[ German L23 and L27 Silencers ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take
a look at the German L27 silencer.
This is a silencer design that
the ... Russians came up with, more or less,
during the ... latter half of World War Two.
The Germans during World War Two would experiment
with two different types of suppressors: those with rubber baffles, and those without.
And essentially the ... suppressors with rubber baffles, which include our L27 here,
were developed for ... use with subsonic ammunition.
The ones with what we would consider today perhaps more
traditional, more standard, just metal baffles, those ... could be used with any ammunition.
So the story of the L27 actually starts with the German L23 suppressor,
which was essentially a direct copy
of a Russian Mosin-Nagant suppressor that they captured.
So let's bring the camera in a little closer so you can see the details on these.
And let's take a look at what the Germans did with a Russian can.
So this is the German L27.
But where the story really begins is with the Russian Bramit suppressors.
So with the L23, which was developed for the Mauser K98k,
the Germans essentially copied this exact design.
And that work was done by a company called Fuhrhop.
... 200 were then manufactured for trials by a separate company called Gutman and Hufschmidt.
"Hufschmidt", for what it's worth, translates into basically a blacksmith
or a farrier, someone who does horseshoes. The company ended up doing metalworking.
At any rate, they essentially manufactured 200 of these for German trials.
And they don't come out all that successful.
The Germans want a better mounting system, and that is where our L27 comes from.
The L27 essentially replaces this bayonet-style locking system
where the whole can goes on the rifle and then locks around the front sight tower.
It replaces it with the same sort of clamp
that the Germans used for rifle grenade launching adapters.
So this is going to slide onto the muzzle of the rifle like that.
The top goes on, and then I can do this with two hands on camera.
Then you tighten down this screw, which locks the whole thing in place.
Now 1,000 of these were manufactured.
And they were intended for essentially all of Germany's 8mm calibre small arms.
So these were for the Kar98k, the G43 and K43, and the MP44 series.
They would work just as well with 8 Kurz as they would with 8 Mauser.
This particular one, as you can see, is marked for the K98k.
And of course the geometry of this mounting system
is a little bit different for the different rifles.
Now these were intended for subsonic cartridges only.
And so we have some really cool markings here on the body of the can.
The "E" is for your range, and the "V" is your sight setting.
So if you want to fire at 50 metres, you need to set your sights for 800 metres.
And that's to account for the lower velocity and the completely different
trajectory of subsonic 8mm Mauser ammunition.
And you can see they have corrections out to 250 metres.
... You're not going to be shooting someone with a subsonic beyond that range.
We also have a marking up here, "Lösen" which is loosen,
because the caps on this are actually left-hand threaded.
And there's a lot of threading in here.
There we go. So we can take that cap off, and then we can also take the muzzle cap off.
And then we have a spacer in there.
And there are no other significant baffles.
This is only designed to be used with two rubber baffles.
And I can more easily show you exactly what those would look like
by using this, which is a reproduction Bramit.
So this used really quite thick rubber baffles.
And ... well, it's not attached to the front of the spacer,
it's stuck on that one with a little bit of grease.
But that spacer sits down here,
which gives you a little bit of expansion chamber in the main tube.
And then the baffle sits between that ledge and this ledge,
so it's going to sit basically right there.
As you can see this one does, like that.
And then you have a second one that sits in the nose cap of the can against that ledge.
So when we line this up, we have an arrangement like this.
So a couple of points to make. First off, the Germans found that
the rubber baffle system was the quieter way to do a silencer.
But also significantly less accurate, which is exactly what we'd expect.
The Russian baffles at least were pre-drilled with a really small pilot hole and scored,
so that the bullet wouldn't deflect as much going through the baffles.
But you were definitely going to lose long-range accuracy shooting through
essentially an inch of solid rubber.
However, it is definitely going to be quieter. That rubber for the first small number of shots
is going to more or less seal back around the bullet,
and help contain the gas inside the suppressor.
Slowing its release, thus making it quieter.
I don't ... have data on the German tests.
The Russians expected about 60 rounds of life from each baffle,
and then found that in cold weather it was really more like 15 or 20.
I actually have some pictures of a dug up German ... carry case for one of these L27s.
And ... about half of the can was used to store the actual suppressor
and the other half to store a whole bunch of replacement baffles.
This is definitely not a ... heated combat, extended fire fight sort of thing.
This is a sneaky special operations sort of use.
Also worth pointing out, the idea that this is left-hand threaded
is because with those big rubber baffles, the bullet ... when it goes through that baffle
is actually going to tend to unscrew these two end caps
because the bullet's rifled in the same direction ... well, it's right-hand threaded.
So by reversing these and making them left-hand threaded
you have the effect of each time you fire it actually tightens those two sets of threads.
And that's important, you don't want the suppressor to come apart
unexpectedly while you're in the middle of shooting.
I should point out, I said the production was 1,000 units of this.
That was what was ordered. Actual production ended early
(although I don't know how early because these aren't serialised),
but it ended because they were unable to get the rubber.
Which really says something about the state of the German military and economy
and, well, the country in general by late in World War Two,
that they had to cancel suppressor manufacture for the want of just those little rubber baffles.
We really know very little of any detail about the actual German use of suppressors like these.
There were a couple of thousand in total
manufactured between this and the other patterns that were used.
This is another one of those areas where the German ... military-industrial complex
produced a whole bunch of different designs in relatively small numbers,
and they all saw some service.
But none of them really saw any use in a truly game-changing manner.
So they were used most likely by various German special forces
types of units, types of special operations.
And in this case, specifically with subsonic ammo, so.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.