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 a rifle that actually
will have sold by the time you see this video.
But it's a very rare and very cool gun
that I didn't want to miss a chance to film. So, this is the sort of thing that they have here.
This is a Brazilian (I'm gonna mess up this name, but we'll give it a go),
a Mosquetão Semi-Automático Model of M954. It is, for all practical purposes, a .30-06 calibre G43.
So how did this thing happen? Well, when World War Two began
the Brazilian armed forces were primarily armed with Mauser bolt action rifles in 7x57mm.
However, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force that was sent to fight alongside the United States in the Italian Campaign
they were actually re-equipped with American small arms just to simplify the logistics.
And so they got 1903s and M1 Garands in .30-06. And a lot of those guys, and Brazilian military leadership,
came back from that campaign with a new interest and respect in semi-automatic firepower.
... They certainly weren't the only ones, a lot of people got this insight from World War Two.
And the Brazilian government decided that it was interested in re-equipping its army with semi-automatic rifles,
or at least some of its army with a semi-automatic rifle.
One might expect that they would adopt the M1 Garand, they certainly still had some.
The US was pretty liberal in doling out M1 Garands to allied countries that were interested in them.
But instead Brazil decided that it was more interested in copying the G43.
They'd certainly encountered those rifles during World War Two, and they decided to set up production domestically
to build their own copy of the G43. And they were going to do it in .30-06 because that was the calibre
that they were adopting, that they were replacing their 7 millimetres with
So this is the result, let's take a closer look at it.
The action is obviously very reminiscent of the G43, and it maintains all of the basic mechanical features.
And internally this works just like a G43. So we've got a safety flag back here.
These are Portuguese markings but they match with English, F is for fire, S for safe.
We have our bolt handle on top of our bolt carrier. And this is a manual hold open.
It does not lock open when empty,
however, there we go, you can push that button in
and it will lock into this little notch in the back of the receiver to lock the action open right there.
This is not equipped to use stripper clips, so you can't top it up that way.
You guys are going to look at this and think that this was, you know, horribly corroded at some point in its life,
and then refinished or something. In reality actually this is exactly how that part was made.
The Germans did the same thing towards the latter half of World War Two.
These parts were forged and the top surface, being just aesthetic, you know, it doesn't serve any
mechanical function, they were just left in their raw forged condition.
Now, even the late war German ones that were pretty rough don't look as rough as this Brazilian production one.
That thing ... looks really gnarly with all sorts of voids in the top.
But that is how they were actually made.
Same thing goes for the rear sight block here. I will point out our rear sight goes up to 1,200 metres.
And then this top surface here was also left in an unfinished like raw forged state.
Because again it just didn't really matter, it's just on the outside.
It is then marked with Fábrica de Itajubá, Brazil. That is the factory where these were manufactured.
This is actually the factory that would go on to produce the FAL for Brazil later on, but we'll get to that in a minute.
On the other side we have these markings, the designation, which is
Mosquetão Semi-Automático, calibre .30, M954.
These are, unhelpfully, given almost exactly the same designation as Brazil's
... last update of their bolt action rifles, which were designated Mosquetão M954.
So it can be a little difficult, if you just look up like M954 you'll end up with mostly bolt action rifle information.
The serial number here is a little bit unusual.
It appears to have been done at a different time. It's a different font. It ... has not been finished, where these markings were.
However, I've seen several others that have the exact same style of marking. Which
makes me wonder if the ... serial numbers were perhaps added by an importer if the batch originally wasn't
serialised in Brazil for some reason. You know like because it was just a test run, or something like that.
Or if they were just serialised in Brazil at a different time than when they were originally marked.
At any rate, this is A82. It is the highest serial number one that I have seen actually.
They've all been two digit numbers, there were very few of these made.
Flipping around to the bottom, this remains basically a copy of the G43 mechanically.
And that includes some of the details like the little spring detent that holds the screws in place to prevent them from rotating.
So to undo this you have to use a punch to push the pin down and then unscrew the screw.
Our magazine here has a 10 round capacity just like the G43. However in order to fit .30-06 ammunition
this has to be a little bit longer than the G43 mag. The .30-06 is 7.62x63mm
in metric notation. It is quite a long magazine.
The mag body is made from a BAR magazine, so a few little modifications to it.
But basically what you have there is a BAR mag.
We have a German style of sling slot cut in the stock.
The handguard of the Brazilian rifle differs a bit in profile and shape from the G43s.
You've got this second grasping groove on the upper handguard, which is kind of distinctive.
Got the sling swivel embedded in the middle of the wood there.
And instead of a single nose cap we sort of have a two-part nose cap
with a rear band here that holds the top handguard on.
And a front band to hold the bottom handguard in place, to hold in the bayonet lug, the cleaning rod, and all that.
The muzzle is threaded here, this did have a muzzle cap on it.
And the threading is there to accept a rifle-grenade launcher.
You can see we have a big ol' front post right there.
It is grooved to accept a sight hood, but the sight hood is missing from this example.
I can pretty easily pull off
the top band
and pull off the handguard so that you can see the gas system here.
This is identical to the gas system in a G43. When you fire this whole piston's going to come backwards
to push the bolt carrier back like that.
And then it disassembles in a couple of pieces so you can take it all apart. There's your gas block up there.
If you are curious about the disassembly and the internal construction of the bolt mechanism,
I would refer you to the video on a standard G43, because they are the same inside.
All in all, the best number I've been able to find is that about 300 of these were manufactured.
As you might not find surprising having looked at it up close,
they had some reliability issues and they ... just didn't quite work all that well.
There was actually a second variation of this rifle set up for production at the Rio de Janeiro ... Arsenal
of which very little is known. There's one little teeny article by Ronaldo Olive that discusses it and has some pictures.
But ultimately what Brazil would do instead is adopt the FAL in 7.62 NATO in 1964.
So this was a very kind of a short-term, experimental, didn't quite work out, sort of project.
And a number of them have ended up here in the United States.
But as you can imagine with only 300 being made, and them not working all that well in the first place,
very few of these survived, and it's very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks to Rock Island for giving me access to film this one for you guys.
And thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]