Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at this North Vietnamese K-50M submachine gun.
This is one of the scarcest variations of the
very popular and very widely produced Papasha 41,
which was of course developed by the Russians during World War Two,
early in World War Two. It fires the 7.62 Tokarev cartridge.
And the Soviets used it pretty extensively for a couple years
and then actually replaced it even before the war had ended with a lighter and cheaper to produce version.
However, the original PPSh-41 did continue to see service in World War Two
with the Russians all the way through the end of the war.
And then after the war ... the technology, the design and the tooling for it, was exported fairly widely among
Soviet influenced countries, in particular China.
So China started building PPSh-41s under the name Type 50. And Chinese Type 50s
went to North Vietnam as military aid when they were fighting the French, and later the Americans.
Now the PPSh-41 is a relatively heavy and relatively large submachine gun.
As originally developed it used a 71 round drum magazine,
but those drum magazines proved not to be super reliable and they were more expensive to make.
In particular, because of the way these guns were built, the drums had a lot of fitment issues.
So ... you could find drums that would work with individual guns, but they were not all, you know, directly interchangeable.
So late in World War Two the Soviets, the Russians, actually ... started using a 35 round stick magazine instead.
That was completely interchangeable and just a lot more reliable and easier to carry.
And that would carry over to the Chinese Type 50s, which could use drum magazines,
but were generally made and issued with stick magazines.
And that of course carried over to the North Vietnamese who got them with stick magazines, like this one.
Now what the North Vietnamese did was they had some of their own shops convert the guns into this, the K-50M pattern.
K-50 because the Chinese Type 50 was referred to as the K-50 in some American documentation,
and that's what led to the "M", the modified name being given to this gun.
So K-50M is an American term, ... I'm honestly not sure what this would have been designated in Vietnam.
At any rate, they made a number of changes to this, so let's bring the camera in close and take a look at those.
I think the best way to understand the K-50M is to consider that what the Vietnamese
were really doing is converting a PPSh-41 to basically mimic a French MAT 49.
They had a lot of experience with the MAT 49, both, you know, fighting against the French with them,
capturing them from the French. And what they did to ... these PPShs really mimics the 49.
So we have some changes at the back and some at the front.
These were converted from Chinese production Type 50 submachine guns, which is a direct copy of the PPSh,
and they actually left the barrel the same length.
It may look a little bit shorter, but that's just kind of an optical illusion because
of the fact that they cut down the barrel shroud.
So originally the ... whole gun would have been a bit longer, because there was
a compensator added to the end, after the barrel. They got rid of that.
They cut the shroud down after two vent holes, bent it down, and, you know, secured it up to the barrel there.
The original front sight on the Type 50 or the PPSh was mounted to the barrel shroud.
Of course with that gone, they had to add their own new front sight block.
And this is very much an AK style of front sight block,
you can see an AK front sight post in there that threads in.
We have an adjustment drum here, just like an AK, for windage.
The rear sight is unchanged from the Chinese gun.
This is somewhat distinctive because the Chinese Type 50s had a two-position aperture sight,
where the Soviet guns, the Russian guns, had notch sights.
The Chinese ones also had rivets that are ground flat, where the Russian's were left domed.
So that whole upper assembly here is Chinese.
However, the lower assembly is newly manufactured, and they had to do that because they changed the stock
from a typical PPSh wood stock to a collapsing wire frame stock, just like on a MAT 49.
Or a Grease Gun if you want to look at it with an American comparison.
This has two locking positions in it. We have a button
right over here.
Push that in and it allows me to retract the stock.
That little notch locks the stock at its full extent,
which is actually not all that long.
The MAT 49 kind of feels like it has a bit of a long length of pull to it. This is a little bit shorter.
And actually feels more comfortable, at least to me.
The MAT 49 of course has a standalone pistol grip, where the PPSh has a more traditional wood stock.
On the K-50M they added a pistol grip from a Chinese AK.
The fire control group is identical to the PPSh, it does have a semi-auto selector.
So rearward is semi-auto, forward is full-auto.
It does also have the exact same magazine catch system,
and uses the same 35 round stick magazines as the standard (either Soviet or Chinese) PPSh.
On the original PPShs the metal frame ended about here where the wood stock began.
So this whole lower assembly was manufactured in Vietnam for these guns.
And you can see, especially if we look down here, they're kind of crudely put together.
This was sort of a small-scale workshop type of job.
It's worth pointing out we have a couple welds up here. Those are not original to the gun.
This is a deactivated war trophy under US law.
So the ... chamber has been plugged, which we can actually see (these are open bolt of course),
and yeah, you can see right in there, that chamber has been welded shut.
And these welds prevent the barrel from being easily removed
as a way to ensure that ... you can't just swap the barrel out,
you can't just drop the barrel out by removing a pin.
Anyway, the new Vietnamese lower receiver assembly comes back here to this sort of squared off flat end.
Disassembly of this whole family of guns is really pretty easy. This one's a little crudely put together,
you can see there are a lot of kind of open gaps in the gun.
But what we're gonna do is push this forward,
In fact, this rear cap is almost certainly a newly made North Vietnamese piece,
but we push that forward, and it's going to unlatch, and it will lift up.
You can see the little locking tab there, that's going to lock into
this slot in the receiver.
So with the gun opened up like this we can pull out ...
you know what? I'm gonna leave that in there. That is a rubber buffer which is pretty soft and pliable.
I don't know if that's an original piece or not, but that acts as just a recoil buffer for the bolt when it comes back.
On the original Russian guns they would typically use like a leather or fibre board in here.
This one has nice soft rubber which ought to work pretty well.
Rate of fire on these is going to be quite high because you have the bolt travelling a relatively short distance and moving very fast.
So, there's that.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. K-50Ms are really very scarce submachine guns today.
Not a whole lot of them were made, not a whole lot of them came back from Vietnam with American soldiers.
And it's really cool to find this one. This is a fully legally registered deactivated war trophy.
So this actually transfers without a charge. It requires a tax stamp, but it's a zero dollar tax stamp to transfer.
And if someone is so inclined they can actually legally reactivate it into a fully functional gun
by paying the $200 tax stamp to do so.
So anyway, you can find this and everything else at this upcoming auction at Rock Island's catalogue through their website.
Thanks for watching.