[ Amsterdam Municipal Police Mauser Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at an adorable little FN Mauser carbine.
This is however a pretty darn rare pattern
of FN Mauser carbine, this is one that was made
specifically for the Amsterdam Municipal Police,
or the "gemeentepolitie te Amsterdam".
I think I'm pronouncing that close to correctly.
Now this was actually ordered post-World War Two.
And in fact the Dutch government was the first government
to order FN-made Mauser rifles after World War Two.
You see the thing was, yeah, the world is kind of awash in small arms after World War Two.
But for small countries like the Netherlands that had been occupied,
they actually didn't really have that much in the way of
firearms for the government to make use of.
There had been a lot of strict controls on what a country like the Netherlands
was allowed to maintain as functional firearms during the war.
And when they come out of the war of course there's tremendous economic damage
to the country, there's a tremendous amount of political upheaval.
And there is concern in the Netherlands about the police's ability
to control significant civil unrest should such a thing happen.
And when the police take a look at what armaments they have available, it's like,
"Well, we've got some miscellaneous carbines from before the war,
but kind of a mishmash of various things.
We've got some surplus K98ks, because those things are kind of everywhere ... where the Germans were.
And we've got some Sten guns from the British."
But really they kind of wanted to standardise,
"We want new guns in good condition, that are all the same,
ease the logistics, ease the maintenance, all that sort of stuff."
And so a bunch of different Dutch police agencies would end up buying carbines from Mauser.
The biggest one was just the Dutch State Police,
and they ... wanted to order 20,000, and they ended up ordering 5,000 carbines for budgetary reasons.
And then the Amsterdam Municipal Police in 1948
(I should say that Dutch ... State Police order was ... 1946/1947),
in 1948 the Amsterdam Municipal Police create a new section,
and this is their Submachine Gun and Carbine Battalion.
And it's teams of 10 men, of which 8 will have a carbine and 2 will have submachine guns.
And they're sort of like the more serious response force of the Amsterdam police.
... Not the typical beat cop, but if something really goes bad
these are the guys who are going to respond. Sort of a SWAT team.
The problem is they don't really have any good carbines for them.
They've got some K98ks, ... they've got the Sten guns, they've got that covered for the submachine gun side.
But the Amsterdam city wants to buy 245 Mauser carbines from FN,
and the problem is at that point FN wasn't willing to accept a small custom order like that.
And so the project would have to wait for two more years until in 1950
the Dutch government ordered many thousands of FN Mauser carbines for their East Indies army.
And at that point in 1950,
the City of Amsterdam kind of jumps in and piggybacks on the order, and gets 200.
I'm not sure why the number dropped from 245 initially desired
to 200 actually ordered, but such things happen.
Could very well just be budgetary reasons ... for the city government.
At any rate, they order 200 carbines, and they're able to do this
because their carbines are identical to the East Indies Army order
with the exception of the roll mark on the receiver.
And that's something that's pretty easy for FN, ... "We'll segregate out these 200,
give them that 'J' roll stamp on the receiver,
and ship them to Amsterdam instead of shipping them to the Dutch East Indies."
So, they made a few little changes to these guns once they actually got them in hand,
let me show you what those are.
Technically, mechanically, fundamentally this is just
a Mauser Model 98 carbine manufactured by FN.
We have FN's manufacturers marking here on the side of the receiver.
"Fabrique Nationale D'Armes de Guerre", Herstal, Belgique.
And then we have the police marking here,
this is specifically the Municipal Police of Amsterdam, all abbreviated of course.
The receiver crest is a crown over "J", and that's for Queen Juliana
who took the throne in 1948 after the death of Wilhelmina.
It has a bent bolt handle here, as is fairly typical for carbines.
Although note that there is no scalloped cutout in the ... stock, it wasn't considered necessary
to give you extra space to get a grip on the bolt handle to cycle it.
And then we have a couple of serial numbers.
They are serialised on the receiver and the stock here.
These ran from 1 to 200, this is of course number 109.
Below 100 they didn't use any leading zeros,
so it would just be a simple 1, 2, 3, etc. up to number 200.
There is also a serial number on the bolt handle there.
Unfortunately this one is mismatched, it's bolt is from rifle number 183.
Now I mentioned that these were the same carbines that were ordered for the Dutch East Indies Army.
There were a couple of differences, one is the police never ordered or used bayonets.
So the guns still have bayonet lugs because it's easier to just leave them on there
than to try and order special guns without them. But bayonets were never used.
The sling configuration used by the Dutch East Indies ... gave you two options essentially.
You had sling swivels on the bottom, and you had sling bars on the side.
So there's our rear underside sling swivel.
And then normally on an East Indies gun you would have
a sling swivel right here on the side of the wrist.
The Amsterdam police didn't want that, and it frankly kind of gets in the way when you're shooting,
and so they actually ground that off and sanded it down flush.
You have the bolt here, the hardware for it is still in place,
but on the Amsterdam police carbines they always cut that off.
The butt plate is this corrugated style, but flat, not cupped at all.
And that's pretty much it for the gun. We have standard sights,
being a carbine, they are graduated out to 1,400 metres.
The front sight is the same sort of barleycorn post that you would expect on a Mauser.
And the magazine of course holds 5 rounds. Chambered for 8mm Mauser
because that ... was the most common available sort of standardisable cartridge
in the Netherlands in the years immediately after World War Two.
Now these carbines would serve in the Amsterdam police,
and in police forces around the Netherlands for about 15 years.
But by the late '50s, early 1960s, there were
really some questions that were starting to be posed about these.
Of course, they had initially been chambered in 8mm Mauser
because that was the kind of the standard available cartridge.
But there's a reason you don't see very many true Mauser carbines
in 8mm Mauser (in 8x57), and that is they have a lot of recoil and a lot of muzzle blast.
Like, it's a powerful cartridge for such a short barrel,
this is about a 17.5 inch, 17.25 inch barrel.
Normally what you'll see with 8mm Mauser are short rifles.
Something a little more like a 20, maybe 22 inch barrel.
The true short carbines are much more commonly found in 6.5 and 7mm cartridges,
the Italian Carcanos and such.
And this was an issue for the policemen,
it's really an unpleasant thing to shoot and to be around.
And on top of that they're looking at this cartridge and they're going,
"Why do we actually need this? Like this thing's designed to be effective out to 1,800 metres,
but we're giving them to police officers in the city, ... why do you need that much range?"
And so it started with the State Police turning in their Mauser carbines
in exchange for M1 carbines in .30 carbine calibre. ...
First off, they were semi-automatic which makes them more practical to use.
But they were also much easier to shoot, quieter, lower penetrating.
They offer a lot less potential hazard to inhabitants of a city
should the police have to fire one off somewhere.
And this would expand to other police agencies, like the Amsterdam Municipal Police.
There were some issues like ... a lot of the cities actually bought the guns with their own money,
and so ... it was a little harder for them to justify getting rid of them.
But between 1963 and 1965 all of the Mauser carbines were turned in
and replaced with M1 carbines in actual service.
And then from there some of them ended up as surplus.
This one survived in beautiful condition
which is really a testament to how it was stored after it came out of service.
And it represents a really cool, really rare,
example of a Dutch, specifically Amsterdam,
... Municipal Police Mauser carbine.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.