[ Croatian Improvised Weapons ] Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Sisak Municipal Museum in Sisak, Croatia, taking a look at an assortment of improvised firearms from the Croatian Homeland War. Now ... it is interesting, during
this war the Croatian forces were armed with everything from the crudest
of home-made single-shot weapons like these, all the way up to excellent
factory production small arms, both from Croatia and from all over the world.
Things that they were able to import. Especially early on in the war, it really
was just a mixture of everything in use. So improvised stuff like this
was made all across the country, but what we are looking at today,
because this is the Sisak Museum, is sort of the Sisak <i>terroir</i>
of improvised firearms. So let's take a closer look and
go through what each of these are. And give you an idea of the sort of guns
that frankly have been made in this area for a very long time and came to
light during the Homeland War. I want to start with this guy, because there's some
cool, interesting, like specific trivia behind it. But first, it is of course a
single-shot break-action shotgun pistol. This is specifically chambered for 16 gauge. You can see we have an extractor there. Manually cocked hammer, very stiff trigger. It's your very basic, single-shot break-action
gun, which in fact three of these four are. What's neat about this
is the barrels were all made (and there were a bunch of these
made ... specifically in this area) the barrels were all made from the
central bar of the steering wheel of ... the Zastava 750, which was a
licenced copy of a ... small Fiat car. And as it turned out that centre
support bar in the steering wheel, the inner diameter was precisely
identical to 16 gauge shotgun shells. And in fact 16 gauge was a more common
cartridge in this area before the war than 12 gauge. In the US we always think of 12 gauge as
the standard, and 16 as a weird aberration. Well, over here 16 was very common. Not everything was actually
completely home-made of course. This is a BSA manufactured Lee-Enfield, which the stock has been cut off of
and the front wood all completely removed. Rear sight, well the rear sight would
have been out on the front of the barrel. Just simply cut down to be portable,
concealable and useful in limited situations. This is the classic Enfield Obrez. That name always gets associated
specifically with World War Two and Russia, or perhaps World War One and Russia, I guess I'm
not entirely sure where people usually use that term. But it applies basically everywhere
across the planet for the last 100 years where people are looking
for improvised firearms. Rifles are often available
from military forces, cut them down and you get a 5 [or 10] shot
repeating pistol of some dubious but definite use. Next up we have another
break-action 16 gauge. This time a ... very full length shotgun. And this one appears to have actually been
made on a proper break-action shotgun barrel. The receiver itself is fabricated, and it's been
put together with an underfolding stock. It looks like some of the parts for this stock
come off of a Yugo M56 submachine gun. Not quite all of them,
they've been modified a bit. I think ... obviously the idea for
the underfolding stock is twofold. One is to make the gun more compact,
but if compactness was all that you wanted you could leave the original
stock and cut the barrel down. But what you also get with an
underfolding stock is the fact that it's cool. And all of the cool guys running around
with cool guy guns have underfolding stocks, therefore your gun ought to have
an underfolding stock on it as well. So on this guy we have a lever here
which is actually the direct lock. On that pistol the lever
pulled a spring out of the way. This has (it's little hard ... you
can just barely see it right there) that bar is specifically what actually
locks into the barrel to hold it closed. And again, exposed hammer. This one has a much nicer trigger,
for what it's worth. On the stock you push in on
(lock that up) push in on this side and that pin comes out of the
receiver and allows it to fold up. I've saved this one for last because it's the coolest
of the bunch, I think, this is my favourite here. This is yet another break-action gun. So we have a button on this side
that allows us to pop the action open. But this was actually made
with an M70 AK barrel, the rear sight from said
M70, and the front sight. So if we look closely here, we can see that
a couple of the places where there would be gas ports or cross pins have
actually been welded up on the barrel. There's one and there's one right there. We have the remnant of an
original barrel marking right there. That's been fitted to essentially the
locking block of a single-shot rifle action. And it's still chambered for 7.62x39, that was obviously a very common
cartridge during the Homeland War. The hammer on this one
is really heavy in fact. The hammer on this one only wants to
come back that far, and drops like so. So the stock is not an M70 stock, but
it is clearly profiled to look like one. We've got a little bit of a rubber
butt pad screwed onto the back there. Of this whole batch I think this is definitely
the most practical, the most useful, of these guns. I'd like to give a big thanks
to the Sisak Municipal Museum for having the opportunity to bring out
these and show them to you guys. It's always interesting to see
what some of the unique elements are to this sort of firearm in
different parts of the world. So if you are ever in Sisak, their museum
... is kind of a cool assembly of everything from prehistory all the way up to the
modern day. Stop in, have a look. Thanks for watching.
