Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to look at my top five submachine guns.
Now the reason for this is I was prepping for this month's Q&A, which we'll be posting in just a couple days,
and someone asked me, "What are your favorite submachine guns?"
And I realised, while I've shot more submachine guns than I actually have on video,
I actually have film footage of all five of what I would consider my favourites.
So rather than just explain it in a brief Q&A answer, that would be a fun thing to put together as a little compilation for you guys.
So, without further ado we'll start at number five. Which is sort of an honorable mention,
because it's not actually a submachine gun by everybody's standards.
Some people would consider it a PDW, and that is the vz.61 Skorpion.
I really like the Skorpion for its compactness and its controllability.
And I'm willing to overlook the fact that it's in .32 ACP, which is really a pretty wimpy cartridge.
I actually kind of like the fact that it's in .32 ACP because it takes a gun in this little tiny package
and makes it mechanically feasible, and actually very practical to shoot, very controllable,
very easy to shoot, unlike almost anything else that would be in that package.
You know, you put 9mm parabellum in that package and the gun gets a lot harder to control.
One of the great things about the Skorpion is it just sits right on target.
They've got a nice rate reducing mechanism built into it, really I think it's a very well designed gun.
It's not for everything. It's for you know specific purposes, it was designed for tank crews and such.
The whole thing gets carried in a belt holster.
And within the constraints of its design intent I think it's a really well done gun,
and a tremendously ... fun gun to shoot. I'd love to have one someday.
I know there are semi-auto versions out there.
To my mind, like, a lot of the point of a Skorpion is bursts.
So I don't know that I really want to deal with a semi- auto. But they are out there for folks who do want those.
Number four is actually the Suomi, the Finnish m/31 Suomi.
And this is number four on my list almost entirely because of its weight.
This is a ridiculously heavy gun, way heavier than anything else that I've got on the list,
and frankly it's ... heavier than a submachine gun really needs to be.
However, within that constraint, it's a magnificent gun to shoot.
It uses a 71 round drum that is reliable and very high capacity. The sights are good.
And just the controllability is excellent. And to my mind ...
there aren't a whole lot of factors that you can properly judge a submachine gun on, and
accuracy and controllability are really the most important two. After that comes handling, and that's where weight is.
And so that's why the Suomi comes in here as number 4 in my list.
Great gun to shoot, very fun. But man, I would not want to have to carry it very far.
Once again, there are semi-auto versions of them out there.
I've fired some of the semi-auto conversions and I think they're frankly pretty terrible.
In the case of the Suomi even more than the vz.61, the full-auto fire is really what you want if you're going to have that gun.
The American M2 submachine gun.
This is by far the rarest on my list, and it really is a bit surprising to me that it comes in
this high on the list because this is a gun that never saw actual combat service.
It was formally adopted, took a long time to get into production. By the time they were ready for production
it had already been replaced with the M3 Grease Gun, not on the basis of ... any fault of the M2,
but rather because the M3 was substantially cheaper to make. And that's what the US military was looking for at the time. Cost.
The M2 is this excellent kind of intermediary between the Thompson and the Grease Gun in several different ways.
It fires from a [Thompson] magazine, which is nice and reliable.
It's a double feed magazine, easy to load, 20 and 30 round varieties available.
The gun has a great in-line stock. It has a great rate of fire. And again, controllability and accuracy are both excellent on it.
It has aperture sights that run great and it was absolutely a joy to shoot.
It's really too bad that there aren't more of these around.
Best numbers I have is like 400 of them were made, and I think 6 survive today. So it's a tremendously rare gun.
But man, really fantastic. Definitely the best .45 calibre submachine gun I've ever shot.
I would happily take an M2 over a Thompson, over a Grease Gun, over a .45 calibre Kriss by a long shot.
And frankly anything else that I've ever shot.
Number two is Italian, it is the Beretta Model 38A.
And it is specifically the 38A early version of the gun.
This is a design that would go through a series of revisions and simplifications through World War Two.
And in fact in commercial production after World War Two. You had the 38, and then the 38A,
minor changes there, and the 38A was the one that really got into serious production before World War Two.
They ... got rid of the barrel jacket, they cut the barrel down a bit, they significantly simplified the bolt mechanism,
and got rid of some of the extra fancy features. This became the 38/42, 38/43, 38/44
and then after the war Beretta continued to manufacture and sell them as the Beretta Model 4 and the Beretta Model 5.
... And I've shot the Model 5 and I've shot a 38/44 and I've shot a 38A,
and the later two guns to my mind are entirely serviceable, perfectly fine and kind of unremarkable submachine guns.
They're good, they're reliable, that's about all I can say for them.
The 38A is a truly magnificent gun to shoot.
It has minimal felt recoil to it. The muzzle just really doesn't move when you're shooting it.
And I'm not entirely sure what that special sauce is that changed between the 38A
and the later iterations, but there's definitely something going on there.
And maybe it's just the simplification of the bolt and reducing the mass of the bolt in the process.
But the 38A is a fantastic gun. And it certainly doesn't hurt that it's actually set up as a left-hander's sort of gun.
It ejects from the left side, it has a charging handle on the right.
Fires from 20, 30 and 40 round magazines that are all of a double-stack double-feed design.
The Beretta 38 magazine is an excellent submachine gun magazine design that would be used for a long time,
for good reason, on basically all of Italy's submachine guns.
... If I was going to get and actually purchase a curio and relic submachine gun (other than a French one),
it would be that. If I were gonna buy one as a shooter, it would absolutely be a Beretta 38A.
So that brings us to the number one place on the list.
The Heckler & Koch MP-5.
What can I say? It's the nicest submachine gun that I've ever shot.
It is one of the most refined. And there are a couple of things that really stand out for it.
First off: there are very few closed bolt submachine guns and the MP-5 is one of them.
And what that means is that you don't have that kerchunk of the bolt dropping forward
on the first shot when you pull the trigger. And it means the MP-5 is just
naturally way easier to get an accurate first shot on than any open bolt submachine gun.
And that means a lot. You know if we're gonna talk accuracy and controllability, first round accuracy is a big part of that.
So I really like that feature. It's not unique among submachine guns in being closed bolt, but
(in fact the Hotchkiss there is closed bolt as well),
but it is both closed bolt and it is roller delayed blowback instead of simple blowback.
And this is also a pretty darn unusual thing.
Most submachine guns for reasons of cost and complexity are just simple blowback.
It's only the mass of the bolt carrier and bolt that resists opening when you fire the gun.
The MP-5 adds the roller delayed mechanism that H&K developed for, initially, full power rifles.
And in doing so it becomes a magnificently smooth shooting gun
It needs a shorter receiver. It's got a shorter bolt travel because the bolt's moving slower when it first starts opening.
It's an excellent gun. Again comes down to ... controllability and accuracy.
I'm assuming, like, guns don't get on this list of mine if they're not fully reliable. So
all ... the guns I've got on this list start off with a pass on the base bar of being totally reliable.
The MP-5 adds to that excellent controllability and excellent accuracy.
Aperture sights, closed bolt, delayed blowback. It's fantastic.
So those are, in my opinion, the top five submachine guns out there.
What do you think they are? Curious to hear about your opinions and
maybe there's something out there that's even better that I haven't had a chance to shoot yet.
Thanks for watching, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.