Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
James D. Julia auction house up in Fairfield, Maine,
taking a look at some of the guns that they are going
to be selling in their upcoming 2017 Fall Firearms Auction.
And today we have a BM 59, and not just any BM 59,
this is actually a registered, transferable, full-auto BM 59.
Now the story behind these is, I think, it's kind of instructive and interesting.
The Italians after World War Two decided to start manufacturing the M1 Garand.
The Italian forces had got a lot of military aid
from the United States after the war, they were shooting a lot of M1 Garands,
and honestly so had a bunch of other European countries.
And both the Beretta and the Breda companies started manufacturing M1s.
Beretta would make over 100,000 M1 Garand rifles
in the decade or two after World War Two.
However, obviously the M1 was ... becoming obsolescent
in the ... late '40s and early '50s because it didn't have a magazine feed.
It had been designed with this 8 round clip for reasons of logistics that made sense at the time.
But for a modern army the Italians wanted a magazine fed select-fire rifle.
That's what all the cool kids were doing.
So where the US took about 12 years to develop the M14.
The M14 wasn't actually adopted until 1957.
And they'd started working on that thing basically in '45 or even 1944
trying to make a mag-fed full-auto M1.
Well, the Italians did the same thing in less than half the time.
So the Italians actually started in 1957 with this development project,
and it was primarily run by two engineers at Beretta, Domenico Salza and Vittorio Valle.
And they started working in '57, they had prototypes in '59,
it was trialled by the Army in 1960, and it was adopted in 1962.
So ... as far as firearms development goes it was a pretty quick development and adoption process.
And they came out with a really good gun.
In fact, I think you could argue that this is in some ways better than the M14 was.
What they did was basically they kept the M1,
the receiver is very similar, the stock, the triggers.
They changed the gas system slightly, they got rid of the dog-leg bend in the gas system.
And then they added a number of modern features, they added detachable box magazines,
they added a gas cut off and grenade launcher sight and a muzzle brake,
they added a bipod, they added a stripper clip charging bridge.
And ended up with a gun that was really very popular.
These were used not just by Italy, but they also sold them.
They were adopted by a number of other countries, Argentina, Indonesia.
I guess no one really huge, but several other not trivial military forces.
And they were also sold on the civilian market, particularly in the United States.
There was a version called the BM 62,
which was the semi-auto only version of pretty much what you see here.
There was another version called the BM 69 that was made
specifically at the request of one US importer.
However, because these guns were actually in service and available for sale before 1968,
some of them were imported as machine guns as well.
Because until 1968 you could still import and register
foreign-made machine guns into the US, and that's what this one is.
So, let's go ahead and take a closer look.
And I'll show you the full-auto mechanism on here, and some of the details of
what the Italians improved on the M1 Garand.
Kick off with some markings here. Back of the receiver on the heel,
where you would expect the markings to be on an American one as well,
it's marked P (Pietro) Beretta.
I realise I should have mentioned earlier, one of the other changes of course to this
from the M1 Garand was they went from .30-06 to the new 7.62 NATO cartridge.
So it is marked 7.62mm BM 59.
And then Gardone V.T. (that's Val Trompia), in Italia. And our serial number there.
Here on the left rear side of the receiver we have the Springfield Armory marking,
they were the importer for this gun.
I think it's relevant to point out that the M1A wasn't introduced until 1974.
So for a long time there weren't a whole lot of other options
for mag-fed .308 American-style rifles.
Unless you wanted to shell out the money for an HK or an FN FAL,
well, you couldn't get an M14, they were US military guns.
And this was your closest option to something like an M14.
The full-auto selector on the BM 59 is located here at the front of the receiver.
We have "A" for automatic and "S" for semi-automatic.
And flipping this lever changes a mechanical lever on the other side,
right here. So that's the semi-auto ... position, and that is the full-auto position.
And the way this works is actually pretty darn simple.
This lever is connected to the trigger mechanism back here, and this is our full-auto trip.
So the key to having a functional, reliable, effective and safe machine gun
is you don't want the hammer ... (assuming it's a hammer fired gun),
you don't want the hammer to just follow the bolt.
That gives the possibility of the cartridge firing before the bolt
is fully locked in battery, and that would be a serious problem.
So instead what you need is some sort of mechanical disconnect
that forces the bolt to lock, and only then releases the hammer to fire.
And that's what this is on the BM 59.
So when I pull the bolt handle open a little bit, you'll see this lever comes up.
I can push it down (it's a little sticky in there with grease).
And the way this works is when the ... charging handle here goes forward
we are going to lock the bolt right there, so the bolt is now in battery.
And then that last little forward bit of travel pushes this lever down
which drops the hammer if I am holding the trigger.
Alright, I'll show you this, I've pulled the magazine out so it doesn't lock open.
I can pull the trigger, and I'm going to hold the trigger down.
You can see that the hammer has come forward here.
The bolt is going to cycle, that resets the hammer.
And then the bolt is going to come forward, lock right there,
and then ... you can see right there, the hammer drops when this goes down.
But not until the bolt,
right there, the bolt's fully locked. And only then does it fire.
With this full-auto setup the rate of fire was about 750 rounds per minute,
which is going to be fairly fast for a .308.
It'd be interesting to try one of these out,
I have not actually had the chance to shoot one in full-auto.
Now of course the semi-auto BM 59s don't have the switch,
they don't have the trip lever, all of that stuff.
And they function just like M1 Garands really.
Now when it comes to magazines, the Italians actually did a really good job
of designing a reliable and durable, and high quality magazine.
They didn't use the M14 mag, because of course the M14 mag was just barely coming into use
by the American military when this started production,
so they didn't have access to M14 magazines to play with.
So this is a 20 round magazine.
... Honestly, it's a better magazine than the M14 is,
it's stronger, it's more durable, it's more reliable, it's better overall.
And what's kind of interesting is that it has ... a couple of things actually.
We'll start with these, it has three magazine stops, two on the right and one on the left.
All three of those meet up against surfaces in the receiver
and that holds the magazine nicely in position.
There are actually two magazine catches, there's one in the front and one in the rear there.
And so where the M14 magazine is a nose in and rock back style,
this actually pushes straight in.
Now this particular mag is a little tight, so you have to wiggle it a little bit.
But in general the magazine just goes in and locks in place like that.
You don't have to try and hook the nose on its catch, like you do with an M14.
Now to take it out
we have a lever that releases the back catch, but there is no lever on the front catch.
So to take it out you grab here, and you do have to tilt it out like an M14 would.
You can actually see the front magazine catch right there.
That's spring-loaded, so when you push the mag in that ... pushes in,
and then snaps open underneath this front mag tab right there.
The rear catch here is much more like what we're used to seeing.
So that one also pushes in and snaps back automatically when you insert the mag,
but then you can manually push it in to remove the mag.
A couple of other features that the Italians included. They added a winter trigger.
So this is a very simple lever that just when it's in the rearward position
it pulls the trigger the exact same way that the trigger does.
So this allows you to fire the gun with gloved hands.
Where the M1 has a bend in the ... op-rod up here,
and so on the M1 there's really no gap
between the gas cylinder and the barrel, they're a little closer together.
The Italians straightened that system out which is easier to manufacture,
and, in theory, a little bit more durable in the long run.
Although I don't know that all that many M1s actually suffered from bent op-rods.
But this is a nice simplification,
so you now have a straight op-rod coming out to the gas block here.
They added a cut-off.
So when I lift this sight up, I am actually disabling the gas system of the gun.
So when I fire it's not going to tap any gas into the system down here,
which means it turns into a straight-pull bolt-action rifle.
That's for firing rifle grenades so that you're not slamming the bolt open
with the added velocity that comes from firing a heavy rifle grenade.
We have a grenade sight here.
What you would do is lift this sight up
and then you have these set for 50, 75 and 100 metres.
And you align these two points with the tip of the grenade,
and that gives you the proper angle on the rifle for firing at those ranges.
The Italians also added this big long muzzle device, called a tri-compensator.
You will hear people often say that the tri-compensator is like the best muzzle device ever devised.
And I think a lot of people think that somehow
this whole length somehow plays into the muzzle device.
And it doesn't really, the muzzle brake is actually these slots at the front
and these series of holes, it's not that complicated.
The reason that this thing is so long is in order to fit
a full-length NATO standard rifle grenade on the muzzle.
Because the M1 is designed to have the gas port right at the end of the muzzle,
they ... kept that where it was,
they didn't want to try and re-engineer the entire gas system around rifle grenades.
And then they had to put this long extension on to be able to fully fit a rifle grenade.
So that's why that thing is as long as it is.
Oh, and they put a bayonet lug on the bottom.
And of course the bipod. So this is an integral folding bipod on the gun here.
And this was included because 7.62 NATO really
isn't a particularly controllable cartridge from the shoulder.
The reason you want full-auto on a gun like this is to make it a pseudo light machine gun,
so the guys can put up sort of sustained supporting firepower if they need to.
And that is much better done from a bipod than from the shoulder.
So, just as ... many of the early FALs and G3s had folding bipods,
the BM 59 did for the exact same reason.
Total cost for these for the Italians ended up being $42 apiece,
... that's in 1962 American dollars.
So they were able to do a really good job of adapting their production tooling
from the M1 Garand to this new rifle and producing it economically.
This is the standard, best known, pattern of the gun, but there were some other variants as well.
There was an early version that was basically a full-length M1 Garand
with just a little short muzzle brake on it and a detachable box magazine.
There was an alpine and paratroop version that the Italians used,
that had a pistol grip and a side-folding metal stock.
There was also a version with a fixed wooden stock and pistol grip.
A couple of different variants of these things that were made.
And they were all really quite popular rifles, they worked well.
They were well liked by the Italian military, as well as the other militaries that use them.
And it really I think goes to show you that
the development process of a firearm isn't ever going to be really fast.
Even ... something like this, this still took 5 years from when they started development
to when it was actually being mass produced and issued to the Italian army.
The M1 Garand took a long time on its own.
But sometimes if you're making a fairly simple change like this to an existing gun
you don't have to make it quite as drawn out and difficult as the US did with the M14 program.
So an interesting gun to take a look at for sure.
There aren't a whole lot of full-auto BM 59s in the US, there are a bunch of semi-auto ones.
In fact there's a couple of new companies that have started making semi-auto BM 59s fairly recently.
But if you'd like one of the full-auto ones, and want to play with that,
well, it is coming up for sale here at the James Julia auction house.
So take a look in the description text below,
you'll find a link there to their catalogue page on this guy.
You can take a look at their description and pictures, and all that,
and place a bid online if you're so inclined.
Thanks for watching.