Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I am Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Kessler Auction House
in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, taking a look at an interesting
submachine gun from the ... Yugoslavian Civil War.
This is specifically a Šokac
(I think I'm pronouncing that correctly), submachine gun.
And it is one of at least 10 and probably 20, different indigenous submachine gun designs
that were put into production around 1990 or 1991 to arm the Croatian forces in
the Yugoslav Civil War, the Croatian ... successful attempt at becoming an independent state.
So the reason that these all exist, ... there are actually a couple factors that go into it.
First off, when the conflict in Croatia broke out there
simply weren't enough guns in the country to arm everybody that they wanted to arm.
So there was some availability of captured Yugoslav National Army weapons and that went a long way.
And they were also able to smuggle in some guns. There were some guns left over from previous conflicts,
like all the way back to World War Two. But ultimately they still needed more.
And once they were done importing and smuggling in everything that could be found,
they turned to local industrial production. Now Croatia actually had a fairly substantial industrial base,
although none of it ... was arms production up until the war.
So what that meant is there were a lot of opportunities for relatively small factories,
but competent factories, to convert their tooling and production over to small arms.
Submachine guns were a particularly popular type because, well, they're fairly easy to make,
and they're pretty effective, especially in urban combat.
So that's what largely was manufactured.
Now like I said, there were at least 8 or 10 and probably more like 20 different designs
that were put into production at some level of capacity.
And these guns are in general not innovative, they are generally copies of other existing guns.
But they're still pretty interesting to look at because of the different ways that the
manufacturing techniques had to be adapted in order to copy an existing gun,
using whatever sort of machinery and tooling might be available.
So, let's take a closer look at this guy and show you a specific example.
So the sharp-eyed may have already noticed this and drawn the appropriate conclusion,
the Šokac is actually a copy of the PPSh-41. It doesn't really look like it externally
because it's got a metal folding stock and a relatively square receiver, where the PPSh had a round receiver.
But mechanically that's exactly what this is. And you can tell by the trigger guard,
which is the one external feature that really does resemble the PPSh.
Now the folding stock is directly from the CZ 25 series of submachine guns.
It does fold up there if you prefer it that way.
And there is a little metal bar right here, and that bar acts to hold the stock closed.
So what you do is rotate that about halfway down,
and then it will lock in place either with the handle down or the handle up.
And to open or close the stock you just pull back on it, and then you can rotate it around.
But the stock is not what we are interested in here specifically, that would be the operating mechanism.
We have a button back here. Push that in and then you can
pivot the receiver open at this front screw.
And once that's open, our bolt assembly comes directly out.
And this is exactly a copy of the PPSh-41 bolt. We have a captive recoil spring here with
this looks like a plastic buffer. There were a couple of different types of buffers used.
And then the bolt itself is, like I said, exactly a copy of the PPSh.
You have a safety latch here on the side which allows you to lock the bolt in the forward or rear position.
Beyond that it's just a matter of a sear engagement surface there,
and a bunch of mass to delay opening. This is simple blowback. Fixed firing pin.
That's it, very simple.
In fact the bolt is so similar to a PPSh bolt that an actual PPSh bolt like this one here,
will in fact drop into the Šokac and just about function.
It's just a little bit tight, I think on the top surface.
And the one other difference is because the PPSh had a wider receiver at the top on the outside,
the safety catch for the PPSh doesn't engage in the Šokac receiver.
You'll see that right here this safety catch comes all the way into the edge of the bolt,
on the PPSh it's slightly outside.
So that's really the only difference in these two.
PPSh bolt.
So fits and locks,
but it's a little bit tight.
And the safety notch doesn't do anything.
Looking inside the receiver you can see a fire control group, we just have a sear.
When I pull the trigger, sear comes down, and then the gun is going to fire until I release the trigger.
That's on full-auto. If I switch this backward into semi-auto, now we also have a disconnector here.
So if I pull the trigger and then push this down, it resets the trigger, and I have to pull it again.
So in this case what happens is the bolt is sitting back here.
When I pull the trigger the bolt goes forward,
it trips that, which resets the sear, then it fires, and then when it recoils open it gets caught by the sear again.
So, a simple but effective semi-auto mechanism.
The magazine catch is located up here,
and it's interesting to point out that the magazine well is plastic while the trigger guard cover is metal here.
And the plastic has a slot open, you can see it right there in the back.
Let's pull the magazine out.
There you go, gives you a little better view of that slot in the magazine well.
The magazines themselves are proprietary in design.
Which I immediately know a bunch of people are going to say is a dumb idea,
why didn't they use some commonly available submachine gun mag?
Well the answer is if there had been one, they probably would have.
But the whole reason that they were making submachine guns in the first place is because
there weren't any commonly available submachine guns to use.
So having the factory make its own magazines makes sense when there aren't any other magazines around to be had.
Kessler here actually has two of these submachine guns.
And by the way one of them is serial numbered in the 3,900 range and one in the 4,900 range.
Which leads me to think that at least 5,000 of these were made, and that's pretty substantial production.
The magazines apparently were at first 30 rounds.
It was decided that that was a bit too long ... I guess to be handy, so they shortened them to 25 rounds.
Taking a cue from the Uzi. So this particular gun that we're looking at,
it comes with a 25 round magazine, the other one has a 30 round magazine.
This is a double [stack] single [feed] mag, so it tapers at the top to feed a single cartridge.
And it has this rather unique locking catch on it.
When it's in the gun, that's what the bolt arrangement looks like. Go ahead and lock that back in place.
We have a safety catch there in the front that allows you to lock the bolt closed.
And we have one in the back, which allows you to lock the bolt open.
However, there is no additional safety.
so if you're walking around with this thing with a loaded magazine
and the bolt catches on something, comes back to here,
and then releases, it will fire unintentionally and automatically.
One last interesting element to point out is the muzzle which is threaded, presumably for a suppressor.
But it is actually reverse, it's left hand threaded. So take that nut off there.
I would presume that there were some Croatian suppressors being made that were also left hand threaded.
Oh, and the sights. Simple flip sight, a really quite small rear aperture, not particularly good.
With two flip settings: we've got 100 metres, and 200 metres there.
With a front sight that is just a round post ... with a full protective hood on it.
Well, because you stuck around to the very end you get a cool bit of bonus footage.
When I was looking around the auction house here for another gun,
I happened to stumble across this one which I hadn't realised that they had.
This is a very early production Šokac, and this is a late production,
and so we get to take a look at a couple of the differences.
Now the first one that you can probably see in this shot pretty well is that the early one is actually a bit longer.
If I line up the magazine wells there.
Yep, you can see the barrel is just a little bit longer, a couple inches longer.
The more substantial difference, however, is the change from
metal and wood to plastic for the magazine well and the grip.
This has basically the same sort of assembly here, although you can see a few things have changed.
If we look up under the bottom, this early gun has a removable fire control group to it,
the late gun does not. You can see the pin holding that in place right here.
As well as a pin ... that's the pin for the magazine catch,
which has been replaced with, I believe, this screw.
Of course on the early gun the magazine well and the trigger housing assembly
are ... both metal welded together right here.
On the later guns this middle section is metal, but the front, the ... magazine well, is plastic.
They really did a pretty good job of maintaining the same grip profile on the plastic grip that they had on the wood.
These are kind of weirdly small, they are ... not very bulky grips in the hand, which is a little bit unusual.
We have some flavour of the Hungarian AK grip on that one,
and then they've replaced it with finger grooves on the new model.
In addition, on the early guns they actually had a front sight hood that ... didn't meet up in the middle,
wasn't a single piece, which is interesting and unusual.
Not sure exactly why, but they changed that to fully hooded and connected at the top there.
Even in just little pieces like this, you can see that the machining work really cleaned up over time.
So there are a lot more extraneous angles on this piece.
And they've made parts a little bit simpler and a little bit more refined on the later guns.
You can definitely see that as well on the receiver tubes.
I don't know how well it shows up in video, but this early gun you can very
clearly feel the tool marks from this being lathe turned.
On the later pattern guns that's a nice smooth finish and better machined.
Internally however on this older one nothing's any different, this is exactly the same.
Still the same mechanics, same style of recoil buffer and everything.
Now the serial numbers are on the same place on both of these.
You'll see the newer one on the left is serial 4,900 and change.
The older one is a little bit harder to make out, it's actually serial number 841.
There we go, you can see it there.
Unfortunately, since the end of the conflict a lot of these guns, not just the Šokac here
but also all of the other types of Croatian designed submachine guns,
a lot of those have become notorious for their use by organised criminal gangs, which is certainly unfortunate.
Very few of them still exist. There were some that were deactivated and sold in Germany.
I believe there were a handful of parts kits imported into the US.
It's pretty cool to find a complete live and intact one here.
It is of course for sale at the Kessler Auction. So if you're interested in this sort of thing definitely check them out.
They are an excellent source for unusual and interesting firearms in Europe.
Thanks for watching.
[ revised sk cn2 ]