Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at
Movie Armaments Group up in Toronto,
where we are taking a look at a
Russian APS 'Stechkin' machine pistol.
This is a gun that I've wanted to do a video on for some time.
Actually what I've really wanted to do is shoot it for some time.
We're actually going to do that tomorrow.
But before we can take it out and shoot it, we need to understand what it is and how it works.
So, this was developed by a guy named, not surprisingly, Igor Stechkin in the Soviet Union.
Actually in the Tula Arsenal in the late 1940s.
So prototypes of this were being built in like '47, '48, '49.
The gun was pretty much finalised in 1950.
A big batch of them made for field trials, and then it was formally adopted in 1951.
Now what we have here is ... well, it's a stocked pistol.
And it's ... I can't really say one of the last stocked pistols to be made,
because people are still tinkering with this idea to this very day.
But the concept was this would be a select-fire personal defence weapon.
And it was originally intended for issue to ... basically NCOs and specialist infantry troops.
So things like tank crews, maybe drivers,
... like personal defence weapons in every military,
guys who didn't need a full-sized rifle, and had better things to do
than be toting around a full-size rifle, or didn't have a good place to store a full-size rifle.
But they needed some sort of decent self-defence weapon
because they might end up in combat.
So in the United States military this role was filled very well by the M1 carbine.
The Soviets, ... in the process of getting rid of most of their submachine guns,
they went to this as their planned personal defence weapon.
So let's take a look at how it works, and we'll talk about how it actually did in service.
There are a lot of similarities between the Stechkin and the Makarov,
and they were adopted at basically the exact same time.
So you can see the size comparison here: the Stechkin is really a very large handgun.
The Makarov's kind of small, but this is really quite big.
Taking a bit of a closer look here, we have our Tula Arsenal manufacturer's mark,
serial number, serial number also on the frame.
There's a three-position selector switch on the side of the slide.
The rearmost position is full-auto, the middle position there is semi-auto.
The forward position with the white dot is safe, and this also serves as a de-cocker.
There we go, that will drop the hammer.
Sights are very typical: square post front sight,
and a rear notch sight.
Now that rear notch is adjustable, there are four different settings for 25, 50, 100 and 200 metres.
And that just raises and lowers that rear notch.
That 200 metre setting was a requirement of the Russian RFP for this pistol.
The magazine is a heel release, so you push that in and slightly backwards.
Pull out the magazine, which obviously looks very much like a Makarov magazine
with the open viewing holes in the side.
This however is a double-stack double-feed magazine,
holds 20 rounds, and these are chambered for the 9x18 Makarov cartridge.
Obviously you already saw this with the stock attached.
There are a pair of slots on the back of the grip,
and a matching lug on the stock with this locking catch right there.
So this slides onto the bottom of the ... grip,
and there you have a stock to stabilise your shooting.
This is set up with a pair of hooks for a sling, and also a big ... loop for a belt.
And then in true stocked pistol form you can push the button, open this
(it does carry a cleaning rod there also by the way),
and you can store the gun in the ... holster stock, like so.
There are two different versions of those stocks that they made:
the wooden ones, and also a Bakelite-type material.
I'm sure this isn't Bakelite, I think this is phenolic resin.
I expect it's the exact same material that AK mags were also made of.
And what's nice about this, is this is a really solid durable-feeling stock.
One of the big problems with stocked pistols, at least in my mind,
is that ... the stocks always feel really fragile because they have to be hollow to hold the gun.
And I always feel like I'm in serious danger of
cracking ... the top of the stock if you put any pressure on it.
So this one? This is actually heavier than the wood stock, and this feels really sturdy.
The other two bits I should point out here are a slide lock,
so you can see the notch for it right there.
This does lock open on ... an empty magazine,
or I can lock it open manually like so.
There is also a little loop, right here, which you can use to attach a lanyard.
They don't have that on the butt because that would interfere with
the magazine release and also with the stock attachment.
In order to disassemble the thing we have to cock the hammer,
and then just like a Makarov, you pull the trigger guard down.
Although in this case it's kind of fixed in place.
It has ... a mechanical linkage up here that allows it to lower,
where the Makarov is more just spring steel doing that.
Once this is down, then you can pull the slide all the way back, lift it up
and slide it off the gun.
Just like the Makarov, this has a fixed barrel on it.
In theory it should be a quite accurate pistol.
Mechanically this is just plain simple blowback, ... that works just fine for 9x18 mm.
We've got the three-position selector going through the top of the slide there
to interact with the fire control parts. And that's pretty much about it.
That's the firing pin back here, which gets hit by the hammer.
Now I'm going to go ahead and take the grip panels off
because one of the interesting elements here is that the Stechkin has a rate reducer built into it.
Because if you have just a simple blowback 9x18 pistol, it's going to run at a very high rate of fire.
Probably something at or in excess of 1,000 rounds a minute,
and that is uncontrollable and will empty your magazines way too fast.
So there is a rate reducer. (Let's pull off that grip panel first.)
This block right here is actually the rate reducer.
So every time the gun fires the slide is going to come back,
it's going to kick this down.
This block has to travel all the way down the grip against that spring,
it'll hit the bottom, then it will reciprocate back up.
And when it hits the top it will trip the release to allow the gun to fire its next shot.
So this is actually relatively similar to like the ... late pattern Astra rate reducers,
or even the ... Czech Skorpion rate reducer.
And it's an important aspect of a machine pistol.
So there you go, there is your field stripped APS Stechkin.
Alright, back to that personal defence weapon plan: it didn't really work out.
The problem was this just wasn't really an effective weapon in that role.
It was large and heavy for a handgun, it was still kind of awkward
and had a fairly limited ... practical range as a stocked pistol here in carbine form.
It just didn't work out well.
Ultimately the ... AKS-74U, the so-called 'Krinkov' in American colloquial terms,
that would end up taking this role for officers, tank crews, that sort of thing.
That was a much more effective weapon as a defensive weapon than the Stechkin.
So production of the Stechkin only lasted a few years.
These were pretty much pulled out of Soviet service by the '70s and replaced by short-barrelled AKs.
However they got a bit of a renaissance when the Soviet Union got involved in Afghanistan
because Spetsnaz troops discovered that you could mount a suppressor on these things,
(they had a special threaded barrel),
and they really liked this as a suppressed machine pistol.
They had a little wire-frame stock on it.
And that gave this sort of a second breath of life.
But even with that use, this was never really all that significant
of a military weapon for the Soviet Union.
So with all of that being laid down,
I'm really curious to get out there and actually try shooting this.
So we're going to go ahead and do that tomorrow out at the range,
so definitely stick around for that video.
A big thanks to Movie Armaments Group for giving me the chance to take a look at their Stechkin.
And if you happen to be filming a movie up in Canada and you need a bunch of Stechkins,
they actually have a nice pile of them for use in film.
So anyway, stick around for the video tomorrow.
Thanks for watching.