Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Limex
courtesy of its owner, Alexander Logar,
taking a look at some of the really interesting
and really rare guns in their reference collection.
And this is a German MP-717(r) or MP-41(r).
This is ... a Russian Papasha 41 converted to use 9mm Parabellum and German MP40 magazines.
So the reason this exists is essentially because
people always think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
What the other guy has is always the better equipment.
And ... there's almost no better example of this
than World War Two submachine guns on the Eastern Front.
So the ... German troops thought that the Russian gun was better.
It fires faster, bigger magazine, and they figured,
... psychological effect here, that the enemy's gun was better.
Well the Russians felt the same way, that the German gun was more reliable.
In late 1941 there was actually a formal request by some German officers
that Germany should just manufacture the Papasha 41.
And so the HWA, the Heeres Waffenamt, the German weapons office
did some actual detailed studies on this question.
And they came to the conclusion that in fact the Soviet magazines were better,
which makes sense because the MP40 magazine is [double-stack single-feed].
Think of it, it's very much like a Sten magazine, it's not the best design to use.
It was used for patent reasons that are beyond the scope of this video.
So the HWA finds that the Russian magazines are better, but the German gun is better.
So in theory, the best solution would be an MP40 that uses Russian Papasha drums.
What they ended up actually making was, well, the polar opposite.
About 10,000 PPSh-41s were in fact converted to use 9mm Parabellum.
So they'd use German ammunition and German magazines.
There are a lot of reproductions out there, but this is an original one.
So let me show you up close how they did this.
There are only three parts required for this conversion.
One of them is simply the magazine, which is a totally standard MP40 magazine.
That was for logistical reasons.
Number two is a magazine well adapter, and there were a couple of different versions of these made.
This is a cast one, there was also a stamped version that was made.
And what makes this easily possible is that the Papasha, the Soviets, used the 7.62x25mm cartridge,
which is substantially longer overall than the German 9mm cartridge.
So there was extra space available in the magazine well here.
In fact you can see there's a pretty big chunk of metal at the back here.
9mm will fit easily inside this magazine well.
So for example, it would have been very difficult for the Soviets
to convert an MP40 to 7.62 Tokarev,
because they would be trying to take a magazine well this long,
and convert it to that long, which would require a lot of modification of the gun.
For the Germans going the opposite direction - pretty easy modification.
So we have a magazine release right here, that's the opposite side of it.
And it's simply locking into the mag catch on the MP40 mag.
Now on some of these conversions they actually popped that pin
and took off the original magazine release levers.
This is how you would take the magazine out of the Soviet gun.
Because with this ... adapter you don't need the lever.
... This isn't the gun that this magazine well adapter was originally issued with,
so this still has the lever in it.
But this is pressed really tightly into place and it's not really possible for me to take it out.
So there's really not much more on the inside than there is on the outside.
It's just a square box. One set of dimensions on the outside,
... it's Papasha magazine dimensions on the outside and MP40 magazine dimensions on the inside.
The ejector right there is the same as was originally in the gun,
there's no need to change that, the bolt face was left the same.
The 7.62 Tokarev and 9mm Parabellum case heads are similar enough
that they would work interchangeably without any trouble.
Now of course the third piece of the conversion required is the barrel.
And this particular gun still has its original Russian barrel in it.
So this is an original standard MP40 barrel, and this is the barrel out of the MP-41(r).
And you can see what they did was simply take original MP40 barrels and convert them.
They had these, they were making these in a substantial quantity at this point.
So there are a number of things that they had to do.
The first obvious one is a machine operation to turn down the outside to this profile.
So the way the Papasha works is you've got a trunnion block right here with a round hole in it.
And the barrel slides through that hole, rests on a shoulder at the back,
and then is held in place with this cross pin.
Which also acts as the pivot hinge ... for the top of the gun.
So they left that shoulder, they cut the cross-pin hole,
and then turned the profile of the barrel down to this appropriate dimension.
You can see the features on the back are basically the same to begin with.
The extractor is at the same basic angle as on the MP40,
so not really any modification required there.
It looks like they did turn down the back of the breech face a little bit.
And then of course the MP40 was threaded at the muzzle for its muzzle cap,
which was there for using blank firing adapters and such.
The Papasha does not have a threaded muzzle.
The barrel just ends inside what is essentially a muzzle brake at the end.
But in converting this MP40 barrel they left most of the threading still there.
It's turned down just slightly in diameter at the front, but still has the threading.
It is interesting to note that the original MP40 barrels
are not as large in diameter as the back of the Papasha barrels.
So ... I can't really demonstrate this all that well because of ... all the other parts in the way.
But setting it up like that you can see that the MP40 barrel is smaller in diameter.
So ... this will centre in the trunnion there because this diameter is the same as the MP40.
But it just barely had enough shoulder to work properly.
You can see here comparing the original MP40 to the converted barrel,
... they didn't turn this back end down at all.
There was just barely enough meat to have that shoulder at the back.
Because this is such a rare item, and a German World War Two item,
and such a very simple device (it's just a magazine well insert)
there have been a lot of fakes of these.
Some of them are actual fraudulent fakes, attempting to be passed off as the real thing.
Some of them are commercial copies, reproductions that are sold legitimately as reproductions.
But sometimes then the reproductions get re-branded as "original" later on.
At any rate, this particular one came out of a lake in Carinthia in Austria,
very good provenance that it is in fact original.
This isn't the gun that it was originally in, the gun it was originally in
was actually ... the same condition as the insert, aka very poor condition.
So the guy who found it pulled the magazine well out,
and Limex has it in this really cool early Papasha 41 for demonstration.
Anyway, a big thanks to Limex and Mr Logar for [giving] access to this to show to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.