[ m/27rv Cavalry Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we get to take a look at sort of
one of the unicorns of the Finnish Mosin-Nagant family.
This is an m/27rv, or a cavalry carbine.
So when the Finnish Army adopted the m/27 pattern of improved, updated Mosin-Nagant,
there was a small group of ... cavalry, there was in fact one brigade of cavalry,
and they found that the standard m/27 just wasn't really suitable for them.
It was longer than they wanted, they didn't like the bolt handle sticking out.
They wanted more of a cavalry-style rifle.
And so a small batch of cavalry pattern guns were put together.
Between 1933 and 1934 the Tikkakoski Company made 2,000 barrels for these carbines.
The barrels are 520mm long, which is about 2 inches shorter than the standard army m/27.
They were then shipped to the Army Ordnance Depot, where they were assembled
along with basically parts of existing Russian M91 Mosins into the m/27rv.
And a total of 2,000 of these were manufactured by the end of 1935.
And they were then issued out to the Cavalry Brigade
- really one of the elite units of the Finnish military at that time.
So let's take a quick look at what they did differently,
because there are a couple of other elements of this that are non-standard.
So the receiver markings on here are all going to have a Tikkakoski marking,
that's where the barrel was manufactured. The "D" indicates ... the D bullet, a specific loading.
And then the serial number for the cavalry carbines is going to be between 72,000 and 75,000.
Not all of those guns, because it was 2,000 guns
... within ... a 3,000 number range, but that's what you'll expect.
Now there were also a small number of standard m/27s
that were cut down because they had damaged muzzles.
Those can have serial numbers outside this range, but standard production: 72,000 to 75,000.
And we have a 1934 barrel date on this one.
Now the most visually distinctive change on the gun, aside from the barrel length,
(but frankly the barrel length is not that much shorter than a standard rifle,
and can be difficult to spot if ... you don't have a regular rifle to compare),
however the bent bolt handle sticks out [!] because this is the only place
where you will see a short bent bolt handle like this on a Finnish Mosin.
There were a small number of snipers that had a 91/30 PU style long bent bolt,
but ... the cavalry is the only place you'll see this one.
Note that it's been coupled with a dished out stock
so that you have space to actually reach your hand under the bolt to open it up.
Also the underside of the bolt knob is flattened and checkered to give you a better grip on it.
In general, these rifles are pretty closely patterned
off of the German Kar98AZ from World War One.
And that kind of fits, the Finns took a lot of German doctrine and German influence.
And we see that again on the stock, where these are inletted for a German-style sling mount,
where the sling would come through the slot on this side,
and then there would be a buckle here that holds it in place.
This one doesn't have the original sling, but frankly this works exactly like one of
the German slings that would be used all the way up through the Kar98k.
These were manufactured on old Russian M91 stocks.
So you can see the patch here where the original M91 had a slot for a sling, and that's been filled.
They did add a sling swivel on the bottom of the stock there, and they also added unit discs.
So that will tell you exactly which of the half dozen or so
different units within the Cavalry Brigade got any particular rifle.
The rear sight is a standard m/27 which is pretty similar,
it's ... a slightly modified version of the Russian [Konovalov] rear sight.
The barrel band is slightly different because it has
this bar on the side for attaching to the side-mounted sling.
And the nose cap ... and front sight are both standard m/27 parts,
just mounted on a slightly shorter barrel and stock.
The Cavalry Brigade would very happily use its m/27 carbines
through the Winter War and the Continuation War.
They took pretty heavy losses, especially towards the end of the Continuation War,
and there was obviously a lot of attrition in firearms over the course of the two conflicts.
And as the guns were basically destroyed or lost in service they tended to be replaced
by other newer-pattern guns, in particular m/31 Suomi submachine guns.
They never made another batch of these, it was pretty much
what the cavalry started with, minus attrition through the two wars.
And ... at the end of the Continuation War a lot of them were really beat up.
They scrapped 923 of them at the end of the Continuation War,
which is almost half of the original production.
That left only a little more than 300 in Finnish inventory.
And in the 1960s, when a lot of arms were being surplused,
304 of them were sent to the United States by way of InterArms.
So actually ... the majority of the surviving m/27rvs are actually in the United States now.
They are, needless to say, a very rare pattern of gun because of the small initial production,
and the fact that most of them were basically used up and destroyed during World War Two.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.