Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we have a very cool pistol to take a look
at today. This is a Soviet PSM, which basically translates into
small semi-automatic pistol, or miniaturised semi-automatic pistol.
This thing has quite the reputation in a lot of circles
for being some super secret-squirrel assassination tool.
That it'll penetrate a bazillion layers of Kevlar body armour.
And, of course, was designed specifically for KGB death squads.
In fact the truth: it's kind of a lot more pedestrian, but
it's still interesting to know the reality behind some guns like this.
So let's go for a little bit of background.
The PSM was designed in the early 1970s, like '71-'72 development began. And it was actually a two-part project.
There was a team of guys at the Tula Arsenal who were developing the pistol, there was another team developing the cartridge.
And so they both were working simultaneously, and it actually took like 5 or 6 years to get the whole thing together into a production model.
These were ultimately then produced at the Izhevsk factory, so designed at Tula but produced at Izhevsk.
And they haven't made very many of them, the best production estimate I've seen is like 1 of these for every 50 Makarovs made.
Which makes sense when you understand the purpose of the PSM. This wasn't intended to be an assassination pistol,
this was specifically a pistol for high- ranking officers. People who in theory
you know, they ought to have a handgun, mostly as kind of a badge of rank and status and position.
But they didn't want to carry around something as big and bulky, if you can call it that, as a Makarov.
So they developed the PSM to be kind of a general officer's pistol, on the same lines as the US use of the 1903 Colt Pocket Hammerless.
Of course, officers in the field who are going to be fighting with handguns were going to get 1911s,
but the general officers, the high-ranking guys who, you know they're not going to go out and
get into any gun fights with their sidearm. Those guys were issued .32 calibre Colt 1903s.
Same thing here: combat officer's handgun, token of rank.
Now the cartridge is interesting in that it's this little tiny thing, it's a little bottlenecked round.
It is 5.45x18mm, the 5.45 of course is the same diameter as the AK-74 rifle barrel.
Which kind of goes back to a long-standing Russian tradition of having sidearms in the same calibre as the rifles.
Way back when, a hundred years ago, this was an efficiency thing where they could produce
both Nagant revolvers and TT-33 Tokarevs, and Mosin-Nagant rifles, all using the same barrel blanks.
Today does that really matter?
Probably not, but there is some tradition behind the idea.
This cartridge is ballistically basically identical to .22 Long Rifle. It fires a 38 or 40 grain bullet at about a 1,030 feet per second,
that's 2.5 grams at 315 metres per second, which is virtually identical to standard velocity .22 Long Rifle.
Now where this has better penetration than a .22 Long Rifle is that it's a fully jacketed bullet,
not just copper washed lead. It's actually got a legitimate jacket. And there are actually two different bullet designs.
There's a 13mm long projectile, which is just a plain copper-jacketed lead bullet.
And then there's a 14.3mm long projectile which actually has a steel tip in the core.
Now, it wasn't designed for armour penetration. In fact the original Russian government RFP
for the design of this pistol had no mention of armour perforation whatsoever.
However, a steel tip allows the projectiles to be made a little bit more accurately, little higher quality,
you can make the bullet a little bit longer, make it stabilise a little better.
... The use of steel is there because it's a different density than lead,
and you can make the bullet longer without increasing the weight so much.
Anyway, ... that steel tipped bullet is the one that does better at armour penetration,
because of course it doesn't deform as much, or at all, when it goes through.
So we are going to do some shooting testing with this little guy today,
and we'll see what kind of penetration we get on some old Kevlar body armour vests.
But first, let's go ahead and take it apart and take a look at the inside.
Let's start with a quick dimensional comparison. The PSM is renowned is a very small pistol.
Well, it is and it isn't. If we look at length and height the PSM is almost identical to the standard Makarov.
It's a little bit shorter in the grip, but lengthwise virtually identical. No significant difference there.
Where these two differ substantially is width.
The PSM is an extremely thin pistol, and there are a number of design elements that went into making it that way.
We'll take a look at all of those in a moment. It is 17mm wide, which is what, two thirds of an inch basically.
Much thinner than most of the other guns out there.
Mechanically the PSM is a simple blowback action, has a magazine that holds 8 cartridges.
And the magazine has this open sided design, very reminiscent of, well,
a lot of other Russian pistols including the standard PM Makarov.
It does have a bolt hold open, although it has no manual hold open or manual release.
Instead
when one racks the slide on an empty magazine the pistol locks open.
It stays open after you take out the magazine. And then in order to close it
you insert a loaded mag, or just remove the empty mag and rack the slide.
Disassembly is very much like a Makarov or really a Walther PP or PPK,
which the Makarov is based on, and so is this at least functionally.
So to disassemble it we are going to hold the trigger guard down and then pull
the slide (what's best way to do that do that?)
and we pull the slide all the way back and lift it up off the frame.
And then
the slide comes off the front. Our recoil spring comes off the barrel. Like I said, very much like a Makarov.
These are going to be quite accurate guns, just like the Makarov and the Walther PP, because of course they do have fixed barrels.
Not a whole lot going on in here. You can see this one was manufactured in 1985.
Alright, a couple design features to take a look at here. Of course it does have a fixed barrel like the Makarov.
I'm sure it would be a ... quite remarkably accurate pistol, as long as you had it on a bench rest or had a very skilled shooter.
As I mentioned earlier, the grip panel is an aluminium sleeve held in place with this pin.
Magazine release back here. Press that back, pull the magazine out.
Again, you can see the frame is this inside piece. This outer shell is the aluminium grip panel set.
Checkering on the sides as well as the front strap.
It has a double action trigger mechanism, very much like the Makarov,
surprisingly.
And also like the Makarov it has a safety and decocker here on the left rear of the slide.
However on the Makarov that thing sticks out quite a ways,
and they didn't want it to do that on this very flat pistol, so it's more lined up in the back of the slide than off the side.
So in order to use this,
push it up, that's going to decock the gun and it also leaves it in a safe position, blocks the trigger.
Then to fire again you flip it down. You can see the red dot now appears telling you it's in the fire configuration.
And now the trigger works. You can cock it and fire single action if you like.
Before we take this out to the range, let's take a quick look at the cartridges.
From left to right here we have a 9x18 Makarov, a 5.45x18 PSM, and a .22 Long Rifle.
And you can clearly see the resemblance. The 5.45 has a slight bottleneck to it, but otherwise is
dimensionally very, very similar to a .22 Long Rifle, and it's very, very similar ballistically as well.
Last but not least before we head out to the range, there are a couple accessories here to point out to you.
We have a standard service holster for the
PSM, it holds an extra magazine on the outside. This is very much like a Makarov holster.
Pistol slides in right there.
This one I don't think has seen very much use. So that comes down and then
locks in place like that.
And then we also have this slightly more concealable type. Bit of a soft leather on the inside. And same deal, holds a magazine.
These both have Russian production stamps in the tops of the flaps, a little hard to read though.
So PSM pistols are extremely rare here in the United States.
They've never been formally imported, they don't actually meet the ATF's regulations and standards for a safe and sporting pistol.
I'll do another video at some point covering what exactly those standards are.
But suffice to say, this gun doesn't meet those standards.
There was one submitted to ATF by Izhmash in .25 ACP for commercial import, and it was rejected for those reasons.
These are, in addition to being made for the military in Russia, these now are also available on the Russian commercial market
in variations for firing "traumatic" projectiles, which is basically rubber bullets and tear gas.
Izhmash makes those models, but of course those aren't something that would be imported into the US either.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you did make sure to share it with your friends, and subscribe both on YouTube and Full30.
And tune back in again to ForgottenWeapons.com for more very cool Russian pistols.