Evolution of the Submachine Gun: Three Distinct Generations

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com i'm ian mccollum and i'm here today at morphe's because i want to talk about the development of the submachine gun from a large-scale perspective over the course of the past hundred years and i can think of few places better suited to finding a whole slew of historical submachine guns than morphes so let's get started there's a white there's a lot of discussion about different generations of submachine guns gen 1 gen 2 gen 3 but there's some there's not a lot of standardization and what exactly does that mean what are the different generations so generation 1 pre-war or world war 1 submachine guns the truly iconic submachine gun of world war one is the german mp18 comma one 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 uh basically villar perosa turned standard gun the villar purosa was a pistol caliber 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 typical 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 bergman mp18 comma one 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 uh in 1918 there really was nothing else out there that could compare quite to this now this wasn't the only bergman and the germans weren't the only people who recognized 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 u.s 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 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 first 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 first generation submachine gun are high quality forged milled manufacturer the use of finely fitted uh 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 thomps 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 schmeicer magazines so these are our our very first iterations of the submachine gun now the generation one submission gun would continue through the inter-war years leading up to world war ii germany and austria in particular would produce a variety of very finely made very effective high quality generation 1 sub machine guns during the 1920s and the 1930s germany in particular had recognized 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 interwar submachine guns would be the styrosolothern 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 first 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 there's like you can't do that out of tube this is all there's a lot of expense that went into manufacturing one of these guys and this isn't our only example we have the irma emp also developed 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 side mounting had 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 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 site out to a thousand meters we have a bolt handle that is designed to duplicate the handling of a car 98k rifle which is far more sophisticated than anyone would be particularly interested in having in the submachine gun uh after world war ii began so that's another pre-war pre-world war ii generation one 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 the elements like the mat the muscle break are finely and expensively manufactured even though they may not necessarily really be all that useful um but things are starting to get a little simpler and that brings us to the second generation of submachine guns these came to exist during world war ii because of the constraints of cost and manufacturing and materials that were imposed by the war everyone had finally recognized just how important and useful submachine guns were in combat and they realized we need a whole ton of these things and the idea of milling out that finely polished top cover of the styrosolothern mp30 that's just laughably uh 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 thousand meter rear sights that we would see on pre-world war ii first generation submachine guns long gone virtually everything in the second generation has at best a two position aperture or open notch so the stem 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 use of bakelite as a furniture material we'll start to see 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 ii 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 ii with its first generation thompson guns but we would get uh get with the modernization program pretty effectively with the m3 uh colloquially known as the grease gun because that's kind of what it looks like again this is the another epitome of a stamped second 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 word the m3a1 would even dispense with the charging handle in favor 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 ii they had their own first generation submachine guns along the lines of the the deck curab 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 ii 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 pps43 that followed this would take that one step further and would add those second gen characteristics of getting rid of the wooden butt stock and replacing it with a collapsing or in the case of the pps43 a folding metal buttstock now we looked at italy's uh pre-war submachine gun the beretta 38a they didn't so much replace it with a new second generation design as they took that first generation gun which was starting to border on second generation anyway it was made in a more simplified manner than a lot of 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 sites have been reduced to a two two option uh notch site instead of a 500 meter 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-31 suomi pre-war it's a generation one submachine gun there's a lot of metal on that thing there's a nice wood stock 1944 the fins adopt the kp-44 which is more or less a finished copy of the pps43 folding metal stock sheet metal manufacturer all of those characteristics now this would carry on after world war ii there are some people who will say that world war ii is second generation and postwar is third and i disagree with that what we see in submachine gun manufacturer in the years after world war ii is really just a continuation of the practices that were put in during world war ii so we continue to see stamped sheet metal manufacturer 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 madison m50 i mean this is this would be perfectly at home as a world war ii submachine gun in this case we have two stamped halves that are clamshelled together uh folding you know tube steel bipod 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 butt stocks we'll see the same developments from the italians you'll get well beretta would continue to simplify and sell the model 3842 um but you have companies like well loretta would then introduce the pm12 which is stamp 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 is really oozy stamp sheet metal construction folding sheet metal stock you're i think getting the point here so i would propose that we have generation two world war ii submachine guns and we also have generation two post world war ii submachine guns i would suggest that the only real development in this group of guns uh to the present day has been adaptation of polymer instead of stamped sheet metal for economic construction and that gives us guns like the hk ump for example or the cz scorpion family i think technically and fundamentally those guns retain all the same characteristics of their world war ii second generation and post-world war ii second generation guns they're designed largely to be compact to be cheap and easy to produce however i think there is a third generation of submachine gun i would propose that the third generation of submachine guns is that group of rifle caliber guns that have been scaled down to pistol caliber typically nine millimeter 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 9 millimeter and that gives it a number of benefits it has matching the 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 this is not just a one-off this isn't a way to say that hk is the third generation of submachine guns because there are others we would see colt develop the colt smg which was its early nine millimeter adaptation of the ar-15 i don't have the whole gun here to show you but the u.s department of energy decided to adopt its own very short barreled submachine gun pattern of nine millimeter parabellum ar there's an upper for one of those another good example would be the russian vitas which takes now it doesn't maintain the uh the gas system of the ak because it's not necessary or functional for a low pa low pressure pistol cartridge like nine millimeter 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 avitas so that is something that we are seeing i think across across the firearms development sector and i would argue that that is our third generation submachine gun the 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 three or generation two 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 morphes for having access to your giving me access to all of these wonderful toys to take a look at and to present to you guys thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 305,280

Rating: 4.9780774 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, smg, submachine gun, sub gun, mp18, erma, schmeisser, thompson, Beretta, uzi, Walther, mpl, mpk, mp5, hk, heckler, koch, 9mm, pistol caliber, steyr, mp30, mp34, mp35, bergmann, Tommy gun, evolution, gen 1, gen 2, gen 3, vityaz, colt smg, grease gun, m3, ppsh, suomi, kp44, 38a, stamped, milled, forged, machined, polymer, ump, kriss, vector, vektor

Id: 5Hrfxu_K9HY

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/i_can_menage]

I disagree on the generations. I don’t see what Ian has done there is descriptive at all nor does it reflect the core developments in SMG technology past gen1 to gen2. He really misses a couple of the key technical distinctions in SMG generations that were really important in fundamentally changing either how the gun was used, operated, or was manufactured.

Generation 1: first generation submachine guns; shoulder fired pistol-caliber machine gun, manufactured to a high standard of quality and primarily from bar stock by machine work such as milling or turning. Basically the same as Ian’s Gen 1 - Thompson, MP-18.I, solothurn, Suomi, Lanchester

Generation 2: submachine guns designed around inexpensive manufacturing. Parts primarily constructed of stampings, pressings, and castings, minimizing machine work wherever, to be produced in vast numbers at very low cost. By way of example, the MP-38 is a Gen 1 Gun in this system (due to a turned and milled receiver tube), but the MP-40 is Gen 2. Think Owen, PPS-43, M3, STEN, M56, Ingram Model 6, MAT-49, Madsen M50

Generation 3: guns incorporating the manufacturing features of Gen 2, but include features that enhance compactness, in particular telescoping and L-formed bolts, and/or feeding through the pistol grip. These guns are dramatically more compact than Gen 2 guns despite having similar features overall. Examples include Walther MPL, Sa Vz.26, Uzi, MAC-10, Beretta PM-12

Generation 4: Primarily designed to fire from a closed bolt. Introduce polymers and composites in place of traditional steel. May introduce delayed blowback, locked breech, vectored recoil, or some other advanced locking or operating system. Examples include MP5, Calico, UMP, Kriss Vector, SIG MPX, B&T MP9

In each generation there, there’s a clearly defined change from generation to generation that is incremental, and can be traced to either a kind of keystone gun or a keystone period that defined what was going to happen with that generation and lead almost everything that came after it.

[u/Get_Em_Puppy]

RE: the early part of the video where he mentions the two Villar Perosa conversions developed in Italy during WW1 (which I'm fairly certain he's referring to the Beretta 1918 and the OVP) -

- The Beretta 1918 wasn't really an SMG, but a semi-automatic carbine. There were automatic variants made, but only on an experimental basis. The single-trigger version that was issued to the Italian Army in 1918 was semi-auto only - and it did not predate the M.P.18,I as is sometimes believed.

- It's up in the air as to whether the O.V.P. was even produced during WW1 at all; it certainly wasn't from 1916 as Ian claimed in his video on it, and it most likely came after the Beretta. It was probably never issued to Italian infantry during WW1.

There were, however, other Italian SMGs that were developed during WW1 and issued in small numbers - these include the Fiat, Ansaldo, and Savoia designs. The Fiat gun at least was genuinely an SMG and was developed as early as 1916.

[u/Bricksnblasters]

I'm a simple man. I see Tommy Gun, I upvote.

[u/VTArmsDealer]

TLDW: Gen 1 - slightly before, during and after WWI. They have an emphasis on quality and intricate fitting and machining. Gen 2 - WWII and after, emphasis on quick production to meet the demand. Gen 3 - modern rifle platforms that are adapted to fit handgun calibers.

I don’t really agree with his definition of Gen 3. I think it should more be defined by a higher emphasis on quality and innovation, and less emphasis on the time it takes to produce.

[u/Green__lightning]

What about earlier closed bolt, delayed blowback smgs? The M50 Reising comes to mind, being delayed blowback, closed bolt, and with a full stock. The Kiraly 43M as well, and potentially even the Schnellfeuer, which in it's final form with a stock, and removable 20 round box magazines seems like it would be on par with other first gen smgs.

[u/43433]

I would argue the best way of looking at the classifications is like 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, etc. because the categories described are primarily focused on the construction style and the minute categories are good for splits in the SMG world like machinepistols, compact stamped SMGs and polymer guns