Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're taking a look at
what I'm pretty sure is the ugliest AK ever developed.
This is a Hungarian AMP-69.
And it is basically a take off from the Hungarian AMD-63 and AMD-65 rifles and carbines,
... heavily modified specifically for the task of firing rifle grenades.
Now a lot of countries have done various sorts of rifle grenade adaptations.
The Poles, for example, had a bunch of rifle grenade launching equipment for their rifles,
but nobody quite did it to this extent.
And what we're looking at here is basically a muzzle extension
for the grenade to actually fit on,
a spring-loaded handguard, a spring-loaded buttstock,
and a special optics rail because the standard Hungarian rifles did not have any sort of rail.
And this is equipped with a low-power magnification optic
that is sighted specifically for grenades.
So it goes out to ... 400 metres on the scope, which is a really sharp angle.
Let's take a closer look.
There are no particularly special markings on these rifles.
The trunnion is just marked with a serial number.
And the selector markings are the same as standard Hungarian rifles,
a "1" for semi-auto, and a little infinity symbol for full-auto.
The stock does fold, there is this button on the bottom.
Push that in and you can fold the stock in right here ...
like so.
And you'll notice there is a cutout in the handguard right here, to allow for the stock to fold.
While these are apparently often found
with the standard Hungarian style of pistol grip,
they did have a specific grip made for them, and it's this one.
This is made out of rubber, which is again going to help reduce pain on firing of rifle grenades.
And it does also have this thumb rest on there,
presumably to help direct your thumb and prevent it from getting hit by things
like, for example, the stock folding button.
We have standard sights, and this is of course a fully rifled barrel
and could be used with standard ammunition as a regular combat rifle.
Although it was certainly intended more for ... specialised rifle grenade use.
Bring that down, we have an "A" there, A is the battle sight zero.
The gas block here is specifically set up for rifle grenade launching.
So the "NY" setting is normal operation of the rifle,
and when you want to fire a rifle grenade, you flip it over to "Z".
Argh, it's really quite tight.
It's really quite tight, but there is Z for the grenade launching setting.
If this thing is too stiff to operate, or if you've been shooting a bunch and this piece is really hot,
these holes are there so that you can actually use a cartridge.
Stuff a cartridge in there, and use it as a lever to pop the gas block selector.
There is a muzzle device here.
The barrel actually comes all the way out to the end, this is about 4 inches long.
We have a couple of gas vents in each side right there ... and right there.
The rifle grenade is going to slide over this.
And of course in addition to venting out the front,
these ports are going to help vent gas out into the body of the rifle grenade to launch it.
I believe these two little spring-loaded tabs right here
are there to provide tension on the rifle grenade
and help keep it securely on the spigot so it doesn't slide off.
Typically on grenade launching spigots like this,
that's done with a wire spring wrapped around the spigot.
But the Hungarians appear to have done it differently.
If I pop this button up, I can actually take ... this device off the end of the barrel.
And you can see the little retaining tabs there.
We have a pin that locks into this little hole.
This is a full-length fully-rifled barrel here, and I suspect that it was done this way
so that the barrel diameter is such that they can still put the front sight block on
and the gas block on without having to deal with changing them.
Because you need the larger diameter to fit the rifle grenades.
So make the barrel small, put these on, and then you can just slide this guy back on like that.
This is not quite the correct magazine.
These were issued with 10 round magazines that actually had blocks in them
to only accommodate non-projectile blank firing cartridges,
because the Hungarian grenades required blanks for firing.
If you fired a standard bullet into the back end of a grenade
bad things would happen, let's just leave it at that.
Now the two most distinctive elements of course are the handguard and the buttstock.
And the way this was designed, the idea is the butt plate and the handguard
stay right where they are when you fire, and the whole rest of the rifle
reciprocates backwards under spring pressure.
So the front handguard can come forward about this far.
You can actually see the springs right in through these vents,
there's one right there, there's one.
And so that's going to cycle like this [along] its guide rods.
And then the buttstock has a big spring right inside here.
So when you fire, it compresses like that.
I have no doubt that would dramatically simplify the process of firing rifle grenades.
I think the buttstock thing is a little bit obvious.
The handguard was the one that really surprised me
when I realised that that thing also reciprocates, that's pretty cool.
And then lastly, in order to aim these rifle grenades
which of course have a far steeper trajectory than any bullet,
you need an optic (or an iron sight, but they decided to use an optic)
that has a really sharp tilt to it.
So there is a little button right here.
I can depress that and then rotate this whole assembly.
And there are markings for point blank out to 400,
I believe that's supposed to be 425, maybe 450 metres at the extreme.
And you can see how much of an angle you would have to hold the rifle at
in order to make a hit with a rifle grenade at 450 metres.
This lever lifts up and the whole thing is going to slide right off the back.
It has a pretty typical AK style of ... attachment rail there.
Although the rail on the action is a little bit different
than what you will typically find on standard AKs meant for normal optics.
And interestingly they actually moved the sling swivel to the front of the rail,
so that you can use it without ... the optic getting in the way.
And one last little thing I forgot to point out:
one of the classic problems of rifle grenades on AKs is that
under the severe recoil of the grenade the top cover tends to pop off.
So the Yugoslav guns have a cross pin right through here that prevents that from happening.
The Hungarians added this little spring tab to the spring retainer.
So in order to remove the top cover you have to push this down in order to push the spring in.
If you don't do that it hits that,
and so of course under recoil that will prevent the top cover from popping off.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about this is,
you can see the reticle there, but the reticle is actually
only visible through the bottom half of the optic.
And that's kind of a safety feature where if your perspective isn't correct,
if you're looking up too high and the recoil of the grenade is going to come back and hurt you,
you don't see the reticle.
So I lost my focus there.
So this kind of seems like an issue with the video camera looking at the optic,
but that chevron is visible here.
But if I bring the camera up you lose sight of it.
And now that the camera is focused on the lens itself,
you can see that the lens is divided right through the middle.
And the top half you don't have a reticle through,
and I don't believe the top half is actually magnified.
Where the bottom half is, which is why it looks different.
So there you go one more time, there's our chevron reticle in the bottom.
And when I lift the camera up and have a poor perspective on it, the reticle goes away.
Remarkably, they did actually field this as a standard rifle as well.
If you take off the optic this thing still works
just fine as a regular combat rifle, albeit a little goofy.
It would be really interesting to try and shoot one of these, ...
I'm sure that the recoiling buttstock is great for rifle grenades,
but I'm really curious how it would actually affect you,
especially the ... spring-loaded handguard as well,
when firing say full-auto with just standard rifle ammunition, that would be pretty cool.
Maybe someday I'll have a chance to take one of these out, and actually do some shooting with it.
But until then, hopefully you enjoyed taking a look at this
horrifically ugly little duckling of a Hungarian grenade-launching rifle.
Stick around tomorrow for some more cool videos on Forgotten Weapons.
And thank you for watching.