Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum and I am filming today here in
the beautiful island of Malta by invitation of the
Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters
and today we're gonna take a look at
an extraordinarily rare and cool firearm.
That being ... what's in the collectors world today
called a Type C, or a pre-production trials FG42.
The FG42 program began in February of 1942
with the production of the first one-off design prototype,
which in collectors terms today we refer to as the Type A.
Now, by the way all of the terminology I'm going to be using here is taken from a book
called "Death From Above" written by Thomas Dugelby and Blake Stephens about the FG42.
And it is the best work out there in general on the FG42,
although I don't think it's quite perfect. There's room out there
for someone to do a more definitive book on this rifle.
Anyway, the Type A was in February of '42,
there was then a second improved one-off prototype made
in March of 1942, that we call the Type B.
The Type B itself was then improved a bit more in April of '42.
So you have a couple months of very early developmental work
and then in basically May through July
a series of pre-production guns were manufactured.
So this pre-production was done at the Rheinmetall company,
although Krieghoff would end up producing most of the guns.
Rheinmetall did the development, and specifically Rheinmetall
had an engineer on staff named Louis Stange,
and he's the one responsible for this design.
Elements of it actually come from the Lewis gun,
but ... I have other videos on the FG42 and its initial development and the production guns.
So, this isn't intended to be a video about the entirety of the FG42 program, just this specific
pre-production model. So if you want more details check out some of my other FG42 videos.
What we have here specifically is one of Rheinmetall's
pre-production guns, and there are a couple other books
out there with information on the FG42. And if you combine
everything together, the theory that I have (that I and the rifle's owner have),
is that there were originally 20 guns made in the very first batch, as basically, the go-betweens,
the missing link between the very first couple of one-off handmade guns and the batch of
troop trials guns that was first made in the summer of '42.
So 20 of these total, and this one is serial number 15, it would fit in that batch,
and it has a unique rear sight which we'll take a look at in a moment.
Once they got the design perfected with these 20
and figured out exactly what they wanted to do,
they then built another batch of 50 guns that were used for troop trials.
That troop trial actually took a while before it took place.
Those troop trials happened in the spring of 1943,
so about six months after the guns were made.
This is because of a number of factors, not the least of which being
political infighting within the Third Reich government about
- what rifle do we want to use? Because by this time
the Wehrmacht, the German army, was already
extensively working with the 7.92x33 Kurz cartridge,
which was really a much better developmental line for infantry small arms.
Now the Luftwaffe wanted the FG42 for slightly different reasons. They wanted a rifle that
could replace both ... well, the MP40 and the Kar 98k and also the MG34 as a light machine gun.
And that's why the FG42 was required to be select-fire capable and why it had a bipod on it.
This had to be a stand-in for a light machine gun.
Because of that, the Luftwaffe wasn't interested in the 8 Kurz.
That cartridge didn't have enough power for them to consider it as a light machine gun substitute.
Hence the Luftwaffe is here looking at an ... 8x57 Mauser rifle. The army has left this behind,
they're no longer even interested in the G43 and K43.
They're pushing ahead to the assault rifle concept with the intermediate round.
Anyway, long way of saying it took some time before they actually did testing on these.
Once these were tested in the spring of '43, they were approved, they were adopted, and
serious serial production began. But before that, we have the prototype. So let's take a closer look at this.
There are a couple features, of course, that point this out as an early pattern FG42.
From the most obvious, of course, the ... grip angle which highlights it as a first model of FG42.
It was only later that they went to a stamped receiver instead of this milled receiver,
and a much straighter version of the pistol grip.
However, looking a little more in detail,
you'll notice that the butt-stock, it is an
aluminium butt-stock, and it is smooth sided.
So this would fairly quickly change to
a design of butt-stock that has strengthening ribs stamped into it.
They continued to reuse the existing smooth ones for some time
(as long as they survived). But new production changed to the ribbed ones as they were stronger.
If we take a look at the markings here, we're going to start to see some slightly unusual bits.
So, instead of having a three letter factory code, this rifle has a Rheinmetall logo on it, because it was
an experimental pre-production gun, not something that was meant to actually be issued out to the military.
For that reason it has no Waffenamts on it, it never went through Army approvals or Army trials...
well, it did go through some trials presumably, but it never went through the proofing program
for official Army acceptance because it wasn't a production gun.
The serial number is 015, the preceding zero typically indicates a pre-production or experimental gun,
and it has a designation of 'FG42'.
Now, most of the literature out there suggests that this designation wasn't actually adopted until '43.
However, we know from a piece of correspondence from Rheinmetall that
... this was the adopted nomenclature at least by November of 1942, if not earlier.
So that's what you can see on the receiver of this gun. This is not the normal place to look for these markings.
So on a typical first model FG42 you have this drum style flip-up sight,
and as a result you have markings here on the front of the receiver.
On this one, however, you can see that the sight is located at the front,
and so the receiver markings have to be located farther back.
That's what makes this a unique pattern of gun.
So this rear sight also flips up and down.
So you can flip it up like that and then
instead of having an aperture that is dial adjusted for range,
instead we have basically a whole little drum of
... rear notches and you can select which one you want.
And if you look up close, you can see that each one has a little range marked on it.
400
300
200 (You may be seeing why they decided to change this pattern.)
100
and
then it jumps up to I believe, 6, yeah 600.
So, this was their first idea of how to do the rear sight
and this would have given the rifle the same sight picture
as you would get on any other German military rifle,
with the V-shaped notch and the barleycorn style front post.
Fortunately for the paratroopers I think, they ended up replacing that
with ... what became the standard pattern, with an aperture sight.
Which is a more usable, a more precise, I think a overall better,
style of rear sight. And that's one of the purposes of a pre-production series like this one.
Test some things out, see what works, see what doesn't.
Make any changes that you need to do, before you set up the tooling to start real serious production.
Now one thing that people always comment on is that the bayonet on the FG42 is
awfully similar to the French MAS-36 bayonet, which is completely true, it is.
Stange didn't think a bayonet was really of any particular use on
this rifle, but requirements insisted that he had to have one.
So he wanted something that was light and simple and the
French pattern of storing it underneath the barrel like this
worked just perfectly. In fact, it worked so perfectly that on a pre-production gun like this,
Rheinmetall actually just converted a captured French MAS-36 bayonet.
They had plenty of these from the occupation of France, and you can still see the French serial number in there.
Now we know this is original, because this particular rifle actually remained in the Rheinmetall factory
collection until probably the 1970s, when it was then given to a Dutch collector by the name of
Henk Visser, who had an ownership stake in Rheinmetall, as a gift.
And Visser would not have replaced this, nor would any of the collectors who have had it since Visser.
So very interesting that they actually, for the pre-production guns, they weren't bothering to
try and, you know, perfect bayonet manufacturing. They just needed something that worked,
so they converted the French ones.
And if we compare this pre-production converted French bayonet to a standard production
FG42 bayonet here, you can see a number of differences. The width of this lug changed,
the depth and size of the knurled section changed, obviously the French serial number is no longer there.
The exact pattern at the tip is slightly different, because once these guns went into production they
did actually manufacture their own bayonets, just not until actual series production began.
Now there are a couple parts on this rifle that are mismatched.
Almost everything is number 15, with the exception of
serial number 03 here on the butt-stock,
and serial number 09 here on the trigger guard assembly.
There are two possible explanations for that.
One of them is that they may have been recycling old parts in this very first trial series of guns.
You know, if a gun failed, but some of the parts were still useful they would go ahead and just reuse those
for the later guns in the series, because everything was being built basically by hand at this point.
The other possibility is that those parts may have been replaced by Rheinmetall
at some point. I mentioned that this came out of the Rheinmetall factory collection. There was actually
a firing demonstration that was given before, and separately from, the actual field testing and trials.
There was a demonstration given to Hermann Goering of these guns very early on,
and given that this is the one gun that Rheinmetall kept and it's from the correct period,
there's a reasonable chance that this is the one that was actually used in the demonstration for Goering.
And if they decided to keep that one, but it had a couple of damaged parts, they may have
replaced those parts before basically setting it aside in their collection.
While the rear sight is really the primary difference between
this, which is described as a C Type gun, and this,
which is a production E type gun,
we also have a couple other little differences.
The most notable of them being the disassembly mechanism
and the way that the trigger guard is actually attached.
On the production guns there is a flat spring used here,
this being one of the elements that was very much copied on
the US M60 when it was eventually developed from the FG42.
The pre-production gun does not have that. Instead it has ...
just a split pin type of attachment down here for holding this on.
You can see that on this side the pin is solid.
There is no space for a flat spring to sit,
it's not a case of simply missing the flat spring.
And on this side we have a split pin inside.
So you would pull the pin out in order to remove the trigger assembly.
Which they simplified with the flat spring on the production guns.
You can also see that the style of production changed slightly.
Where on this, we have a nice smooth,
basically seamless, trigger guard.
The production guns would have a much more obvious two part
manufacture, make a left and a right and then weld them together.
Later production actually they would further simplify this,
they would remove this part of the stamping, the trigger guard itself,
and replace it with a piece of sheet metal riveted in place.
But that's a little bit beyond the scope of our Type C prototype.
By the way, while we have this production gun here,
which is a very early production gun, it's serial number 141.
I should point out this is actually one of two FG42s that was used in the filming of 'Saving Private Ryan'.
Now you may not remember there being FG42s in 'Saving Private Ryan' and
you're not losing your memory. The footage was in fact not used. Apparently
the film company spent quite a substantial amount of money renting a pair of FG42s and
... they filmed them, they filmed a shooting sequence with them, and apparently Spielberg decided
he didn't really like the way it looked and so the footage never made it into the movie.
But, they were actually used by the studio and they were filmed.
Fortunately, they were not converted to blank-firing for the movie.
I suspect the owner would have been quite upset if they had been.
Anyway, just a little interesting footnote on this particular production FG42.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
This is basically a unique opportunity to take a look at a one-of-a-kind FG42.
This is the only example of this pattern that's known to still exist.
So a big thank you to the collector who allowed me to pull it out and put it on camera and show it to you guys.
If you enjoy seeing this sort of thing on-line, please do consider supporting me directly
through ForgottenWeapons.com or through Patreon. It is your support there that makes it possible for
me to travel to places like beautiful Malta here, and bring extremely exotic rare guns like this to you.
Thanks for watching.