Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here at the Rock Island Auction
House taking a look at a couple of the machine guns
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
May of 2017 Premiere Firearms Auction.
And yesterday we took a look at the Star Z-63,
which was a gun that didn't look like much,
but had a lot of clever things going on inside it.
Today we're taking a look at a ... Yugoslav Model M56.
Which is a submachine gun that doesn't look like it's got a whole lot going on,
and in fact doesn't.
So right after World War Two Yugoslavia started manufacturing their own submachine guns.
This was the Model of 1949 and it was basically just a direct copy of the Soviet PPSh-41.
And that wore off fairly quickly, there were some problems with the PPSh-41.
Namely its drum magazines were finicky and easily damaged.
It had a rate of fire that was really, really high, it was like 1,100 or 1,200 rounds a minute.
And that was just too fast. It's hard to use suppressive fire when you're shooting that fast
because you kind of use up all your ammunition fast, even if you're using a 71 round drum magazine.
So the Yugoslav military developed this gun to replace it.
This is the M56, and it is aesthetically a copy of the German MP40.
It certainly takes some of the really obvious visual characteristics of the MP40. Like the folding stock.
This plastic (I don't think it's actually Bakelite), but synthetic plastic lower assembly.
The forward mounted magazine.
Unfortunately this isn't really an improved MP40, this is really a less capable MP40.
The MP40 had some cool things going on, like its completely enshrouded telescoping recoil spring.
This doesn't bother with that.
This was chambered for the 7.62x25 Tokarev cartridge, which makes sense.
That was a standard cartridge for countries that were associated with the Soviet Union.
Now in 1965 they would introduce the M65 as opposed to 56,
which was basically the same gun in 9x19. But much more common are the 56s.
This magazine looks like a Soviet PPs-43 mag, it is not interchangeable, they are not quite the same.
And well, why don't we take this apart? Let me show you the controls and take it apart,
because it's the exact opposite of the Star.
You are probably thinking to yourself,
"Wow, that looks like a really awkward, uncomfortable gun to hold", and you would be right, it is.
... The Yugo M56 is remarkably long in the receiver, the magazine is way far forward.
In fact the barrel length is less than a third of the overall length of the gun when the stock's extended.
Which is saying something.
The stock itself is very similar to an MP40, and has all the problems of an MP40 stock.
... Even the best manufactured versions of this will get wobbly fairly quickly,
it doesn't provide any good cheek support.
It's kind of an "uh" stock.
Now it ... can be folded.
We have a button right here,
which allows the stock to fold, the butt plate is going to fold down.
The gun is in fact so long that you don't even have to worry about it interfacing with the magazine,
because it doesn't even get to the magazine.
You know, with the stock folded this thing is long.
The magazine release is nicely shrouded inside the plastic guard here.
You can get in there and pull the magazine out.
They did one thing right, it is a ... double-feed magazine.
In order to deal with the ubiquitous potential submachine gun
safety issue of the bolt bouncing back and firing unintentionally,
the solution for the M56 was to have a little spring- loaded catch on the bolt handle that locks onto this lug.
That lug right there on the receiver.
So if you're not actually grasping the charging handle, that holds it forward.
That seems to be a reasonably effective and very simple way to do that.
For a safety we are going to use the charging handle once again.
In order to engage the safety, you cock the bolt, and then you actually take the handle and rotate it 90 degrees down.
And I think that says "safe". It certainly does effectively in a practical matter it does safe the gun.
Because pulling the trigger once you've locked the bolt in place like that does nothing.
Making the gun hot again simply requires rotating the charging handle back forward.
And I will point out you can do that in the forward position as well.
You can lock it down there, and you can see they've actually relieved the plastic lower for that little latch for doing that.
There is a fire selector switch on the M56 here, it's right there. It's a little push-through button.
We are currently set to "Rafal", that's full-auto. If I snap that ... through we have "Jeu" something, like that. That's semi-auto.
The rear sight is a very small notch. And there are two of them that you can flip between.
100 metre and a 200 metre, nothing special there.
Now where this gets really fun is disassembly.
The disassembly is pretty well set up, except it's not fully thought out.
So in order to disassemble it, what we want to do is rotate this rear knob
so ... there's a little indentation and we want that right at this position.
So I have to push this button in which will then allow me to rotate the rear end cap around.
And I want it with this dent facing out this direction.
Once it's there, I can pull the end cap forward and then rotate it in.
And what I'm doing is ... basically locking the mainspring inside the tube.
So once that's in position I can lift the lower receiver off.
Now, we'll finish the disassembly in a moment,
but first I want to point out that when you reassemble the gun you're going to have it like this,
and what you have to do is pull the knob down just slightly, and it then unlocks and now presto, the gun's together.
What you are supposed to do now is ... push this button in and rotate this to lock this rear cap in place.
But you don't have to, you can go ahead and shoot the gun like this.
And what will happen is this will start bouncing back and forth, this cap can come forward,
and you stand a pretty decent chance of the gun spontaneously disassembling itself while you're firing.
That's a really bad thing.
And a proper design would have prevented the gun from being reassembled in any manner
where it could be fired at the same time that it could come apart.
OK, that warning aside, here is our upper removed from our lower.
Sear right there just drops down to release the bolt, pretty simple.
It is interesting, they actually have a block of wood in between the metal frame and the plastic shell.
You can see it right there as well.
Removing the bolt means we push this back in and unlock it,
and that gives us the recoil string.
Can then pull the bolt handle back to here,
where we can rotate this to some point here where it will come out.
There we go. Bolt handle comes out,
and then the bolt comes out.
Unlike yesterday's Star Z-63, there is nothing fancy going on here.
This is just, other than the extractor, a solid hulk of a bolt.
It does have a fixed firing pin on the front, got the hole there for the bolt handle.
It is recessed in the back so that the mainspring has a place to stay in
and not kink when the bolt cycles backwards. That's it, very simple.
And there you have the M56 completely ... field stripped anyway.
Not a whole lot going on on this gun, it is a pretty bare-bones, simple, basic submachine gun.
It worked. The disassembly thing is definitely an issue that you need to be aware of.
Not the greatest plan for a military design.
And of course if you own one of these as a civilian in the US today,
something that you need to be aware of because it is a potential safety hazard.
Well, for all the bad things I've had to say about the design of the gun,
this is actually a really cool example, because as far as I can tell it's a totally original Yugo M56.
It doesn't appear to have ever been cut and re-welded.
And it's certainly not a remanufactured tube gun, it's got the cool Yugoslav crest,
it's got all the serial and assembly drawing numbers that you'd expect.
And it looks like a really excellent example of what is a fairly obscure Cold War submachine gun.
There are a lot of parts kits in the country, but not a whole lot of original guns.
So unfortunately it is a dealer sample machine gun, which means it is only legal
to purchase by a person who has a machine gun dealer's licence.
So that's bad news for those of us who don't, it's good news for those of us who do,
because it means the value on this gun is going to be substantially lower than if it were transferable.
Simply because there's a smaller pool of people who can legally own it.
So if you are one of those FFLs with a machine gun dealer's licence,
and you would like to have a really cool all-original Yugo M56,
take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to Rock Island's catalogue page on this guy,
where you can see their pictures and description.
And if you're interested, you can place a bid on-line or come participate in the auction live.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]