Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a fantastically rare
German World War One self-loading rifle.
This is an FSK-16, or a
I think I'm pronouncing that close to correctly, it's a flyer's self-loading carbine.
Now this is essentially the final iteration of Paul Mauser's Model 1906 rifle.
Which is flapper locked. Now as originally developed
the system was a short-recoil flapper-locked rifle and pistol.
And it was first 1906, iterated a bit and improved, became the Model 06/08.
And that was actually sold sort of on a commercial basis.
They didn't make many, but they did make some and sold them as a pistol.
And I have a previous video on the 06/08 Mauser pistols.
But Paul Mauser continued to work on developing the system.
His great goal was to develop a practical, functional self-loading rifle,
and didn't really manage to pull it off before he died.
He did make a whole bunch of different versions with different operating systems.
One of them exploded and destroyed his right eye.
Never quite managed to pull it off.
... His brother basically would finish one of his designs to this,
which did actually get some use in World War One.
So anyway, the 06/08 continues to iterate into the Model of 1909.
We know that the German Rifle Proof Commission was interested in this.
In 1913 they bought 43 of the Model 1909 rifles to tinker with.
And the big change that came with this pattern was the 1909 model was a short recoil gun.
Which means that the barrel reciprocates backwards a little bit when you fire.
And it's that movement that then unlocks the action and allows the bolt to cycle.
Well the short recoil action in a shoulder rifle was not really desirable.
And so what Mauser did was rework the system
to be inertially operated instead of recoil operated, and that's what we have here.
This ... design was completed by I think it was the Model 10/13.
There were sporting rifle versions of this exact system
sold before World War One as the Model of 1913.
And I actually have a video on one of those which looks identical internally to this.
Once World War One got going, Mauser of course immediately had
bigger things to deal with than tinkering around with development of a self-loading rifle.
So they pretty much took the design they had ... right when the war began
and they reworked the outside of the rifle into a military configuration,
and presented it to the German military as ... a semi-automatic infantry rifle.
Which was not accepted.
The problem was the thing was way too expensive, way too fragile,
way too delicate in field conditions, it never would have survived in the trenches.
However, there was a potential use for it in the aircraft of the time.
... So there's a brief time period between when aircraft ... start being used for combat roles
and when they start mounting machine guns in lots of aircraft.
There's a brief period where guys are flying around with pistols and revolvers and shotguns
and taking pot shots at pilots on the opposing side.
And that's an area where a self-loading rifle would be really useful
because you don't have to manually operate it between shots.
It's much easier to shoot at an enemy plane.
And aircraft are a pretty sterile environment, so you're not going to be getting dirt
or shrapnel into your rifle if you are hundreds of feet up above the ground.
And so this is the configuration that was subsequently presented
to the German military for aircraft use.
The stock has been cut down in the front because it's unnecessary out there.
There's of course no bayonet lug on it, and this protrusion
has been added on the front of the magazine well.
So let's take a closer look at this, and let me show you how this gun actually operates.
If you are getting a sense of déjà vu and wondering if
you've seen this video before, you sort of might have.
I do have previous videos on the sporting rifle version of this system
and also on the infantry rifle configuration.
And to be honest, the infantry rifle and the flyer's carbine here
are essentially identical except for some of the woodwork.
So if you've seen that on the infantry video,
you may not need to watch the disassembly of this one, because it's the same.
But if you haven't, let's dig into this.
First off, this stock has very unfortunately been given
a really ugly coat of dark brown paint by somebody.
It's covered up the stock markings, so we have nothing to look at there.
It's a bummer, but inexplicably people do things like that from time to time.
Here we have the markings on the side of the receiver,
Waffenfabrik Mauser A.G. Oberndorf am Neckar, Mauser's Patent 1916.
And then we have the serial number on the front of the receiver, it is S 489 K.
Not exactly sure what the significance of the S and the K are,
but they are typical for these rifles, and that's normal markings.
And then you'll see 489 on the bolt, and you'll see matching numbers on a bunch of the other parts as well.
At the front end of the rifle we have a short cut-down stock.
That is not a sporterisation, that is how the aircraft carbines were actually supplied.
There's no need for ... protecting the barrel out at the end,
so they just cut that off to save weight.
Then we have this protrusion in ... front of the magazine.
This is just wood, it's been screwed into the stock.
You can actually kind of see the seam there, ... it is a separate piece from the regular stock.
And I believe (there's no good documentation),
but I believe that this is just there for a better grip.
It allows you to grip the rifle back here, which in the tight quarters of an aircraft makes sense.
And you can do that without grabbing onto the magazine and potentially causing a malfunction.
I'm not sure about the geometry of the inside of some of these aircraft.
This could allow you to press the rifle up against the edge of the cockpit.
... Well, there wouldn't be any ring mounts because this is pre-machine gun.
But pushing the rifle against something.
Kind of akin to ... like the muzzle lip on the MP40 submachine guns from the Second World War.
Now the magazine is detachable, in order to take it out
you press this button in the front of the trigger guard,
which drops the trigger guard down, and you can then pull the magazine out. It's tight.
You can see why this wouldn't be a great plan in the trenches in World War One.
The magazine is mismatched, it's magazine number 442.
If this looks like an MG13 magazine,
that's because this was the basis for the MG13 magazine.
They are not interchangeable, but this was Mauser's first
sort of detachable box magazine along these lines.
It holds 25 rounds. And it's actually the basis for a really good magazine.
The gun does lock open when empty, although because I've taken the magazine out it won't now.
So we'll go ahead and close the trigger guard.
Now there's a little bit of a process for charging the rifle because the bolt's just locked normally.
What you have to do is take this knurled surface (and it's matching surface on the other side),
you take these, push them forward until they click, then you can cycle the bolt.
Note that this snaps back when the bolt closes.
So if I want to open it again, I have to push that forward.
And then I can manually charge the rifle.
So what's going on in there? Let's open this up and take a look.
First thing to do is take this little stud and snap it out to the side.
... You can see that this top cover kind of lifts up,
and I'm just going to lift it up and take it off. And this is our interior system.
So what we have here are a pair of flaps.
And when they are pushed inward like this,
they sit behind the bolt and they prevent it from moving back.
When they are open they do not prevent it from moving back, and it can cycle.
In the top cover we have this plate with two cam surfaces.
The rollers on the top of the flaps sit in these surfaces.
This is the configuration that everything's sitting in when the rifle is ready to fire.
The rollers here are in the front of these cam tracks.
The flaps are locked behind the bolt so that it can't move.
And this plate is under spring tension. You can see the spring right there.
... And by the way, the striker is inside this guide rod,
you can't see it. And I can't take the bolt out.
Normally the way you would take the bolt out is to lock the bolt all the way to the rear,
like this, and there is a tool that goes into these two holes
to lock the bolt with the spring compressed inside it like that.
And then you can lift the bolt, spring, striker and this rear contraption all out at once.
However, I don't have that tool, so I'm not pulling the bolt out, sorry.
Anyway, there's our firing configuration.
When you fire the rifle it moves backward under recoil.
However, this plate is floating here under spring tension, and it has inertia.
It would rather stay at rest than start moving.
And so what's going to happen is the rifle is going to move backward while this stays in place,
which essentially pulls it forward like this.
That is going to run the rollers back in these cam tracks,
which is going to open the flaps like that.
When this plate has moved all the way ... forward
(when this top cover has moved backward underneath it),
it will catch on a spring and lock in the forward position.
That locks these flaps in the outward position,
allows the bolt to now come backward. There's still pressure in the chamber,
but there is less pressure because it has taken some time for this to move and unlock the flaps.
Now when the bolt starts moving back you can see a little track right there,
that lines up with this lug (because remember it's flipped over).
When the bolt pushes this lug up that unlocks the cam plate, allows it to retract.
And so as soon as the bolt is no longer physically holding these two flaps outward,
as soon as it closes these cam tracks are going to force the flaps back together.
So that's the reason that you have to grab this surface and snap it forward
in order to manually open the bolt, is you have to lock the flaps in the outward position.
I should also mention we have a manual safety lever right here.
When it is engaged it actually locks (we can engage it now),
when it's engaged it actually locks this flap behind the bolt.
... So that the bolt is always going to be locked in battery in a safe position.
It also locks the trigger. The way that it does that ...
Lift this out. You can see a little flap right here. That's a safety.
And if it is not in the inward position it also locks the trigger.
... Oh, and I should say, that little slot locks onto that little tab.
So if the locking flap is in the open position here,
which is what we've got set up right now, the trigger is locked.
You don't want to be able to fire if the flaps aren't in battery because the gun will destroy itself.
Once this is pushed ... inward, which is what you would get
if the locking flap (there we go) is locked, then the trigger will function. There you go.
It's striker fired, so pulling the trigger releases a striker
that's under spring tension inside of this tube.
So that's pretty much it. It's an exquisitely well-made gun.
Far too well made in fact to be functional in the trenches of World War One for obvious reasons.
German aviation forces, and that includes fixed-wing aircraft,
Zeppelins and observation balloons,
the crews of all of these different services would use a couple, two actually,
different self-loading rifles during this early period of air combat.
One of them was essentially the Mondragón rifle,
originally designed by Manuel Mondragón in Mexico, manufactured by SIG.
The Mexican government defaulted on payments for them,
which left SIG with a bunch of leftover rifles.
And the Germans actually bought a bunch of them during World War One
and refitted them with drum magazines and used them as aviation semi-auto rifles.
Then there was also this pattern, this was the FSK-16,
the Mondragón was identified as the FSK-15.
Both of them did see use, but not for very long and not in very great numbers.
So we don't know the exact number of these that were manufactured.
We know from Mauser records that 485 of them were sold to the German military.
Presumably they didn't start at number 1, they probably started at number 100,
especially given that this one's over 485 in serial number.
But that was pretty much it, something on the order of about 500 of these were made.
They did not see substantial use.
Brief use in the aircraft and then side-lined for the rest of the war
because they weren't suited for ground operations, and they were far inferior
to the machine guns that ended up being mounted in aircraft.
At the end of the war obviously the Treaty of Versailles disarms the German military,
and rifles like this ... they can't justify keeping them in service and so these get scrapped.
And today they are really extremely rare.
So it's very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.