- [Miles] Today we're gonna be talking about the
UK vz. 59 which is a Czechoslovakian design
from the 1950s.
Today's video is brought to you
by Marcolmar Firearms which allowed us
the generous use of their facilities
and we've been talking about them
for the previous two episodes
and of their machine guns
and replications of machine guns.
(gun shot)
We'd also like to thank Ventura Munitions for
the ammunition they provide us and various video
reviews on TFB.TV.
Please give them a shout-out.
In addition to my friend Brush
who helped with this video
and helped with the production of making it.
Thank you very much Brush I appreciate it.
So down to business here.
The UK vz. 59 stands for Universal Version
of 1959 which was the year
the machine gun was adopted.
The belt fed machine gun was
actually based on the vz. 52
light machine gun chambered in 7625x45mm.
This is not the vz. 52 rifle
for those of you who might be getting
confused at this point.
The Czechs had a large insistence in the 1950s
to stick to their own designs and to stick to
what they wanted to make to begin with.
The Soviets tried pushing AKMs, Kalashnikovs,
PKMs on the Czech Republic that was underneath
Soviet influence but the Czechs refused
and they wanted to do their own thing.
Eventually they later on
repented and they later adopted
the 762x54mm cartridge however
everything they had before that was chambered
in 762x45, The vz. 52, the 858 rifle,
and later on it was switched over to the 762x39.
So the UK59 was chambered in 762x54
rimmed.
There were two models, there was a light
and a heavy barreled version.
The heavy barrelled version was a little bit
longer than the light one.
There were around 24,000 made
in the period of the 1950s to the 1960s.
There's also a 762 NATO version
that was later on made
to try to attract more customers outside of the
Czech Republic.
An interesting note about the UK vz. 59 is that
it is still used unto this day
within the Czech military.
Although the Czech military is currently trying
to replace it with the Mark 48 from FN Herstal.
It is a open-bolt design that it based on the
vz. 37's gas system.
It was also used by Slovak troops after Slovakia
and Czechoslovakia split in the 1990s
and it is still used by Slovak troops today.
Now that we've looked at some of the history
of the UK vz. 59,
let's look at some of the operating components.
First and foremost we need to look at the
pistol grip that is
also the charging handle for the system.
The original machine gun version of the UK59
you have to press the trigger in order to
release the catch forward.
It's a little precarious but
it seems to work out in the machine gun version.
However with the semi-automatic version,
there is no trigger pressing here,
and Marcolmar had to redesign the bolt
to accommodate a semi-automatic only version
that would be allowed to be approved by ATF.
You have to press a lever
on the left side of the firearm.
Notice during the course of fire
that the trigger actually also
actuates a dust cover for the machine gun
underneath as well.
As you press the trigger with each round,
the dustcover flips on
and then flips off the machine gun.
So this is how the UKM and the UK59 work.
You've got your receiver,
This is milled by the way,
you've got your carrier,
and then you've got your bolt head.
So this fits in here.
This is the
forward position.
And this is the rear position.
Coming back into the bolt.
And this is when it's locked.
So to fit it in,
first you have your receiver here
and it fits in just like so.
Now this has to be in the forward position
for it to go forward or else...
(clicking)
Stuck.
Boom.
Forward.
That's in there.
So now that it's inside the receiver
it's in the lock and you can see
it's cammed in those two little spots.
There we go.
Here it's locked.
Here it's not.
All right so first things first,
you've got
this hammer
or striker.
The striker part, this goes in the upper portion.
And you can fit it in
right back there.
And so as you can tell
the striker
goes forward
and fires the firing pin.
Boom, when it's released.
Now it's fired from closed bolt position
so that means the striker is back here.
It lets go, the spring goes forward,
it hits it
hits the firing pin,
that's the cartridge,
the gas pushes back on the piston,
bam,
that unlocks it, it goes to the rear.
At the same time
it goes back,
drops the shell out through the bottom
and loads a new round in from the top.
From the feed part.
So unlike other machine gun designs
the feed tray system is very different.
Now the Czechs had to use the Soviet ammunition
but they didn't have to use the Soviet belt.
The belt is a non-disintegrating, push-through
tab
which means you could push the belt in after
closing the feed tray
and then pull it from the other end
and then the rounds will
place themselves correctly.
The feed tray cover actually doesn't have
any moving components within it.
All it is is a simple cover.
The actual moving components are the actual belt
and the actual underlying components of
the machine gun itself.
The belt is configured in such a way
that it actually helps to push the rounds
out of their individual placements
into the chamber.
So although the machine gun
could be fired from a bipod mount
the machine gun could also be mounted
on a tripod.
The original tripods had a lot of intuitiveness
built into them.
They could
double function as an anti-aircraft mount,
a prone mount, or sitting mount.
The anti-aircraft mount we unfortunately weren't
able to take the tripod out and show you
but you can see other videos on the Internet
showing how the tripod works.
Essentially you have to take
the various legs apart
and you put them in this weird contraption
and what you get is a standing mount
that you can actually shoot from.
In here we're showing you
how to take the tripod apart and
facilitate it for movement use.
This would allow a soldier to take the tripod
down and move it from position to position.
Also note that the
connection point for the tripod
is actually on the top of the machine gun
instead of on the bottom like many other
machine guns are.
What this does is it puts
the machine gun at a lower vantage point
and so you can get lower to the ground
and have more cover with it.
Of course the Czechs had to compensate for this
by making a taller rear site to compensate for
the tripod being in their way.
And you could traverse and elevate
the machine gun either finely
or crudely on a wide range of areas.
All this adjustment was done with your left hand
without ever having to move your head from the
machine gun or your other hand.
The rear sight ladder for the UK 59
had to be elevated because it had to
clear the tripod mount
that would be attached to it.
It had elevation tick marks that went up to
2000 meters.
In addition it had an elevation point on the left
and it had a wind adjustment on the right.
Bear in mind their front sight
could be adjusted as well.
When not in use it flipped down against
the top of the machine gun cover out of use
while during transportation.
The butt pad of the UK 59 featured a shoulder
latch that could be pushed up and down
and could allow a gunner to have better stability
when firing the machine gun from the prone.
Bipods are of an extremely simple design
and they had two positions.
Either employed or racked up against the barrel.
However the bipod could also be
completely removed in case one needed
to take them off and maybe switch barrels.
For that you would have to change
in case of an emergency.
They also had very loose tolerances so the bipods
didn't collapse and bend over when putting a lot
of pressure on them.
The handle was very unique on the machine gun
because it had essentially three positions.
It had a sort of assault phase, an upper phase,
a barrel-changing phase,
and then you could swivel it between all these.
This further allowed you to take the barrel
off the machine gun when you needed to.
You could put it in a different position,
whatever position was best for you,
just by simply rotating it
and pressing the latch.
Depressing the feed tray cover and pushing it to
the right allowed the entire barrel fixture
to come off entirely.
This is one of the faster methods of changing
a barrel among a number of machine guns
in the world.
The bolt could still be pressed forward.
Putting it back on you just switch the latch
to the left, and then in the open position,
then press it down to continue.
The UK 59 was fitted with an assault can
that could fit a 50-round
belt of 762x54 rimmed ammunition.
Putting the assault can on the machine gun,
it fixed on the right side,
and it was latched to two little points
next to the feed tray cover.
This allowed the machine gun to be mobile
and allowed gunners to run around with
the machine gun if they needed to.
For extended periods of time
such as in a vehicle mount
you could have an actual dedicated can that
could have extended amounts of belts linked
inside of it and that you could fire from
for an extended amount of time.
So you wouldn't have to be confined to a 50-round
assault can.
I hope you enjoyed the video, guys.
We really enjoyed making it,
and we look forward to seeing you
next time on the channel.
Next time we're gonna be talking about the
Soviet PKM general purpose machine gun.
However unlike the UK 59 we have here,
the PKM that we're gonna have in the video
is actually gonna be fully automatic.
Thank you very much
and we hope to see you next time.
("The Stars And Stripes Forever")