[ Colt Model 639 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Morphy
Auction House where we're taking a look
at this Colt Model 639 that is in their
upcoming fall of 2018 Firearms Auction.
Now this may look like some other ...
black tactical AR-15 looking thing.
However, there's a really cool historical connection with the Model 639.
And it's really unusual to find one intact, much less in as beautiful a condition as this one is.
The 639 is the export version of the Colt 629.
And the Colt 629 is the factory designation for what the US military adopted as the XM177E2.
This is in fact identical to the rifle, or the carbine,
that MACVSOG was issued and running around with in Vietnam in 1967-68.
So MACVSOG of course is the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group.
You can see why that was generally shortened to s-o-g, SOG.
And they are the Special Forces sneaky guys running around behind enemy lines.
They wanted a gun that was a little more compact than a full-length M16 rifle.
And so initially, actually in '66, the Army bought a couple of thousand Colt 609s.
And that was the Colt Commando, so to speak, and it had a 10 inch barrel,
and it was a little bit too short.
So Colt did some working on this with the gas impingement system that the AR/M16 has.
Barrel lengths down at 10 inch start to get a little sketchy for reliability.
And so Colt ended up, after a year or two of study and development,
they extended the barrel by an inch and a half, so this guy has an 11.5 inch barrel.
And then specifically for the military they added this muzzle device to it.
And that muzzle device, technically speaking,
reduces the decibel level of the report by a little bit,
which is why ATF has ruled that those are actually legally silencers, or suppressors.
But that wasn't actually the purpose, the purpose of this was to make
the gun not sound like an M16, and it does that pretty well.
This actually sounds substantially more like an AK when it fires than an AR or an M16.
And so that was a substantially important thing for Special Forces guys behind the lines.
If you had to start shooting,
better that it sounds like a friendly gun than it sounds like an enemy American gun back there.
So that was the purpose for this.
Let me show you a couple of the up-close details of exactly how these guns were put together.
... Which of the M16/AR features they have.
And, yeah, it's a beautiful one.
So when it comes to M16 variants, there are a number of details to look for.
And we'll go ahead, and let's start on the receiver.
This is a full fence receiver, as it should be for the 639.
And what that refers to is this raised section here around the magazine release.
This prevents the magazine from being accidentally dropped if you push the gun
up against something, because all of this surface is the same height as the release button.
So full fence there.
This has an aluminium collapsing stock. It is a two-position stock.
Because this wasn't done to be modular and adjustable for armour,
and different body types and heights of people.
This was done to make the gun more compact.
So when you wanted to transport it you can collapse the stock in this far.
It only goes this far because the M16 basic operating system
requires the use of a buffer spring coming into the stock,
and the buffer spring tube is this long, so that's your minimum length.
That is your actual shooting length.
639 has this sort of tear-drop shaped forward assist button instead of ... the later round peg.
Of course it has the early pattern sights, you have a range adjustment wheel there.
You have a two-position rear sight here. One for up to 300,
and one marked "L" on the front there for long range, over 300.
The receiver is marked as it should be: Model 639.
And this is the proper serial number range for these.
You'll find them going from 4790001 up to about 4790100.
Colt Firearms Division, etc. etc.
And we have safe, semi, and auto positions on the selector.
Now the moderator here originally would not have had this serial number engraved in it.
That's done for the purpose of registering it and giving it a serial number.
As Colt originally manufactured these things that muzzle device was just a muzzle device,
and it wasn't serialised any more than a birdcage flash hider would have been.
But that's a legal requirement now.
These moderators actually worked reasonably well, except that they are not disassemblable.
And so after one has been fired a bunch, it tends to clog up with powder residue
and particulate matter, and it becomes less effective over time.
And there's no easy way to clean these out,
I suspect they could be if you put this thing in like an ultrasonic cleaner.
That would probably do a pretty good job of clearing it up.
But that was one of the issues with these, why they didn't go on to be more widely used.
In addition to the fact that by the time they were starting to do a lot of research on this
and develop it yet further, the war in Vietnam was winding down.
There were export restrictions that Carter put into place on exporting suppressors.
And this just wasn't really a place that Colt saw a good reason to put money into.
So these are really quite limited to Vietnam period carbines.
Inside we have pretty typical full-auto M16,
can of course pop the upper and lower apart.
All the bits down here that you would expect.
These use ... what would become a standard carbine buffer and spring.
And the bolt is totally normal M16, with basically no use to it at all.
So there are a couple of reasons why these are so rare to find.
One of course is that they didn't sell many,
it was like 102 I think, just over 100 of these were actually sold.
And of course these are machine guns,
so they have to be registered, NFA transfer tax, and all that.
Which of course this one is, fully transferable.
And then ... beyond that these were sold around 1972, '74.
In 1975 ATF actually came out with the decision that these things ...
had to be legally registered as suppressors.
And at that point Colt actually issued a recall on all of these guns to take the suppressors off.
And the production they had after 1975, they just used
birdcage flash hiders for the 639 instead of these moderators.
It's important to point out at that time there were also
legal restrictions on the export of suppressors.
So it wasn't just a US civilian market thing for Colt, it was also an export sales thing.
At any rate, a lot of the owners sent the guns back in for the recall, but some of them didn't.
And the people who didn't still had to legally register the suppressors, or else destroy them.
And so a small number of owners actually registered the suppressors, like this one,
leaving the guns completely intact.
And so that dramatically reduced the number of them existing in this configuration.
And it's really cool to find them in that configuration, because this is exactly,
right down to the full-auto functionality,
exactly what the MACVSOG guys were running around with in Vietnam.
Which is a really cool connection to American military history.
So as it stands this gun legally is a two-stamp gun.
In order to transfer it there is one transfer tax and stamp for the receiver, the full-auto bits,
and there is a second one for the muzzle device as a suppressor.
This thing is coming up for sale here at the Morphy Auction House.
If you take a look in the description text below you'll find a link to ForgottenWeapons.com.
From whence you can get over to Morphy's catalogue page on this gun
and take a look at their description, their price estimates, their photos, all that sort of good stuff.
So if you would like to add a Vietnam Special Operations rifle to your own collection,
this is an excellent one to do.
Thanks for watching.