Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian. I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company looking at some of the guns that
are coming up for sale in their April of 2016 Premier auction.
And today we're taking a look at another German last-ditch rifle.
Specifically this is a VG-2, a Volkssturmgewehr 2.
This ... so what happened was right at the end of 1944,
the German military was starting to look for ways to simplify rifle production. They wanted to arm the Volkssturm,
(so this is actually really the German government more than the German military),
they wanted to arm the Volkssturm, they don't have ... the weapons production to do it in the standard method,
you know, they can't just order a bunch more K98k Mausers
because they can't produce any more than they're already producing.
So what they want to do is develop a simplified kind of a last-ditch
rifle that they can spread out and have manufactured by a whole bunch
of little shops all over Germany and German occupied territory.
The different German counties, states you might say, are called Gau,
and what they wanted to do is distribute production and have the local
heads, the Gauleiter, organize and head up this rifle production.
So they ended up actually having five different submissions of
rifle designs, which got named the VG-1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
And the main one was really the VG-1, however the VG-2 did
have substantial production. This rifle was designed by a company
called Spreewerke, ... which was a subsidiary of a rather large
Berlin industrial conglomerate called Deutsche Industrie Werke.
And Spreewerke specifically was a subsidiary with a big factory
in a town called Grottau, in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
So the big difference ... what made the Spreewerke, the VG-2, design
appealing to the Ordnance Department was that it had a sheet metal stamped receiver.
And this made it simpler to manufacture for a lot of small shops
than the VG-1 which was basically a heavily simplified Mauser.
Now this is as well, but the VG-1 had basically a Mauser style forged and machined receiver.
And that's an intricate part to make, that requires a lot of heavy machinery.
Where this stamped receiver could be done on much smaller tooling,
more easily distributed around. Or at least once the receiver was done
... it would be simpler to have the rest of the gun built by small shops.
So this was authorised for manufacture,
and ... the primary manufacturer was Grottau in the Sudetenland.
They stamped receivers in Berlin, but then ...
... they manufactured the rest of the parts in the Sudetenland.
The receivers got sent there for final assembly.
There was one other factory that ... there's documentation
saying that a factory in the Danzig area had been authorised to
make these rifles and saying that they were actually in production.
However, there haven't ever been any rifles recovered that show the markings saying they were made in that factory.
So, maybe the original documentation is wrong, maybe they never went into production,
maybe they didn't make very many, maybe they all got captured and destroyed by the Russians.
Who knows? But none of them have ever turned up to date.
So why don't we bring the camera back here and let's take a closer look at how this all goes together,
show you how it works and a few other details.
Taking a closer, technical, look at the construction here. We can start by saying that this is a bolt-action rifle.
It uses the basic Mauser principle, two lugs on the front of a rotary bolt.
The bolt handle locking into the rear part of the receiver here does actually function as a third safety lug.
Despite the rather crude appearance, these are safe guns to shoot.
They are perfectly capable of sustaining the pressure required and they were proof tested.
They are fed from a 10-round detachable magazine.
This is actually a standard Gewehr 43 or Karabiner 43 magazine.
That's typical of the Volkssturm rifles, several of the different
designs used G43 magazines. Now, these are in production,
you can source them from the factories that are making them,
and then you avoid having to make that many other components in little small shops
where, you know, you don't want to push their capabilities too far.
We have a basic magazine catch here. There's actually a spring that you pull in tension
instead of press in compression to open that.
The safety on these rifles is extremely simple.
It's one piece, sheet metal piece, riveted to the bottom of the receiver.
When you push it this direction the trigger can move back.
When you flip it to this side, the trigger is blocked by that little
hook projection. So that's all there is to the safety.
The rear sight is made of two round stampings that hold a milled bar with a little notch in there.
In theory that's windage adjustable, you could tap it back and forth.
And then the front sight is a very basic post with a protective hood around it.
The muzzles on all of these are pretty heavily counterbored,
that was done deliberately. And what's interesting
is that the barrels on the VG-2 were all Luftwaffe barrels.
So, we can just barely make out some of the original stampings on this barrel down here.
Luftwaffe barrels were used because they were an available supply
of spare aircraft machine gun barrels that hadn't been used.
At this point in the war, you know, aviation fuel was getting very difficult to come by,
and spare machine gun barrels really weren't something of major value to the Luftwaffe.
So the barrels were basically confiscated and used ...
turned down and fitted into rifle actions to make Volkssturm rifles.
Speaking of the barrels, what we have here for assembly is a sheet metal receiver.
This is one piece, U-shaped piece, that's wrapped around a mandrel and stamped.
And then there is a front trunnion and a rear trunnion here,
machined steel pieces, basically starting with tubular stock,
that are pressed into place inside the receiver, and then these pins hold them in place.
Then we have pins down here holding the front stock in place.
The locking lug recesses are cut into this piece of steel.
So the barrel is pressed in and pinned in place, and then the bolt locks into this and it
... acts the same as a complete milled receiver in a proper Mauser rifle.
The bolt is a simplified version of the standard Mauser bolt.
Disassembly is simply done by (take the safety off), pull the trigger down,
and that drops the sear and allows you to remove the bolt from the back of the rifle.
And our bolt has all of the standard components. We've got two locking lugs up front.
We have an extractor. We have a space for the ejector.
On the back you have this tail, this connects to the striker.
So when you push ... when you lock the bolt down, this
striker is under spring tension and it's pulled back, or rather
it stays in place and the rest of the bolt goes forward. When you pull
the trigger there is a sear holding this in position that drops down, which
allows this to snap forward and the firing pin protrudes out the front.
Now there are two sets of markings on the receiver here. We'll start with this one on the right side.
This is marked "chd", and that is the factory production code for Spreewerke's facility in Berlin
where the actual sheet metal receiver stamping was made.
And then the rest, the majority, of our marking is up here on the left side of the receiver.
And over there, we have the model designation, VG2,
we have a "cyq" factory production code and a serial number of 10,856.
That "cyq" is the Spreewerke ... production code for the Sudetenland plant.
Now, those of you who are into German World War Two collecting will
notice that "cyq" is the same as one of the major producers of Walther P38 pistols.
That's correct, Spreewerke made P38s and it's generally considered that what happened
was when they started VG-2 production, that replaced P38 production.
They were probably running low on available materials to make P38s anyway.
And being able to produce a really cheap rifle was of more utility to them than producing a much smaller
number of handguns at that point in the war.
One thing you will not find on this rifle are any Waffenamts or German Army proof marks.
And there's good reason for that. We wouldn't expect there to be any, because these Volkssturm rifles
... the companies that manufactured them were responsible for their own testing and inspection,
and they reported directly to the local Gauleiter, the regional economic director.
They didn't report to the official German Ordnance Department, or the German Army.
So, the Waffenamt is a German Ordnance army inspection stamp, if you don't report to them
they're not going to be stamping these rifles. So, no Waffenamts on a VG-2.
In fact, no Waffenamts on most of the Volkssturm rifles in general.
One interesting feature here on this particular rifle, you can see that the rear in the receiver here
has this stamped bolt guide. That's there just to force this tail into proper position and line it
up as you close the bolt. That wasn't always done, some of the really late production rifles
this is just all one flat piece. Beyond that, there isn't really very much variation in the VG-2s.
They were all produced with the same basic characteristics.
The only differences you'll find really are some slight variations in barrel length.
Probably due to the different types and qualities of spare machine gun barrels that they were supplied.
The VG-2 rifles typically had a cupped metal butt plate. This one you can see the screw holes for it,
but the butt plate itself is missing. In fact, you can also see this line where it originally...
That would have originally been the edge of this cupped metal butt plate.
So, in total, the estimate is that 16,000 to 18,000
of these rifles were manufactured.
It's a little hard to tell because there are rifles with an 'a' suffix,
which normally would suggest that they went from 1 to 10,000,
or 1 to 9999 and then start it over at 1a and started building up.
However there are also rifles out there that have serial numbers over 9999.
In fact this particular rifle is 10,856. So determining exactly how
far they went above 10,000 before they went back to the the 'a' ... suffix, little tricky.
Anyway, the estimate is 16,000 to 18,000 of these made. However
very few of them survived in European and American gun collections.
And the suspicion is the reason for that is that the Grottau area, where these were manufactured,
was overrun and captured by the Soviets. And so most of these rifles were probably employed in that area,
because that was the whole point of the Volkssturm rifle production program, ... to make the guns
in the area where they were going to be issued and used. So, if all of these got issued out and used there,
they were probably all captured by the Russians and that material just simply
didn't make its way into Western Europe and the United States.
You know, ... these are the sorts of guns that get brought back by
returning vets who are in European occupation. An American
vet in Europe is probably not going to run into these rifles,
and if they do, honestly, they're probably going to look at it and say, "Holy cow, that looks like junk.
I want a nicer, better, fancier looking rifle", and this probably isn't what they'll bring home.
As a result, they're really scarce and valuable today.
So, if you'd like to add this particular one to your own collection,
it is, of course, coming up for sale here. If you take a look at the description text below,
you'll find a link to Rock Island's catalogue page. You can look at their pictures and their description, etc.
And if you'd like to place a bid on the rifle, you can do so right through their website.
Thanks for watching.