Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at Morphy's because
I want to talk about the development of the submachine gun
from a large-scale perspective over the course of the past 100 years.
And I can think of few places better suited
to finding a whole slew of historical submachine guns
than Morphy's, so let's get started.
There's ... a lot of discussion about different generations of submachine guns,
Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3, but there's ... not a lot of standardisation,
and what exactly does that mean? What are the different generations?
So Generation 1, ... World War One submachine guns.
[ Gen. 1 : World War One ]
The truly iconic submachine gun of World War One is the German MP18,I.
They weren't used in particularly substantial numbers,
there is some question as to whether they were actually the first submachine gun in use.
The Italians had two different versions of basically Villar Perosa turned standard gun.
The Villar Perosa was a pistol calibre machine gun used by the Italians,
but the original 1915 pattern does not fit the general characteristics of a submachine gun.
And so I'm leaving it out of this discussion.
However, by 1918 the Italians were pulling apart Villar Perosas
and setting individual barrels and actions in shoulder stocks rather like this,
and issuing them out as what we would consider today to be ... stereotypical submachine guns.
And unfortunately I don't have an example of that to show you.
So for World War One we're going to stick with the Bergmann MP18,I.
This is really the submachine gun that would demonstrate
how submachine guns are intended to be used.
These were issued out to storm troopers,
and they allowed a volume of close-range firepower that was unprecedented in 1918.
There really was nothing else out there that could compare quite to this.
Now, this wasn't the only Bergmann, and the Germans weren't the only people who recognised this idea,
but they were the only ones who were really able to put it into practice before the end of the war.
We do also have John Thompson in the US
who came up with a similar concept, the "Trench Broom" as he called it.
In fact it was Thompson who coined the term 'submachine gun'
in reference to the Thompson submachine gun.
And the idea here is exactly the same.
However, the Thompson was still in development during World War One, it never got into the trenches.
But it would have been used just like the MP18.
Now what make these a specific ... I would call these 1st Generation submachine guns is ...
well, it's easy to call them that because they were the first submachine guns out there.
But the characteristics that make a 1st Generation submachine gun are
high quality, forged, milled manufacture. The use of finely fitted, finely finished, wood stocks.
These are guns that were manufactured primarily for their quality
and not for expediency, and we can see that in a few distinctive features.
The ... original Thompsons had very complex, click adjustable, fancy rear sights.
This would be nonsensical in later submachine guns.
The MP18 uses a 32 round magazine taken from the Artillery Luger
that is a fantastically expensive and complicated piece of work.
This would very quickly go away, in fact by 1920 the Germans were rebuilding MP18s
to use traditional double-feed double-stack 20 round magazines,
the System Schmeisser magazines.
So these are our very first iterations of the submachine gun.
Now, the Generation 1 submachine gun would continue
through the inter-war years leading up to World War Two.
[ Gen. 1 : Inter-war ]
Germany and Austria in particular would produce a variety of very finely made,
very effective, high quality Generation 1 submachine guns during the 1920s and the 1930s.
Germany in particular had recognised the capabilities of these guns in warfare,
and was very interested in their further development.
Despite not being legally allowed to develop them under
the Treaty of Versailles, they would find ways to do so anyway.
And arguably the best of the inter-war submachine guns would be the Steyr-Solothurn Model 30,
later to become the Model 34.
These were used by the German military as well as the Austrian military.
They were sold internationally, they were really quite popular guns with a lot of clients.
The Japanese used them, the Chinese used them.
Who else? Some of these in .45 ACP were sold to the New York Police Department, of all places.
So we have again the defining characteristics of a 1st Generation submachine gun:
we have finely milled and forged parts, we have a wood stock.
In this case we have what looks like a round tubular receiver that is actually not stamped tube.
This is in fact all milled, the top cover kind of gives that away,
in that ... you can't do that out of tube.
... There's a lot of expense that went into manufacturing one of these guys.
And this isn't our only example.
We have the Erma EMP, also developed and sold commercially during this time period.
Very well-liked by the Spanish, this would see a lot of use in the Spanish Civil War.
The French would actually use a couple hundred of these in the very beginning of the Battle of France.
The Germans would use them later on in World War Two.
Again finely machined. This does have a tubular receiver, but it is a machined tubular receiver.
Wood stock, even a wooden vertical front grip, which is a little bit unusual.
Side mounted magazines are not uncommon for these guns.
... There are pros and cons to where you mount the magazine on a submachine gun.
On the bottom tends to make the gun less likely to snag on things as you move around,
but it inhibits going prone with the gun with a large magazine.
Top feed interferes with the sight,
but tends to be more reliable for feeding because gravity assists with the feeding.
Side mounted allows for easier reloading because one expects the gun to be held like this,
which allows the hand to be right here for reloading the gun.
It also allows the shooter to get low prone very easily.
However, it has the downside of it kind of off balances the gun.
Anyway, side mounted mags were not uncommon, typically on the left.
Sometimes on the right like this, the Bergmann MP35,
another gun that would be adopted by the German military.
We again have complex, high quality, time-consuming manufacture.
We have a tangent sight out to 1,000 metres.
We have a bolt handle that is designed to duplicate the handling of a Kar98k rifle.
Which is far more sophisticated than anyone would be particularly interested in
having in a submachine gun after World War Two began.
So that's another ... pre-World War Two Generation 1 gun.
Now by the late 1930s we'll start to see a simplification begin in submachine gun design.
And this Beretta Model 38A is a really good example of that,
where this is still an expensive, complex gun to manufacture.
It has a sliding magazine cover on the bottom, it has a tangent rear sight.
There are a lot of features to this gun, ... elements like the ... muzzle brake
are finely and expensively manufactured,
even though that may not necessarily really be all that useful.
But things are starting to get a little simpler.
[ Gen. 2 : World War Two ]
And that brings us to the 2nd Generation of submachine guns.
These came to exist during World War Two because of the constraints of cost
and manufacturing and materials that were imposed by the war.
Everyone had finally recognised just how important and useful submachine guns were in combat,
and they realised, "We need a whole ton of these things."
And the idea of milling out that finely polished top cover of the Steyr-Solothurn MP30,
that's just laughably ... you can't do that, you just can't get away with it.
So I think this is best exemplified by the British Sten gun.
Which looks like a combination of various scrap bits from a plumbing truck, but it worked.
And the essential characteristic of the Sten gun was it had to be
quick, cheap and functional, and that's exactly what they got.
There is no wood to be found anywhere on this gun, there are barely sights.
In fact this one doesn't have a front sight because it's missing, but.
The 500 or 800 or 1,000 metre rear sights that we would see
on pre-World War Two 1st Generation submachine guns, long gone.
Virtually everything in the 2nd Generation has, at best, a two position aperture or open notch.
So, the Sten gun is one iconic example, but there are plenty of others.
On the German side we have the MP38 and MP40.
Where we have a stamped tubular receiver, a stamped magazine housing,
and we have the use of Bakelite as a furniture material, ... and again no wood.
We'll start to see compactness become an important characteristic of these guns.
A great number of them have folding stocks.
Where, prior to World War Two, the folding stock on a submachine gun wasn't really a thing.
At best you would have a removable stock like the Thompson, but even that was relatively uncommon.
So the Germans did the MP40.
The United States of course went into World War Two with its 1st Generation Thompson guns,
but we would get with the modernisation program pretty effectively with the M3.
Colloquially known as the "Grease Gun", because that's kind of what it looks like.
Again this is ... another epitome of a stamped 2nd Generation, very cost effective submachine gun.
Made from two stamped halves welded together.
A very simple tubular wire frame buttstock, which is collapsible ... like that.
Early versions had a charging handle, by the end of the war
the M3A1 would even dispense with the charging handle
in favour of just a simple notch cut out in the bolt
that you would use your thumb to charge the bolt with.
So this dramatically reduced the cost of American submachine guns.
The Soviets got in on the action.
Prior to World War Two they had their own 1st Generation submachine guns
along the lines of the Degtyarev, the PPD.
Again, finely milled, machined, high quality, good wood stocked machine guns.
That would quickly give way to the Papasha, the PPSh, during World War Two.
We do still have a wood stock here, but it's on its way out.
And in this case it's because this is cheap and easy to make.
The front end of the gun, the moving parts
heavy gauge - stamped maybe isn't the right term here, bent might be more appropriate,
but folded metal components, a minimum of machining requirements.
And the PPS-43 that followed this would take that one step further,
and would add those 2nd Gen characteristics of getting rid of the wooden buttstock,
and replacing it with a collapsing or, in the case of the PPS-43, a folding metal buttstock.
Now we looked at Italy's pre-war submachine gun, the Beretta 38A.
They didn't so much replace it with a new 2nd Generation design,
as they took that 1st Generation gun (which was starting to border on 2nd Generation anyway,
it was made in a more simplified manner than a lot of the other guns of its period),
they took that and they just simplified it to make it as cost effective as possible.
They got rid of the barrel shroud, they very much simplified the muzzle brake,
they got rid of features like the magazine well cover.
The stock is simplified, all aspects of this gun are simplified.
The sights have been reduced to a two option notch sight, instead of a 500 metre tangent.
So the Italians were doing pretty much the same thing at the same time.
I don't have examples here to show you, but we'll see the same change with Finnish submachine guns.
The KP m/31 Suomi, pre-war, it's a Generation 1 submachine gun.
There's a lot of metal on that thing, there's a nice wood stock.
1944 the Finns adopt the KP m/44 which is more or less a Finnish copy of the PPS-43.
Folding metal stock, sheet metal manufacture, all of those characteristics.
Now, this would carry on after World War Two.
There are some people who will say that World War Two is 2nd Generation
and post-War is 3rd, and I disagree with that.
[ Gen.2 : Post-War ]
What we see in submachine gun manufacture in the years after World War Two
is really just a continuation of the practices that were put in during World War Two.
So we continue to see stamped sheet metal manufacture, a focus on economy,
folding stocks, portability.
We don't see a fundamental change in any of the technical aspects of the gun.
For example, the Madsen M/50, I mean this ... would be perfectly at home
as a World War Two submachine gun.
In this case we have two stamped halves that are clamshelled together,
folding ... tube steel [buttstock].
From the Germans we'll see guns like the Walther MPK and MPL.
Again we have almost entirely stamped sheet metal construction, simple tubular folding buttstocks.
We will see the same developments from the Italians.
... Beretta would continue to simplify and sell the Model 38/42.
... Well, Beretta would then introduce the PM12, which is stamped sheet metal, folding stock.
In Czechoslovakia we will get the Sa 23 and Sa 24,
tube steel, simple, cost-effective, crude (you could say crude), submachine guns.
Which would be the inspiration for the tremendously iconic Israeli Uzi.
Stamped sheet metal construction, folding sheet metal stock,
you're, I think, getting the point here.
So I would propose that we have Generation 2 World War Two submachine guns,
and we also have Generation 2 post-World War Two submachine guns.
I would suggest that the only real development in this group of guns
to the present day has been [the adoption] of polymer
instead of stamped sheet metal for economic construction.
And that gives us guns like the HK UMP,
for example, or the CZ Skorpion family.
I think technically and fundamentally those guns retain all the same characteristics
of ... World War Two 2nd Generation and post-World War Two 2nd Generation guns.
They're designed largely to be compact, to be cheap and easy to produce.
However, I think there is a 3rd Generation of submachine gun.
[ Gen. 3 : Modern Day ]
I would propose that the 3rd Generation of submachine guns is that group of
rifle calibre guns that have been scaled down to pistol calibre, typically 9mm Parabellum,
but while retaining the major aspects of their rifle origins.
And unfortunately I don't have a whole ton of cool examples of these to show you, but
kind of the definitive one would be the HK MP5, or as we have here the MP5SD.
The idea being this is roller-delay blowback. It is no longer a simple-blowback, open-bolt submachine gun
like everything else virtually that we have looked at so far.
This is the G3 rifle scaled down to 9mm, and that gives it a number of benefits.
... The training protocols are the same for the submachine gun and the rifle.
In this case we have closed bolt operation, which gives very good single shot accuracy,
which can be very important. Especially on the suppressed version.
And we see this is not just a one-off. This isn't a way to say that HK
is 'the' 3rd Generation of submachine guns, because there are others.
We would see Colt develop the Colt SMG, which was its early 9mm adaptation of the AR-15.
I don't have the whole gun here to show you, but the US Department of Energy
decided to adopt its own very short-barrelled submachine gun pattern of 9mm Parabellum AR.
And there's an upper for one of those.
Another good example would be the Russian Vityaz.
... Now it doesn't maintain the gas system of the AK,
because it's not necessary or functional for a low ... pressure pistol cartridge like 9mm.
But it retains the closed bolt operation,
it retains the rifle handling and the interchangeable controls and training.
In the same way that the user of a G3 can easily figure out how to use an MP5,
a user of an AK can very easily adapt to figuring out how to use a Vityaz.
So that is something that we are seeing, I think, across the firearms development sector.
And I would argue that that is our 3rd Generation submachine gun.
... Basically the rifle re-chambered for a pistol cartridge.
So do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you have your own definition of a
Generation 3 or Generation 2 submachine gun that you think is more accurate?
Let me know down in the comments. Hopefully you guys all enjoyed the video.
I'd like to give a big thanks to Morphy's for ... giving me access to all of these
wonderful toys to take a look at, and to present to you guys.
Thanks for watching.