Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction House
taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be
selling in their upcoming May of 2017 Premiere auction.
Today we're taking a look at a French MAS 38 submachine gun.
These are fairly scarce in the US like many French rifles, although not all.
They weren't really widely used outside of France.
These were manufactured by the French state arsenals,
and they never really had any particular interest or desire
or motive to export them or sell them on the commercial market.
So we don't see many of them outside the French military,
and especially machine guns like this,
we don't see a whole lot that came into the US.
Now, the French submachine gun design which eventually became this started in the early 1920s.
Of course after World War One the French military had took a lot of the lessons
it had learned from that conflict and put them into new small arms development.
And the most important thing they thought there was to manufacture
was a newer, better, more modern light machine gun.
And that became the Châtellerault 24/29, and that was the main focus of France's
rearmament program ... in the 1920s and '30s.
However, they were also looking at pretty much everything else; pistols, rifles and submachine guns.
So there were a few submachine gun prototypes that were introduced in the mid '20s...
And testing and development continued until well, into the mid 1930s, but there was never a huge sense of urgency to it.
There was really some question as to exactly what tactical use the submachine gun would be put to.
And it wasn't a priority.
It became a priority in 1940. At that point this design had progressed a bit,
and in ... May of 1940 there was this collective realisation that
"Oh. Oh crap, we're going to need some submachine guns."
And the 1935 pattern prototype was pretty much on the spot adopted as the Model 38, the MAS 38,
and immediately rushed into production. Now only less than a thousand, 958, of these
were actually manufactured and available by June of 1940 when France capitulated in World War Two.
But production did actually continue during the war under German occupation.
The Germans manufactured something like 20,000 to 30,000 of these,
(or the French manufactured them under occupation), and then when World War Two ended, when France was liberated,
they would continue to produce these, and really produce them in large numbers.
They made about 203,000 into the early 1950s.
So these saw use primarily in Indochina. They were intended for squad leaders,
you know, commanding officer sorts of guys.
This is not unlike, say, the German doctrine of the submachine gun, giving them to squad leaders.
There's a lot of debate on these. I think there's some misunderstanding, and certainly there is a
lack of general experience using them with a lot of people commenting on them today.
What is interesting is this is a very compact, small, handy little submachine gun.
And it's chambered for a cartridge that is generally referred to as pretty anaemic,
it's the 7.65 French Long cartridge at 7.65x20mm.
And this is certainly a cartridge that is less powerful than the 9x19 or the .45 calibre
cartridges that were used in most submachine guns, but it's not as bad as lot of people think.
It fires roughly an 88 grain bullet at about 1,200 feet per second. So this is kind of in line with 9mm Makarov.
And part of the rationale for this was that does allow more ammunition to be carried.
In addition to squad leaders, this ended up arming a lot of paratroop units.
And so they were equipped with what they could jump with, and if you can carry
30% more ammo because the ammunition is lighter, well, that's got an advantage to it.
Now there are a number of interesting little features to this thing.
You may be looking at this and thinking that the barrel's not quite on straight.
Well that is true, the barrel is actually offset from the receiver by about 6 degrees,
we'll take a look at that. And it's got an interesting safety and some other cool bits.
So a few basic facts about the MAS 38 here.
It is a short gun, it is an overall length of like 24 inches. Barrel's just over 8.5 inches long.
Weighs just under 6.5 pounds.
Has a 32 round stick magazine of course. It does have this nice little dust cover to go over the magazine well when not in use.
Like most French small arms at the time, it has a ring on the front and a sling bar in the back for carry.
Now you may notice that it has no sights.
As a matter of fact it does of course have sights, it has a 100 and a 200 metre rear aperture sight.
They both fold down to stay out of the way, so they don't snag on anything.
And then you just flip up whichever one you would like.
That is paired with this big wide front sight. Very reminiscent of the Lebel and Berthier rifle sights.
That notch in the centre is for precision shooting, if you need to get a really specific target.
And then if you just want a close range quick sight picture you've got a nice wide front blade.
The sights are offset just slightly to the left,
you can see that on the rear sight as well as the front sight.
Why exactly they chose to do that? Not entirely sure, but they did. The French always kind of do things a little bit differently.
So marking-wise, we have the calibre up here at the front on the receiver, 7.65 Long.
We have the model, which is MAS Model 1938, "Mle", that's "Modèle" or model in French.
And then the serial number at the back end of the receiver.
This one is F 11,815. There are three serial number prefixes that these were made with: F, G and H.
Primarily F and G, and each one of those would go from 1 to 99,999.
This one is interesting in that it is a quite a low serial number, and I believe this was actually a German occupation production gun.
The Germans made 20,000 to 30,000, which would put this right smack in the middle of their production run.
And then if we look on the ... right side of the stock we have the standard French rifle stock cartouche,
which is marked September, "Septembre", and then what appears to be 1942.
The cartouche is a little worn, it's a little hard to read.
But that I think says '42. The stock is matched to the rest of the gun
and that date would make sense for German occupation production, so that's kind of cool.
Now in terms of operation it's a very simple gun. There is no semi-auto so there's no fire selector.
It is safe or full-auto, and the safety is actually the trigger itself. You take the trigger,
flip it forward, that's the safe position. This does in fact lock the bolt whether it's forward or back.
(Of course, well obviously it's locked when it's back.)
You know, that's kind of an effective little safety right there.
It's very simple, but you know what, you're not going to pull the trigger when the trigger's folded up, are you?
So you have a sliding dust cover here. And it works a little differently than some other guns,
it has a hook [stub] that allows it to pull the bolt back.
A ... stub on the inside.
But that stub is actually spring-loaded, and you can see it, it's in the centre of the handle here. It's that centre circle.
So what happens is when it's forward that stub goes all the way in towards the centre of the gun,
and it impinges on the bolt and allows me to pull the bolt back.
But when I pull it all the way back,
it pops up. You see that's come up now.
Now this is locked to the rear, and when the bolt goes forward it does not pull the dust cover with it.
Which is important because you have to have the dust cover back in order for a shell to eject,
or else it will immediately malfunction.
So when you start to fire you pop the ... charging handle all the way back, lock the dust cover open,
fire all you want. And then if you want to leave the bolt forward,
empty, safe the weapon, what you do is just push this forward
and right there, that little detent snaps back in, hooks on the front of the bolt,
and this is now ready to operate as a charging handle.
And the mainspring pushing on the bolt holds it in a forward position, which keeps it shut.
So it's simple, but quite effective.
The magazine (and this one's kind of greasy), is a double feed magazine.
So two columns of cartridges, which is good. Easy to load. It has a locking catch here,
and this big wide ... continuous over-travel stop. So you're not going to over insert this thing.
The magazine release is that button.
Mag slides straight in. That button is positioned so that, as a right-hander, you grab the magazine,
push the button, and pull the magazine out.
Disassembly of the MAS 38 is super quick and easy. There's a locking tab here on the bottom of the stock.
We just pull that, rotate that, stocks off, that comes out,
bolt comes out, trigger housing comes off. And the gun is field-stripped.
So I mentioned earlier that the barrel is not square to the receiver,
which it's not. It's about six degrees downward relative to the receiver.
The purpose here, and there is a purpose to this, is to allow the stock to drop so that you can get a sight picture,
without having to raise the sights too high above the barrel. Because the higher they are, the more likely they are to
interfere and get caught on things. So that's the rationale behind having that angle, it's to drop the stock down.
Now what's interesting about this is it does lead to an issue of
the bolt and the breech face aren't parallel to each other. So on the bolt
it's a bit subtle, but if you look closely you can see that the breech face is also cut
not 90 degrees square to the direction of travel of the bolt, but 6 degrees back that direction.
And that is so that the breech face fits flat against the rear of the barrel.
Now the bolt here does have ... a fixed firing pin, but it is a removable firing pin.
You can tap out this pin, the firing pin ... actually comes out the back of the bolt.
This is the extension of the recoil spring which is stuck in there right now
(it'll wiggle, but it doesn't want to come out, that needs some cleaning).
We have a sear notch back here, which is what's going to hold on the trigger, right there.
So the trigger mechanism is really simple, all you're doing is pulling the sear down. Which clears this notch,
and lets the bolt go forward. And then you can see that hole in the bottom of the bolt.
That is for the safety, when I push the trigger forward it pushes this round peg up,
which is going to lock into the bolt when the bolt is in the forward position and prevent it from moving.
That's really important. One of the potential safety issues with open-bolt submachine guns
is that if you have a loaded magazine in the gun, and the bolt's forward on an empty chamber,
if you drop the gun on its buttstock you potentially get enough inertia
to pull the bolt back just enough to clear the magazine, pick up a cartridge, slam it forward, and fire.
That is the primary safety consideration you have to really work on mechanically with open-bolt submachine guns.
So on this one when you engage the safety, it locks the bolt forward to prevent that from happening.
Alright, I know someone's going to ask what these numbers are... These are not original French numbers,
I believe these are related to the ATF, an early registration number for the gun. Something like that.
Some person has stamped this in like five different places on the stock and the receiver.
But not ... part of the original French markings.
... There's conflicting information on how well these were liked, but from what I've seen from people who actually
had contact with them in military service, they were pretty well liked.
... Because the cartridge is not particularly powerful, they're a very controllable gun,
they're very comfortable to fire, they're very easy to shoot well.
The magazines and the ammunition are nice and light and small to carry, which is a helpful nice thing.
Like I said they were used primarily in Indochina. They did stay in service until about 1960, particularly with police units.
And the Air Force actually used them as an aircrew gun because, I presume, of their small size.
... As a fighting military front-line submachine gun they were replaced by the MAT 49, which was a larger gun in 9mm Parabellum.
So while they may not have been particularly disliked by troops, it was recognised that
the cartridge did suffer in stopping power compared to some of the other options out there.
And, lest I forget, we will mention one of the gun's other minor claims to fame which is that
it was a MAS 38 that was used to shoot Mussolini.
Well, these are pretty unusual submachine guns to find here in the United States,
and it's pretty cool that this one is fully transferable.
So if you're interested in having it yourself, do your own testing on 7.65 French Long and see what you think of it.
... Is it underpowered, or is it just a really comfortable submachine gun to shoot?
Take a look at the description text below and you'll find a link there to Rock Island's catalogue page for this particular gun.
You can take a look at their pictures and descriptions, and place a bid right there on-line if you so choose.
Thanks for watching.