Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a Steyr MPi-69.
This is essentially what happens when the Austrian Army
takes a look at its equipment and goes,
"Mmm, you know it's the 1960s, and we've been using these MP40s for an awfully long time now,
and they're kind of getting worn out. And maybe we should have something newer
and cheaper, and something we can get spare parts for."
And they hand the project to Steyr, and Steyr goes,
"Well, you know that Uzi's a pretty slick and efficient system,
let's just kind of basically copy that."
And they come up with the MPi-69 (MPi: machine pistol).
And it is formally adopted by the Austrian Army in 1969.
And, well, let's take a closer look at it.
Normally I try to take slings off of guns like this
when I'm filming them because they tend to get in the way, but in this case
the sling is actually an essential element of operating the gun, so I left it on.
Now before we get to that, let's start with just the overall layout of the gun.
Obviously this is rather Uzi-like.
We have a magazine in the grip frame, this is a 25 rounder.
It took 25 and also 32 round mags.
And these are proprietary to Steyr submachine guns,
they would go on to be used in the 9mm version of the AUG.
It makes sense to have a proprietary magazine.
If Steyr is making this for primarily the Austrian Army, which they are,
then the Army is going to need new magazines anyway, no matter what they're getting.
So Steyr might as well design a magazine they think is really good,
and then be able to also sell those to the Army.
So it is a double-feed double-stack magazine.
Durable, solid mag, nothing wrong with that.
We have a cross bolt ... safety and selector combined here.
So fully over ... with the "S" all the way extended, that is safe.
The middle position gives you a red bar here, that is semi-auto.
And all the way over with the "F" fully extended is full-auto.
For sights we have actually a really pretty narrow front post,
using that sort of classic submachine gun style there
where the front post is offset in the threaded base,
so that you can adjust your windage by slightly rotating the post side to side.
And then you adjust the elevation by ... threading it in and out in 180 degree increments.
The rear sight is a two-position flip aperture with a 100 metre and ...
200 metre settings.
Kind of interesting that they went with this sort of stepped
design to the aperture itself to prevent glare.
Now the charging handle is the really funky bit, it is actually connected to the sling swivel.
So this is your charging handle, right like that.
And as you can see it is a telescoped bolt, but we'll look at that more closely when we take the gun apart.
Now you would think that this is just begging for all sorts of unintentional manipulation
if you're carrying the gun on the sling, and I think to some extent it is.
But the one thing that they did include to ameliorate that a bit is this lug,
which if the sling is held up in this position that lug sits against the front sight protector,
and prevents the charging handle from moving at all.
So they did think about this a little bit.
... What people were probably thinking about
was some particularly efficient way to take the gun, and cock it and be ready to fire very rapidly.
But I'm not sure that that really worked out so well in the field.
Oh, and so I should point out the markings here: Steyr, Made in Austria, Steyr logo,
and our serial number.
The rear sling bar is just a bar that's tack welded in place.
The basic wire frame stock is locked here in the travelling position.
In order to deploy it you take these two buttons, push them together,
you can then slip the stock backwards.
And it has three positions that it can be extended to.
So you've got short, medium and long.
And then I can just pull the stock out.
To remove the bolt we're going to take this button,
which is actually the back end of the recoil spring.
Push it in, and then the back of the receiver here pivots up ...
like so. And then we just pull out the whole bolt assembly.
This is very much Uzi-like, this is a telescoping style of bolt
where the breech face is actually at this position.
So half the mass of the bolt is in front of the breech face.
This allows you to have a shorter overall package.
It's not quite a bullpup, but it's using some of that same concept.
The recoil spring is captive inside the bolt,
you've got a guide rod that goes all the way to the front.
And then a little soft rubber pad to absorb the impact of the bolt on the back of the receiver.
Barrel removal is also rather like the Uzi, we do have a spring latch here basically.
I pull that back, and it allows me to unscrew a barrel nut.
There's that.
There is a tooth right here that locks into these teeth on the barrel nut
that prevents this from unscrewing.
I can then pull the barrel out, again very Uzi-like there.
And once the barrel is gone, I can take this plastic housing forward.
And with the barrel nut gone, there is no longer anything preventing me
from pulling the ... square metal tube receiver out the back of this polymer.
There we go.
And away it comes. So this just holds the fire control assembly.
In another Uzi-like element, the sear is actually ... two sear surfaces, sort of.
Those lock into the bolt here and here to hold it open.
And there are two sets so that if the bolt bounces open slightly, the sear will lock in this
and hold the bolt in place rather than allow it to accidentally discharge.
So that is a good safety mechanism. That's something the Uzi didn't originally have,
and the Uzi had to go and sort of retrofit that with its ratcheted top cover.
I do also want to mention - the previous owner of this unfortunately decided to drill a hole in it,
and mount a vertical front pistol grip that is not original.
So I went ahead and took it off for filming, but the hole is still there.
And he ... did put a little felt pad to protect the plastic, but then also drilled a hole through it.
So that's why that's there, this would not normally be on an Austrian MPi-69.
And then we have our receiver, a very simple square tube receiver.
There is an open slot in the bottom for the magazine,
open slot for the fire control group, slot in the side for the ejection port,
and another slot in the side ...
for access to weld the front trunnion in.
We then have our sling charging handle here.
It's non-reciprocating, so as soon as you let go of it, that little spring pulls it back forward.
And there's the whole thing, that's all you got. Really pretty simple, quick and easy to field strip.
It's a very efficient gun, very economical to manufacture.
Copying elements of the Uzi is not necessarily a bad thing by any means.
The MPi-69 would serve in the Austrian Army until 1981,
when it was replaced by the, predictably, MPi-81.
Which is really ... the exact same gun, just with a regular charging handle
instead of this weird sling-based thing.
The MPi-81 (which by the way I have a video coming in the future on, it's filmed, but I haven't posted it yet)
the 81 was then in turn replaced by the 9mm version of the Steyr AUG.
Which is the submachine gun that is formally in use with the Austrian Army now,
to the extent that small units don't have things like MP5s instead.
But, at any rate. These are really quite scarce in the US, and what's really cool
is that this one is actually a registered, fully transferable, curio and relic eligible MPi-69.
So it's a very simple mechanical submachine gun,
but it's something that's actually really quite scarce on the collector's market.
So very cool to see an example like this in such nice condition.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.