[ Tank Suomi ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at another very unique version of the
m/31 Suomi submachine gun.
This is the tank version, or the light armoured vehicle version.
And just a few dozen of these were manufactured by Tikkakoski
... for the Finnish military in the 1930s before the Winter War.
Finland didn't have a lot of tanks or armoured vehicles, but they did have a few.
And those few needed to have weapons mounted in them.
And so one of the concepts that was used was the idea of having a ball mount
in the armour plate of the vehicle that would connect specifically to a Suomi submachine gun.
Now in order to make this practical in the vehicle they made a few modifications.
So the stock was removed and replaced with just a simple vertical pistol grip.
Because of course you don't need shoulder support if you're
firing the thing from a mount in a vehicle.
And this of course cut a foot off the length of the gun, and made it a lot more compact.
And then of course, they have a barrel jacket specifically made to fit in a ball mount.
So let's take a closer look at that.
You might think that being shorter would make this gun lighter than a standard Suomi,
which is a pretty hefty piece of equipment to begin with.
The truth is it does not,
actually this barrel jacket is substantially heavier than the standard one for the m/31.
The standard jacket is about half a kilo, this is like 1.3 kilos,
so we're talking about almost 2 additional pounds on the gun from this barrel jacket.
Now if we start at the back here.
Basically ... the tangs that would originally attach a solid wood stock
were lopped off, and they added a metal frame back here.
And you can see ... this cut right here,
... what would normally become a regular stock has been cut off and a pistol grip attached.
The trigger mechanism and all the mechanical parts up in here remain identical.
Now this particular example doesn't quite fit this gun,
it doesn't rotate quite far enough into place to be locked in.
And of course it's still in the white and covered with a bunch of very old, hardened grease.
This was acquired from a Finnish depot.
(There's how it comes off the gun.)
It is definitely a real tank model shroud,
but it appears to be one that wasn't actually completely finished and fitted to a gun.
So considering the scarcity of these, it's probably the best example that I will ever see to film.
Now, the big extra material here is to fit into the ball mount on the vehicle.
We still have ventilation shrouds to help cool the barrel.
And beyond that, it's just a matter of having
the same locking attachment as on a standard Suomi jacket. So.
So nothing about the front end of the gun is any different.
This is just basically something made possible as a neat side effect
of the quick-change barrel and shroud mechanism that was originally put onto the Suomi.
The rear sight remains the standard pattern of rear sight for an m/31.
But there is no front sight fitted because, frankly, this thing would be fired instinctively,
and by watching bullet impacts because there's no ... optical sight mounted to it.
So there's no reason to put a front sight out on the end of the shroud.
The concept here was that the gun would be used as a gun in the vehicle
as long as that was appropriate. But if the crew needed to bail out of the vehicle,
they could actually take the gun with them.
Because, through the simple quick detach mechanism used for the shroud of the Suomi,
both the tank version and the regular version, all they had to do was
pop the disassembly lever, pull the gun out,
and fit it with a standard barrel shroud which would be carried in the vehicle.
And then upon exiting they would have an almost perfectly functional submachine gun.
It wouldn't have a stock, but it could still be used at close quarters fairly effectively.
It's really a neat sort of modular type concept that fits well
with the way that the Suomi was designed with this quick-detach barrel and shroud.
So ... like I said, there were only a couple of dozen made before the Winter War.
As of June of 1940, at the end of the Winter War,
inventory officially said that there were 31 of these still in military stores.
By the inventory taken in 1944 after the Continuation War, none of them were in stock.
And the reason is once Finland started capturing a lot of DT Degtyarev machine guns,
the tank model of the DP-26 or 27, they were much more interested in using those.
They used a more powerful cartridge of course, a proper rifle round instead of a 9mm pistol round,
and they were available in large numbers, and also already set up to fit in ball mounts.
And, of course, they would fit in the captured Russian tanks that Finland had acquired.
So this was really no longer of any particular use, and they were taken out of service.
And like I said, because there are so few of them ever actually manufactured,
it's really cool to be able to get a chance to take a look at this one.
Even if this jacket isn't a completely finished example.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.