Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're taking a look at a High Standard
submachine gun, also known as a Marlin submachine gun,
also known as a UD-42 or United Defense submachine gun.
And this is a design that passed through three different companies
before it was actually able to be manufactured.
The original designer was a guy named "Gus" Swebilius, or Carl Swebilius,
who was chief designer for the High Standard company,
and he came up with a design and patented it in 1940.
And it's a good little gun, it's a 9mm open bolt submachine gun.
It's kind of distinctive for these doubled magazines.
That's how the magazines were made at the factory, and how they were intended to be.
It's an open bolt gun. It's a pretty fast firing gun, the rate of fire is about 1,000 rounds a minute on this.
And it uses 20 round magazines doubled together, so.
The US government wasn't really interested because it wasn't in .45 calibre, however the Netherlands was interested.
They decided that they needed some 9mm submachine guns in December of 1941, which is
coincidentally when the Japanese attacked the Dutch East Indies. It appears the Netherlands kind of went,
"Oh, OK, we're gonna need some more guns, let's put in an order."
High Standard however wasn't able to fulfill the order. High Standard was busy producing
Browning M2 heavy machine guns and had no spare production facilities.
So Swebilius looked around for some company that was interested in basically licencing rights to the gun,
and he found the United Defense Supply Corporation who was interested in doing it.
and so on December 12 1941 they licenced, they transferred the rights to UD, United Defense.
Well United Defense also didn't actually have any manufacturing capability of its own,
it was just kind of a paper company. United Defense then subcontracted the manufacture to the Marlin Corporation.
Marlin was actually a gun maker and had available production capacity,
which is what they needed to actually build some guns.
Unfortunately for the Dutch, Marlin wasn't able to put these into production nearly as quickly as had been anticipated.
They complained that the drawings they had gotten from High Standard weren't very good,
that they had to do a lot of retooling, and as they started production
they were producing the guns as they were contracted to do, but when they were inspected by the Dutch,
the Dutch inspector insisted that the guns had to have interchangeable parts. Which is a very reasonable request,
but it wasn't included in the contract between Swebilius, or United Defence, and Marlin.
So Marlin had to then go back and redesign some of their tooling to ensure that all the parts would be interchangeable.
Well, as this is going on the Japanese are busily conquering the Dutch East Indies,
that fight ends in March of 1941, and at that point, it's too late.
There's no point to sending these guns where the Japanese will get them.
So all 15,000 that the Dutch ordered ended up staying in the United States.
So what do we do with all of these guns? It's a 9mm gun, it uses its own proprietary magazines.
The US military wasn't interested in them.
So what ended up happening was they were assigned to the OSS.
Ultimately all of the guns save 800, the Dutch government kept 800 for themselves
which would then eventually be transported to the East Indies after World War Two,
the remaining 14,200 all went to the OSS.
And for the OSS this was a great gun, because 9mm was the cartridge that was available in occupied Europe,
and the OSS just sprinkled these things around like candy.
Pretty cool actually, ... everywhere from Greece, the Mediterranean up to Norway
they were distributing these guns by airdrop, and with SOE and OSS agents and Jedburgh agents.
In particular, a bunch of them went to France, a bunch of them went to Belgium, a bunch of them went to Holland.
And that's where this one is, there's 6 or 7 of these that are now registered today in Holland
that are left over from these OSS and SOE covert operations.
... It's also a very simple gun to take apart, so why don't we do that and take a look at the internals.
So it's a relatively short barrelled gun.
We have of course a large magazine catch, and these magazines are very similar to the Thompson in style.
The magazine lock is this round peg that comes into the back,
and they have a rail on the back, kind of a T-slot here in the receiver
that the magazine fits into.
It is an open bolt gun, but it does have both a safe and semi-auto position for the fire control group.
And most of these guns that you see, at least here in Europe (I haven't looked closely in the US yet),
will ... have mismatching upper and lower assemblies because they are in fact interchangeable.
So we have 34 on the upper,
and 37 on the lower. So only a couple digits off, but they are different.
The rear sight is an aperture, back here, adjustable for windage, and then interestingly
adjustable for quite a lot of elevation.
Although there are no demarcations on that, so not sure exactly how you're supposed to tell what the range is.
The simple solution is don't raise the sight. You just leave it there, because it's a submachine gun.
Disassembly is based on this lever. I'm going to pull it down and then
the upper and lower assemblies simply come apart. There's a big lug here on the bottom
that locks into
this tab, gets held in place. Pretty simple there.
Not a whole lot going on in the back of the gun though. We just have a sear that drops to release the bolt.
In semi-auto we have a disconnector that comes up as well.
That goes down, trips that, which pops the sear back up.
At the front end we have actually a very small, light recoil spring which is a little bit unusual.
And a bolt that is heavy in the way that the recoil spring is kind of surprisingly small and light,
so you put that together, and it will work just fine.
Now the OSS referred to these often as Marlin submachine guns because they were made by Marlin,
although they are not marked Marlin anywhere.
They're marked UD for United Defense, and they typically today are known as United Defense Model 42s.
That's pretty much it for the mechanics of the gun, it's a basic blowback submachine gun.
Open bolt, charging handle cover there.
Well, thanks for watching guys, I've kind of intended to do a video of one of these in the United States
because they're floating around the US, but ... when I had the opportunity with this one that
actually is a Dutch Resistance World War Two gun, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to take a closer look at it.
So thank you for watching. If you enjoy seeing this sort of thing, please do consider taking a look at my Patreon page.
It's support from the folks there that make it possible for me to travel and bring these guns to you guys.
Thanks for watching.