Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Limex
courtesy of Alexander Logar, taking a look
at ... a couple of the really cool guns
in their reference collection.
And what we have here specifically today
is a German Parabellum machine gun.
This is a Model of 1914/17,
and this was one of the standard German aircraft machine guns from the First World War.
They are exceptionally rare, and it's really cool to get a chance to take a look at one.
Now, this project began as a commercial endeavour by DWM,
Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken,
because well the German army had adopted the MG 08 Maxim, a very standard pattern,
large, heavy duty Maxim gun as their standard armament and they were very happy with it.
But DWM wanted to continue to improve the design
for commercial sales and military export sales.
Probably the best way to think about this is, this is DWM's equivalent to the Vickers gun.
So Vickers Armstrong & Company had the rights to the ... Maxim gun in the UK.
And what they did was they flipped the action upside down
because it allowed them to make the receiver about ... 30% smaller, and thus make the whole gun lighter.
That was the pattern of Maxim essentially that the British army eventually adopted.
Well, the German army stuck with the older, heavier, more true to the original Maxim design, MG 08s.
But DWM wanted a commercial product that was like the Vickers gun.
So the actual internal design work on this is substantially different from the Vickers,
and ... the design work was done by a guy named Karl Heinemann.
You may be aware of Heinemann if you've watched some of my other videos.
He would go on to manufacture some really interesting
toggle-locked rifles and early self-loading rifles.
Well, he started working for DWM in 1911 and they had this project ready in 1913.
And by their description this was the SM or
which is Shoulder Machine Gun, hence the shoulder stock on the back.
Unlike a Maxim gun with its spade grips that required a tripod,
in theory this could have been used off a bipod - or an airplane.
And aerial use is where these ... actually saw service.
So the German military first tested these (in aircraft actually) in February of 1914.
So before the war even began.
And in fact the first Fokker that was demonstrated
with the new experimental synchronisation technology,
that was actually done with one of these 1913 pattern Parabellum machine guns.
Now I should say that it's a little bit of complication on the nomenclature here.
DWM's commercial name for the project was Model of 1913.
The German army recognised it as the Model of 1914, that's when they tested it.
So by 1915 this was the standard machine gun
... basically for flexible mounts in German aircraft.
It was used mostly on multi-gun multi-crew aircraft like the Gotha bombers later in the war.
And there were a couple of versions that were developed.
So I said what we're looking at here is a 14/17.
The ... first versions were water-cooled guns
much like the standard Maxims, and they had a water jacket out here.
In 1917 they revised the design to ... have an air-cooled jacket, as you see on this one.
Because of course it is lighter, it's slimmer,
and you really don't need the whole water jacket for an aircraft machine gun.
The slipstream that the aircraft is flying through does a perfectly sufficient job of cooling it.
So, the scopes were also added in 1917
to ... give them more tactical flexibility, better aiming in the air.
Let's go ahead and pull this open and let me show you how it all works,
because it's fantastically German inside.
You know, the Forgotten Weapons merchandise shop over on Varusteleka
has some pretty cool stuff, like these merino wool hoodies which may be more useful than you'd think.
Check this out, we have: Varusteleka merino wool hoodie contents check.
In this you will find one 9mm automatic.
Two boxes of ammunition.
Four days concentrated emergency rations.
One first aid kit in convenient self-contained bottle.
One Finnish-English dictionary.
100 rubles in dollars.
One hundred dollars in silver.
One pack salty licorice candy.
One tin age-defying skin care cream.
And three pairs of wool socks.
Shoot, a fellow could have a pretty good weekend in Helsinki with all this stuff.
[Fits all that and keeps you warm too...]
[Forgotten Weapons Merino Hoodies available through the link below. (Survival kit contents not included)]
Let's start by showing you some of the markings here,
so there's that SM,
And there is an absolutely gorgeous DWM commercial crest on the top cover of the gun.
Like they wasted no effort on the engraving on that, that's really cool.
From the outside we have controls that are recognisably Maxim-ish, but still a bit different.
So we have our charging handle here, and it's the same sort of crank handle
that you would have in a Maxim gun.
The spring's a little weak in this one.
But one of the things that Heinemann did is he moved the mainspring
... essentially into a tube here at the back of the action.
If we look on the other side you can see that there's no big sheet metal fusee spring cover.
On the Vickers and Maxim guns that mainspring was external to the action.
Heinemann ... modernised it and moved it inside,
which is something that Vickers didn't actually do,
even though they were working at basically the same time.
For shooting we have a pistol grip on the back instead of spade grips,
with the trigger and a very simple trigger safety.
So to shoot this, you're going to hold the safety down with your middle finger,
and then fire with your index finger.
And that just works by physically blocking the trigger from moving backwards.
The buttstock on this one is a little bit loose,
and it's because we don't have the tool to tighten it down.
I'll point this out because it's a really funky, weird way to do the buttstock.
There's a buffer tube essentially coming back, that's about this long.
And the base of the buffer tube is threaded.
And then the buttstock has a tube running through it ...
all the way to the back here.
And you actually slide the buttstock over the back of the buffer tube
and then you screw it down from here. And that screw is tight, it's too stiff, ...
and we can't tighten it down all the way. Otherwise it would pull the buttstock
in snug against the receiver.
And there's a pair of locating pins to lock it in the correct orientation.
So, I mean even the buttstock attachment on this is weirdly but stereotypically German.
Now we have a rear sight here that folds down, and it's just a very simple V notch.
Which would be paired with a very simple post front sight, nothing ... particularly fancy there.
Of course, they put on the scopes instead.
And then there was originally a muzzle booster on this,
which unfortunately is missing from this particular one so I can't show you that.
Now this looks like a handle, but it's actually not.
That is the support for the top cover.
One of the limitations of the standard 08 and 08/15 Maxim guns for aircraft use
was that opening the top cover, it pivoted up like this.
And if you're trying to open the top cover to ... fix a malfunction in the air,
you're going to have a very difficult time doing that.
You're going to have to hold that top cover up with one hand all the time,
or it's very likely going to blow right back down.
So on the 1913s this top cover actually slides forward on a pair of rails.
And out here it's got a little hook that latches right onto that ...
to hold it nice and stable in place.
And so this is something that you can actually open up while you're in the air on an aircraft.
The feed block on the Parabellum is not removable
in the way that the Maxim and Vickers feed blocks were.
We have a lever out here, that's your belt release.
So you pull that back and you can pull out a belt that's still loaded in the gun.
This is still a short recoil action, so when it fires
the whole action is going to cycle back ... like this.
That is going to cause the feed pawl to cam over, so that's what actually feeds the belt in.
At the same time that it is unlocking the action ... back here.
You can see the mainspring, which is now located right behind the action,
and as I said, runs into a buffer tube in the stock that's about this deep.
So it's actually a relatively short spring in there.
We have a toggle action that is fundamentally Maxim-like,
you'll recognise that if you've seen the inside of a Maxim.
However, the design of the bolt itself is substantially different.
So I can pull this out the same way that I would a Maxim.
Just lift that up, rotate it,
and there is your 1913 Parabellum lock.
You thought a Maxim gun was intricate and expensive to manufacture,
this is even more so, but it fundamentally works the same way.
So there's your cocking lever.
The trigger on this is actually this pair of little legs,
which in fact even have little tiny rollers in them.
If we look inside the action, there is a trigger bar right down here that is going to pull backwards.
And that actually pushes up on this stirrup, which fires the action.
So it fires from a closed bolt like the other Maxim guns.
This is spring-loaded to allow a cartridge to be stripped into these extractor lips right there.
And then this is your lever that is actually pushing a cartridge up and down.
So a cartridge is going to come in from the belt, snap into ... the extractor grooves here.
And then when the bolt goes backwards,
it gets pushed down by this arm camming in the side plate of the gun.
This track, right here ... is operating this arm.
Running that pusher up and down.
That pushes it down in line with the firing pin. It will fire, and then it gets ejected
out the bottom of the gun just like a Maxim gun.
The ejection is done by the next cartridge pulled off the belt being pushed down into position,
which in turn pushes the extracted empty case off the bottom of the extractor.
And if you need to take a live round out of the bolt, that's what this guy is for.
You can open that up and pull the cartridge out.
So, small. This is physically much more akin to the size of a Vickers lock
than an original Maxim lock.
But even more complicated to produce.
So if we take a look at the feed cycle here, now that you've seen the bolt.
You've got your first round, which is in the extractor having been pulled ... in by the belt.
When you pull this back it's going to pull the ... cartridge out of the belt.
And as soon as the bolt is all the way back ...
(do that a little slower)
so right about here, this lever arm is going to start going up in its track.
Which is going to push the front of the lever arm down.
That pushes that cartridge into line with the barrel.
The bolt's then going to return forward,
that's going to push the cartridge into the chamber,
at the same time that the extractor is going to snap over the next cartridge on the belt.
When you fire it of course the round in the chamber fires, that causes the whole thing to cycle.
And then this lever arm is going to pull out the next cartridge in the belt,
and then this lever arm is going to push it down like the previous one.
At which point, well, there's not room for 3 shell cases on this extractor,
and so the bottom one, which is now empty and extracted,
gets pushed out the ... ejection port on the bottom of the receiver.
Alright, let's take a look at the scope for a moment.
This is a 3 power, 3 magnification scope.
The eye-cup back here is reproduction, but the scope is original.
These were easily detachable scopes, there's a quick-detach mounting system here.
We're just going to take these levers, rotate them 90 degrees backwards,
and then I can lift the scope right off.
We have semi-circular cuts in the mounting pegs there.
And a very simple locking system right here,
where when it goes forward this dowel locks the scope in place.
And you have adjustments on the scope base.
So this is your windage adjustment screw on the rear base.
And then there's an elevation adjustment screw on the bottom of the actual scope body.
So the original anti-aircraft sights (before they mounted scopes),
there was a mounting point right there for the rear sight.
And then a mounting bracket right here for the front anti-aircraft sight.
And that would be in place of the standard infantry-style sight.
But of course both of those become irrelevant when you mount a scope on the gun instead.
One other thing I want to point out that's just so very ... stereotypical of a gun like this,
that is exquisitely manufactured, very expensive, and very, well, German.
The screws are numbered, not as you might expect with the serial number,
but with the order of their installation and removal, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
And also on the front scope mount bracket, 1, 2, 3, 4.
But in addition, a little dot on each of the front bracket screws,
so that you don't mix them up with the rear bracket screws.
Well, I'd like to give a big thanks to Limex and Mr Logar for giving me access to this thing to film.
These are very rare today, even ... missing the muzzle device on this,
it's still a really cool piece to be able to show to you guys.
So hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.