Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction House.
I'm checking out some of the guns that they're going to be selling
in their September of 2015 Premier Auction.
And there were actually a couple of Bergmanns in this particular auction,
and I grabbed one of them here that I wanted to show you.
This is a Model of 1896 Number 3 Bergmann automatic pistol.
So 1896, this is a pretty darn early self-loading pistol.
So the patent that these guns are originally based on was actually taken out
by a Hungarian watchmaker by the name of Otto Brauwetter.
Now he didn't really do a whole lot with it, he came up with this initial idea and then he sold it.
And the guy who ended up doing all the development
and actually turned this into a workable pistol was none other than Louis Schmeisser,
whose name has gone on to be associated with a great many other German guns.
Now they are called Bergmann pistols because they were made by a company
owned by a fellow named Bergmann, he was the money in the deal.
Schmeisser was the gun designer, Bergmann was the financier.
And Bergmann was quite the effective and talented financier.
By the time he was 19, he was managing director of the Gaggenau ironworks.
It became one of the factories where he produced handguns, among many, many other things.
So the first functional Bergmann pistols like this were in 1894.
And those were actually a delayed blowback mechanism.
It was kind of overly complex, and frankly it fired a pretty wimpy little cartridge.
And very quickly, by the 1896 version, they dropped that
and they were just straight blowback pistols.
So there were actually three variants of this gun,
they were all 1896, they all shared the same design.
They were the Number 2, the Number 3, and the Number 4,
and they varied in the cartridge that they fired.
So this is a Number 3, right in the middle, and the most widely produced of the three versions.
Why don't I bring the camera back here,
and let me continue explaining how this works while we take a closer look at it.
So this is a Number 3 Bergmann,
which means it is chambered for a 6.5mm bottle-necked case.
That fired ... between a 65 and an 82 grain bullet,
depending on exactly which factory loading you got,
at velocities between 720 and 775 feet per second.
So not a completely underpowered cartridge,
kind of wimpy by today's standards, but not bad for 1896.
And it actually had a reasonably heavy bullet for its bore diameter.
Now it's interesting that this particular gun is number 2044.
The first thousand or so that were manufactured,
they actually used a slightly different version of the ammunition
that had no extractor groove on it.
And as a result it also had no extractor in the gun.
With blowback pistols you generally don't actually need an extractor.
The extractor does two things that are particularly useful.
First off is it actually keeps the cartridge in a fixed position,
which makes it a lot easier to design reliable ejection.
The extractor is what makes sure that the cartridge actually hits the ejector
in the right position to get thrown clear out of the pistol.
And then the other thing is if you want to unload a cartridge without firing it,
the extractor is important for that.
When you fire the gun, the gas pressure in the barrel on a blowback pistol
typically does a perfectly suitable job of extracting it.
Anyway, this is a late enough gun that it
used a far more typical rimmed cartridge like we would expect to see today.
It is a blowback design so ... go ahead and cock it. Single action only.
We have a recoil spring inside the bolt here, this is our bolt stop lug.
This functions kind of like the lug in a C96 Broomhandle.
You can see into our chamber there.
You can see we have an extractor on the top of the bolt.
The safety is here on the left side. This is the fire position, and that is the safe position.
Locks the trigger.
Pull it down to fire, pretty simple there.
This kind of weird lug actually encases the magazine follower spring.
So to open the magazine you push the cover plate
slightly over to the right with this button, and then pull it down.
You can see right here, this is our spring-loaded follower.
Very much like a Mannlicher-style rifle actually.
This uses a 5 round clip of cartridges.
To load it, you pull this cover plate all the way down,
place your clip in there, and then release the cover plate.
This follower will sit at the bottom of the clip, and it will push up each of the cartridges in turn.
The spring for it is up inside here, that's what this area on the gun is for.
And when you chamber the last round, just like a Mannlicher-style rifle,
the empty clip falls out the bottom of the pistol.
These look pretty awkward, they actually handle reasonably well.
Especially considering the fairly light recoil you would get from them.
Now we have a hole right here, this is a safety port.
This is a gas vent, so that if your brass case ruptures the gas will come out here
instead of blowing all back into the action and causing problems.
This marking I ... have not identified, I suspect that is a retailer's marking.
Whoever it was that ordered the gun and sold it at retail put that on.
One of the other interesting elements to the Bergmanns
are a three digit number up on the barrel.
And you'll find this on all the different models,
and it seems ... the number is dependent on the calibre of the gun,
but doesn't appear to have any direct relationship to the calibre.
So this is a 6.5mm gun and it's marked 278,
and you'll find that number on all the 6.5mm [guns].
One of the other, I believe it's the 5.5mm, is marked 611.
(I think I have that one correct.)
At any rate, the one suggestion that I've heard that seems most likely is that this
actually references the number of a cartridge
in Bergmann, or one of the major ammunition suppliers, catalogues.
So like the DWM ammunition catalogue.
That could be totally wrong, I'm not sure, it's kind of a mystery number on there.
But it's common to all the Bergmanns that I've ever seen.
So ultimately the 1896 was not a totally unsuccessful pistol.
In total about 4,000 of these were made.
And Schmeisser and Bergmann would go on to continue collaborating and refining this design.
The final versions of the Bergmann,
which ultimately were actually locked-breech pistols,
were used by Denmark up until, frankly, until close to World War Two.
The last designated version was the Model of 1910/21.
So, from 1894 to 1921, that's not a bad lifespan for a pistol design that started out so early.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
I kind of really like Bergmann pistols,
they are an interesting family of early automatic handguns.
They don't get a whole lot of recognition, there's not a ton of information out there on them.
And ... they just look really cool too.
So there are actually several of them, I believe there are four or five,
of the early Bergmanns of a couple of different varieties in this auction.
So I will have a link to this particular one's catalogue page in the description text below.
And I will leave it up to you guys, if you're interested,
to go dig out the other ones in the catalogue.
Thanks for watching.