Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the National Firearm Centre,
part of the British Royal Armouries in Leeds.
And we are taking a look at a Viper Mark III submachine gun.
Now they don't have a Viper Mark II here,
but they do also have a Mark I which we did a previous video on.
So if you haven't seen that one, it's an
... equally weird and totally different design than this,
and I have it linked at the end of this video, so make sure to check that one out.
Anyway the Viper series ... they were all experimental, they were never adopted.
And they were intended for military policemen in
British occupied West Germany after World War Two.
And the idea was to provide them with a one-handed capable submachine gun,
presumably for shooting at fleeing suspects.
... This one actually has sights on it, which is an improvement over the Viper Mark I.
This one also has a shoulder stock. But the intended method of carry
was to use this sling and loop the thing over your shoulder.
Actually I can kind of demonstrate this I believe.
So you would loop it over your shoulder and you would bring it up and fire it right here.
You can carry it rather like this.
And it just hangs nicely inconspicuously at your side,
and then swings up to actually use.
Probably not intended to use the sights on the sling.
But it does have this shoulder stock which is usable.
I don't know, wave a truncheon or something with your other hand.
But that was the intended role for the Viper series of submachine guns.
So, this being the Mark III, let's go ahead and take a closer look at it.
Really quite a lot of work went into manufacturing this
because, while it's mechanically a Sten gun, almost every part of it,
in fact, I think every part of it has been changed,
and is not actually compatible or interchangeable with the Sten.
So right off the bat, the magazine is actually not a Sten magazine.
We have a magazine release right here, push that and I can pull the mag out.
This is actually an MP40 magazine.
You can see the German markings right up there.
Why they would use an MP40 magazine, I have no idea.
The only advantage I can see is that it is a little bit narrower front to back,
narrower enough that you cannot put a Sten magazine into this gun.
The only other gun like this that I'm aware of that used an MP40 magazine
was the French PM-9, which was also developed right after World War Two.
It makes a little more sense to me that the French would have MP40 mags lying around to use.
Why a British armoury would use an MP40 mag
when ... they should have been ... like just tripping over Sten mags in corners,
I don't know, that's a bit of a mystery.
The other controls we have on here are
a push-through selector switch in the front.
The fire mechanism on this is broken today, it doesn't reliably function.
But you have safe ... (wait let's see, which one was it? Safe I believe was ...)
yeah, safe is with the button pushed all the way through this direction,
which does lock the trigger there.
You then have a centre position, and a position pushed all the way towards the left.
And one of those is semi and one of those is full-auto,
but neither of them works reliably today, unfortunately.
They also went to the trouble of putting in a little ejection port cover.
That's just held in by friction so we can pry it open there, it's spring-loaded.
And we have the bolt cycling right there.
There are actually sights on this Viper, unlike the Mark I.
And they are nicely optimistic sights with a 100, 200 and even a 300 yard aperture.
Those go along with a rather pointy front post there, and a couple of protective wings.
The shoulder stock to me is actually a lot better than it looks.
It seems very short, and in fact it is a fairly short stock.
But when you consider that the length of pull comes all the way out to here,
this actually handles pretty well for me.
And of course you've got to like the little screwed on wooden panels on the side.
Now if you don't want the stock there is a button, right here,
which has a latch coming out the other side.
We push that in and ...
we can (with a little bit of fiddling) we can remove the buttstock.
So now this is really in its own element
as an under-the-shoulder sort of one-handed submachine gun.
Now we should be able to remove the rear end cap here and pull the bolt out.
I can remove this pin,
which is done by lining up (let's see here, there we go),
lining up that notch right there. Then you can push it through.
At any rate, you can pull that through, but then this end cap is quite solidly stuck in place.
So I'm not going to mess around with it because I can't get the end cap off anyway.
I tried before we started filming.
Note the awesome wood panels on the pistol grip.
Both the sides and the back strap has its own very nice little wooden lining.
We can take off the front end, however, and remove the barrel.
This is a ratcheting lock, obviously, as you can hear.
And the trigger guard is also connected to the barrel shroud here.
That's on there so you don't burn your hand off
if you accidentally touch the barrel after firing.
There we go, we can pull that off. Just a shroud that goes around the barrel.
And it also locks the barrel in place.
So there's a little notch right here, and a pin on the front of the receiver.
There you go, there's the front end of the thing.
And the barrel just locks in place like that.
You can see they've salvaged a barrel from something else
because there's a cross pin hole right here,
to hold on a sight block or a gas block or something.
In fact whatever they've salvaged this from had a gas port in it as well,
because this goes through into the chamber but doesn't actually do anything on this gun.
So of course it is a one-of-a-kind production prototype.
In fact I should point that out, the one marking on this
is right here on the left side: Machine Pistol Viper Number 3.
Like I said, these were never actually put into production.
This is a one-of-a-kind prototype, and really cool to get to take a look at.
Honestly, between this and the Viper Mark I, I think this one would be my preference.
This seems to be a little bit better put together,
despite the fact that the trigger doesn't work anymore on it.
I like the fact that it actually has a shoulder stock,
and of course it has these very classy wooden panels on the shoulder stock, so.
A big thanks to my Patrons whose financial support makes it possible for me to travel
to the UK and other places, find awesome guns like this one, and bring them to you.
And, of course, a big thanks to the Royal Armouries for letting me
pull this down out of their collection and show it to you guys.
If you're interested in visiting the Armouries collection yourself,
there is a big museum that is open to the public like 362 days a year.
And then the National Firearms Centre extensive reserve collection is not open
to the general public, but it is available by appointment to researchers.
So the website for both is in the description text below.
You can use that to get in contact with them to arrange an appointment.
Or you can actually browse through the catalogue that they have photographed
and available online, which is a pretty cool way to spend some time.
Thanks for watching.