Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I am Ian McCollum, and today, courtesy of the Mosin Crate,
we are taking a look at two examples of the Hungarian Walam 48.
This is a copy of the Walther PP that was manufactured
shortly after World War Two.
Basically what happened is the Hungarian police
after the end of the war were looking to replace their very old
service pistols, because they were still using Frommer Stops.
They wanted something a little more modern.
The Walther PP has been a fantastically popular and
successful design emulated by many different companies.
And FÉG decided to basically just straight-up copy the gun.
So they brought in some engineers, they developed this,
this was not done with the cooperation of the Walther company.
And there are a number of small differences between the two pistols, which we'll get into in just a moment.
But this was formally adopted as the Model of 1948, or M48
(actually for a Hungarian it would be 48M) police pistol specifically.
And some 22,000 of them were manufactured and delivered for the Hungarian police
in .32 ACP calibre in 1950.
Once that contract was finished the factory then went about offering the guns for export or other sale.
And basically, "Hey, we have this thing tooled up now, let's see who else we can sell it to."
Now if we fast forward about 10 years,
there was an arms deal that was put together between Hungary and Egypt in 1957.
So Egypt is being run by Nasser, who is looking to build up the Egyptian military after the Suez Crisis,
and has pivoted from western support to Eastern Bloc support.
And hence has the opportunity to set up an arms deal with Hungary. And he purchases specifically pistols,
both Model 48s, presumably for officers, and also Hungarian-made copies of the Tokarev.
Also somewhat confusingly designated the 48M, but the 48M Army Pistol in Hungary.
Both of these guns were contracted at the same time, a bunch were ordered.
10,000 of these Walam 48s were ordered, and I think 13,000 of what was called the "Tokagypt"
in an interesting squishing together of words. ... Again, we'll get to that as well in a moment.
Ordered in 1957, pistols were produced and deliveries began in [1958],
... but the deal fell apart for some reason. It's not entirely clear why.
But it results in there being some guns with Egyptian crests and some without,
both for the Tokagypts and the Walams, so let's take a closer look at these.
I have an example with a crest and one without so you can see the difference,
and we can get into some of the little details of the gun.
Right off the bat I want to point out that while the original Model 48s as used by the Hungarian police
were in .32 calibre, these guns specifically made for export to Egypt were in .380.
The Walther PP was of course available in .32 and .380 calibre,
and so it's not surprising that FÉG was perfectly happy to adapt their Model 48 to either cartridge.
It's not that complicated to change between the two.
Now looking at the example that does have the cool slide markings here,
we have an Egyptian crest in the middle, we have "Made in Hungary". These were produced in 1958 by FÉG.
It's interesting to point out that this slide marking is virtually identical to the slide markings on the Tokagypts.
Just with a different name and different calibre.
Calibre of course is 9mm Browning Short, which is 9x17, or in this country generally called .380.
And then Walam 48 is actually a contraction. The "WA" stands for Walther, and the "LAM" stands for Lámpagyár,
which was (sorry for the pronunciation there) that was the official name of the FÉG factory
from like 1948 until 1965, and that actually means Lamp Factory.
After that, they got rid of that name and went back to just "Arms Factory".
At any rate, that's what Walam is, and it's very interesting that these Egyptian contract guns
have the ... contracted names on them.
So you have Tokagypt, which is obviously a Tokarev made for Egypt, and then you have the Walam at the same time.
The Hungarian police pistols have serial numbers with an R prefix,
I am assuming here (I think it's a fairly safe assumption) that "E" stands for Egypt.
And there is an interesting question of exactly which guns have which serial numbers.
There were 10,000 allegedly made, although it sounds like only about 7,000 were delivered.
And because of the stoppage of this contract to Egypt partway through, some guns have this slide marking.
And some just have completely blank slides. I believe there are also some that have
the markings but not the Egyptian crest.
In this case my unmarked one is a relatively low serial number,
the marked one is just under 8,000.
I would have kind of suspected that the marked ones would be the first batch,
so I don't have a particular explanation for why the serial number range is this way in relation to the markings.
Anyway, the one other marking I will point out to you here is on the barrel,
which actually has a British proof mark and has been proof tested as
firearms going through British commercial trade have to be proofed.
So this is marked 6 Tons, which is the proof pressure. And then it's a little hard to see there, but it says
.380 .680 inch. 0.680 inch is 17mm. This is 9x17, or .38 by .68 inch.
Just a little quirk of British proof testing marks.
Now for the sake of comparison I have an actual German production Walther pistol, this is very, very late war.
In fact this is like a GI capture from the Walther factory pistol, so it's pretty crude.
But we can compare it to the Walam and see just a few of the little differences.
So perhaps the most substantial one is the shape of the back strap here,
which is nice and rounded on the Walam, and has a little more of a sort of a beaver tail style design on the actual Walther.
The magazine floor plate is also rather distinctive on the Hungarian pistols.
There is a metal insert here, so this is actually the floorplate itself,
which has this sort of Bakelite, I think it's Bakelite, finger extension.
It's actually kind of comfortable, but it is prone to damage.
A lot of these that you find will have chips or cracks or major chunks missing from them.
That said, the magazines are interchangeable. This obviously is not a late-war German magazine,
this is a modern Mec-Gar Walther PP magazine and it's chambered for .32, but
standard Walther magazines fit just fine in the Walam.
Now there are a few other differences that we can see in here.
The shape of the grip panels is a little bit different.
You'll see that Walther drilled a hole through the hammer, FÉG did not.
The rear sight design is a little bit different there.
The patterning on the top of the slides is a little bit different.
The one substantial mechanical difference here that you can see on the outside is this,
which is the loaded chamber indicator.
It's a little hard to see, but right above my finger there is what looks like a second extractor.
That is actually the loaded chamber indicator.
And when a cartridge is in the breech face that gets pushed up,
and it raises that little indicator peg, so that you can both see and easily feel
that there is in fact a cartridge in the chamber.
That's a view on the opposite side, not a whole lot else different to see here.
... Some very minor things like the exact configuration of the magazine release.
These sorts of things mean that not many of the parts for these pistols are actually going to be interchangeable,
aside from some of the simple ones,
and ones like the magazine that were deliberately intended to be interchangeable.
FÉG would go on to stick with this style of design, and continue to develop it into other guns.
And they would expand the calibre offerings to 9mm Makarov for more compatibility within the Warsaw Pact.
You'll see guns like the PA or AP-63s later on with alloy frames,
and deviating a little bit more from the Walther PP design specifically.
So this is, I believe, actually the first post-war non-authorised copy of the Walther PP.
And so it's a cool example of the starting point for FÉG to go on to design a whole line of pistols.
These pistols were really pretty scarce in the US market for a long time.
You know a few of them came in from here and there, often
re-imported from guns that originally went to Germany or went to the UK, like these apparently did.
And it was only fairly recently that a much larger batch of them came in. And so ... that brought them to attention,
you'll find them out there a little more easily now. Until of course they dry up once again.
But anyway, a big thanks to the Mosin Crate for setting aside a pair of these for me,
so that I could bring them to you guys on video.
If you enjoy firearms collecting, definitely check out his YouTube channel.
I will link to it in the description below. Hopefully you enjoyed this one.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]