Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am out here at the range today
courtesy of the Morphy Auction Company up in Pennsylvania,
and we have a magnificently rare and very cool
First World War machine gun. This is a Villar Perosa.
This is the double-barreled 9mm Italian aircraft gun turned ground gun.
So there are very few of these around, and it's really cool
that we get a chance to do some shooting with this one.
So let's jump right into it.
First, you can't cock the bolts if the safety is on, so we'll disengage the safety,
rack both bolts, engage the safety, pop in both magazines. They are a
back in rock forward design, which is a little bit unusual there.
And now we're hot. Let's see what it looks like with both barrels at the same time. This thing has a pretty high rate of fire.
There we go, and...
Whoo, that is a fast submachine gun.
Alright, so one of the problems with this thing is the sights.
This is really an aircraft gun that was repurposed to become a ground gun,
and when they did that they were moving it into a role for which it really wasn't designed.
As an aircraft gun this fantastically high rate of fire is a really good thing,
because in an aircraft you're only going to have these brief fleeting moments
where the enemy craft is close enough and in your sights,
and you want to dump as much lead at it as possible during that brief moment.
So you take a very high rate of fire, like 1,500 rounds a minute here, you double it up with a second gun.
It doesn't really matter that your magazines are small, only 25 rounds each, because you're gonna hit both triggers
(these fire independently), going to hit both triggers and do your best to get some rounds on that enemy airplane.
And this being World War One, that enemy airplane is made of basically wood and canvas
and you don't need much more than a 9mm bullet to go all the way through it
and destroy anything that you manage to hit.
So it really does make sense in that role. And it was set up in the Italian Capelli [?] bombers.
But then they went and put it also into the ground role. And in the ground role, well, it's not designed for the ground role.
So instead of a big spider sight that allows you to actually see and track a moving target,
we've got this little tiny aperture sight right in between the triggers. And there's no buttstock,
so as soon as you start firing the gun recoils backwards, because the bipod does pretty much
nothing to ... support the gun. It holds it up, but doesn't hold it forward or back. You can't push into this bipod, there's no stop.
And so as soon as you start shooting the gun starts moving, your little tiny aperture sight just disappears, it's gone.
And you're left trying to figure out what you hit or not.
Now the normal sort of solution to this would be to aim basically looking at your bullet impacts.
Well, kind of like a Minigun, the problem with that is
it fires so fast that by the time you register where you're hitting and start to make adjustments,
you're out of ammunition. And you have to start over again. Now,
I suspect in what as close as this came to practical ground use,
I think the doctrine probably would have been to fire one barrel at a time,
and you'd have an assistant gunner who could be reloading the empty magazines as you fired one at a time.
And that would more or less let you keep up a continuous
(as close as you can get to continuous with 25 rounds and 1,500 rounds a minute),
but that would let you keep up a continuous-ish rate of fire.
Safety.
Wow, man that just goes really fast. I can't hit anything.
Alright. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the video, it is certainly...
- Hey. - What? - Wrong war, this is ours.
- No, this videos over, we're using this. - What?
Alright, well. I hope you guys enjoyed the video of the gun I no longer have because Othais stole it.
Othais will be coming out with a super-cool video on the entire history of the Villar Perosa.
So what you'll have to do is go watch it, then you can go ... back and watch my history video on the Villar Perosa,
and you can see which one of us did it better.
If you want to find out for yourself and just own the gun and shoot it whenever you want,
it is of course coming up for sale in the Morphy ... October Extraordinary Firearms Auction.
So go to their catalogue, check it out, you can see all their pictures.
It also comes with a replica Capelli bomber aircraft mount which is super cool,
but wasn't practical for us to bring out to the range today. So hope you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
- Can I have my ... gun back now? - No. - Yes.
Alright, and here goes both.