[ Bramit Suppressor for the M91/30 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to look at
the one major standard Soviet
sound suppressor from World War Two.
This is the Bramit, ... I'm going to go with "Bramit".
And I have here an authentic one
in really bad condition because it was dug out of a swamp somewhere.
And also a reproduction.
So I can show you two things, one of them being
what especially the markings were supposed to originally look like.
And also so that you can see the differences between the reproduction and the originals,
because there are some substantial differences
where they didn't really make the reproductions quite exactly right.
So the Soviet Union actually became interested in suppressors in the early 1930s.
And the first system that I'm aware of that they actually developed and started testing
was a suppressor for the DP-27 light machine gun as early as 1931.
They would go on to test 4 or 5 different types of suppressors,
different designs, between '32 and '38 but they didn't really like any of them.
There were a bunch of problems that they found,
and ... I don't have a lot of details on the exact models they were testing,
so it's unclear to figure out exactly why these problems were problems.
But in general they found the suppressors to be too heavy, not quiet enough,
and also to impair the accuracy of the rifles.
Now the Bramit is a suppressor that uses solid rubber baffles that are shot through.
If that is the sort of system that the other Soviet suppressors were using,
it would certainly become understandable why they would inhibit the accuracy of the rifles.
At any rate, what we're looking at here didn't actually show up until June of 1940,
when it was first tested by the Technical Bureau of the NKVD, the state security organ.
And they liked it, they put it into testing and in December of 1940 they formally adopted it.
Now it would take another 9 months before production started,
and production actually began in September of '41 in Leningrad.
Where it very quickly was delayed and restricted due to the siege of Leningrad.
Eventually production would begin in a couple of other factories outside Leningrad.
There were I think four different factories that actually produced these at various times.
So we'll talk about quantities and what happened at the end of the production life in a minute.
But before we do that, let's take a look at how this actually works.
So the Bramit was designed specifically for the 91/30 and nothing else.
This is our reproduction one which is going to fit very nicely.
It just slides over the muzzle, rotates into place, locks behind the front sight.
Very simple, very easy. Maybe not a gas tight seal,
but frankly, this isn't the world's most perfectly Hollywood silent silencer.
So a little bit of gas leakage back here is really not a big deal at all.
Now let's start with our original one, this has three separate parts to it.
We have the cap ...
and we have the front chamber, and then we have the main body of the thing.
And this is left-hand threaded, so it has to go backwards.
The functional design of the Bramit is basically just two big heavy rubber baffles.
So there is ... a tube adapter in here, a spacer basically.
And just an open expansion chamber with no baffles.
You would then have a ... solid rubber baffle right in this position.
And it runs up against that ledge.
And then originally you would take off the front, which is also threaded,
but on this one it's completely corroded together,
and you'd have a second rubber baffle up here.
And we have a bunch of markings on the side here, and they basically take two forms.
Down here we have markings that are basically a warning not to fire standard ammunition.
You are not supposed to fire supersonic ammo through this.
That would cause a problem for this, pressure that would damage it.
And then up here you actually have a sight adjustment table.
So the ammunition that this was supposed to be used with was subsonic ammo
with a muzzle velocity of about 260 metres per second (or 850 feet per second) being subsonic.
That would allow you to get rid of the supersonic crack,
which makes a suppressor significantly more effective
in terms of actually not being heard by other people at distance.
However, if you're going to fire subsonic ammunition out of a Mosin-Nagant,
your rear sight markings are not quite going to be accurate.
And so what they did was mark on the suppressor
exactly what sight setting you would use for what range.
So if we look up at the top here, if I want to shoot at a 100 metre target
I'm going to set my sights for 7.
So that is my 100 metre setting.
And this goes out to 300 metres, which would be ... shot with the sights at 12.
So you can see a huge change in your zero, in the trajectory,
because of using subsonic ammunition.
And it's, I think, really cool to mark that on the suppressor itself.
Now they made a bunch of subsonic ammo.
But of course, what if you don't have it? Well, you were allowed to modify
standard light ball ammo, so ... the light ball is 148 grain.
And what you were allowed to do if you didn't have the subsonic, was take a round of light ball,
pull the bullet out, and dump out two thirds of the powder.
And then put the bullet back in, crimp it back in place and use that.
This does not seem like a really optimal solution,
but I suppose it's better than blowing the suppressor off or not being able to shoot.
Now those sight markings go out to 300 metres,
that was considered the maximum effective range of this system.
The practical range was probably more like 150 to 200 metres.
Now, I can show you ... in more detail how exactly this works using this reproduction.
I will point out on the reproduction the threads are all right-hand threaded,
where on the originals they are left-hand threads.
So that's a really easy way to discern between the two
if you think someone might be trying to pass off a reproduction as original.
Alright, also if you look at these threads, you can see the thread pitch
on the original is much finer than the thread pitch on the reproduction.
Alright, here's the reproduction disassembled down here.
Your suppressing effect comes from essentially just these two rubber ... washers.
This one's thoroughly jammed inside the end cap so it doesn't want to come out.
They are quite thick compared to the rubber
wipes that I would expect to see in modern suppressors.
And originally (there are some surviving photos),
originally these had a small diameter hole drilled through them,
and they were scored to give the bullet a path to travel through.
They didn't have full diameter holes like this one does in the reproduction.
Originally the designers, the manufacturers,
expected a lifespan of approximately 60 rounds for these wipes.
The idea with ... wipes in suppressors is that the bullet will go through,
the rubber will expand, and then the rubber will basically seal itself up behind the bullet
thus helping to trap gases inside and make the gun quieter.
However of course, as you fire more and more rounds,
you blow a bigger and bigger permanent hole in those rubber wipes.
And eventually they are completely ineffective and they need to be replaced, so.
The plan, the expectation, was a lifespan of about 60 rounds.
What they found is that, especially in the winter, they were much more brittle and hard,
and they had a lifespan of more like 15 to 20 rounds.
So in 1942 they developed a new one,
and they actually had a winter ... rubber baffle, and a summer one that were separate materials.
In '43 through the Lend-Lease program Russia was able to get some better quality rubber,
and they were able to redesign it again for a universal all-season rubber baffle again.
But ultimately you're still talking 50 or 60 rounds,
even with the best materials, before they need to be replaced.
So this isn't the type of suppressor you would put on a machine gun.
This is definitely a sniper's sort of weapon, and that's who these were issued to.
They were used by snipers, they were used by partisans.
There was a plan in '44 to send 1,000 of the suppressors
and a bunch of ammunition to partisans in Yugoslavia.
And they were also used by army and NKVD scout units.
And so much more widespread use of these
than probably suppressors in any other military force during World War Two.
So once again, if you have one that is right-hand threaded it is absolutely a reproduction.
Of course, if you find one that's in this kind of condition, it is
virtually guaranteed to be a reproduction as well.
Fit that in there, and this threads down over the top of it.
The one last thing. I will point out to you is these are called a "Bramit", b-r-a-m-i-t,
and that is actually a contraction of "brothers Mitin" in Russian.
And the brothers were the ones who came up with the design.
These were largely made in 1942 and 1943, production wrapped up at the beginning of 1944.
And the very last ones put together were assembled from parts in April of 1944.
By that point, like some of the other Soviet small arms equipment,
they'd built enough of them that like,
"OK, we have enough. We can stop manufacturing them now and move on to other things."
And ... so the total number produced is unclear.
We know for a fact that in 1942 they made just under 60,000 of them, which is a massive number.
If you compare that to, say, what the German silencer programs were doing,
the Germans were making 500 to maybe 1,000 of each of a couple of different designs.
And none of them were quite perfect,
and so they'd shut down production or they couldn't get the materials.
The Soviets on the other hand, found one design that was not perfect but good enough,
and they just made a massive pile of them.
They did that sort of thing with a number of things besides suppressors.
You'd say they did that with sniper rifles, they did that with tanks.
At any rate, it was a winning strategy in World War Two.
So total production, unclear. Definitely in excess of 60,000,
probably not more than 100,000, so somewhere in that range.
However, they are extremely rare today because they went out of Soviet service after World War Two.
They apparently weren't particularly interesting souvenirs for soldiers to bring home.
And so while I'm sure there are more of them in Russia today than there are in the West,
there are very few of them anywhere.
So that's why we have this one.
Even for the condition that it's in, it's still a really, really cool find.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.