[ MAC Model 1947 Prototype SMGs ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today courtesy of the French Gendarmerie,
taking a look at a couple of very cool prototypes from the French trials program
that would eventually lead to the adoption of the MAT 49.
Now in France at this point there were three primary state-run arsenals:
Tulle - MAT, Châtellerault - MAC and Saint-Étienne - MAS.
And what we have today are the MAC Model of 1947 designs that were submitted to this program.
So after World War Two, like immediately after World War Two [in Europe] in May of 1945,
... while World War Two is still going on in the Pacific theatre,
the French military decides that they need to have a whole new armament program.
And one of the weapons that they would like to develop is a 9mm submachine gun.
And it specifically needs to be something light and compact,
and it must have some sort of folding (or presumably collapsing) stock on it.
So all three of the French arsenals put together developmental prototypes to fulfil this need.
And what we have here are the MAC 47-1 and 47-2.
In fact these are serial numbers 1 and 2.
So let's go ahead, and take a look at what MAC was suggesting
to make a light, compact, folding-stock submachine gun.
But first I would like to tell you guys that this video has actually been brought to you
thanks to my friend Shazzi here. - Hi.
Who has made it possible for me to do a lot of my European filming by helping me find lodging.
And what Shazzi does for her regular day job
is work as a professional real estate agent here in Paris, France.
And I suspect there are a few people out there who might be interested as Americans
in having some real estate here, especially with the exchange rate as it is right now.
- Absolutely, it's a good time to invest in France.
- But that process has got to be a very difficult black box for someone trying to work from the US,
but that's something that you especially do, right? - Absolutely, I've worked with many expats.
For one thing I'm perfectly bilingual so I speak perfect English,
at least I hope, and perfect French.
And you know the buying of property in France ... could be quite complicated,
but I can walk people through the whole process.
Help them find a place, visit for them, send them all the documents.
And then basically like walk them through the whole procedure
and make it actually something fun and not you know painful.
- Horrifically terrifying dealing with bureaucracy in a foreign language.
- And I even go further than that because once people ... become owners here
I continue with my services. If they're not here and something happens in the apartment
like a water leak, they can call me, I can take care of it.
I can help setting up the place, the utilities, set up the internet.
I mean, I really try to give like the best customer service that I would like to receive, so.
- Those really are some of the elements that you can easily do in your native country
and native language that become an order of magnitude harder in a totally foreign country.
So alright, well that's fantastic. I've worked with Shazzi
for ... lodging to do some of my filming here in Europe.
I highly recommend her. How can people get a hold of you?
- Well, they can call me, I will give you my contact info.
And please call me if you are looking into buying a property in Paris.
I know Paris like the back of my hand and let's make it happen.
- Fantastic. Her information is down in the description text below.
-Thank you. Thank you so much. - You're welcome, now let's get back to the gun.
As is fairly typical of development programs like this,
MAC submitted two guns that have the same basic action.
We'll take these apart in a moment but they work the same way, they're both actually
lever-delayed guns. But they differ in some of the details,
like the stocks and the charging handle mechanisms.
So let's start with number 1 here.
We have of course kind of everything folding on this gun, we'll start with the magazine well.
Now these guns both used modified MP40 magazines.
And I don't have the correct magazines for them here, so I've put in just
standard MP40 magazines that came out of other elements of this trials program.
But the way this originally would work is
lift it up and you can lock the magazine ...
there we go, into place vertically.
And then the stock unfolds off the top, like so.
Giving you what is possibly one of the ugliest submachine guns ever developed.
But it is very light and very handy when it's all folded up.
These weigh in at approximately 2.1 kilos, that's about 4.6 pounds.
They are able to be that light largely because of the lever-delayed mechanism.
Which we will get to in a moment, but first I want to show you a couple of the details here.
So the magazine release is right here, this doesn't quite lock up properly with
this standard MP40 magazine, but what would normally happen is you
push that in. It's going to push the magazine catch out to the side.
There we go, so the magazine catch would originally have been
just a little bit higher up on the magazine, right about here.
Now we also have a folding magazine well.
And that's locked in place by this cover. So if I pull this open a little bit,
you can see that there's a little ledge right here that locks over the back of the magazine well.
That locks it in the open position. There's another little ledge right here.
So when you want to fold the magazine well, what you would do is pull this back.
And there is a nice little tab there that you can do it with.
You can then pull the magazine well forward on this pivot like so.
And then this ledge is going to lock behind the back of the magazine well there.
Which prevents it from moving until you again lift this up.
And then you can lock the magazine well in the shooting position.
This, by the way, acts as the safety for the gun.
Because of course when the magazine well is folded down
the magazine isn't in line with the chamber. You can't have a round in the chamber.
This is an open bolt firing gun, so you would never be left with a round
sitting in the chamber, and that is functionally safe.
Now the charging handle on this is pretty cool, it's this lever under the trigger guard.
So all I have to do is pull that back and
Let it down gently there.
There is no selector lever, it's automatic only, like so.
So if I hold the trigger down, it's just going to cycle and cycle until I release the trigger.
So a clever idea for a charging handle, definitely unorthodox.
It's handy, it's small, it doesn't protrude
out of the side of the gun, ... I think that's kind of a cool system.
And then we also have our stock release, which is this spring-loaded latch right here.
Push that down, you can fold the stock over the top, like so.
For sights we have a two-position rear aperture, that's 100 and 200 metres.
And a nice big square front post,
with sort of the stereotypical French precision notch in the centre.
So if you wanted to make a very careful shot, you would use that centre notch
as your aiming point. Where if you just wanted something faster and quicker,
especially in low light, use the entire front sight block.
And just to point it out on here, there is our marking. This is serial number 2.
Now for disassembly we have this lever on the back.
Open that up, and I just rotate that lever 90 degrees,
you saw the trigger guard pop down.
At this point I can just open that right up. It's pinned in place here in the front.
This front pin can come out, it's a screw and nut,
but you wouldn't normally do that just for disassembly.
When I open this up, this is a lever connected to the charging handle.
(Sorry, you can't see it, there we go.)
So when you are charging it, you're using this ... lever
to pull the bolt right in there backwards, like so.
There we go, there is the bolt.
It is difficult to see down inside there, but the recoil spring for this
is actually a coiled up torsion spring, very much like an AK hammer spring.
And it is acting on this lever the same way that an AK hammer spring acts on the AK hammer.
It is a stronger spring though, and it provides enough resistance
to act as a fully functional main recoil spring for the gun.
This is a lever-delayed design, so when it's locked open
ready to fire it's going to be in this configuration.
When you pull the trigger, the sear is going to drop off of this surface,
and the whole thing is going to go forward, it'll pick up a round, push it into the chamber.
Once the bolt face here hits the base of the chamber,
the whole thing is going to collapse down like this.
These two lugs on top of the accelerator lever are going to lock into the receiver.
It's a little tricky to see, but right up in there - and there on the other side,
are two recesses milled into the receiver.
Note that they are on ... this milled section of the gun.
So this is inexpensive sheet metal, this is a solid milled block
that includes, I wouldn't call them the locking surfaces, but sort of the pseudo-locking surfaces.
So in this position, once this is fully collapsed,
the firing pin automatically protrudes through, fires the cartridge,
and this is going to start moving.
But the ... bolt can't come back any significant distance
until after this lever has rotated down
and pushed the main block of the bolt carrier here backwards.
... This has a lot of inertia, pushing it backwards (so the bolt's doing this),
takes a relatively large amount of time and energy.
And by the time this is in this position, pressure has dropped in the chamber
and it's safe for the whole bolt assembly to move backwards.
Now I can take this apart by punching out this centre pin.
This would originally have been staked in place, you can still see the stake marks,
so this is not something that's part of the field stripping.
But once you remove that pin ... far enough that it lets the centre piece out,
I can then pull this off. So there's your fixed firing pin.
That's the bolt carrier, this is the bolt head.
And I can then rotate the accelerator lever around and take it off.
So there is your bolt body.
That's the open cut for the ejector.
Your extractor goes in there, the extractor is missing from this particular example.
This is the same sort of system that would go on to be used in the FAMAS.
Now if we move over and take a look at our other example.
This again used a modified MP40 mag, this is just a standard one.
Actually this isn't quite standard, this has notch in it,
this came out of a different prototype gun which we'll cover later.
On this guy we have something that is obviously just a copy of the Sten.
This is one of the Sten stocks, so that folds over like so.
And they have changed the under the trigger guard charging handle
to a side lever charging handle, like so.
That is non-reciprocating, pull it back and then slide it forward.
The [stock] catch on this one is this big ol' lever right on the back.
Push that in and it's going to unlock from the receiver.
And then you can fold it around like so.
There's the only marking on this one, MAC Number 01.
And otherwise these two guns are essentially identical.
They are not parts interchangeable, they are both one-off handmade prototypes.
This one by the way, has the ... disassembly lever missing,
so they've replaced it with just a simple style of pin here in this collection.
These two designs were both tested by the French in 1948.
And neither one of them was found to be good enough to proceed further in the development program.
On the plus side they were definitely light and compact.
There were a couple of downsides though, for one thing the actions required particularly
high quality materials, both for the lever delay system and also for the recoil springs,
And it was desired to have something a bit more simple
that ... didn't need a lot of high-end fancy alloys to manufacture.
In addition, as you've probably already recognised just from looking at these,
the handling characteristics were kind of terrible.
... Neither of them have particularly good grips.
... If your standard is just the Sten gun, the number 2 here is kind of OK.
The number 1, like the stock, the grip, everything about it handling-wise is just terrible.
And so these developments did not go any further.
Of course ultimately it would be a simple blowback,
heavy, large, and very robust MAT 49 that would be adopted.
I in fact have a video on the MAT 49 if you're interested in seeing what was eventually chosen.
Anyway, a big thanks to the Gendarmerie for giving me access to some
literal one-of-a-kind prototypes like this. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.