[ Yugoslav M72 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and courtesy of Polenar Tactical
I am here today in Slovenia taking a look
at an original Yugoslav army M72 light machine gun.
This is the heavy barrelled, bipod fitted
drum-fed version of the Yugoslav M70 rifle.
Now it's worth pointing out here when we start, that the ... AK-47
was originally developed in the Soviet Union,
and it was intended to be a replacement for the submachine gun.
The Russians came up with a whole new set of small arms with the rifle being the SKS,
the submachine gun being the Kalashnikov,
and the light machine gun being the RPD - the Degtyarev belt-fed gun.
It was decided in the late 1950s when they had the improved version, the AKM,
that it actually made a lot more sense to have
a light machine gun that was mostly parts interchangeable,
and in particular magazine interchangeable, with the AK rifles.
They scrapped the SKS, they used the AK as a rifle and a submachine gun stand in,
and then they basically made a [heavier] version of the AK ... for a light machine gun.
That's where Yugoslavia comes in, Yugoslavia of course had developed the M70 rifles,
which is their version of the milled receiver AK rifle.
And to complement that in the same sort of way,
they developed the M72 as a milled-receiver light machine gun.
Now if you've seen my previous video on the M70 rifle
(which you should and I'll link to it at the end of this video)
that was a rifle that first off had a fully functional magazine ... hold open,
which this light machine gun originally did as well.
But development of the M70 began back in the late 1950s,
and the first versions of it were developed in 1964.
So there's a prototype M64 rifle that developed into the M70.
At the same time, the prototype of this light machine gun was the M65 light machine gun.
... They simplified the prototypes ... into this final M72 version.
The original prototype guns actually had quick-change barrels
and a few other stylistic differences.
I point this out first off because it's interesting,
and secondly because it is unusual and curious about the M72 that it actually has
a shorter handguard than the standard Yugoslav M70 rifles, which seems to be backwards.
Like the light machine gun, where you know the barrel is going to be getting hotter,
you'd think you'd have a more protective, better handguard on it.
Well, this is actually a holdover from the original M65 prototypes.
The quick-change barrel required a shorter handguard
so that you could get to the barrel removal mechanism.
They got rid of the barrel removal system, but kept the ... style of the handguards,
and that's why we have a short handguard on the M72.
So let's take a closer look at this, let me show you the earliest version of the receiver.
And then we'll talk about where the design went from here.
We'll start with the left side of the receiver here, this has most of the visibly distinctive features.
So as with the early M70 rifles, it's this scalloped cut at the front of the receiver,
the scallop back here, this screw connection.
This is the part that originally contained the bolt hold open lever.
The downside to that bolt hold-open lever was that it
prevented the use of standard AK magazines.
And so virtually all of the guns originally produced with those levers
were retrofitted to remove them, including this one.
So you can see that now there's no lever inside this slot in the receiver,
there's just essentially a solid screw or a rivet there to keep the hole filled.
Going back to the side of the receiver,
we have the Zastava logo, Zastava, made in Yugoslavia.
And then the [right] side of the receiver is pretty normal.
We have serial numbers on the receiver, the bolt and the dust cover.
The standard lightening cut here.
The receiver markings here are "U" for safe, "R" for full, and "J" for semi-auto.
For their light machine gun version Yugoslavia opted to use a 75 round drum magazine.
This is in the Romanian/Russian style where it doesn't actually open up to load,
instead you have a lever here on the front.
This removes spring tension from the follower, it's on a ratchet in there.
So you can see we have the dummy rounds that comprise the follower.
To load this what you do is pull this lever up, put in a cartridge, and then release the lever.
That applies spring tension to it and resets the ratchet on the lever.
So lift up, insert cartridge, release.
Up, cartridge, release, up, cartridge, release,
and so on until the magazine is completely full.
Capacity ... on these originally was 75 rounds
of I should also say, 7.62x39, same standard AK cartridge.
Yugoslavia opted to put a nice rubber butt plate on all of the M72 variant light machine guns.
We have the ribbed black plastic pistol grip, complete with a little thumb cutout there.
That's a distinctive feature of Yugoslavian AKs, as well as the Tabuks
which are the Iraqi licensed copies thereof.
The rear sight is windage adjustable,
and this is ... sort of a standard RPK-style adjustable rear sight.
So screwing this left and right just adjusts your rear notch left and right.
We already talked about the shorter handguard. And while it is shorter, it's also chunkier.
It's wider here and thicker than a standard AK handguard.
So it is more heat resistant, it just doesn't cover as much of the barrel as on the rifle.
Speaking of that barrel, it is a much heavier profile than the rifle barrel.
... It takes more heat to actually raise the temperature of the barrel, so it heats up more slowly.
And it is finned in this back section behind the gas port.
... Those fins simply give it a little more surface area so that it can radiate heat out more quickly.
We do have night sights on the front right there.
And a cleaning rod captive in here, of course no bayonet lug.
A standard thread protector, ... there was no muzzle brake or compensator used on these guns.
And then the bipod is held together just with a simple little sheet-metal clasp at the back.
You can drop that down, and then the bipod folds together here, ...
and then locks out into position.
Note that the two sheet metal legs lock into this cutout in the bipod mount right there.
They lock in, you have pivot side to side, but nothing front to back.
The barrel is threaded into the milled receiver,
so there is no barrel locking pin to be seen on the outside.
The top cover used on the M72 is the same as that of the M70 rifles.
So it has a little cutout here for the recoil spring locking catch.
However, because there was no plan to use grenade launching off of the M72 light machine gun,
that ... spring-loaded button is not put into the receiver.
Nor is there any accommodation for a gas cut off on the gas block.
I'll go ahead and disassemble this just to demonstrate it,
but disassembly is identical to any standard AK.
So you push the recoil spring in, that allows you to take the top cover off.
This then pushes in to unlock.
We take out the captive recoil spring.
The [bolt carrier] lifts out the back. ...
Go ahead and take the bolt out as well.
Unlike most of the AKs being made, Yugoslavian guns did not use chrome-lined barrels.
The standard explanation for this is that they didn't have any deposits of chrome.
But Yugoslavia had lots of friendly relations with lots of countries
where they could have purchased chrome had they wanted to.
I think it was really just a matter of reducing the cost of the guns.
So the last bit is to take off the gas tube, we need to open this lever.
That can be - yeah, and this one is quite tight.
However, you can do that easily with the bolt carrier of the gun as a tool.
Put that on there, rotate this up,
And we can take off the gas tube.
And there you go.
That is a field-stripped Yugoslav M72 light machine gun.
A lot of the Yugoslav AK designations can be a bit confusing,
they used a lot of both letter and number suffixes.
Fortunately the M72 is a bit easier.
... It begins with the M65s which we're not going to talk about,
they were never actually produced in real quantity.
The first standard gun was this, the M72, that's the early milled receiver.
When the M70 rifles were updated and improved and simplified,
this then became the M70B, the second version.
And that was ... sort of the later, the standard, milled receiver.
And then when they went to a stamped receiver a little bit later,
the stamped version of this gun is the BM70B2.
So those are your three main patterns of Yugoslav light machine gun AK.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. This was a really cool one to be able to film
with a proper un-messed with original gun here in Slovenia,
... previously part of Yugoslavia. Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.