General Liu's Chinese Semiauto Rifle from WWI

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian I'm here today the Rock Island auction company looking at some of the rifles they're going to be selling in their upcoming December of 2016 premiere auction we have a really cool one here to look at today this is another of the early semi-automatic rifles and this is a Chinese general you rifle now it this never actually had a formal designation in China when it was tested it was simply referred to as the self-loading rifle but it has come to be known by the name of its inventor a general te Lee general Yu was Chinese of course and born in 1869 an engineer and administrator all-around apparently a pretty talented guy so in 1912 Lu was appointed superintendent of the Hanyang Arsenal by none other than at the time Chinese President Sun yat-sen hun Jung was one of the main government arms producing Arsenal's in China at the time and it really it was a pretty important position pretty prestigious position to be in well hun young also was in need of new machinery and new tooling it needed modernization and at the same time generally you had designed a semi-automatic combat rifle of his own development and here's this perfect mix of he's got the idea and now he's in charge of an arsenal and what leave does is he's built a couple prototypes in China and he decides to contact the Pratt & Whitney company here in the United States about getting new manufacturing tooling new machinery for the Hanyang Arsenal and hey since we're getting new tooling let's get exactly what we're going to need to build my new semi-automatic rifle he writes to Pratt & Whitney in 1914 so reasonably quickly after taking his post on Young and Pratt & Whitney is amenable to this idea they think it's pretty cool so later in 1914 general Yu and his family in fact arrived in Hartford Connecticut or Pratt & Whitney is located now Pratt & Whitney today we would think of as probably an aircraft manufacturing company or an aircraft engine company however pre prior to World War two they were also a munitions and arms making company they did in fact they're notable for making some of the early pre Gatling guns or pre machine guns gardener guns were manufactured by Pratt & Whitney as well as other things other other firearms so they were a good option they knew how to make guns they knew how to make tooling cool perfect Lee shows up they start putting this all together by 1916 the the manufacturing line is functional and the Pratt & Whitney starts making a handful of test guns a few of those are sent back to China for testing and they're actually tested alongside some of Lee's handmade prototypes and there is actually still a Chinese testing report that has survived on these guns in fact I have a copy of it both in Chinese and translate it into English on the website if you're interested you can see that there's a link to that in the description text below and it's interesting there were some the guns had some problems now some of these problems were related to poor quality ammunition they use prototype rifle that he made in China had apparently a poorly made recoil spring that wasn't up to the standards of the american-made guns the American guns seemed to have worked reasonably well there were some concerns about long-term durability and longevity but it seems to have been a decent design so the idea was Pratt and Whitney would then ship all the tooling back to China and you know they had a small batch of guns that they had manufactured just to prove out everything make sure it was all working by the way that is the reason why the receiver markings on these rifles all say made in made by the hyung young arsenal despite the fact that these guns were actually made by Pratt & Whitney because they were sending back the tooling to make these receiver markings as well so you're not going to you're not going to produce the Han young tooling and have it say Pratt & Whitney on it anyway the plan was this all goes back to China China adopts a self-loading rifle you know at the forefront of modern military technology and everyone lives happily ever after unfortunately things didn't really work out that way what happened instead was the tooling shipment got delayed because of World War one and it didn't ultimately wind up in China until 1919 shortly before the tooling arrived that it's a Haizi exactly what happened here but it appears that generally you himself suffered a stroke and had to retire from his position how debilitating of a stroke I don't know some reports say he actually just died at that point it seems to me more likely that he actually lived until 1929 but regardless he was unable to continue his work at the hon young Arsenal or working with these self-loading rifles as a result he wasn't able to pick up basically he wasn't able to arrange installation or transportation of this tooling that had been purchased so the tooling ended up sitting on the docks in China for like two years before it was finally brought in it was actually then sent to the Gong Shan Arsenal I'm probably mispronouncing that but that's about as close as we're going to get and that this tooling was refitted and used to make bolt-action Mauser rifles so the lis rifle just it had great potential and it got to that point and a couple things went wrong in the project just completely fell apart without leo there to actually basically hold its hand through setting up the machinery and getting the rifles into production and getting them formally adopted by the military it just all fell apart so the tooling did end up going into some use it's kind of funny it actually a lot of that tooling apparently did finally come back to Han young but not until 1935 when it was then set up to make Chiang kai-shek pattern Mauser rifles so that is kind of the lost story of the Chinese military semi-auto rifle wouldn't have been the first military semi-auto rifle the Mon Dragon really does take that in 1908 but you know what this is really right on the the first wave of truly functional military self-loading rifles so why don't we go ahead and take a look at the mechanics because it's also mechanically a fascinatingly cool gun it's a gas trap system based initially kind of based on the Danish bang system and bang rifles are quite hard to come by but this is a very cool variant thereof and so we can get an idea about how to get the bang worked as well by looking at this guy alright let's start with a quick look at the markings here now I don't know the exact translation of these although I suspect by the time you watch this someone in the comments will probably have explained them to us but the gist of this is saying that the rifle is manufactured at the Han Yong Arsenal again this rifle was actually manufactured by Pratt & Whitney but because this was a sample using tooling that was going to Hanyang the the receiver markings are set up to say on Yonge because that's where this in theory would have been manufactured later on the rear sight markings are in Arabic numerals which is not uncommon for this sort of thing and you can see it's a pretty typical Mauser style rear sight goes out to 2,000 meters got the same markings on the side there as on this side this is chambered for eight millimeter Mauser and it interestingly it actually holds six rounds in the gun in the magazine does have a flush blind magazine again like a Mauser the only other markings on here other than a couple of sporadic serial numbers that we'll see here and there are these two markings on the muzzle cap and this one again I don't know the exact translation but this one is for semi-automatic mode and then I can push this button and rotate the muzzle cap into its other position this is a manual mode where it functions like a straight pull bolt action rifle so the basic idea of a gas trap or bang style rifle is that the barrel actually ends about here in fact I can take this cap off and you can see when we line it up the muzzle ends there this cap goes farther and this cap is hollow inside what this does is you get some of the blast the bullet of course goes out this hole in the middle but some of the gases and blasts get trapped in this cap and they serve to push the cap forward that in turn pulls this forward this is a spring-loaded connecting rod and we'll see it in much more detail when we take the rifle apart but basically what happens is when I pull that connecting rod forward pivots a lever and pushes the bolt backward so this is the the lever in its full forward position you can see the bolt only traveled a short distance maybe half an inch that's closed that's full travel it's actually more like three quarters of an inch probably but that's that's the only that's the limit of the travel where the bolt is actually being directly propelled after that it's just moving on inertia and once that inertia is going the bolt is going to come all the way back to here that is why the receiver runs has this weird extension is so that you've got a place for the bolt to actually go now the bolt has locked open because the magazine is empty there is no manual hold open this is just the follower so when I push the follower down the bolt will then travel closed snap shut re lock and it's ready to fire again so there aren't a whole lot of controls on the leo the one that we really have is the safety here when you rotate this up that engages the safety that is going to lock the bolt in position and it doesn't interfere with the trigger but it does prevent the gun from actually firing what this is doing is actually grabbing the striker mechanism part of the bolt and holding it in place you'll see how that works when we pull the top cover off at any rate that's safe that's fire so I already have the muzzle cap off the next thing I need to do to disassemble this rifle is take out this split pin because that there's the other end of it that's what's holding the front sight and the front band in place and I need to take the stock off in order to show you the internals so I'm going to go ahead and do that and we'll be back in a moment okay with this split pin out now I can slide this cap off the gun that's going to have the front sight which is why you want this pin to be nice and tight and you can see it's locking into a piece that's fixed to the barrel here because you don't want your front sight wobbling around but pull that off this also by the way has our band that log then we have the rear barrel band which has just held in place by a typical spring-loaded catch although it kind of unusual I have to say this is actually the first time I've seen something quite like this the band is not on the bottom or right at the side it's located kind of at an odd angle off-center on the bottom side of the rifle now we can lift off the front handguard that shows us nothing at all up here because all the working bits are on the bottom next up we're going to take out the floor plate and then take off the trigger guard the floor plate is just a little spring-loaded catch we push that down pull it backward just like a Mauser and we get our magazine spring follower and floor plate then we have three screws here that hold the trigger guard in place so we'll go ahead and pull those screws out there we go production engineers will appreciate the fact that all three of these screws are the exact same specification so you only have one pattern of screw that you need to produce and you don't have to worry about getting them mixed up once those are out then we can lift the floor plate and magazine box off or the trigger guard and magazine box now with all that done we can take the stock off just to note to anyone doing this in the future you do have to have the operating connecting rod pushed all the way forward or pulled forward in order to remove the stock all right now with a stock off we can really see the cool bits this is our connecting rod so it's all the way up here at the muscle I put the gas cap back on for the time being and then this rod comes all the way back to here at the front of the receiver when the gas trap system holds that rod forward it's going to pivot on this pin just like that which is going to throw the bolt back that is how the connecting rod system works now in order to see how this locking system actually works we have to pull a rear cap off of the receiver this is just in there to make sure that the bolt doesn't come off the back of the gun when it's not supposed to now the recoil spring for the bolt is located in this tube in the side of the receiver so in order to in order to take the bolt and bolt carrier off we have to take out the spring before we can take the spring we have to take out the connecting rod because the spring comes out the front and the connecting rods in the way removing that rod is pretty easy we've got this pin we're going to rotate it around to there you'll notice when it's in place here it's locked by this little tab now that it's there I can just pull that pin out and then the rod drops out of its position I'll go ahead and take the muzzle cap back off now with the rod out you can see the front of the main spring guide rod right there it's got that nice large flat surface because that's where the little finger on the connecting rod is going to push it and that rod is also back here it's got a key key way to it that locks it into this piece which is the bolt carrier and receiver cover so when the rod gets pushed backward it's compressing the spring inside this tube and it is pushing the bolt carrier back which pushes the bolt back complicated enough so the back of this spring guide rod does have a little screwdriver slot it also has a little tiny pin which I don't know if you can quite see it's got a little spring-loaded pin that prevents it from rotating because when you rotate at 90 degrees it's going to unlock and the spring will go shooting out the front of this tube if you're not holding it in place and so that spring detent is very important to prevent it from spontaneously disassembling itself all right what I'm going to do here is use a screwdriver to I can push down that détente I can then rotate this okay and then that spring is going to come right out the front now this actually has two Springs and they are separate not entirely sure why there but there is our guide rod which is also kind of part of our operating rod and it's two main Springs with the spring out we can now just pull this off the back of the action so the way this works the rear part of the bolt is permanently situated in this round recess the front part of the bolt can slide back and forth in here that is how it locks and unlocks you can see right there that's the key way for the spring guide see the key there locks into this like so goes it goes in further and then locks but don't need to do that right now so that is what connects the bolt ultimately to the recoil spring and thus and from there out to the muzzle if we look inside this you can see that we have this piece rotating when I turn the safety in the safe this is the fire position where it doesn't obscure anything this is the safe position where this piece is coming downward what it is going to do is actually grab a hold of see if I can get this there we go you can see that cutout in there this piece on the inside is the actual striker wow that's a strong spring so when this rifle is cocked the sear firing mechanism sear is holding this lip that's / that's holding the striker back when you pull the trigger the sear drops which releases this it snaps forward however the safety will lock it in place and hold it to the rear thus saving the rifle preventing it from drop our locking lug is this guy this is very similar to like an 1886 or 1888 moniker locking system that lug is going to pivot up and down so this is the unlocked position you'll notice we have an angled lug here that's going to travel in a couple of little rails in the locking lug so that when this rear piece comes forward which it has to do to fire because it's connected to the striker and the firing pin when that happens those two lugs force this locking block down if the locking block can't go down this piece can't go forward and that is a safety mechanism that prevents the gun from firing unless it is actually fully locked so the bottom surface right there is our locking lug that is going to lock up into this locking shoulder I said this is similar to the early moniker straight pol rifles it's honestly not that great of a system it probably works but you know it's kind of iffy you have potentially a lot of stress on this round pin that could deform you have you only have one you got one locking lug it's off-center this isn't nearly as strong as having the whole back of the bolt tilt which is what most that what this kind of evolved into I would say now it does mean you don't need any extra stuff at the front so there's no locking lug in the front we have a nice big extractor here on the side the firing pin is protruding forward because everything at the back here is in its compressed and fired position the sear is right there and when I pull the trigger you can see that drops then of course it has a disconnect mechanism built into it so that it only fires once when I pull this far enough down the trigger is going to lose contact with that piece which raises allows the sear to spring back up and blocks the bolt from firing a second time unless I pull the trigger a second time this big flat spring is actually what putting pressure on this guy the seer itself we have a trigger spring back here you can see how the two kind of work together we do have a stripper clip guide here I mentioned this you this held six rounds in the magazine it was fed by a proprietary Chinese stripper clip this thing in the side is an ejection buffer or a case deflector I suppose is a better term for it to ensure that the cases go out in the appropriate direction and I think that is pretty much it for the Chinese the rifle thank you for watching guys I really hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed taking this apart and showing you how it works this is a marvelously good condition gun it looks like the stock is brand new out of the factory really really cool there very few of these around maybe a dozen maybe two dozen were originally manufactured they're basically unknown in China because only a handful of them ever went there for testing and those are long since destroyed the ones that survived here in the United States like this one are pretty much guns that were gifted to people by Pratt & Whitney or by the U while they were being made here or guns that for whatever reason kind of fell off the back of the truck and never made it to China in the shipment with the tooling so very scarce guns to find very cool pieces of American and Chinese and semi-automatic rifle history if you'd like to own this one yourself take a look at the description text below you'll find a link to rock island's catalog page for it and you can see their description and their pictures and you can place a bit over the phone or online or here in person at the auction thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 454,515

Rating: 4.9688993 out of 5

Keywords: China, Chinese, Danish, Denmark, Bank, Liu, semiauto, Pratt & Whitney, Hartford, Mannlicher, 1886, 1888, Shanghai, development, history, Sun Yat Sen, 8mm, 8x57, Mauser, gas trap, factory, tooling, trial, trials, prototype, experiment, experimental, mondragon, 1908, rare, scarce, unusual, awesome

Id: ML2V2FdWP-A

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 28 2016