Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a Swiss SIG MP48 submachine gun.
This is essentially what you get if you go to SIG
and you tell them you want a submachine gun
and they give you one of these beautiful things,
and you say, "No, no, no, I want it cheaper and simpler."
And you do that about four times in a row.
You eventually whittle them down to the point where they are dejectedly giving you this.
And in fact it would go even one step simpler and cheaper than this.
But we'll get to that at the end of the video.
So what happens is ... the Swiss government finally starts taking notice of
an interest in submachine guns in about 1940.
Coincidentally when World War Two breaks out
and people start using submachine guns very effectively.
So the Swiss military goes to run some submachine gun trials,
and SIG presents them with an MK ... (well, it wouldn't have been one of these,
it would have been a slightly longer barrel), but an MKMS submachine gun.
And the problem is this is a little bit too expensive, and as the trials continue
SIG makes a little bit simplified version, the Model 1941.
And then eventually they ultimately just lose the contract
to Waffenfabrik Bern, their major competitor in Switzerland.
But the SIG Company will continue to attempt to iterate on this design
and develop something that is of commercial interest to someone.
And so they continue with a 1944 design where,
instead of the nicely, finely machined receiver,
they go to just a pretty simple forged (actually probably cast) receiver.
And you'll see that here too, in the '44 design it was a cast receiver with
the same sort of traditional wood stock. That didn't really go anywhere.
And so in '46 they simplify it again both to make it shorter and cheaper,
and get rid of the traditional stock.
And they go to a wire collapsing stock and a ... modern style pistol grip.
They also shorten the barrel down quite a bit, so they go from about an [11.5] inch barrel
to about an 8 inch barrel, ... 200mm or so.
Now this version would see a little bit of adoption,
... a batch of these were actually purchased by Chile.
That's kind of it, this really was another unsuccessful SIG submachine gun.
They had a long history of unsuccessful submachine gun designs.
So ... before we talk about the final iteration of this sort of thing,
let's take a closer look at it, and let me show you what they have done to simplify the inside.
Given how different the overall look of this is compared to the original MKPS series,
there are actually a surprising number of holdovers from that original 1930s SIG design.
For one, the folding magazine well remains essentially identical.
Now, it's got a different release mechanism,
there's now this big latch on the side that unlocks the magazine well.
So you depress that to open or close it.
But the magazine release lever is still on the front.
These magazines are exactly the same that you would get in the early SIG submachine guns.
So pretty much the entire run of different designs are all based on the same magazine.
And that makes a lot of sense, it's a good magazine, double stack, double feed, good capacity.
And there's no reason to change it up,
and have to make a whole bunch of new magazines every time they iterate the design of the gun.
The basic geometry of the receiver also stayed pretty much the same.
It's the same length, the ejection ports are the same size and the same location.
So SIG didn't have to really re-engineer or redo much of the math
when they did these new iterations like the MP48 here.
They were able to stick to changing less complicated features.
That said, there are definitely some things that did change, the sights certainly changed.
There is no longer a manual safety on the MP48.
Although you can see where on the MP46 they did have one,
a safety very much like the early 1930s designs,
a lever that would flip back and forth from safe to fire.
Well, that was in the casting or forging here.
(And by the way, you can see they didn't even bother to finish machine
the outside, they just left it rough like that.)
But this was machined for that style of safety,
but it was never actually installed on ... the MP48 pattern.
Instead of a tangent leaf the sights are now a rotating block of U-notch sights.
We have a little arrow here that tells us what range we're set to,
and they have a 50 metre, 100, 200 and 300 metre rear notch.
The front sight is actually even more K31-like than some of the earlier guns in fact.
It's got a K31 style of protector wings.
And it's got that square front blade that's mounted in a diagonal dovetail.
So you can adjust the windage in very slight increments by tapping that forward and backward.
It makes it a little more precise, a little easier to adjust than just a straight side to side dovetail.
I don't want to forget about markings, but there are only basically two here.
We have a serial number. This is just a guide for lining up the end cap for disassembly.
By the way, there are serial numbers on a number of the other parts.
And this is an all matching gun.
And then there is a "9MP" marked on the bottom of the barrel,
and that stands for 9mm Parabellum, 9x19.
That is, by the way, the only calibre that these later guns were offered in.
Of course the pistol grip is offered here in conjunction with the collapsing wire stock.
There's a little button right here, (this particular one this button is really tight).
But if I can push that button in, I can then collapse the stock inward
for a much more compact package for travel, or carry, or storage.
There's no manual safety on the MP48, in fact ... like almost no external manual controls.
It does have a semi-auto capability now, and that's in the form of a progressive trigger.
So a slight pull gives you semi-auto, and a deeper pull gives you full.
And then the safety essentially is the magazine well.
Because you can have a loaded magazine in here,
and if the magazine well is locked forward like this, the gun is by definition safe
because there's no way for a cartridge to get up into the chamber.
You don't have to worry about a round being chambered when you do that
because this is an open-bolt firing gun.
Meaning that for it to fire you lock the bolt back,
when you pull the trigger the bolt is going to jump forward.
It can never actually be at rest
with the bolt forward and a round chambered unless you have a dud round.
So that's the safety right there.
And it's actually a fairly fast, fairly reasonable safety.
If you want to take the gun from carry to actually firing,
all you have to do is cock the bolt, and press this latch,
open the magazine well and it's ready to fire.
In order to get a look at the inside, we have to take the trigger guard assembly off.
That is very much like the earlier SIGs
where we ... still have serialised screws and screw keeper screws.
So I can take this one out, but there is a little bit of a trick.
This is essentially the same trigger guard as the early 1930s designs,
and on those there's a second screw at the back behind the actual trigger guard.
Well in this case they went ahead and they still use that screw,
but now you have to take off the grip in order to get to it.
There we go, take the two grip screws out, the grip comes off.
Serial numbered, of course.
But what's hiding underneath is this much cruder, and really fairly sharp,
little sheet metal tab to secure the grip.
And you can see down inside there is the other trigger guard screw.
Alright, we take that out.
And now - got to put this part way down,
and then this can lift out from underneath the sling bar.
So there's your trigger guard.
And then the wood and the stock assembly will drop off.
Really nothing in there, it's just a truncated full stock
with a couple of grooves for the wire frame bars.
There we go, there's the inside of the gun.
A little bit of a simplified trigger assembly, there's no longer a manual safety.
It's interesting to note that all of the cuts
for the manual safety were actually made here, along with milling this flat.
But I think it's pretty safe to say that the safety was never installed
given that the safe and fire markings aren't on here, and the parts aren't installed.
I suspect this one may have been one of the very first
built on what was originally an MP46 receiver that would have still used the safety.
We still do have this mechanical safety lever back here
that was a feature all the way back to the MKMO series.
This prevents you from pulling the trigger if the end cap is not fully in place.
So to take this off I just depress that.
Rotate it so that the arrows line up with each other, then this comes off.
One of the nice improvements they made here by this point,
is they have a fully captive recoil spring.
And that takes a lot of hassle out of reassembling a gun with a loose recoil spring.
The bolt handle has been slightly redesigned, but it works essentially the same way.
There's a round cutout there for the front end of that captive recoil spring.
That's going to ensure that the bolt handle can't come out.
And the bolt has been simplified a bit, there are less machine cuts necessary for it.
You may notice this looks quite a lot like something like a Sten bolt.
The firing pin is fixed in here.
It's actually still a separate piece that's just pressed in place, you can see it right there.
But on the earlier guns, if we go back to the MKM and MKP series,
the firing pin was actually a separate component that would come out.
And there you go, that's the whole thing. There is a SIG MP48 field stripped.
After this SIG did make one additional simplification,
and that was to replace all the wood with polymer, they went to a black polymer.
And at that point it was getting into the 1950s,
and they actually had changed their standard nomenclature.
So people are probably familiar with SIG's pistols being 200 series, and their rifles being 500.
So you've got the SIG 210 and 220, 225, 226, etc.
With the rifles you've got the 510 which is the Sturmgewehr 57.
And then people are probably more familiar with the SIG 550 series.
Well, the submachine guns were the 300 series, and essentially
this MP48 with polymer furniture was the first of those nomenclature designs.
So that would have been the SIG 310.
That was also basically a complete failure.
There would be a SIG 320 design, which was done in prototype only.
And that was a fundamentally different design that, hopefully,
I'll have an opportunity to film for you another day.
But that's what ended up happening here.
Essentially this is like the third from the end of SIG's attempts to make a submachine gun.
And they were just never really able to come up with something
that fit what the market was looking for.
It's unfortunate, a lot of these are very nice.
Even the radically simplified ones have features on them
that are way more sophisticated and better manufactured
than you would expect on a budget, simple, submachine gun.
Which I suppose is probably a big part of why they were never able to be cost effective and popular.
Anyway, this one is obviously NFA registered,
this is a fully transferable C&R submachine gun.
A big thanks to Morphy's for giving me the opportunity
to take a look at this one and show it to you guys.
Thanks for watching.