[ Swedish m/21 BAR ]
Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a Swedish m/21 pattern BAR.
(Browning Automatic Rifle.)
And I want to start this by pointing out
how much good judgement Sweden had
to adopt this as early as they did.
1921 predates almost anyone else adopting a light machine gun after World War One.
And there were a few countries that got the light machine gun idea before the war,
but not many, it was pretty much just the Madsen gun.
And then of course you had the Lewis developed during the war,
and the Lewis is very much a first generation light machine gun.
Mechanically quite complex, it's kind of a helicopter to run.
Really cool gun, but not necessarily the thing that you want to adopt after the war.
And if you're in a position to be adopting a new light machine gun in 1921,
your options are going to be the Lewis gun, the Chauchat, and the BAR.
And the Swedes not only picked clearly the best of the three guns,
they also picked it in a configuration that would solve ...
frankly, this is a better light machine gun than the United States had in World War Two.
We had the BAR, we designed the BAR,
and we still didn't figure out how to use it as effectively as Sweden did in 1921.
So, putting that aside for a moment, what actually happened was
Sweden first purchased 700 (it was actually technically 703)
BARs from Colt, by way of FN.
FN had the licence to sell Browning products in Europe.
And so when Sweden ordered BARs, they ordered them from FN.
FN of course was in no position in 1921 to be ... tooling up to make a new gun.
So they instead just purchased the guns from Colt: so Colt, FN, up to Sweden.
And this was a combination of complete guns, and also just receivers.
And in conjunction with their purchase of the initial batch of guns,
the Swedes also purchased a licence to manufacture more of them domestically
at the Carl Gustafs Stads ... Gevärsfaktori, the state rifle factory.
So between 1923, when they started domestic production,
and 1935 they would produce another roughly 7,500 of these guns.
So Sweden had about 8,200 of them in total.
And this was their standard support weapon, standard light machine gun.
Now there are a couple of features that make this obviously stand out
from ... other patterns of BAR, especially the American one.
Number one is the distinctive large pistol grip.
Number two is the slightly curved magazine,
which is necessary because this is chambered for the Swedish 6.5x55mm cartridge.
And the third is, of course, the bipod.
So let's go ahead and take a look at all of those in sequence.
First off, the pistol grip on this thing is fantastic.
Way better than the American non-pistol grip versions of the BAR.
And frankly way better than the Belgian versions,
the small ... pistol grip that actually both Colt and FN would end up using later on.
This thing, great, very good for controlling the gun.
The magazine release, not quite so great.
This is still the early pattern button in the front of the magazine well.
And it's important to think of this as a 1919 pattern of BAR,
commercially designed and sold by Colt.
So you get a lot of those early elements, case in point - the early style of rear sight.
This is basically the same as what the Americans had on the original M1918 BARs.
It's a sight very similar to that of the ... M1917/British P14 rifles.
It's good: it's got a very nice, large rear aperture that's quite usable.
On the top of the receiver these are going to be marked
with the Carl Gustafs Stads Gevärsfaktori mark,
crown C for the Swedish Royal family, and date of production.
So this is a 1924 production gun.
And we have our serial number back here, 1185, so actually a very early production gun.
The Swedish safety is a little bit different from the standard.
We have full-auto, semi-auto, and safe.
And in this case you've got an extended lever,
and when you flip to safe there's this extra button in the way.
And it's spring-loaded, and it allows you to put the gun into safe.
But if you want to take it off of safe and put it into one of the firing positions,
you have to push down on this button, and then push the safety lever up.
So I think this is primarily designed to prevent range accidents
or friendly fire, unintentional shooting.
Once it's on safe, you can't just bump it back into the fire position.
The magazine has this distinctive curve to it
because of the shape of the 6.5x55 cartridge.
It is the only BAR cartridge that used a different magazine like this
other than the standard straight magazine.
They're ... all 20 round capacity.
There's that.
Also rather distinctive is this deep aggressive checkering on the buttstock,
on both sides of the buttstock.
That is there for the gunner's support hand to come back here,
and grasp the buttstock while shooting to help control the gun.
That gives him some texture to get a good grip on.
Similar texture on the forend of the gun for the front hand.
I will point out the front sight has snapped off of this one,
unfortunately, so don't worry about that.
This also actually has an American .30-06 barrel on it.
But the profile is exactly the same as what the Swedes had.
So it looks just like what you would have on a properly configured m/21.
Now the bipod is a mid-mounted bipod, back here, that is frankly substantially superior
to what the US would develop for the 1918A2 in World War Two.
We've got little spring clamps here that hold the bipod nicely in place when it's not in use.
Like so.
The way this is designed, the bipod legs will fold out and stop at full extension here.
That means that as the gunner you can set the bipod feet,
which have these really aggressive spikes on them,
into the ground, and then push into the bipod to help control fire, and that's a good thing.
The downside is it makes the gun a little trickier to just leave standing up on its own
because if the buttstock slides backward
the bipod legs will collapse forward, like this, under weight.
Now, while I've got this out of the way,
I'll point out we do have an adjustable gas regulator
just like the standard commercial BAR of the time.
One really cool side effect of this being essentially a Colt commercial BAR
is that the pistol grip assembly from the Swedish gun will drop right into any Colt BAR.
And that includes all the World War One guns, whether made by Colt or other people.
This will drop right into a US 1918 or US 1918A2 BAR.
So if you have a BAR and you really want this better style of grip,
if you can find a Swedish grip assembly, it'll just snap right in.
If you are interested in the mechanical function of the gun,
I will refer you to my video on the US BARs
because internally this is exactly the same.
The receiver design back here is the same, so the whole disassembly process is identical.
And the mechanical function is identical.
They are open bolt guns, as you can see there.
And run like ... the fantastic John Browning machine guns as they are.
Production of the m/21 pattern ended in 1935,
largely because there was some developmental work going on in Sweden to update the guns.
And the biggest complaint they had about these was that they had a fixed barrel.
And so if you used them like a light machine gun
and put a lot of ammo through them,
you could get the barrel very hot, and you had no way to change it.
And they wanted a quick-change barrel solution.
So they came up with one, which they adopted as the m/37.
It basically involved (it's a clever system), they
added a threaded extension to the front of the receiver
that had a movable locking wedge on it.
And so ... they're not trying to machine ... detachable threads into the existing receiver,
they kind of put that functionality out in front of the receiver.
They would adopt that as the m/37, like I said,
and between 1937 and 1944 they'd build another 15,400 of them,
as well as converting a lot of the existing m/21s to that new pattern.
So, these would remain Sweden's standard support weapon until the late 1950s,
when they adopted the FN MAG, as basically everybody did when that gun came out.
Interesting to point out the FN MAG is essentially a BAR flipped upside down and belt fed.
So still not a huge departure from the basic mechanical system.
And that was in the late 50s or early 60s.
The guns would actually remain in limited service in Sweden until at least 1980.
So that is I think actually the last
of the different national patterns of BAR that I haven't covered yet.
I do have a ... couple of videos on the American BAR,
as well as a video on the Polish version of the BAR.
And the ... FN produced, adopted by a number of countries, the FN Model D.
So if you're interested in other versions of the BAR,
there are a number of other videos you can check out.
Hopefully you enjoyed this one.
Thanks for watching.