[ Yugo M56 at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am out here on the range today courtesy of Morphy's,
and we have a Yugoslav M56 submachine gun.
This is just a really interesting submachine gun to me.
Because ... like the people who put this together, ... they had good hearts and they were really trying,
but they didn't do a very good job of picking the components that they ought to combine.
So essentially what they wanted to do was get an MP40,
like ... this is Yugoslavia just a few years post-World War Two,
the MP40 is a gun with a fantastic reputation.
A lot of the Yugoslav guys were familiar with them, and so we want that.
So we've got the same basically tubular receiver,
a in this case not Bakelite, but actually plastic lower assembly,
the under-folding stock to make it compact.
But we need it to be compatible with Soviet Bloc arms, so it's chambered for 7.62 Tokarev
which is a great submachine gun round. But they just didn't quite get all the bits right.
Alright, let's see how it actually shoots.
OK, a couple of things going on here.
First off, ... actually very pleasant to shoot. Very comfortable recoil, like not much recoil.
The gun is kind of bouncy, which is because it's really kind of long.
And ... until you really have some practice with it,
that makes it difficult to hold really well on target - it tends to jump around.
To me, the grip is a bit too square.
The shoulder stock is actually too short.
Like what they should have done is make the receiver a couple of inches shorter,
and the stock maybe a couple of inches longer.
Although the very long receiver is what makes this gun comfortable to shoot
because the bolt's got a lot of travel to take up the recoil impulse of that 7.62 Tokarev.
Ow! It does eject straight up in the air,
which means the cases come straight back down onto your head.
Which is a little disconcerting, a little distracting sometimes.
We do have a semi-auto on here,
which is this ... switch on the side, so this should be semi.
Yup.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the bolt is actually not impacting
the back of the receiver on this when it cycles, which is really nice.
That's a mechanical element they got right.
In fact a lot of the mechanical elements on this are pretty decent, it's just
the human factors that - not so much. [Note the inconsistent powder charges in the ammo...]
And you can see that in the fact that Yugoslavia would, the very next year,
bring on line the 49/57 submachine gun.
Which is essentially ... basically a reworked Papasha, and I have a video on one of those as well.
And that is I think a superior gun to this, but it doesn't quite have the same character.
It's like a Tokarev. This is a gun with some real character to it.
I've got to admit, ... when I set up to do this video I was thinking,
"Ah, how do I talk about how bad this gun is without really going overboard?
Like, I don't necessarily dislike it."
But when I'm out here now that I'm actually putting some rounds through it,
it's actually a pretty pleasant, comfortable gun to shoot.
I still don't like a lot of the handling.
The grip is a little weird, do you hold it here? Or do you, I guess, hold it around the front.
But this all gets hot when you start shooting, there's no barrel shroud on it.
The stock's too short.
But that recoil impulse is fantastic, and ... as I shoot it magazine after magazine,
it just gets easier to hold it on target. Slow rate of fire.
That's actually pretty nice.
Just the gun looks, well, ... it looks communist.
I should also point out that these things are extremely rare
in the United States as transferable guns.
I actually had a case bounce off the receiver,
off the bolt, while the bolt was cycling, while I was shooting.
... Honestly, it's not very often that I change my initial impressions on a gun
when I'm actually shooting it on a video like this.
And I'm actually coming around on this thing a bit.
There's no arguing with the actual shootability, and this shoots really nicely.
Look at how much bolt travel that thing has, that's why it's so nice to shoot.
Anyway, a big thanks to Morphy's for
loading me up with some ammo to come out here and do some shooting with this.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
You don't even have to keep it in the shoulder, you can pull it out ... and shoot it right there.