Hi guys Thanks for tuning in to another video on forgotten weapons.com* I'm Ian McCollum and I'm here today at the Dutch National Military Museum We're taking a look at some of the guns in their extensive firearms collection including this very unusual and very cool French submachine gun What makes this unusual is that it has a clock spring type mainspring and when you fire it this whole thing spins in circles back and forth Really interesting and really unusual now this was developed after world war two the designer was a frenchman by the name of Louis Debuit and the guns were produced though well I should say the designation of the thing is the MGD PM 9 so pm 9 is a machine pistol, "Pistolet Mitrailleur" 9 millimeter Submachine gun and then MGD stands for the two guys who ran the company that manufactured them and the designers so M and G were "Merlin et Gerin" and The designer was Debuit, Louis Debuit So what he was trying to do was design a submachine gun for the French police He wanted something that would be extremely easily concealed so that you could have officers who were armed But not alarm the public or not make it real obvious that they were alarmed so this thing folds up Into a very compact package this is even the same, It's smaller than the Hotchkiss universal, and then it can be deployed Very quickly into what is a pretty much functional submachine gun it's a little crude in the handling, kind of like a STEN. But! It gives you the opportunity to have a very compact gun Debuit originally designed this gun for the 7,65X20 french long pistol cartridge. That's the cartridge they used in the 1935 pistols and in the MAS38 submachine guns and That variation of the gun actually used MAS38 submachine gun magazines make sense That's the only large magazine out there for this type of gun in that caliber. However, he apparently realized quite quickly that no one was interested in another submachine gun in 7,65 French that cartridge was obsolete right at the beginning of world war II much less at the end of world war II By that point everyone was using 9 millimeter The French would move to 9 millimeter for their military submachine guns by the late 1940s, so by the time this was actually in production the French military was using the MAS... The MAT 49, and so Debuit redesign this to use 9 millimeter and interestingly he chose to use MP40 magazines to do so Of course late 1940s there in France there MP40 magazines easily available all over the place This is an interesting early example of someone designing a commercial gun based on a readily accessible, available, existing magazine something that we see today. And we really like often today in the civilian market when someone comes out with a new gun. You know what use a magazine That's cheap and readily available instead of forcing us to go buy some proprietary thing. Well. That's exactly what they did here As for the rest of the gun, it's actually pretty clever and interesting on the inside It's worth noting that very few people have ever copied this design So let's take this apart and take a look at how it works and why it hasn't taken off Controls on this are very simple and easy to work with the stock doesn't have any sort of solid lock what happens is when you bend it here, it pulls these two bars out of these little recesses So there's a little bit of spring tension all always holding the stock closed But in order to fold it you just push it to the side on This side we have a safety selector, which will only go into the safe position if the gun is cocked in Order to do that. We're going to take the handle and rotate it 180 degrees around -all this grabs the gloves- now the gun is cocked So now I can move the selector into the safe position if I want to There is another safety on this and that is rotating this another 90 degrees see the hole there I can push this button on the bolt handle and lock this plunger into that hole on a rotary gun like this, that's the equivalent of the the extra notch on a typical Submachine gun like an MP40, where you would pull the bolt back and rotate it up into the locking notch to securely lock it in place. That's what we've done here. So, now i can pull the trigger all I want, it does release the sear but the spring in the bolt are held in place and can't go anywhere and In order to release that we just push the handle forward and it disconnects This fires from an open bolt, but it does have a floating firing pin We'll take a look at that in just a moment, and what happens is when you fire, the bolt is going to come forward, chamber a round fire it, and then of course recoil backwards which is going to cause this clockwork spring to rotate ,there we go, and, at this point the bolt catches on the sear and locks in place But the spring can continue to cycle backwards. That acts as the over travel for the bolt so on a tube receiver type submachine gun you need to have a sufficient space behind the magazine for the bolt to slow down, come to a stop, and then, start moving forward again. On the PM9 here What you're doing that rotationally instead, so the bolt only has to come back this far to feed but then it's going to travel all the way through to here to decelerate and By allowing it to decelerate that way you don't need a heavy buffer spring At the end of the bolts travel and it's going to also reduce the rate of fire of the gun We have two buttons down here one on each side the button on this side Allows us to unlock the magazine well to fold it forward and The button on this side allows us to remove the magazine and this is a It's written on one side there there. We go. This is a standard Mp 38/40 magazine so 32 rounds 9X19 parabellum There is a two-position rear flip sight So two different apertures for different ranges, i believe that's 50 meters and 100 meters and Something that I've noticed on so many french submachine guns these sights are both very small And they're very low down on the gun you really have to cram your your face down on the stock in order to get a sight picture and We also have a very stereotypically french front sight it's a fairly wide square front site that has this notch cut in the center of it and the theory is the wide front site gives you a quick acquisition sight picture And that center notch gathers a little bit of light and it can be used for precision shooting So the french developed this during world war one and they use this style of sights on... Well, the Lebels, the Berthiers, the 1917 self loaders, the MAT38... MAS38 submachine guns This was a very standard style. All right. Now to take this apart. We have this button Checkered on the front so you can get a grip on it and what you do is actually I'm going to drop the bolt first You can kind of do this in any position, but it's a little weird We pull this back and then this whole panel lifts up and off of the gun maybe I'll get it here! There we go! Thank you Alright. So, one easy little button, just like that, and this is our whole mainspring and well, mainspring assembly really, and then this big round lug runs in this track in the bolt So the bolt is simply going to cycle back and forth like this because it has a lug in it that is rotating So this is the position everything starts in and then as this rotates through the first hundred eighty degrees It's going to pull the bolt back over the sear to here then we'll have the handle at this position, and it's going to continue to rotate down through this area and We have this track where it can come out come back down through here and Then cycle back up, so that's how the recoil system works The firing pin is free-floating and you can see it right back there, so when I push on that the firing pin comes forward This lug on the bolt is going to hit that firing pin and cause it to protrude just like that when Everything is aligned when the bolts fully forward and the handles forward then It's fully closed and it automatically fires and then starts the sequence again Typically in the submachine gun we would have the sear catching on the bolt in this case this er. Actually catches on the recoil mechanism, so this hook right here is what catches on our sear right there And we have a flat spring that provides tension to the trigger and sear fortunately when this was designed Debuit had the presence of mind to make this a sealed unit, so the spring remains wound inside here and it is a clock type spring wound up and To take it off what you would do is rotate this lock pin 90 degrees, but there is no way I am doing that because I don't want to have to try and rewind that clock spring As long as you leave it assembled when this handle moves that lug on the back moves along with it You'll also notice that there is a little square cutout right there that is a safety so that when this is in the rearward position So we have our bolt handle So when we have the bolt handle back here It would be coming back down into the bolt track And you want to make sure that you don't have the possibility to have a cartridge Carried in the front of the bolt and then accidentally fire it while the gun is fully open That's why that cutout is there so that this lug can't engage the firing pin at the rear end of travel only At the front end of travel right there One last neat little element is this plug in the bottom of the stock which is a cleaning rod. it's threaded in there, and it's going to take me a moment to unscrew There we have the complete cleaning rod. Jag slot in the front for a cleaning rag. Why they made this a separate Piece that's held together by the cleaning rod? I have no idea What they did for some reason Well, I'm really happy to have finally gotten a chance to take a look at one of these They're a very notable and unusual firearm because of this clockwork style of mechanism if you're interested in firearms like this Especially if you're interested in Dutch firearms make sure to stop by the Dutch Military... National Military Museum if you ever have a chance to they have an excellent collection It's a brand new building and really extremely well done if you like seeing this sort of thing on the internet I would appreciate it if you'd consider taking a look at my patreon account It is support from the folks there at a buck a month that makes it possible for me to travel to places like The Netherlands find these guns and bring them to you. Thanks for watching
