Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today I am at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at some of the guns they are going to be selling
in their upcoming September of 2017 Premier Auction.
Specifically today we are taking a look at this German MP41 submachine gun.
Now, there's a question that arises when you take a look at a gun like this, and that is: why?
Why would they take an MP40 and just put it in a wooden stock?
And if you attempt to answer that question you will find yourself travelling down a rabbit hole of further questions.
Because the first thing you'll find when you disassemble this is it's not actually quite entirely an MP40.
This is actually the top end of an MP40 and the bottom end of an MP-28.
This was designed and developed by Hugo Schmeisser at the Heanel Company.
Produced primarily in 1941, they made like 26,000 of these in 1941.
And, like I said, the bottom end of this is virtually identical to Schmeisser's MP-28 design.
So we can continue our question of why would they build this?
Haenel was already manufacturing MP40 ... guns ... and a lot of the parts on this are in fact MP40 parts, identical.
But the German military never formally adopted the MP41.
And you don't really see much use of this with, say, the SS or police units, like you would expect with a lot of
the other non-conventional or non-standardised submachine guns in Germany during World War Two.
Well, the best answer that I can come up with is that these guns were made primarily for Romania.
They're similar in layout to the Romanian Orița submachine gun,
and they are documented as mostly being seen in use with Romanian troops.
Now as for the question of why this? Why didn't they just sell Romania MP40s if Romania was looking for submachine guns.
Well the best explanation that I've seen someone come up with comes from Martin Helebrant's book, "The Schmeisser Myth".
And his proposal is that Haenel probably had, if not actual parts from the MP-28,
they certainly had all the jigs and fixtures and tooling from the MP-28.
So, while they were able to make MP40s a lot faster than they could make these, by a scale of about three to one,
they could make about 100 of these per day and they could make about 300 MP40s per day.
By using this MP-28 lower ... system they were able to use fixturing that already existed, that didn't need to be tooled up.
And potentially they were also able to start using some of the spare parts they might have had left over from MP-28 production.
So this might well have been a design where you could avoid some of the bottlenecks of MP40 production.
Things like receiver tubes and rear sights could be produced
in ... enough quantity to mate up with MP-28 lower parts that were also easy to produce
on a separate and non-competitive production line, or perhaps already in stock.
By putting these together they presumably were able to get more production
than they could have by just sticking to the MP40. So that seems to be the most likely explanation.
Now a ... second batch was put together very late in war, in '44, of about 1,500 guns.
And interestingly at the end of the war they actually had a substantial number of MP41 parts still remaining. So
why is a bit of a question.
But why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at the markings on this,
because there's some interesting and unexpected markings on here,
and then I'll pull it apart and show you how it differs from the MP40.
The most substantial marking is here on the top of the receiver tube, where it is marked
MP41, Patent Schmeisser, C.G. Haenel, the manufacturing company.
A lot of people will call the MP40 a Schmeisser, which is actually a misnomer, that gun was
really, while it includes elements of previous submachine guns designed by Schmeisser,
Schmeisser himself wasn't really a part of the MP40 production.
The MP41 here however, is entirely a Schmeisser gun.
Now here's one of the interesting things about these guns. You'll notice it is Waffenamt.
However, I mentioned before that these guns were never formally accepted by the German military, by the Wehrmacht.
So why would it be Waffenamt? And the answer is the receiver tubes are actually, at least in their initial production,
identical to MP40 tubes and they were manufactured on the exact same production line.
So the Wehrmacht was inspecting and Waffenamt stamping the receiver tubes for the MP40,
and then only after that process was finished was the supply for the MP41 split off and sent elsewhere for this construction.
The barrel and the front end assembly of the 41 are basically identical to the MP40.
However, they do not have the blocking bar on the bottom of the barrel.
The magazine well is also literally identical to that of the MP40, the later pattern with the steel reinforcing ribs.
And the MP41 magazine is in fact just an MP40 magazine with different markings on it.
One might wonder why would they bother marking these magazines separately,
that seems like ... an extra step when there's no good reason to do it since they're identical to MP40 mags.
The best answer I've seen suggested is related to the fact that these went to Romania.
And Romania did have the Orița submachine gun at the same time. Orița magazines are basically the same
style and type as MP40 magazines, but they are not interchangeable in either direction.
So potentially the Romanian government or military requested the markings on the magazines
to ensure that people could keep track of what mags work for the MP41s and what mags were for the Orițas.
Our last element here that is identical to the MP40 is the rear sight, literally the same part.
This is a two position flip-up notch sight.
Once we get to the back end of the gun however, we start seeing some substantial differences.
The fire control group here is in fact identical to that of the MP-28.
This is a 28, and you'll see the same thing on the trigger guard on the bottom.
The bolts may be different, but these pieces are basically identical.
The MP41 has a bit of a simpler disassembly procedure than the MP40.
We just have to take the end cap off. So push in this plunger,
rotate it counter-clockwise about 45 degrees, and the end cap comes off.
Once the end cap is off, you can simply pull out the striker and spring assembly.
This is ... for all practical purposes identical to the MP40s. And then we can pull out the bolt.
Now the bolt is very similar to an MP40, but not quite the same.
This is an MP40 bolt, this is an MP41 bolt. They look extremely similar, and from the top they actually are identical.
When we flip them over however, we can see the one difference.
And that is this cut track on the bottom of the MP41 bolt. That is for the semi-auto disconnector.
The MP40 is a full-auto only gun, and doesn't have a disconnector.
So that is how you can tell the two apart.
I have taken the trigger guard screws out, and we can now separate the stock off of the MP41.
So this comes out, we have this nice standalone wooden stock, we'll set these aside.
This should give you a pretty good idea of the true nature of the MP41, so here is the upper end of an MP40.
Note that the bottom of the tube is completely smooth,
the trigger mechanism, which is quite simple, is all located in the lower assembly.
Here's the MP41, which has this trigger mechanism welded on, attached to the bottom of the receiver tube.
And then this is an MP-28 where you can see this is exactly the same trigger mechanism,
or mechanically the same trigger mechanism,
attached to the bottom of a machined receiver tube instead of a stamped one.
So there it is, you have a hybridised MP40 plus MP-28 gives you an MP41.
If you haven't seen my previous video on the MP-28 you should go watch it, but in case you don't,
for whatever reason, here's the other side of this trigger group,
and what we have here is basically a trigger where when you push this forward,
it drops the sear down, which allows the bolt to go forward and fire. And then this is a disconnector.
So when the bolt travels backwards it's going to run over this ... arm,
which pushes this up, which resets the gun. So in semi-auto mode this disconnector prevents fully automatic fire.
And in full-auto mode, it's just ignored.
Well a lot of people obviously think that this is just an MP40 sitting in a wooden stock, which now you know it is not.
It does behave quite similarly to an MP40 though. In fact personally I would far prefer to have one of these than an MP40.
I think this wooden stock is a far better more stable system. The folding stock on the MP40 was great for transport,
but those things are always loose and wobbly, and I would much rather shoot one of these.
In fact I have, I liked it quite a lot. It gives you the stability of a fixed stock
but also the rate of fire and the controllability of the MP40 system.
So really a pretty darn good system overall.
This would definitely be one of the top tier submachine guns of the Second World War.
If you would like to have this one yourself, it is a registered,
fully transferable submachine gun coming up here for sale at Rock Island.
So if you take a look at the description text below you will find a link to their catalogue page on this gun,
that'll have their pictures, their description, their price estimates and everything else you'll want to know.
And if you're interested in it, you can place a bid over the web, or phone, or come and participate live in the auction.
Thanks for watching.
[ cc by sk cn2 ]