Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
where we are taking a look at what has got to be the most
adorably cute little mortar you have ever seen in your life.
This is a French Modèle 1937 50mm light mortar.
And, like so much of the French ordnance in the 1930s,
this really basically originated from World War One.
So, the concept of this weapon was initially requested by the
French military in 1924. They had come out of World War One
recognising that basically every single French small arm
in World War One was hopelessly obsolete as of 1918.
The Lebel was obsolete before the war, the Berthier had been kind of squeezed into this rifle
configuration and into service. The carbines were long obsolete.
The machine gun, the Chauchat, was not a particularly high quality design and really needed to be replaced.
And the French, while they found that they really liked rifle grenades, they kind of also wanted a light mortar.
Most of the other countries in the war had been using light mortars of various sorts.
And they provided this really valuable intermediate sort of level of firepower,
something that could be set up and deliver a large volume of fire, but not be all that big, easily transported.
Troops could bring light mortars with them on the advance, or into forward observation sort of posts.
You can do a lot with a light mortar. And so we would see this concept take off,
in particular with the Japanese developing what Americans tend to call the "knee mortar",
the Type 89 and Type 10 grenade projectors, which are very similar in concept to this.
The difference here is what the French came up with ... has that same basic mortar form factor, just made really small.
This whole thing weighs about 3.6 kilos, that's like 8 pounds,
I mean this thing weighs less than a lot of rifles. And yet it's a two inch (or 50mm) mortar.
Now, I say it was requested in 1924. Well, again, like so much of the French ordnance upgrade program,
they thought they wanted it, and then it was delay delay delay delay delay delay delay delay.
And then, "Oh god, war's about to happen. We really need guns right now."
So it wasn't actually adopted until 1937, hence the 1937 designation.
And late '37 at that. They finally like agreed, "OK, we have this design and it actually works now.
We've finally put off the development and the approval and the testing and all long enough."
In January of '38 they placed an order for 21,950 of these, a whole crapload of light mortars.
And then they bumped that order up shortly thereafter to 50,000 of them, because,
"Wow, you know it looks like we're gonna be needing these, the Germans are looking a little frightening over there."
So by the time the Germans invaded in 1939 they had a grand total of 2,900. Not nearly enough.
And of course production would end with the Armistice in the spring of 1940.
Now production did pick back up in 1944,
and these would go on to be used in Indochina in particular.
And they'd have some application to French rifle grenades after the war, but we'll talk about that in a moment.
Before we get to it, let's take a look at how this thing actually works.
And before I do that, I actually want to point something out so that you can see it from the full perspective there.
This thing folds up in this really slick way
to that.
That is your light mortar, and that would be super easy to drop into a pack or carry around with you.
You can compare this to some of the other 50mm mortars out there and this is slick.
It's a folding mortar, I mean, come on, that's just really cool.
So the way this thing is all held together is basically three little snap clips. So I can pop these two off,
that opens up the leg assembly, flip that over and then the leg assembly can spread out.
And then we can open this sucker up, like so.
And presto, it's ready to use.
So the basic set up of this thing is that it's always supposed to be at a 45 degree angle.
And there's a little bubble level down here so you can determine that.
And that is the purpose of this little spring-loaded wire and these hooks.
When you are setting this up on something that isn't a perfectly flat tabletop,
what you do is you're able to use this to adjust how far forward the legs can pivot,
so that you can get a 45 degree angle on the thing even if you're on rough, uneven terrain.
You then have a very basic iron sight here on the front of the mortar (pick it up so you can see that right there),
you lift this up and you use this to aim, to set your windage.
And if you're not aimed properly at the target, you can adjust that with this screw.
Which is going to traverse the thing side to side, just a little bit, nice little fine adjust there.
There are marks on here, I don't know exactly what the demarcations are, but probably something in mils.
So that's how you point the thing at your target properly.
But then there's still a question of range, of course you don't want to overshoot or undershoot.
So the way range is done on this thing is there's actually a series of vent holes in the tube itself right under this.
And this can be screwed in and out, and that will progressively cover or uncover those vent holes.
That impacts the amount of pressure that's generated when the shell fires, which in turn
... impacts how far it goes. So your minimum firing distance is 80 metres there. And then we can
screw this through,
takes a little while to get up to 100, but then things start to increase and our maximum effective range
is, well, goes out to 460 metres. This is a little sticky right at the end, I'm not sure exactly what's going on there,
but we can certainly get to 430. So basically you're looking at 100 to 450 metres of range.
That's not a huge amount, but remember that this is a little, tiny mortar.
The projectile that this thing throws is only about 0.4 kilos. It's basically a one pound mortar shell.
Which is kind of like a rocket assisted hand grenade really.
However, the thing is so small and light and handy that you can take it anywhere really.
So you always have to balance ... with something like this, power versus portability.
And in this case, the French took the portability side.
I would argue that this is maybe going to be a little bit slower to use than a rifle grenade,
but it's definitely going to be more accurate. And it's going to be a lot simpler to set up
a sustained barrage, or a repeated fire, on a position using this as opposed to a rifle grenade.
I'm sure it's also more accurate.
Once you've gotten everything lined up, you've got the range, you've got the windage.
You've used the bubble level here to confirm that the mortar is at a 45 degree angle to begin with,
so that your range setting is going to actually work, you then have this lever to fire it.
That nice snap is the firing pin pulling back and then dropping. When you lift the trigger up it resets.
So this is not a fixed firing pin gun.
When you're ready to start doing this, you drop the shell down in the tube. And then it fires when you pull the lever.
This isn't one of those mortars like you often see, where someone drops a shell down
and then plugs their ears, and the shell goes neuuboom, and fires as soon as it hits the bottom.
There are not a lot of markings on here, but this is
"Lance Grenades", or grenade thrower, Model 1937, serial number on it there.
And then we have a manufacturer's mark, MAP, on the bottom of the tube there.
I should say, I should give proper credit, this was designed by a Captain Nahan
(N-a-h-a-n) at the Châtellerault Arsenal in France.
However, when it went into production it was actually produced by I think four different companies.
The Châtellerault Arsenal did produce them. This particular one was MAP, which is Manufacture des Armes de Paris,
so a private company that also made rifle parts during World War One, and clearly was well into the arms industry.
So after the war this would go ... back into production,
although I don't know a grand total of how many ... actually ended up being made.
It would be used in Indochina. I don't think it saw so much use in Algeria.
... What the French did initially is they took this 50mm mortar shell, took the fin assembly off of it,
basically, put on a new fin assembly and ... adapted it for use as a rifle grenade because
they just couldn't get away from that rifle grenade idea. They really liked those things.
So the first semi-automatic rifles off the production lines after the war,
the MAS 44 and the MAS 49, both have grenade launching set ups for this style of grenade.
They're basically the same projectile adapted to a rifle.
And they would do the same thing with a version of the MAS 36, the LG48 has a grenade launcher set up for these.
And all of those would see use in Indochina.
Makes manufacturing easier when basically the business part of the mortar shell and the grenades are the same, so.
That would go on to change starting in 1951. In order to be more compatible with NATO
France went to a different style of rifle grenade, a 22mm in diameter, the NATO standard.
And that's when this was basically started to be phased out of service.
And the rifle grenade launching went to the MAS 36-51 and the MAS 49-56,
which were both set up for those new NATO compatible grenades, so.
I find this thing just really cool, I actually have one of these myself that's deactivated.
This particular one is not deactivated, this is a live intact mortar registered under the National Firearms Act here in the US.
So if you're interested in going through the NFA process, it's actually not quite as complicated as most people think.
And hey, you know, have yourself a live mortar.
I'm not sure exactly how you would go about making ammunition for it.
Of course any explosive projectiles, actual mortar shells, ... would need to be registered as destructive devices in the US.
But it certainly is legal and possible to set this thing up to fire inert projectiles with,
I don't know, a shotgun shell as a propellant charge or something.
Anyway, I will leave that to whoever ends up buying this thing.
If you would like to see Rock Island's description and pictures and value estimate,
you can take a look at the description text below. A link there will take you to
ForgottenWeapons.com, my website, and a link from there will take you over to Rock Island's catalogue page.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]