Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm out here today at the lovely
shooting range at the James D. Julia auction house
up in Maine. And I'm taking a look at some of the guns
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
fall of 2017 firearms auction. And when I saw that they had this,
I could not resist the opportunity to take a look at it.
And I'm really excited that we're gonna
be able to do some shooting with it today.
This is a Solothurn S18-1000, and it is a self-loading
anti-tank cannon. Light cannon, but cannon all the same.
This fires the 20x138mm rebated rim cartridge.
That's the same cartridge that's used in the L-39 Lahti Finnish anti-tank rifle.
... It was also the German 20mm Flak cartridge.
This was produced by Solothurn, which was basically a subsidiary of Rheinmetall going into World War Two.
And it existed in that kind of brief time period between the two World Wars when
pretty much all the major military powers wanted some sort of infantry weapon
that could defeat light armoured vehicles, or rather armoured vehicles.
Because when these things were all being developed, tank armour was thin enough
that something like this could actually defeat pretty much any tank on the battlefield.
Unfortunately for the guys who made, and used, and had to carry these things around, that didn't last long.
This would defeat, for example, a Panzer I or a Panzer II, but by the time the
Germans were making Panzer IIIs and IVs, this wasn't gonna cut it.
Now you could still use one of these on the treads, or if you could get a hit on something like a viewing port,
maybe manage to stick a turret ring and, you know, damage a tank. And they were certainly very effective on pillboxes,
fortifications and light armoured vehicles, things like trucks and half-tracks and armoured cars,
these would be very effective. But you know, this is a really heavy and
bulky and awkward item to be schlepping around a battlefield. This thing's over 100 pounds,
so it really takes two guys to move this thing in any practical manner.
And so as a result they didn't see a whole lot of use during the war.
Primarily the Swiss, the Italians and the Hungarians bought this gun.
And this is, by the way, the big version, there was also a slightly smaller version that
Solothurn made, the S18-100 (instead of 1000). That fired a 20x105mm cartridge.
That's kind of the wimpy version, and a bunch of countries bought small numbers of those.
Actually I should say my Finnish cap here is appropriate because Finland had one of these guns.
It's not known if it was ever actually used, but they did have one.
The one use I was able to find for sure was a Dutch anti-tank gun team in the
invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, actually effectively used one of these at a river crossing.
They destroyed a couple of German armoured cars, forced a third one to retreat, and
that's kind of about the extent of the actual combat effective use of Solothurns.
Now the Russians would use this sort of gun, much smaller, much simpler versions,
the PTRS and PTRD rifles. They would use those pretty extensively later in the war.
But the Solothurn was a magnificently made, expensive, really high-end anti-tank rifle.
Let's take a quick look at the controls, and then I'm gonna put a couple of rounds through it.
Alright, well here is our magazine. This is an 8 round magazine of 20x138 rebated rim.
The Solothurn is a short recoil gun, so you will actually see the barrel
reciprocate backwards when we fire.
Magazine goes in here, that's our mag release, that is our bolt release.
This has, I should say, a nice magazine cover there to keep it clean when you're not actually shooting.
Alright, the bolt handle here. Because this thing has to have such a monstrous recoil spring in order to work,
you can't just have a straight pull bolt handle because you'd never be able to pull it back,
so instead, it has a ratchet crank. I'm gonna pull this out to unlock it, and then three full turns
open the bolt.
We're also going to open our ejection port cover in the process, there we go.
That's locked the bolt back, and then I wind the charging handle back.
There is an automatic safety on this, right here, if that button's not pushed in,
the gun's not going to do anything because you need to have this
locked in the ... back to normal position in order to use it.
So life pro tip: don't stick your finger in the breech of an anti- tank cannon. This should be obvious, but in case it's not.
The bolt Is closed here, and that is our rather massive bolt. So I'm gonna go ahead and crank it open.
There we go. There is the bolt head, which you might note looks an awful lot like an MG34 bolt head.
Parts of the MG34 were absolutely derived from Rheinmetall patents and guns, kind of like this one.
Anyway, it is a rotating bolt head, so we've got 8 locking lugs up there
that are gonna rotate from vertical to horizontal up in here, in the barrel extension.
Now, let's crank this all the way open.
Bolt's locked open, so now you're ready to load a magazine. And
you can also see at the back side of the receiver here that little chain.
That's what actually cranks the bolt forward and back.
Not a whole lot of guns actually have literal chains in them, that's kind of like the equivalent of a timing chain in your car.
Alright, I think we're ready to actually do some shooting.
You guys ready?
Whoo, that's definitely nicer than a Lahti to shoot. It pushed me back...
felt like a couple inches. I think the bipod actually swivelled a bit,
I need to stake that down a little bit more securely, but you know what?
As long as you pull this thing tight into your shoulder, it gives you a push back but - that's it.
Honestly that didn't hurt in the least. I think we need to do another.
Alright, we're gonna do one more shot here. By the way, I think you probably have noticed in the high-speed
that nobody is putting their face right on the receiver. It's like, why doesn't anyone have a cheek weld?
Well the answer is we're using the iron sights up here,
and these are kind of offset away from the side of the gun, so you actually don't
have your face in contact with the receiver when you're using the iron sights.
Ahhh, oh yeah.
Phew, well hopefully you guys enjoyed watching that. It was certainly a kick,
literally and figuratively, to do some shooting with one of these.
I've also shot a Lahti, and this really is a much nicer experience than the Lahti.
The Lahti as a gun is less expensive, I don't want to say cruder,
but it's definitely a simpler gun, and that kind of shows through.
It's a more brutal gun to actually shoot. These are kind of the Cadillacs of anti-tank guns, and I can tell.
It's really not nearly as bad a gun to shoot as you might think. How's that for an endorsement?
So at any rate, if you'd like to own this one yourself, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to James Julia's catalogue page on the gun, you can take a look at their pictures,
their description, all the accessories that come with this one, and place a bid for it on-line,
or ... over the phone, or by showing up here and participating in the auction live.
Thanks for watching.