Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, today we are taking a look at
the Bergmann Number 1 Automatic Pistol,
also known as the Bergmann Model of 1894.
Now this was the first pistol that Bergmann
made that was actually commercially offered.
So not very many of these were sold, it wasn't
like a huge blow-out success.
But unlike the prior prototype, shop, experimental examples,
these were actually manufactured and sold.
Now I have two examples of them here, ... they vary a bit, each of them,
but they do show the distinctive features of the Number 1 pistol.
So the main difference between the Bergmann Number 1 and the experimental, patent,
toolroom type models that had preceded it was that the Number 1 was a simple blowback action.
The original patent that had been taken out was for a delayed blowback action.
It had something of an angled wedge that the bolt had to fight against in order to retract.
That was...
Well frankly I don't know, having never actually seen one of those I don't know if it was a matter of it being too expensive,
or if it was simply not functional, or for the cartridge that they wanted to use it was simply not necessary.
But for this first real commercial version Louis Schmeisser got rid of that delayed system entirely,
went to a simple blowback. Which remember at the time is a relatively novel idea.
The first really popular simple blowback pistol is going to be the Browning Model of 1900,
which ... wasn't built until, shoot, five years after this.
So that seems like an obvious solution to us today and kind of a pedantic, simple sort of thing,
but this was cutting-edge technology in 1894 when these were being manufactured and designed.
Now it appears that Bergmann actually wanted to start making these earlier, 1893 even.
But he didn't have the time and production space to do so. Now remember Bergmann is an industrialist,
he's not a gun designer himself. He takes on the projects where he thinks he can make money.
So he took on this automatic pistol project, he had Schmeisser working on it,
then when it comes to manufacturing them he has to actually set aside some space in a factory,
or build a new facility where he can manufacture a new product like this.
Well, it appears that at first when he didn't have anything readily available, I think he actually turned to Mauser
to see if he could contract with them. Mauser was a well-established company in the arms business,
and there seems to be evidence that Mauser made 10 or 12 of these prototypes in 1894 to 1895,
but never put them into serial production. And ultimately bailed out on the project
when they realised they were going to be producing their own automatic pistol, the Mauser Model of 1896.
So the thing comes back to Bergmann and he does in fact set up his own production lines and
starts putting out some of these pistols. ...
So with that being said, why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at these two,
and look at a few of the specific features and details of them.
Right so here are the two Bergmann Number 1s that we have access to today.
There are a few minor aesthetic differences between them, the one biggest, most notable difference
is between this cup-shaped thumb thing and this button. We'll get to that in just a moment.
First however, let's take a look at the functioning of this guy because this is the nicer example.
So in order to load the Bergmann (and this system by the way, would remain in place through
just about the end of the 1890s, certainly all the way through the Numbers 2, 3 and 4),
in order to do it, what you do is take this whole plate and pivot it down.
So it opens up like this, you can see how this circular ledge is useful here.
This pivots down and this is under spring tension, so what you see right here is your magazine follower.
And if we look up close, right here,
you can see that when I pull this back this plunger is moving.
There's a little coil spring right in here that works on that plunger, that plunger puts pressure both on this cover plate
and on the follower right up inside there, and that provides the spring tension to feed cartridges.
This particular Bergmann is chambered for a proprietary 8mm cartridge, as is the other Number 1 that we have access to today.
They were made in at least a couple other calibres.
There's an unfinished example, a little pocket model, in a 5mm cartridge.
And one was also provided for Swiss military testing in a 7.5mm cartridge.
So there was a lot of variety here.
However this one is in 8mm, I do not have any ammunition for it, however I do have this clip of
6.5mm ammunition for a later model of Bergmann.
And this uses the exact same style of clip that the Number 1 would have.
It's called a monkey tail clip because of this little loop at the bottom.
And you use this to feed five cartridges at a time into the pistol. The way the feeding works
is we're going to take this side plate, pull it down,
and all the way open until it latches like that.
Now inside here you can see we have the follower and the plate.
These are both operated on spring pressure by a plunger right here with a coil spring
inside the frame of the gun. That puts pressure on both the plate, which is disconnected at the moment,
and the follower. Now once that's open, you take the clip, drop it right into there.
This one's not quite a right fit because it's 6.5mm instead of 8,
but once that's in there, then you close the plate (take it out). When you snap this into place,
you can hear that snap, that is the spring releasing the follower, which is then going to snap up,
and push these cartridges one at a time up so that they can feed into the chamber with the bolt.
When you chamber the last cartridge there is now nothing holding this clip in place,
and it falls out through these slots on the bottom of the pistol. This is the exact same type of
clip mechanism as you would get on a wide variety of Mannlicher rifles, the German
Commission Rifle, the Gewehr 88, does this, the Steyr Model of 1895 straight-pull does this, the Carcano does it,
the M1 Garand actually does it in a similar manner, except it ejects the clip out the top instead of the bottom.
So this was a pretty well accepted and, at the time, cutting-edge technology for feeding a repeating firearm.
Now, once you've got this loaded, then of course we're going to look at the bolt.
We have a single action trigger back here, so pull it back,
fire like so.
So when you fire the bolt cycles back, like so, this far,
and then goes forward. All that's going to do is allow the empty case to eject and then chamber a new one.
Now with these, and with several of the subsequent models, the cartridge actually had no extractor rim.
Which is unusual and interesting, a lot of people may not realise that you don't actually need an
extractor to extract a case on a blowback firearm. You have enough pressure in the barrel pushing backwards that
almost all the time cartridges will extract on their own.
What the extractor does is allow you to manually remove a cartridge
if you decide you have one chambered and you want to un-chamber it, you need the extractor for that.
And it also often guides the cartridge out, it controls where the case is going
so that the ejector can hit it in the right place and eject it cleanly out of the pistol.
Without an extractor guns will typically work, but they might not be quite as reliable.
Now for Bergmann I think this was a matter of simplicity.
And given how early self-loading pistols were at this time,
people may not have honestly realised that the extractor was all that necessary.
So there isn't one on here.
We have this lug on the bolt which goes all the way through to this side, where you can see that as the bolt runs
this lug is going to run on this bar. That's going to help stabilise it, keep it from
twisting, kinking, getting stuck on anything. You've got the bolt controlled at the back here by the opening in the frame,
right in there, and then you've also got the front of the bolt controlled by this rail.
So that keeps everything running smoothly.
The protrusion on this side I believe is a safety feature. So that this will hit this lug on the frame,
that will prevent the bolt from coming out the back of the gun and hitting the firer
should anything else go wrong. So it's a redundant safety there.
The recoil spring for this gun is located right in here underneath the barrel.
... That's pretty simple, it's operating against this plunger.
See it cycling there.
In theory you've got these serrations that make it a little bit easier, you could grab it and pull it back that way I guess.
That doesn't really actually work very well, much more effective to grab here and pull.
A couple other things that ... might look like controls. This is actually a screw,
lift that up. This allows you to disassemble the pistol, which I'm not going to do on this one.
This ... long extension will come off the front and allow you access to the mainspring.
And then this cross piece acts as a retainer for the firing pin, which is right there.
I should point out the firing pins on these Bergmanns, and pretty much all of them, are not spring-loaded.
You can see I've got the firing pin extended there.
You can push it in, kind of jiggle the pistol, it'll come back out. There's no spring.
So if you have this carried with a round in the chamber
and the hammer down, if you hit that hammer you will discharge the pistol and it will be bad.
The safety does ameliorate this problem, so we have a safety lever here on the side.
Pull that down, comes all the way down to there.
When the safety comes all the way down it does cam the hammer back. So now ...
There's no official half-cocked position of the hammer, except for the safety which pulls it out to that point.
So the safety on these pistols is very important. You definitely need to use it.
... Or you would have. The chances you'd be carrying one of these pistols today are approximately zero.
The one last thing to point out here is this odd contraption is actually a holder for the cleaning rod.
Originally the cleaning rod would have run in the side right here. So this holds it and then
the slot at the front of the cleaning rod snaps over this little lug to hold it in place. That's pretty cool.
We can see that cleaning rod in some of the pictures of the Swiss trials guns.
Now, we do know that this pistol failed to be super- impressive at Swiss trials, obviously, they didn't adopt it.
The Swiss would ultimately adopt the Luger pistol a couple years later.
But ... the Bergmann company's experience in these trials was good enough apparently that they had some
faith in the pistol. They thought they could build it into something better,
so they went back to the drawing board and started making alterations.
Right, before we close up here, I do want to do a little bit of looking at this second example of the Number 1.
... These guns are early enough that they have some differences in them.
Of course the first one we looked at, the really nice one, had this big thumb ledge here to open the magazine gate.
On this pistol we have a pair of buttons that are actually connected to each other.
So, we have a magazine loading gate like that.
Now this suggests that this pistol is a little bit later, because this system is very
much like what you would find on all of the later Bergmanns, the Number 2s, 3s and 4s.
The ... fact that it does not have a cleaning rod on it also suggests that it's a bit later,
because the cleaning rod was abandoned and it doesn't show up on any of the later commercial guns.
However, there are some other elements like this being squared off,
where on this pistol it's rounded. This one seems a little bit more nicely finished,
they put a little more effort into it. Where this one seems just a little bit cruder.
But at the same time it also seems like a later evolution of the design.
So what exactly that means I don't know. With only two examples to look at
there are only so many conclusions that you can draw.
However this does function the same way, we still have this blowback system,
we've got the serrated pad up here, we have our exposed guide rail for the bolt back there,
safety works the same way, trigger, hammer, all of that works the same way.
These do not lock open, by the way.
And that's pretty much it.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. It's a definite privilege, a rare privilege to be
able to take a look at these Number 1s. There are very, very few Bergmann Number 1s still in existence today.
The next video in this series will be on the Bergmann Number 2, predictably I suppose.
So definitely check that one out as well if you'd like to continue the saga of these pistols.
If you enjoy this sort of content, please do consider checking out my Patreon page.
It is funding from folks like you at a buck a month that makes it possible for me to
travel to some interesting collections like this one, and bring you guys interesting pistols like these.
Thanks for watching.
But for this first real commercial version
Louis Smisher, Shmich, bleagh,
Louis Louis Schmeisser got rid of that delayed system.