[ MG-13 (Portuguese M938) ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company taking a look at a few of the guns
they are going to be selling in their upcoming
May of 2019 Premier Auction.
Specifically today we have a Portuguese contract,
registered and transferable, MG 13 machine gun.
Now the original development of the MG 13,
and its relationship to a couple of World War One machine guns is really pretty hazy.
And ... I don't really trust a lot of the written documentation,
and before I talk about exactly ... how this gun was developed, I want to do some more research.
So instead, today we're going to take a look at what the Germans did with it,
and how it actually works, because there's a lot of interesting stuff on the inside of this gun.
Now you will notice, perhaps, that for example this has like an MG 34 style of bipod,
and the barrel jacket looks very much like an MG 34.
This is a relatively modern machine gun.
... Despite its name, MG 13, it was actually adopted in 1930 or 1931 by the German military.
And that "MG 13" name exists simply as, well as a distraction.
Under the Versailles Treaty the Germans weren't allowed to be developing new machine guns,
and they were developing new machine guns. And so they had guns like this and the MG 15
that they gave what sounded like retroactive names to.
So that, if pressed, they could maybe plausibly claim
that this was actually a gun developed during World War One.
"No, no. We're not developing new stuff, we already had this. We just decided to make some.
And by the way, they all must have been made by Simson,
because Simson is the only company that's allowed to make
military arms under the Versailles armament limitations."
This was actually manufactured by Rheinmetall in Sömmerda.
But what we have here is interesting in that it's a short recoil operated gun,
it has a tilting locking block that's a bit unusual and interesting,
it actually uses detachable box magazines.
It has a 25 round box magazine, which is most typical.
And then they actually also made a 75 round double drum for this gun.
And it fires from a closed bolt, which is a bit unusual.
The Germans adopted this in '30 or '31,
and this was kind of their standard infantry light machine gun for just a couple of years,
until the ... final development and adoption of the MG 34.
The MG 34 would serve as an excellent general-purpose machine gun.
Because it was belt fed, it could be set up as a heavy machine gun
with a lot of sustained fire capability. It had ... easily interchangeable barrels.
And those were a couple of characteristics that the MG 13 did not have.
You can change the barrel on the MG 13, but it's a much more involved process.
You have to pull the whole action out the back of the receiver.
It's not quick like the 34 is.
And of course the box magazines don't allow for the same sort of
sustained fire that you can get with a belt feed.
So if you look at historical pictures, you will see
a lot of these guns showing up in the inter-war years.
And they did stay in German service in World War Two,
just relegated to rear-echelon sorts of use.
They were also sold in substantial numbers to Portugal.
... In addition to selling [existing guns] to Portugal, ...
the Germans also manufactured guns for Portugal.
And this is actually a Portuguese contract [gun].
Spain, I believe, also purchased some of these from the Germans and used them.
But let's go ahead and take a look at how this comes apart, and how it works inside.
Alright, let's look at some interesting features here.
First off and starting in the back, we have a stock that actually has a
collapsing butt plate there so it can take up a little bit less space in storage.
... The only reason that's really helpful is because the stock also actually folds,
which is quite unusual on a light machine gun.
So right over here we have a lever, which when I ... open it out
it unlocks ... that from that which allows the stock to fold.
And then we have a little spring-loaded detent right there, the stock snaps into that.
And presto, you have a nice, much more compact, gun.
We also have a carry handle here, it rotates 360 degrees around the barrel,
but that's how you would actually carry the thing.
And then when you're not using it, it just falls down at the bottom out of the way.
The MG 13 was a select-fire gun.
And like the 34 that would come later,
your selector lever is actually built into the trigger mechanism.
So the top is semi-auto, the bottom is fully auto.
These are "S" and "A", and not "E" and "F", because this is a Portuguese contract gun
not an ... original German gun.
And then we have a safety lever right here, so fire and safe, like so.
Now this lever is a little bit of a mystery, but I think I know what it's for,
and I'll show you that when we do some disassembly in a moment.
Moving around to the magazine, it is side mounted and we have a release lever right here.
This looks very much like a Fedorov mag, but it is not.
It's also not interchangeable with the magazines
in the World War One Flieger rifles, for what it's worth.
25 round capacity.
Because this is a closed-bolt gun, we do also have a bolt release right there.
So when you've got a mag in, this will lock open when it's empty,
like so, although you can't really see it from that side.
And then when I push this down it'll drop the bolt ... like that.
We actually have two sets of sights.
This is your regular rear sight, just like a Mauser.
And then there is also this flip-up sight.
Note that it has a notch way up here at the top,
that is actually there for the anti-aircraft sights.
This lug on the barrel is there for mounting the front anti-aircraft sight,
which is a round spider-type sight.
And once that's in place it moves the line of sight quite high, of course,
and at that point this acts as your rear sight.
You can then fold it down to protect it when you're not using it.
There are two bipod mounting points here, one at the back and one at the front.
The reason for that is the front one is actually for the bipod,
the rear one is to put the gun on an anti-aircraft ... tripod.
And that's when you would be using the anti-aircraft sights,
that's also when you would be using the 75 round double drum.
I should also point out here that when you don't have a magazine in the gun,
you do have a spring-loaded cover that locks in place using the magazine release.
And that just prevents dirt from getting into the gun through there.
Just for reference sake, there's the front sight. It folds down when not in use,
again so it doesn't get banged on things and damaged.
It's a very standard German style of front sight.
We don't have "MG 13" marked on here anywhere,
but we do have a really big Portuguese serial number here on the right side of the receiver.
B series, number 661.
And we have a Portuguese crest just in front of the ejection port.
The Portuguese, by the way, referred to this gun as the Model 1938 machine gun, or M938.
Now disassembly happens in two parts, ... basically we have a centre receiver,
we have an upper top cover and we have a lower assembly.
And first we'll open up the upper receiver simply by pushing in this button, and lifting it up.
And doing that we get a view of a really interesting feature here,
the recoil spring is actually completely housed in the top cover.
So this peg is connected to the recoil spring.
That peg drops into this hole down here which is integral to the bolt.
So that when the ... top cover is down, moving the bolt compresses the spring.
When the top cover is up, you can cycle the bolt back and forth, pull it out,
you've disconnected the mainspring completely.
In addition to that, we have this cool interesting thing,
which actually allows you to adjust the tension of the mainspring.
By screwing this knob up and down you can see that we're moving this solid silver bar.
And what this is actually doing is ... allowing this section of the mainspring,
which is what's actually used, to expand and contract.
So we can effectively increase or decrease the spring force.
That is really cool. That's a system that was ... obviously on the Maxim guns.
But it was a ... much trickier system to actually adjust,
... you had to do it a half a rotation at a time on the outside the fusee cover.
This is nicely protected inside the gun when it's closed, that's a really cool little system.
Now I mentioned at the beginning that this is a short recoil system.
What we have here is our locking block right here,
and that's going to pivot up and down to lock the bolt and unlock.
Our bolt is directly connected to our barrel,
so that's the ... short recoil distance that the barrel travels back.
... So that's in battery.
As this comes back it's actually pivoting this arm, which is an accelerator arm.
So that gets pushed to here,
and then it uses basically a bit of extra leverage to throw the bolt backwards.
So right there, this lever does that,
throws the bolt backwards,
which is going to fully extract our cartridge, kick out the empty case.
The mainspring up in the top cover here,
will then push it forward again and it locks into battery.
Now we'll go ahead and take this out so you can see how these pieces actually work.
By the way, one of the cool things here is
I can actually just lift out this accelerator arm ... right there.
So we'll take that out right now.
Now in order to get the action out, the bolt and the barrel and all those internal bits,
we have to take the lower off.
Or at least we have to pivot the lower down.
So we have this spring-loaded button here, push that in,
and then the lower pivots down, just like say an AR or many other guns.
And that, by the way, is where this lever comes in handy.
This simply drops a block down that prevents the lower from moving up.
When we take this off in fact you'll see that clearly
previous owners haven't known what to do with this
because one of the parts is dinged up inside where someone was probably hammering on this.
So I think that little block, which literally does nothing
except prevent these two parts from closing together when you've got it engaged,
that is really a very clever tiny, tiny, little element in the design.
Because what it means is I can set the gun up like this and pull the barrel out.
Normally if you're doing something like this with a gun that's this heavy,
... you're going to have to lay it down on its side, and then
the lower's kind of flopping in and out, and you're getting gunk into the recesses here.
This way I can leave it set up, and I can now pull the bolt out, I can pull out the barrel,
and the operating mechanism.
I can do this all while the gun is sitting stable.
And having done this with some other guns, normally what happens here
is you have to have like two hands holding this so that these parts stay apart
so I can pull stuff out the back,
while also having a third hand to remove those parts.
I'm really impressed with that thing, it's so simple, but so very practical in the field.
Alright, now the actual locking parts.
Our bolt has a single locking surface right here at the back.
It is, by the way, hammer fired we'll take a look at the ... fire control group in a moment.
But there's a spring-loaded firing pin in there.
The bolt handle is attached directly to the bolt, as is that plug which is for the recoil spring.
Now that is going to slide back and forth in this barrel extension.
There's our ejector.
It's a very long bolt, it's going to go all the way in like that.
That's fully forward, and then when it's locked this bar lifts up,
locks against the back of the bolt, prevents it from moving.
Because this is short recoil, this whole assembly is
going to start going backwards when you fire.
When that happens, this surface on the back of the locking block
is going to get pushed upward.
(Specifically by this surface in the back of the lower assembly.)
When the back end goes up the front end comes down,
that unlocks the bolt, which can then cycle backward.
Now when it goes forward, ... there's actually one more little piece in here.
So the way that this works is the ... locking block is being pushed upwards
as ... this whole assembly is going forward.
When the bolt is fully home
this square section at the bottom, those two corners,
are going to hit those two protrusions,
they're going to push this forward, and allow the locking block up.
You can see that working here, I'll use my thumb to push up on the locking block.
Right when it gets to there, it then goes against the springs,
this goes up, and now the ... bolt assembly is locked in place.
By the way, you can also remove the barrel itself.
There's a locking catch right here, push that down,
and then there are a series of interrupted threads on the barrel.
So this is actually your barrel extension assembly with the locking blocks.
Now the lower assembly is held in place by a pin here, that has a little spring-loaded lock.
So I'm going to push that in,
and then I can pull the pin out.
And then we can pivot this guy.
There we go, you can take that entirely off.
So there's our actual receiver.
Now we can go ahead and take a look at the inside of the fire control system.
This is hammer fired, so it's a closed-bolt hammer-fired gun, which is kind of cool.
This is actually just the pin that holds the hammer in place, so we'll leave that alone.
We have a disconnector right here.
So when this whole assembly is going forward,
(and first off you'll note that in our locking block we have this big open hole,
... whoops, that is there for the hammer to swing up through),
so when this goes all the way into battery, these two surfaces at the bottom
are going to hit these two disconnectors.
They're going to trip them forward just like that.
Once those go forward, then the hammer can fall.
Oops, except that I have it on safe.
There we go, now it's set to fire, and now hammer will go forward.
As long as I'm holding down the trigger
this stays rearward, which doesn't catch on the hammer.
Instead the hammer is locked back only by the disconnectors.
So ... (I can't do this with two hands), but what that means is then
when the bolt goes into battery again it will pull these forward,
and the hammer will fall at that point instead of following the bolt as it goes forward.
Now I mentioned there was a part kind of beat up in here, ...
from this hold open lever, you can see that that's the position to actually assemble the gun.
And when you want it locked open just drop it down to there.
And right here there is a bunch of wear, and that spring is a little beat up
because I think someone's been trying to close the gun with this engaged,
or tried to pull this lever down while the gun's closed, and you can't do that.
Alright, well that was a lot of features to point out, and here is your nicely field-stripped MG 13.
So I think this is a really cool example of an inter-war German light machine gun
that didn't get a whole lot of usage.
There's a kind of a brief period in history where
magazine-fed, rifle calibre light machine guns were the standard.
And it's like late 1920s into late 1930s, and that's kind of about it.
After that a lot of countries started going to belt-fed light machine guns.
And later on they would go to squad automatic weapons in smaller calibres.
But this fits into this cool kind of group of guns like the ZBs, and the Brens,
the Degtyarevs, these guys of course, the Châtellerault 24/29s, the Nambus.
And I think that's just a really interesting group of machine guns.
So this is one of the scarcer of them to find.
If you would like to have this one yourself it is, as I mentioned at the beginning,
it is NFA registered, it is a transferable curio and relic gun.
So if you're willing to go through the NFA paperwork you can purchase it yourself.
And take a look at Rock Island's catalogue page to see their description,
their photos, the accessories that come with it.
Because there's a bunch of stuff that comes with this gun.
Place a bid for it online if you're so inclined, and check out everything else they have in the sale.
Thanks for watching.