MAT 49-54 Police Submachine Gun

I guess thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons calm I'm Ian McCallum and today thanks to the French Ministry of the Interior we have access to a mop mat 49/50 for police submachine gun these were made specifically for the Paris police in 1954 as the name implies and they're a very interesting twist on the standard mat 49 so in the aftermath of world war ii this is a standard one the French military realized that a nine millimetre parabellum submachine gun really was a better idea than the seven six five long that they had developed in the 1930s and used in World War two so using the lessons of what everybody else had started developing and building in World War two they put together their own new submachine gun and that would be the map 49 these were trialed in 1947 adopted in 1949 and they would go on to be very popular in military service they were used throughout Indochina and Algeria and are generally very well regarded they're a very simple a very durable kind of heavy but very reliable submachine gun so the issue however is that this was designed for paratroops it needed to be compact so we have a stock that telescopes up we have a magazine well it also folds up and this makes for a very compact package to jump out of an airplane with but if you are a policeman on the streets of Paris having a compact weapon isn't really all that important there are well more important to have some other features like being able to shoot single shots pretty accurately so among the major changes to the police version the model 1954 version they replaced the wire stock with a wood stock which is much more comfortable they went ahead and added a very interesting kind of a semi-auto lockout to it the original map 49 doesn't have a semi-auto selector it's just off or high the police version does have semi-auto and of course as you can obviously see they extended the barrel out that's going to give you a longer sight radius well easier handling and makes this handle a little bit more like a rifle than a submachine gun so let's go ahead and take a closer look at exactly how these different changes work especially this trigger mechanism which is pretty cool all right starting with markings we have the manufacturer's name up here on the top these are the Matt 49/50 format 54 and that stands for the manufacturer Nessen you know disarmed it - so ma t this is the model 1954 pattern and this is number AR are being one of the the first of the serial number prefix letters that was used by - 269 so as with the the gun that this replaced which was a police modified version of the MAS 38 submachine gun relatively few of these were made because they were only made for well they're made for the Paris police and this is in particular a police issue one however they were also used by the gendarmerie and the CRS or the Republican Guard they're like the the equivalent the police equivalent of the gendarmerie mobile for comparison's sake here's a standard map 49 basically the same markings we then have a separate serial number back here this has the prefix PP which stands for prefecture did police the police department and then this is not a serial number of the weapon but a police RAC number so 1781 in this case and that would apply to not just these guns but all of the other guns that were in police inventory so one of the two really obvious modifications was the replacement of the collapsing wire stock with a wooden buttstock this has a sling bar in it very similar to French rifles of the period and its length of pole is just under an inch longer than the fully extended length of pull on the wire frame stock but in general a much more comfortable cheek weld with this now you may notice a few other differences like our standard gun here has the grip panels pressed into the lower assembly where a police gun has plastic grip panels contouring the fabrication up here is very square where it's welded and rounded over on the standard gun that is not those are not differences with the police model those are differences over the years of manufacture of the map 49 so I don't want to try and get into all of those small variations in standard map 49s but you'll find the standard ones squared rounded metal grips and plastic grips parkerized finish which these both have versus black paint over parker ization that is the subject for another video of at a later time you will also notice this does not have the dust cover on it that is simply because the dust cover on this example is missing so in standard service they would have had this folding dust cover so the other obvious difference is they lengthened the barrel that gives you a longer sight radius it makes the gun handle a little differently it would be interesting to hear the exact justification because frankly i don't think it needs a longer barrel but someone thought it would be a good idea so they experimented with with a really long barrel they experimented with a 430 millimeter barrel which is just under 17 inches they ended up for the model 54 adopting a three hundred and sixty-five millimeter barrel which is like fourteen point three inches that compares to nine inch for the regular military gun which is two hundred and thirty millimeters so substantially long barrel on this guy and to go along with it I actually have a slightly different style of front sight hood that is thin and stamped as opposed to being a much heavier rounded version on the standard gun on top and you'll notice the standard gun had a sling swivel attached to the front sight the police gun doesn't need that because it instead has a sling ring attached to the barrel jacket the police model sights are basically identical to the regular military sites except that the police model got these big site protector wings on either side and then the coolest part of this whole conversion I think is the trigger mechanism where the original gun as I said didn't have a semi-auto mode for police use they very much wanted a semi-auto mode and so the main trigger here on the police version is semi-auto if I lock that open pulling the trigger will close the bolt and then get locks back open until I reset the trigger to fire again now it is still a submachine gun and they do still want to allow full auto fire they just want to make it make sure that you don't fire in full auto unless you really actually intend to this makes obvious good sense in a police context if you want to make one good careful shot it would really suck to discover oops I accidentally had it on full auto and my one careful first shot hit the bad guy and then the rest of the three round bursts went into the crowd of people behind him so what they did is they added this medal that's basically just a pivoting piece of sheet metal pinned in place here and so to fire in full auto you have to lift that up and then the front trigger is a full auto trigger so if I pulled that one it's going to continue to fire until I release the trigger so that acts as a really effective simple but effective safety because you just can't put your finger in until you deliberately lift it up out of the way so after World War two for the Paris police the first submachine gun used was this modified MAS 38 they would then transition about 1954 to the Matt 49/50 format 54 these would then eventually be replaced by the beretta PM 12 and then and the beretta would stay in service for several decades and only in the last few years where the Berettas replaced by nine-millimeter HK umps so there's your brief history of Paris police submachine guns in about three sentences so I'd like to thank the Ministry of the Interior for giving me the opportunity to take a look at one of these and bring it to you guys these are as you might expect quite rare guns to find outside of well outside of France outside of Paris even in particular because they were specifically used by the Paris police so hopefully you guys enjoyed the video thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 125,862

Rating: 4.9817567 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv, mas 38, police, Paris police, prefecture de police, mat 49, mat 49-54, mat 54, smg, sub gun, submachine gun, police model, gendarmerie, crs, garde mobile, security, 9mm, tulle, long barrel, fixed stock, ministry of the interior, France, French, grip safety, mat 1954

Id: hiXqDGa5t78

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020