K thing, it's the Swedish K."
So that's where the name came from. Now, let's take a look at how they work.
In Swedish inventory most of these guns were updated to the m/45B configuration, which involved a couple of changes.
They strengthened the rear end cap on the receiver and they fixed the magazine well in place.
Because by this point the guns were only intended to use one magazine. And that was the 36 round
double-stack double-feed magazine that was designed by the Swedes in 1945.
This came into use just shortly after this gun was trialled and adopted. And this is an excellent magazine.
You'll notice ... the sides aren't parallel. This gives the cartridges a little bit of wiggle room,
it gives dirt and debris a place to go and generally makes the ... magazine more reliable.
It is nice and easy to load. It's reliable. It's strong. It's a really good magazine.
Before this however, the Swedes actually designed the gun to use Suomi magazines.
Primarily the 50 round coffin mags, although they did also have drums,
because of course the Swedes had a bunch of Suomis in their inventory.
They'd been using these in World War Two, the 37/39 Suomis, and they had the magazines,
they're a high capacity mag, they're in the right calibre.
So the trials guns, both from Carl Gustav and Husqvarna, in '44 were both designed around these guys.
When this magazine came into use they designed a magazine well adapter that would fit it.
Originally they were removable. And we'll take a look at the removable type on the Port Said copy because it still has it.
But, before we do that
we can take a look at the markings here. We have a crown C, Swedish military property mark or proof mark. And a serial number.
That "Made in Sweden" I suspect is aftermarket to bring the gun into the United States.
Other than serial numbers on a few parts, that's it for markings on the gun.
These have a pretty heavy-duty folding stock that is held in place back here.
When it's folded this is just held under light spring tension like a detent, and all you have to do is lift the stock up to pop it open.
Once you open the stock all the way it locks in place ... with this latch. So this has
actually just a tiny bit of wobble, but it's quite a strong lock up system.
In order to close the stock you have to compress this spring by squeezing the stock together, and you can't do that unless
you push this lever back. Because this lever, right here, acts as a lock to prevent the stock from folding.
So if you push that lever and then squeeze the stock then you can
fold it back up.
The m/45 is a full-auto only gun, so there's no selector switch.
There is also no safety lever on the gun, the safety is actually this hole.
When the bolt is forward you can push the bolt handle in, and that will push that pin into this hole,
which means you can no longer open the bolt. ...
Obviously when the bolt's forward it's prevented from firing, that prevents the bolt from bouncing open and firing inadvertently.
Once you pull this open you can cock the gun. At this point the safety doesn't do anything,
you can push it in, but it's not going to prevent you from closing the bolt.
If you want the gun safed while the bolt is open,
you lift it up into that extra notch.
For sights you have a three position rear notch to choose from, so 1, 2 and 3.
The front sight is adjustable, so you can thread it in and out for elevation. And note that the front post
is not exactly centred in that whole front sight piece. So to adjust your windage you actually rotate the sight left or right.
That in theory impacts your elevation slightly, but not so much to really make a difference on an open-bolt 9mm submachine gun.
Rate of fire on these is actually fairly low, about 600 rounds a minute. That's one of the things that people liked about them.
They were a quite controllable gun. It's also a relatively heavy gun.
And personally, my one complaint about the handling really is the front to back width of this grip. To me it's uncomfortably large.
I think they could have cut this off by like half an inch and had something much more comfortable.
It may have been designed for like the giant hands of a brace of Swedish Ice Vikings, but
for normal people, or at least for me, it's a bit large.
Disassembly is really easy, we're going to push this centre pin in.
And then we can rotate the end cap around and then it comes off,
the recoil spring comes out, and then the bolt comes out.
That's it for the back end of the gun.
On the front end the barrel jacket and barrel are removable.
This is the barrel nut here. And there is a little spring detent, right there, that we have to hold down,
like so, and then we can unscrew,
alright, then we can unscrew the barrel nut and the barrel jacket comes off,
the barrel comes out. And that's it for field stripping.
There you go, there's a field stripped m/45B.
The bolt is just a single large block of metal with an extractor in it.
The firing pin is fixed in the bolt face. So it's extremely simple, there's really nothing fancy going on in here at all.
There were a couple other versions of the gun, there was an m/45C
which had a barrel jacket with a bayonet and that was used like for guys on guard duty.
The bayonet that they fitted to this was the carbine bayonet, which was extra long to make up for the
... Swedish Mauser carbine's short barrel.
So the bayonet on this thing was like 18 inches long, which I suppose actually made it sort of a viable tool for a guy on guard duty.
There was also the m/45D which had a selector switch on the receiver so it could be set to either semi-auto or full-auto.
But by far the most used standard configuration was m/45B, which is what you see here.
Well, the Swedes liked their fancy painted green guns to blend into the forest, the Egyptians weren't so fancy.
So this was licenced by Egypt, ... the date's unclear, either late '40s or early '50s. Definitely by 1952 they had it.
And ... it was set up with Swedish technical assistance
and obviously ... a technical package from the Swedes, because the gun is just identical.
The markings are of course slightly different. And I believe this is Arabic for Port Said, maybe 9mm.
Something along the lines of the model name, Port Said.
In fact, probably pretty close to the ... translation of the markings here on the right side, Port Said, 9mm, made in Egypt.
And all of the numbers on here are numbered in Arabic, along with an Egyptian military crest up there.
Now there are two differences that we can see that are changes from the m/45 to the later m/45B.
One of them is this end cap, which on the Egyptian gun is just a plain round cap.
On the Swedish B pattern they really reinforced it. They added this hook
which had a matching lug on the receiver. They added this bottom lug.
Apparently they had issues with the strength of the receiver end caps, because they put a lot of energy into increasing that.
So that's one change. The other change is up here at the magazine well.
So this gun is also set up to use the same 36 round double stack magazine.
Although I will point out, if you look here,
... this is a Port Said magazine and the witness holes are numbered in Arabic.
The magazine's numbered in Arabic, and we have an Egyptian proof mark on there as well.
But we can see the original mag well design that the Swedes designed for using Suomi mags.
So on this one there is this metal bar that comes across, and I can actually push that out
(should be able to),
there we go, that comes out. And then the magazine well comes off.
So this is the way the Swedish guns originally were. When they decided
that they were gonna stick with just that 36 round mag, they started permanently pinning these in place.
Pin's coming through from that side, and rounded over on this side like rivets.
The Egyptians never bothered to make that change. And what it means is that a Port Said can actually still fit
a Suomi coffin mag. It's a little little sticky here, but there you go.
Now you've got a 50 round magazine in there, and it will also
take the Suomi 71 round drums as well. So that's pretty cool.
Other than those two changes, the Port Said is identical to the m/45. All the internals are the same,
it works exactly the same way. So we're not gonna bother taking that one apart.
So it was the late '40s or early '50s when Egypt licenced the design, and they actually had Swedish engineers come over
and help them set up the tooling to produce these guns. And as a result they are ... perfect copies of the Swedish m/45.
This would then also end up being used by US forces in Vietnam.
The US Navy, specifically the SEALs, acquired the Carl Gustav as a good option for a deniable submachine gun.
Something that fired 9mm that wasn't directly tied to the United States.
They liked the fact that had a nice solid folding stock. So it could be compact
but didn't wobble and was easy to shoot when it was open.
And one of the other things they liked was that the front barrel assembly was easily removable.
And the US military actually built an integral silenced barrel assembly for the Carl Gustav.
And that's some of what they used in Vietnam. Not all of them, of course.
Eventually, once the Vietnam War heated up, the Swedish government
stopped allowing sales to the US government because they were being used in a war.
And so the US Navy, the SEALs, had to look elsewhere for their 9mm submachine guns,
and that's what led to the Smith & Wesson M76, which we have a video on.
Some shooting and also history and disassembly of the 76.
The 76 copies this basic layout and pattern, but makes a number of changes to it.
So if you're interested in the further evolution of this design, you should definitely check out
the Smith & Wesson M76 video. That'll be linked at the end of this.
And speaking of which, I think this is pretty much the end of this video.
I'd like to once again thank ... Movie Armaments Group for
letting me come up here and take a look at their m/45 guns, Swedish and Egyptian,
and bring them to you guys. So hopefully you enjoyed the video.
And thanks for watching.