Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today I want to address an issue that comes up in comments a lot,
something I get asked about a lot, and that is box magazines versus drums.
Really the question is: why not drums? Why aren't there more drums?
I often see this when discussing the BAR, "Hey, look the BAR had a 20 round magazine.
It was intended as an automatic rifle sort of pushed into the light machine gun role,
wouldn't it have been better with a bigger magazine, especially a drum, like, why didn't the BAR have a 50 round drum on it?"
And this also applies to, in some cases rifles, and also submachine guns.
I think the problem is there are a couple of downsides to drums that people don't generally think about.
don't take into consideration. So the first one is drums are more complicated to make
and more complicated to make reliable than basic simple box magazines.
When you are having to push cartridges in circles that's a lot more difficult
dealing with two axes instead of just "push cartridges straight through box".
So that's one element.
You also have, and maybe I think this is actually even more significant, drums are a pain in the butt to carry.
It's one thing to have a drum magazine in a gun, but if you are then trying to carry a load of ammunition
on your person, stick magazines, box magazines, are far more convenient to actually carry than drums.
Think about an AK drum, or a Thompson drum, or a Suomi drum or a Lewis gun or a DP pan magazine.
These things are, you know, they range from yea big to, you know, DP pans are huge things.
How do you hold those on a belt? They take up a lot more belt infrastructure than stick magazines.
And anyone who has, say, taken a drum fed submachine gun into a combat style match,
like an IPSC style match where you need a lot of ammo and you need reloads, will recognise this.
You know, I can fit a whole bunch of say, 32 round, 33 round, block stick mags in the exact same space where I could fit one drum.
And you'll get more ammunition in the same space with stick mags than you will with drums.
And I think we see ... these two issues (and those are the two main ones,
it's harder to make drums reliable because they are more complicated, and it's a lot more awkward to carry drums),
and what we see is that this idea of drum magazines being good keeps coming back,
like it's a persistent, compelling idea, and a lot of people have tried it.
However, if you look at the people, the countries, the military forces specifically because that's what I want to focus on here,
if you look at the militaries that adopted drums, look at what they adopted after they adopted a drum.
And you'll find that it is virtually never another drum.
So, we have a bunch of examples here. The Thompson gun.
When the US military first adopted Thompsons they had both 20 round stick magazines and 50 round drums.
Now there were also 100 round drums for the Thompson. Those things are ludicrously heavy and ludicrously large to carry
in any way, even in the gun. And I don't think the military ever used 100 round drums.
They are really rare, very few people bought those things.
But they did use 50 round drums.
Once the war got going they realised these drums were awkward, they switched to 20 and then added 30 round stick magazines and
when the Thompson was simplified during World War Two, the new M1 version of the Thompson
couldn't even take drum magazines. It didn't have the cuts in the receiver
to actually use the drum magazines for the Thompson that already existed.
The US military just was not interested in those things.
Let's see. We have the Lewis gun. The Lewis of course
there was no follow-up gun to the Lewis that used its pan magazine, instead the Bren gun used a box magazine.
Same thing with the Soviet DP, the Degtyaryov,
they went from a pan magazine ... that gun was replaced by the RPD which used belts.
Now it did have a round drum-like thing, however this was just a hollow box that held a 50 round belt of ammunition.
And there's no complexity involved in that.
... You can carry those things, you don't have to, you can carry belted ammunition and put it into that.
So the RPD did not have a drum despite the fact that it looks like it does.
The Suomi is an excellent example, the Finnish Suomi submachine gun,
which was the inspiration for the Soviet PPDs and Papashas, all of which used this 71 round drum.
Now the Finns also during World War Two designed and manufactured a 50 round quad stacked box magazine,
which is sort of in between a drum and a box. It has the
compactness and the easy portability and storage of a box magazine
but it's going from four stacks of ammunition, like narrowing up to ultimately a single feed at the top.
So it was a very complicated magazine, and it wasn't reliable enough for them to keep using.
Ultimately, in the 1950s after the war, when they went back and started manufacturing magazines for the Suomi again
they went to a simple double feed double stack 36 round box magazine.
The Soviets did the same thing. Now they did keep a drum from the PPD into the Papasha 41.
The PPD didn't really see all that much service, or any service, before they got to the PPSh.
When they replaced the Papasha with a newer, simpler, better gun, the PPS-43, the Sudayev,
they went to a 35 round double stack double feed box magazine that was easy to carry,
and very reliable and easy to make. Cheap to make compared to drums.
You know, you can get like two 35 round box magazines compared to a single 70 round drum,
the two box magazines are going to be smaller, they are going to be cheaper, and they are probably going to be lighter
for both of them put together [rather] than the single drum.
So the only downside you have is that you actually have to change magazines once during that same expenditure of ammunition.
The benefits far outweigh that disadvantage.
Let's see there are another couple ...
Oh, the other one that I am thinking of is the RPK, the light support version of the AK.
When it was first developed it was developed with a 75 round drum magazine.
When that got replaced, first off, some countries saw the writing on the wall and didn't even build the drum.
Yugoslavia went to a 40 round box magazine instead, as did other countries.
Romania made 40 round box magazines, as did a bunch of other people.
When the Soviet Union developed the RPK-74 in the new 5.45 cartridge,
they experimentally tried a drum magazine, and then ditched it and went with a 45 round
traditional double feed double stack box magazine instead.
The drums are just too complicated, too expensive and too bulky to carry to be justified.
Again, ... we've got two different calibres here, but 90 rounds worth of 5.45 ammo in two box magazines
are going to be easier to carry and lighter than 75 rounds of 7.62 in a drum.
So, I guess ...
So there are a couple other questions where this comes up. I alluded to the BAR.
This is why they never developed a drum for the BAR is it wasn't going to be a practical replacement
for a cheap, effective and reliable 20 round box magazine.
This question also came up a lot with the German MP40/I where they had this complicated,
weird mechanism to allow you to have two MP40 box mags in the gun at all times.
And a lot of people asked, "Why didn't they just design a drum?" The answer is, well all the things we just talked about.
Drums are complicated, expensive and clumsy to carry.
And so that's why the Germans went to a double box magazine instead.
And of course that they, not surprisingly, found to be heavy and awkward
putting that much ammo way out at the front of an already front heavy gun.
So, hopefully that has brought a little bit of enlightenment to this question.
Hopefully it answers it for a few people,
and thanks for watching.