Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum and I'm here today at Hire Arms,
a movie armoury company in Johannesburg, South Africa,
and we're taking a look at a really unusual and cool
German 1920s revolving semi-auto shotgun. So this is a Becker shotgun,
it was actually designed in the 1890s, patented in the 1890s, but didn't go into production until the 1920s.
And according to all the sources I've been able to find, only a hundred of these were made.
The serial number on this one is a little odd considering that, but we'll get to that in a moment.
The way this works, this actually has a six position cylinder that has five
chambers in it and one blank position.
16-gauge, apparently they were all made in 16-gauge, and then the barrel blows forward with each shot.
It automatically ejects the empty cases, the first four empty cases,
the last case remains in the cylinder until you manually eject it.
And a really interesting and unusual design. So let's take a closer look at how this whole thing works.
So this actually isn't even marked 'Becker' on it anywhere.
The only marking on it is on the left side of the barrel, right here, where its marked
'Deutsche Jagdwaffengesellschaft Dusseldorf',
so, German hunting weapons manufacturing, Dusseldorf.
Then it has a serial number on the receiver here and the serial number (assuming this is a serial number), is 755.
That's a bit odd if only 100 were made. You know,
it's certainly very common for companies to start at numbers other than 1,
but usually they start at, like, 100 or 1,000.
So I don't know, either they started at a weird place or perhaps the
common knowledge about how many of these are made is incorrect.
We have a German 'Crown over U' proof mark here on the rear tang,
and then the other really cool set of markings are here on the cylinder.
Each of the chambers is actually numbered in Roman numerals 1 through 5, and
then there is one blank which is actually an empty, a plugged space for a chamber.
So let's take a look at how this works.
So the first thing you need to do in order to load this, is actually cycle the barrel forward.
And this is what normally will happen when you fire it, you take this and
pull it just slightly forward. That action re-cocks a striker back in the firing mechanism.
So from this position, I can actually dry fire it ... [click]
you can hear that.
Normally that would rotate the cylinder, but our cylinder is already at its fully unwound position.
So once I've got that barrel forward, I can then load a cartridge through this
loading port, and then index the cylinder, load number 2,
index it, load number 3,
number 4, number 5.
And then, having loaded number 5,
we roll it to the sixth position where it is solid and plugged,
and that means that chamber number 5 is in line with the barrel.
So the first thing that's going to happen when you fire is that the barrel is going to snap backwards,
like that.
When that happens, ... there's a cone on the barrel, and there's a cone on the front of each chamber.
They interlock and that provides a gas seal to prevent blowby.
That allows the shot to go down, you don't have gas blowby coming out,
although the Becker does have a nice shield on the front just as extra protection.
At the same time, gas is actually being redirected into the previously fired chamber.
Now in this case this is our first shot fired, so there is no previous one.
This, what would be a chamber, is just a plugged block.
... Once we get to our next shot, this gas coming over is going to automatically eject the empty case
out the ejection port, so.
And then the barrel is going to go back forward. So right now we've just fired round number 5, chamber number 5,
the barrel is going to be forced forward like so, it only moves about an inch, a little less, maybe 20mm.
When that happens, the cylinder rotates one position, it indexes down to number 4.
When you load this up, when you wind it, you're actually winding up a spring
that gives it the energy to unwind for one full revolution as you empty the whole cylinder.
So now that we have number 4 in line,
the gun is cocked, we can see that the barrel is forward. When we fire this one,
now chamber number 4 is going to fire, gas is going to come down through here
and it's going to vent into number 5 and blow the case out there,
and then it is going to immediately proceed to blow the barrel forward ...
[click]
and as you can see right there that trips a latch, and allows the cylinder to index one more position.
So now we're on number 3. When we fire number 3, it will eject number 4.
When we fire number 2, it will eject number 3.
When we fire number 1, it will eject number 2.
And then you are left with the gun in this position. The barrel has blown forward,
you are left with the blank solid chamber facing the barrel, and you still have
your empty round number 1 in its chamber, because there's no cartridge left to blow it out.
So in order to deal with that there is a manual ejector rod, just like an old-style revolver,
and we can pull that back and kick the case out manually, like so.
That also means if you have, say, a really sticky case, or for some reason
the ejection system malfunctions, you can easily use this manual ejector to go back and
unload any cases that didn't automatically eject.
In order to reload the thing, what we have to do is
re-cock the action and
then you can wind this back up, loading as you go, until you're at number 5,
and the gun's back in that original loaded, hot, ready to fire configuration.
We have a safety latch down here, that's just going to act as a standard safety.
And then there are two disassembly pieces. There's a plug here,
which I suspect holds the barrel in place, and pulling that down allows you to take the
front end of the gun off. And then there is a disassembly lever on this side which
rotates down, and I believe that allows you to take the rear end of the gun off.
Unfortunately, this particular example is...
I'm not entirely sure how to take it apart and I don't want small pieces to go flying all over the place.
So unfortunately, that's as far as we're gonna take this down at this time.
But I think you got a pretty good idea for how it works.
Well, thank you guys for watching.
These are obviously really quite rare guns to find.
This one is not in the world's greatest condition,
but I think this is the first time I've ever actually
seen one of these in person, so I didn't want
to miss the opportunity to get some video on it.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
A big thanks to Hire Arms for letting me
take a look at this and bring you guys the video.
Thanks for watching.