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 both versions, well, two of the four versions
of the Swedish K aka the Carl Gustav m/45.
Called the "Swedish K" because
submachine gun in Swedish is "Kulsprutepistol",
which I ... am almost certainly mispronouncing,
but it means basically "pistol bullet sprayer".
Starts with K, hence it just gets shortened to "Kpist" or Swedish K.
Anyway, when these were originally brought into service in 1945
they were like this, the standard m/45 pattern.
However, after a few years they made a number of improvements to them
resulting in the m/45B, which is this pattern.
And I figured, since Morphy's actually has examples of
both of these things here at the same time,
it would be a good opportunity to take a look at them comparatively
and show you what changed between the two versions.
We've got the original m/45 up here, the 45B down below.
The 45B pattern was adopted in 1954.
And along with that, ... here's the most obvious visual change, they started painting the guns green.
This is paint applied over the original Parkerised finish,
and it just makes the ... finish a little more durable.
Now the most substantial change from a technical and user perspective
is the change in the mag well.
The original m/45s were intended to run on two different styles of magazine.
They wanted to be able to use the Finnish style of 50 round quad-stack mag,
as well as their own domestic developed 36 round double-stack box magazine.
These are excellent magazines by the way. You'll notice they're slightly trapezoidal,
that gives the cartridges a little bit of room to move around
and allows the magazine to feed reliably even if there's some sand and grit inside it.
At any rate, the original m/45s had a detachable magazine well.
This, you don't actually need it regardless,
but it makes feeding the standard stick mags a bit easier.
Without that you can fit one of the Suomi quad-stack magazines.
And you can also use the 36 rounders.
Now what happened is they decided to abandon use of the quad-stack magazines
because they just weren't nearly as reliable as the domestic 36 rounders.
And so with the B variation they just permanently riveted that magazine well in place.
So it can no longer be removed because there's no need to remove it.
The second change was to the barrel shroud out here.
The original gun had fairly large vent holes, the B model has smaller vent holes.
There were concerns that the large holes left this barrel shroud a little bit too fragile,
it was a little too easy to bend it.
And by reducing the size of the holes you can make the thing stronger.
So that was part of the B upgrade.
And then third, they strengthened the rear end cap on the receiver
both internally and externally (we'll pull them apart in just a moment).
They did this because they were also changing the ammunition that they were using.
Sweden had originally used the same ammunition for its m/40 pistols and its m/45 submachine guns.
They changed that, they introduced the m/39B cartridge
which was essentially a more powerful armour-piercing 9mm.
It had a heavy steel jacket on the bullet that didn't deform very easily,
and it was also a higher pressure cartridge.
So they had to stop using that in pistols,
and then they needed to increase the strength
of the attachment to the end cap here, and also to the buffer inside.
So you take this off by just pushing the centre in,
and rotating it just far enough that that hook releases.
And then we can pull the end cap off.
And the same thing here.
Now our original m/45 here, you can see the original recoil pad in there, ... the buffer,
and it's pretty well destroyed and
melded itself into the recoil spring there, so I can't take it off to show you.
Obviously though you can see why that wasn't a really good solution.
On the 45B version they add a spring buffer in here instead, and that's a much better solution.
And then if we look at the end caps you can see that in addition to the really obvious hook on the top,
they've also added a strengthening tab on the bottom
where the original m/45 was just a plain round cap.
Definitely cool to see both of these in the same place,
it's not common that one is able to.
Now the two other versions that I'm not touching on are the m/45C,
which is a version made specifically for soldiers who are standing ceremonial guard.
It's essentially just a different barrel jacket that includes a bayonet lug,
so that you can fix a nice long bayonet to the thing so it looks better on a parade ground.
And the m/45D which is a version that ... included a semi-auto selector switch.
It didn't go into real significant production,
these are the two versions that saw the vast majority of production and use.
So, they are both fully transferable, they're both curio and relic eligible registered guns.
So very cool to see them both here at Morphy's. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.