[ SIG P75 Development ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look
at the early development of the SIG P75 pistol.
This is the same gun that would be sold on the
commercial market as the SIG P220.
And I think a lot of people would probably consider
this a bit of an unusually commercial
and modern gun for Forgotten Weapons.
However, we have access today to a couple of the developmental prototypes,
and we can take a look at how this pistol actually came to be.
And in reality this is an interesting mechanical pistol in a way that I think
a lot of people might not be aware of.
Specifically this uses a folded sheet metal slide. Did you realise that?
Perhaps not, let's take a closer look at where they came from.
So in 1949 the Swiss military adopted the P49,
this would come onto the commercial market as the SIG 210.
And it is widely regarded as probably the best quality service pistol
actually manufactured and adopted by a major military.
This thing really is as much target pistol as it is service pistol.
It is single action only, it has a very nice trigger,
exquisitely high quality to the manufacture.
These things run like they're made out of buttered glass, they are really extraordinary guns.
And the commensurate price tag is, not surprisingly, high.
These were relatively slow to produce, they were expensive guns, all milled and forged steel.
And by the 1960s the Swiss military really needed something that was a little more economical,
and in some ways a little more modern.
So in the 1960s SIG began development
of a new pistol that would incorporate a lot of new features.
It would have an alloy frame, it would ... have a double-action trigger mechanism.
It would use this novel construction method, or at least novel for the Swiss,
of a stamped slide over a machined breech block.
... I don't know exactly where they did get their inspiration,
but they certainly could have got the inspiration for that
from the World War One German Jäger pistols,
or the World War Two German Volkspistole program,
which used many of these same technological elements.
At any rate, the day of the super high-quality blued polished SIG 210 was ending.
After a couple of toolroom models, SIG put together a batch of 35 prototype pistols,
one of which is right here.
And you can see that this largely follows the exterior configuration of the ... P49.
You'll see that while this has a de-cocker, it's in the exact same position
as the safety on the earlier pistols.
The lanyard loops are in the same place, they both have heel magazine releases,
and they're both the same size.
Camera perspective makes the top gun look a little bit bigger here,
but these were both made with 120mm barrels.
Well let's take a closer look at how this thing works on the inside.
So it is still in 9mm Parabellum with a 9 round magazine,
they haven't changed that plan from the 210.
And then in order to disassemble it we have a much simpler system.
The 210 required you to pull out the slide stop pin, like a 1911 or a Hi Power.
On this new pistol you just pull the slide back to this point,
rotate the unlocking lever, and then the slide comes right off the front of the frame.
And then remove the recoil spring and the barrel.
And this is the same style of Browning sort of tilting barrel locking mechanism
that was used in the 210, and which is really the dominant form of pistol action today.
In order to make that work with an alloy frame however, there needed to be a steel insert.
So there are actually two steel inserts on this early prototype.
You can see one of them right here that has been dropped into the frame.
It has a section of guide rail, and then this also has the bearing surface here
that causes the barrel to lock and unlock.
So that's an important piece that has to be hardened and have good wear resistance.
And you're not doing that out of aluminium alloy, hence the inserted steel block.
There's a second block up at the back here that's going to include a fixed ejector.
And I think those are really the two main notable elements in this prototype frame.
Of course we do have a double-action trigger and a de-cocker.
So this prototype dates to 1969.
And it's interesting to note here that the serial number is P 63,000 and change.
At this point in the development, these prototypes were being numbered
in the same series as the commercial series of SIG P210 pistols.
And that would continue until the actual military adoption of the new gun.
Now development of this gun would continue and after a couple of years,
by 1972, there was another batch of prototypes that had been built.
Not quite as many, this time 27 of them.
And this batch included both 9mm Parabellum guns as well as .45 ACP test guns.
They are still being numbered in the SIG 210 commercial serial range.
So this later prototype here is P 64,616.
And there are a number of additional changes that have been made at this point.
Most notably, the barrel has been shortened about 12mm.
So the first batch was 120,
the second batch was down to 108mm.
And it would actually stay this way until final adoption of the gun.
A couple of other more aesthetic changes.
The first prototype here had a relatively complex screw windage-adjustable rear sight.
And with the second prototypes that was simplified to just a
dovetailed front sight that you could drift side to side
in the spirit of the simplified ... production design of these guns.
Now I mentioned at first that these pistols used a ... new for the Swiss
sort of assembly technique, namely a folded sheet-metal slide.
So let's take a closer look at how that actually worked.
On the first prototype in particular, it's really pretty obvious
because they have these little indentations.
And if you look at the front of the muzzle, you can see that this nose piece
is a separate milled block that has been inserted in this U-shaped bent slide.
So this isn't really a stamping in like the German style of stamping,
which would use a thin-gauge sheet metal and have a relatively complex pattern to it.
This is more like what I would call the Russian version of stamping,
(at least the early Russian version of stamping) where you take a heavy piece of sheet metal,
and it's more bent than it is complex stamped.
So SIG put this nose piece in the front,
and then they did the same sort of thing with a breech block in the back.
And this is what's very similar to the German Jäger pistol from World War One.
You can see the delineation right there.
This section right here at the back of the ... ejection port is ... the milled insert.
The rear sight is also included on that milled insert.
You can see the delineation back here as well.
Slide on the outside, milled on the inside.
On the second prototype it's even more obvious on the breech block piece
because they wrapped the slide around the back instead of having it
end square like on the first prototype.
So you can see that there.
On this second prototype they ... introduced this kind of,
well I want to call it lumpy here, profile to the top of the slide.
The rest of this is still manufactured the same way.
The seam isn't quite as obvious on the nose piece of this second prototype,
but that is how it was put together.
Just as an interesting side note, I'll point out that Astra
attempted to copy the SIG 220 with its A-80 pistol.
And they tried to manufacture it the same way, and they actually had serious problems
with this nose piece not being firmly attached to the slide.
And ... they would start to bend and like come off the slides as you were firing.
Definitely not a good thing, and caused a huge recall of Astra A-80 pistols.
So while we think of this as a simplified manufacturing technique, that doesn't mean that it's easy.
It still requires some real expertise in order to get it, and get it right.
Now comparing the frames of these two prototypes,
you will recall that the first one had this fixed ejector back here.
The second prototype they've evolved the design a bit,
and the ejector is now a thinner stamped piece that's pinned in place down here
instead of being connected back to the fire control group.
So in this design, we're really getting very close
to what would be the final military version of the gun.
However, you can still see the steel locking block in the front
where it has been basically dovetailed into the frame here, and that would still need to change.
Now, at last, in 1975 the gun was formally adopted as
the "Pistole 75", the P75, for military service.
And ... as such, a new serial number range was instituted.
No longer would these guns be manufactured under the
same serial numbers as the 210 series, now they got their own.
They would again have an "A" prefix indicating army use.
And where the ... P49 pistol had all been in the 100,000 range,
they decided to just add a digit and the 220, or the P75,
all of these guns would be in the 1 million serial number range.
So this is the 139th army pistol made as you can see from the numbers there.
And it shares pretty much all of the distinctive elements of the prototype,
there are only a couple of major changes that were made from that prototype.
You'll notice there's still the stamping contours there up on the top of the slide.
I should point out this: these have this cool Swiss shield on them,
being military pistols made by SIG.
Of the changes that were made, we can see two of them from the outside.
One is the addition of a little finger rest ledge to the front of the trigger guard,
the prototypes had all been round trigger guards.
The other is the hammer.
The prototypes had all used kind of a wide beaver-tail hammer,
the production guns have just a narrower serrated hammer.
... There were some very minor changes to the profile of this locking block,
however with the military guns it was now pinned into the frame
instead of having this large dovetail style of cutout there.
So certainly makes it look better,
presumably it was not any less effective in retaining that block sufficiently in place.
And lastly, a firing pin safety has been added.
Now we can only see a little bit of it here,
there's this little lever on the side of the fire control group.
And when I pull the trigger that lever is going to lift up like that.
There is no such lever here on the prototype.
What that lever actually does is push this spring-loaded blocking piece
(this is the military slide right here),
pushes that blocking piece up which allows the firing pin to actually move.
On the prototype slide here, there is no piece.
It's interesting there is a cutout there, but no firing pin safety built into it.
Conveniently, we happen to have a cutaway of this exact style of the pistol,
and so I can show you exactly how that firing pin safety works, right up here.
So the firing pin itself is down here at the bottom.
And we have this block right there,
that as you can see is dropped down into a cutout in the firing pin.
So as long as this block is down, and it is spring-loaded so it's always being pushed down,
that prevents the firing pin from ever moving.
This would act as a drop safety, so no matter how much force the pistol impacts with,
the firing pin can't go anywhere because it's physically blocked from moving.
However when you pull the trigger, that lever (do it again),
that lever pushes that blocking bar up, which then allows the firing pin to move.
And right there, there we go, when the hammer drops it pushes forward like that.
... There are redundant safeties,
so if I'm not pulling the trigger I can't push the hammer forward either.
But, when it does, that's how it all works.
Since we have this cutaway here, I can also take a moment to show you the
simplified and improved version of the locking system that is typical on pistols today.
When John Browning originally developed the tilting barrel system
he had a swinging link that would pull the barrel down.
What people successively did was refine that into just a wedge.
So when the slide comes back, you can see that we have a pair of
angled surfaces right here that are going to interact with each other.
This red wedge built into the frame
(and by the way, this is part of the steel locking block that's in the pistol)
that is going to force the barrel to tilt downwards, just like that.
The barrel is then unlocked from the slide,
and the slide can continue backwards to eject and then load a new cartridge.
When it comes forward, pressure from the recoil spring
is going to push that barrel back forward
where it is now sliding on a surface out here,
and pushed back into battery.
So the Army at this point has officially adopted the P75 as its new service pistol,
the guns have gone into significant mass production.
However, there is one last change that's going to be made.
You'll notice on the early military guns there's some contouring up here,
and there's actually a fair amount of fine detail in the bent or stamped slide components.
And somebody, I'm not sure if it was the Army or SIG,
decided that they really wanted to simplify this a bit.
I suspect it was probably SIG deciding that they could probably make this
a little more economical of a gun to produce.
Maybe they offered the government a reduced price
on the pistols if they were able to make a few changes.
And so SIG put together an example.
And this one actually is one of the example pistols that was presented to the Army, saying,
"We'd like to make a few changes to the slide profile.
Take a look at this, see what you think, and if you like it
then we'll change our production to this method."
Looking at these, you can definitely see the changes in the contour.
So these narrow slide serrations have been replaced with thicker ones.
And there's less detail, they're not on a raised sheet here.
Looking at the front, some of this contouring right in here has been simplified.
The raised contours on the top of the slide have been removed, it's now a nice plain flat surface.
This dip at the front of the slide has been replaced, it's now again a linear solid plain flat surface.
The Army took a look at this demonstration model and basically apparently said,
"Yeah, ... obviously that's fine, we have no problem with it."
And so SIG changed their production to this style of slide.
Now it's still a bent sheet metal slide over a breech block and a nose piece,
but now it really looks a lot more like a blocky milled slide.
I don't know exactly when this transition took place,
it definitely took place by the early 50,000 serial numbers.
And this is the style that would be produced from there on.
Now we have just one last variant to take a quick look at.
And this is distinctive for having a "Z" prefix serial number.
This is one of a small batch of guns that were made for the Zoll,
the Swiss Customs and Border Patrol Service.
And it is identical really in every way except for:
it has night sights on it which was apparently dictated by the Border Patrol,
and it has one unusual modification down here.
Apparently there were some concerns about magazine retention,
and so this shield has been added to prevent ... you
from kind of unintentionally releasing the magazine.
You can still take it out just fine, but this I guess prevents ...
if the butt of the pistol drags over anything it won't hit the magazine release,
it'll hit this little guard shield and deflect off.
So exactly what the problem was that led to this I don't know for sure,
but it is an interesting little detail that is specifically on the Customs and Border Patrol guns.
As recognisable by their Z prefix serial number because they aren't actually Army guns.
Other than that ... and of course the three dot night sights,
this is the exact same P75 pistol that the Army had.
Well hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
... If you have a modern SIG P220,
hopefully you take a bit of a new look at it now, recognising where it came from.
If you enjoy seeing this sort of content on the internet,
I would appreciate it if you would consider taking a look at my Patreon account.
It is support from folks there that makes it possible
for me to find collections like this and bring them to you guys.
Thanks for watching.