Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Kessler
Auction House in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland,
taking a look at a number of the guns that they have
including this Franchi Model 57 submachine gun.
Now the Italian Franchi company isn't really well known
for its submachine guns, and in fact this is the very first
really commercial production submachine gun that they ever made.
Their first prototypes were in 1956, by 1957 they had
this pretty much finalised production submachine gun.
It's a very simple gun, ... it's a stamped receiver shell with a number of riveted components added inside it.
Feeds from Beretta magazines, 20, 30 and 40 round.
And it's, all in all, a perfectly decent, good submachine gun.
The problem is it was never really able to achieve substantial military or commercial success
because it was always competing against a couple of other guns that were just a little bit better or just a little bit cheaper.
It was, of course, introduced in 1957. And Franchi was attempting to get Italian military contracts for it.
But they did manage to sell some to the Italian Navy in approximately 1962,
but they did not manage to sell any to the Army and that was the big contract.
Unfortunately for Franchi the Beretta Model 12, or PM12, won that competition.
And the Beretta is one of the guns that Franchi would be competing with for its entire production lifespan.
One of the other major ones being the HK MP5.
The problem for Franchi was they were just never quite able to match the quality or the cost
of the major competitors that were out there.
Now you may notice that this looks very similar to the Walther MPK and MPL.
If there is copying that was at hand there, it was on the part of Walther, because this came out before the Walther did.
This is definitely one of those guns that has that sci-fi, action hero sort of look to it
thanks to the sheet metal construction and the vent holes and all the just little detailed features.
However, as I said, it is really a perfectly adequate and fully functional submachine gun.
You do have the folding stock here, it is basically just a bent tube stock.
And it doesn't have a locking mechanism when it's open, just lift it up.
Well, I shouldn't say no locking mechanism,
it has this spring-loaded detent, so to open it all you do is just pull hard enough to pop it out of that detent,
fold it around, and it will snap into the exact same detent when it's locked in the open position.
There are marking on both sides, we have the manufacturer here on the right
which is Luigi Franchi, Bresca. Bresca of course being the main gun making area in Italy.
And then on the other side we have the gun's markings itself, it is a submachine gun, a machine pistol, calibre 9, Model 57.
There is no manual safety on the gun. There is a selector button right here, which is for semi-auto and full-auto.
And there is a grip safety. Nice and easy to engage, that's not a bad grip safety as those things go.
But that is the limit of your mechanical safeties. Trigger of course. And the magazine release is a bit unusual.
Unlike a normal button or lever, this is a very strong spring that you actually lift up.
Like so.
And that allows you to take the magazine out.
These guns do use standard Beretta 38 family magazines. So principally available in 20 and 40 round varieties,
I'm pretty sure there were also 30 round ones that were made.
The charging handle is up here on the left side of the gun.
Spring-loaded, non-reciprocating.
And of course it is an open bolt firing gun, so once you have it locked open,
pull the trigger, bolt closes, gun fires.
Now the interesting bits of this come in disassembly, so let's start by taking the barrel out.
So the barrel nut is held in place by a little ratchet mechanism. There are teeth here on the back surface of the nut,
and a little spring-loaded retaining catch there.
That is just held in place by a combination of gravity and the spring from the charging handle.
So if I have this pointed downwards it does nothing.
However if I have it pointed upwards and I pull the charging handle back
that retracts and then I can unscrew the barrel nut. This is actually the entire barrel.
You can see this pin here is what's locking the nut that I am holding onto to the barrel itself.
Once it's unthreaded the whole barrel just comes right out.
You can then take the charging handle, pull it back to there, and pull it out.
At the back of the gun we have this rear cap with the stock. We are going to push this tab backwards,
and then lift the rear cap off.
It is quite stiff on this example. This is a really new, unused gun.
There we go, once you've got it started, then ...
that removes the stock.
You'll notice the bolt is still held in place. And that is because we have to remove the recoil spring.
We have this end of it here,
and the other end of it right there.
What I need to do is reach in the back, push the recoil spring guide forward,
and then rotate it 90 degrees,
and then it comes out the back of the gun.
That's the recoil spring. And now the bolt comes out.
And there is the whole thing field stripped. It's a very simple gun to take apart and a very simple gun to manufacture.
The bolt is of what we call a telescoping nature, which simply means that
while the ... barrel face is back here, there is a lot of bolt mass extending forward.
This allows you to make more efficient use of space in the gun.
So you can see how far forward the ... front of the bolt comes.
Instead of this material all having to sit behind the back of the bolt,
it can instead sit up here where we have to have material [space] in the gun anyway in order to make space for the barrel.
The bolt face has a simple fixed firing pin, nothing really special about this.
Back here is our sear engagement surface, that's what the trigger mechanism works on.
And in the back a hole for the recoil spring.
Note that the guide rod goes all the way clear through the bolt, like so,
because the guide rod is going to actually lock in place on the front of the receiver.
The spring itself comes all the way up here to the very end of the bolt,
at that point the hole through the bolt narrows and the spring is held captive.
So the guide rod stays in place and the bolt just reciprocates back and forth along it.
And of course the receiver, the major component here, this is made in two halves and then welded together.
So there is a seam along the whole circumference of the gun.
... Everywhere you see rivets on the outside there are things attached on the inside.
These three rivets are attaching the barrel trunnion.
Note that there is the large hole in the bottom where the barrel comes though and locks in place.
And then there is the small hole above and to the left, and that small hole is for the charging handle
(which I have re-installed), so it comes right back there, just pushes on the bolt and physically pushes it back.
The rivets up at the front here are to hold in place the front barrel trunnion
which again you need two points of contact on the barrel to hold it stable.
And then we have the recoil spring guide assembly riveted in place there.
The sights on this are very simple fixed notch and post, they look rather like that.
Zeroed for 50 metres, pretty typical engagement distance for a submachine gun.
And lastly in the back we have the fire control group.
You can see the sear dropping right there. This is in the semi-auto mode.
Note that it is engaging the right side for semi-auto and there is a disconnector.
So when I pull the trigger all the way through the sear is going to drop, and then lift back up.
If I flip this switch over to full-auto, now I am going to engage the [left] side,
the sear will drop and it will stay down as long as I hold the trigger, hence full-auto.
One of the classic questions for submachine guns is what sort of safety mechanism is present
to ensure that you don't accidentally pull the bolt back
far enough to strip a cartridge, but not far enough to engage the firing sear and thus fire unintentionally.
And the answer is on this there is a lock on the bolt that is connected to the grip safety.
So, if you don't have the grip safety engaged and you charge the bolt back it will come to right there,
which is just ... not quite far enough to strip a cartridge out of the magazine,
the bolt is locked there in position.
You can no longer engage the grip safety and the bolt will not go forward
until you charge the bolt all the way back. Then you can engage the grip safety and fire.
So what happens is if you accidentally pull the charging handle, instead of coming back to here and then firing,
it will come back to here and lock in place, and then you can fix the gun.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Franchi Model 57 managed to stay in production and available for sale all the way up until the 1980s.
Apparently these were primarily relatively small export contracts to various African countries
This was never adopted on a wide scale by any European military force.
So, some of them were made in semi-auto. In fact in 1962 they introduced a semi-auto only police carbine model.
And a few of them actually came into the United States with 16 inch barrels and as semi-auto only guns.
However, in the US it wasn't long ...
Well, since then, the ATF has ruled that open bolt semi-auto firearms are
classified as machine guns, because they are easily convertible, and thus
... that limited ... importation of the semi-auto version into the US.
Apparently some of those were actually registered as machine guns in the US and are available on the commercial market.
But this was never available in any substantial numbers in the US.
Kind of like it wasn't really made in any substantial numbers much of anywhere else. So.
Definitely an interesting gun though, a rare one, and one that it was very cool to finally get a chance to take a close look at.
So, if you are in the market for interesting collectible firearms or machine guns,
the Kessler Auction House is one of the biggest ones in Europe and they always have some cool stuff
like this Franchi, so definitely take a look at them if you are in that market.
Thanks for watching.