Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today by the
generous invitation of the Croatian Police Museum,
taking a look at some of the guns in their collection
from the Croatian Homeland War. And specifically today
we are taking a look at a Croatian ERO.
This is a basically perfect, parts interchangeable copy of the Israeli Uzi.
... The development cycle started in 1991, production began in late 1992.
And this was actually adopted as a standard weapon by the Croatian Army in early 1993.
It would go on to serve with the Croatian Army all the way through Afghanistan.
The guns are still used in limited numbers by the Croatian police today.
This is the best quality and most manufactured
of any of the Croatian domestic submachine guns. So it's a pretty cool story.
Now this originates in 1991 of course, because that is when
the Croatian Homeland War begins. Croatia is invaded by Serbia.
The Croatians really have very little military capacity at that time,
and they need any and all arms that they can get their hands on.
Now there was a company called Končar that was a major industrial concern in Yugoslavia,
as well as carrying over, in fact they are still a major industrial concern today.
They did things like large scale electrical infrastructure, transformers, major projects.
And they set up a subsidiary called Arma specifically to manufacture military goods
in Croatia during the Homeland War, and this was their primary product.
Now the most interesting question about this, to me at least,
is how exactly was a Croatian company able to set up production
of what is a magnificently made and virtually perfect copy of the Uzi on such a tight time frame?
How did they put this together in just a year?
Now there's no documented evidence, there's no actual admission of anything,
but it seems pretty clear to me that this was done with technical assistance from the Israelis.
How exactly that happened is really unclear.
There is some evidence from domestic news articles in 1991
that someone in Croatia ... claims to have had the ... technical data package for the Uzi.
Croatia did and does have a strong Jewish community.
And I think it's realistic to consider that that community
could have been in contact with the Israelis and got military assistance.
Of course no one is willing to acknowledge or admit to any of this,
but it probably happened because this is too good of a gun
to have been developed this quickly without that sort of assistance.
So let's take a closer look, let me show you just how well made these really are.
This is clearly and completely an Uzi.
So of course it uses standard Uzi magazines, 32 round capacity,
made in Croatia, as were the guns of course.
On the back end of the receiver where we typically expect to see Uzi markings,
we have in fact Uzi markings, we have the Croatian designation here, ERO.
And that is actually taken from the name of, well, basically an opera
that was written as part of a Croatian cultural resurgence in the late 19th century.
So kind of a cool association there.
We have a serial number, which is in no way representative of how many of these were made.
I have no idea what the numbering pattern was, but they did not make 176,000 of them.
They made 15,000 or 20,000 of them. And then Croatia.
On the opposite side we have the logo and name of the manufacturing company, Arma,
we'll get to some more detail on them a little bit later.
And then the most readily distinguishable difference
between this and an actual Israeli-made Uzi are the selector markings.
So the selector works exactly the same way, "R" is full-auto, "P" is semi-auto, "Z" is safe.
The Croatians put their own language letters on the safety.
Beyond that we have all of the standard Uzi controls.
Magazine release is here, there is of course a grip safety, selector.
The stock unfolds like so, just like you would have on a regular Uzi.
Actually, I should say the one other thing that is just slightly different here
is the cross screw for the rear sight.
It's the same dimensions. The screw itself is the same as a regular Uzi.
But the screw head and the bolt are just slightly different
than what you would find on an IMI product.
The sights work exactly the same way though.
I can take the top cover off by popping that lever back, lifting this up.
Worth pointing out that these do have the ratcheting safety mechanism in them
that was added to the Uzi shortly after its original development.
That prevents the bolt from bouncing open and firing unintentionally,
which was a bit of an issue with some of the early Uzi production.
So to me this is also an indication that this was done with technical assistance of somebody.
If you were just trying to ... reverse engineer it and put it into production as quickly as possible,
that mechanism is the sort of thing that would be very tempting to just leave out.
Because it's really not essential, it's just a good idea.
There's our bolt. Even things like the material of the buffer pad
at the end of the main spring is proper standard Uzi.
And these parts will interchange and work perfectly well in Israeli-made Uzis.
Now this is the standard pattern, this is the one that went into mass production.
There were two other versions of the ERO that were done.
One was the Mini-ERO, which is not quite a copy of the Mini Uzi.
It's a little bit bigger than a Mini Uzi, and that was pretty limited production.
There was also actually a striker-fired
16 inch barrelled semi-automatic version that was prototyped.
Never went into production but they did make prototypes, so it seems that there may have been a
plan (or a potential plan) to manufacture these for the civilian population,
or perhaps even for export to a country like the United States.
But that never actually took place, just prototypes were made.
In total somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 EROs were made.
Like I said, they were used by the Croatian Army for quite some time.
This was a specialist weapon, it wasn't intended to be a standard infantry arm.
They were issued out to Special Forces, to military policemen, to scout reconnaissance units,
and to a lesser extent things like armoured vehicle crews.
Anyone who needed a particularly compact weapon, something smaller than a rifle, got this.
The typical places you would see this sort of weapon being used in other armies,
things like artillery crews,
in Croatia, those guys still got ... typically M70s, but they still got AKs.
This was a more limited issue sort of weapon.
There was also a suppressor manufactured for it,
a silencer factory-made for it that attaches using the standard Uzi barrel nut.
I don't have one of those to show you but they did also make them, and that falls in line
with their use by groups like Special Forces and reconnaissance scouts.
So Arma was not actually shut down at the end of the ERO manufacturing.
They went on to do some other projects, most notably the APS-95,
which was going to be the new Croatian-manufactured AK/Galil copy.
That's a subject for a whole different video, but worth pointing out
that it was manufactured by the same firm as the ERO.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. I'd like to give a big thanks to the Croatian Police Museum
for giving me access to this example to film for you.
If you find yourself in Zagreb, definitely consider stopping by and checking out the museum.
It's a little bit small but pretty well packed with cool firearms and other artifacts of Croatian history.
Thanks for watching.