Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum. I'm here today at the Royal Armouries, the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, England, courtesy of ARES: Armament Research Services. Today, I had the chance to take a look at one of the new production Brügger & Thomet VP9 pistols... ...which is... ...sort of a copy of the Welrod 9mm. I figured this would be a pretty cool opportunity to take a look at the two side-by-side, and let's see how close to a copy it really is. So B&T sells these as a cool set in its own, very nice little leather case. We open that up and a whole smorgasbord of VP9 bits. So we have the gun itself here... ...of course... ...then you have a spare suppressor, various cleaning tools, second spare magazines - these are in 9x19 - uh, cleaning brushes. This is the tool for disassembling the suppressor. We'll take a look at that in a moment. We have a whole couple sets of extra rubber baffles. This is for attaching a light or other accessory to the weapon. So this ring mount goes around the suppressor, tightens down, and then you have a little bit of picatinny rail for attaching... whatever veterinary sort of tools you might need. Now let's take a look at the VP9 compared to the Welrod Mk. 1. So this, a little bit counter-Intuitively, the Mark one was actually the later production Welrod after the Mk. 2. It is in 9x19 parabellum, where the majority of the Welrods were in .32. But Brügger & Thomet has decided to use 9x19, so we'll compare these two. What really struck me when I started looking at these is that the Brügger & Thomet gun is a really, REALLY, close copy of the Welrod. For example, the trigger mechanism. If we look up close at the original Welrod, you can see that there's a grip safety here that blocks this trigger bar, and the trigger really just is this long bar held in place by these two... screwed-in-place side plates, and... ...it pushes back... ...until it trips the seer (gun is currently not cocked, so it's not dry-firing), but that's all that the trigger does. And, if we look at the new Brügger & Thomet version, it's the exact same thing, even down to the same little side plates. Grip safety, and that trigger. It's just a long bar with a spring-loaded return right there in the middle, just like the original Welrod. Now, on the original Welrod, the magazine comprised the grip. I believe these were made from Colt .38 Super magazines with this big hard rubber... ...coating added to the bottom to make it a little bit more... grippy, and prevent gunk from getting in the bottom of magazine. But, then, there's just a modicum of a magazine well here, and, on the 9mm guns, there's a magazine catch right at the front of the trigger guard. On the original .32s, the magazine catch was attached to the magazine, on the back, right here. Brügger & Thomet has changed the style of magazine catch, and they've made it a much more modern type, but - we have this, this button here is the magazine release - ...but they've pretty much done the same thing. They have a standard 9mm single-stack pistol magazine inside a contoured plastic grip. Now, they did make this plastic grip much more... ...ham-shaped than the original... ...and that's, that's an improvement. You get a good, easy two fingers on this and your pinky underneath the magazine. The original Welrods tend to have a very narrow grip, especially for the bulk of the rest of the gun and they're kind of awkward to handle. The grip safety remains the same on the Brügger & Thomet as it was on... ...the original Welrod. If we take a look at the actions, these are both rotating-bolt, manually-operated pistols, and on both of them, you rotate the bolt 90 degrees counterclockwise, you can then open it, that ejects the empty case, and you can then close the bolt. There are two locking lugs here at the back... ...close the bolt, and when you close it, you're compressing the firing pin spring, and... ...essentially, cocking it. Same goes with the VP9. It has the index mark is much more clearly defined here, where you rotate 90 degrees. Pull the bolt open. Oh, I should say: The one difference here is on the Brügger & Thomet gun, once you've fired it, you actually have to have the grip safety depressed in order to open the bolt. That's the only real difference I can see. We still have our two locking lugs on the back of the bolt... ...just like that... ...and, to load a cartridge, you just... push the bolt in, rotate back up into alignment... and it's ready to fire. one of the other interesting elements to the Welrod suppressor was that it actually used solid rubber battles as well as metal baffles - or, I should say, solid rubber wipes - as well as metal baffles, and those wipes would wear out over just the first handful of cartridges, because you would be shoot- literally, shooting brand new holes through those wipes. Now, they did make the gun... substantially quieter, for the first few rounds, and given the Welrod's purpose... ...as, basically, an assassination weapon, that style of suppressor was just fine, it wasn't something you were expected to put a lot of volume of ammunition through. Well, if we take a look at the Brügger & Thomet suppressor, we have this big hex pattern at the front, and it comes with a hex-shaped tool, which allows me to just unscrew the cap... Lo and behold, what do we find but... rubber wipes. It's not just rubber wipes... ...you have a nice stack there. So this is the front half of the suppressor, and it is going to alternate metal baffles, and... ...rubber wipes. The exact layout for these is specified in the manual so that you don't get it all messed up, like I probably just did. There we go! So this stack is, of course, removable (as you can see), and the rubber baffles are replaceable and that's what you have a bunch of spares of in the general suppressor case. So we have this attachment accessory for a rail, here, for all of your veterinary accessories: The, uh... ...the tactical hoof-pick, the... the infrared {pick} detector, the laser-guided syringe alignment indicator, possibly the, the tactical pill applicator... really, anything that you need to attach to your veterinary pistol. I don't know that this qualifies so much as a veterinary pistol in the traditional sense, but... perhaps that's not exactly the target market that Brügger & Thomet had in mind when they designed this. Regardless, it's a gorgeous case, it's a very cool pistol, and it absolutely has some real improvements over the original Welrod: Much handier, much more reliable... ...or, more reliably handling, I should say, having not actually fired it yet. Anyway, thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed getting a chance to compare these two. If you're interested in these, make sure to check out the ARES blog post that accompanies this video, where you'll find high resolution pictures of the entire B&T set, as well as the 9mm Welrod, and if you're interested in small arms research on your own, definitely get in touch with the NFC here with Royal Armouries; their collection is not available to the general public, but it is available by appointment. Thanks for watching. [Captions provided by a part of the YouTube community. Neither official nor entirely accurate, as well as failing to comply to any caption or subtitling standards, as such standards are unknown to the captions provider.]
