Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian. I am here today at the James Julia Auction House. I'm taking a look at some of the machine guns that they're selling in their October of 2015 auction. And one that I noticed that they had was this guy, which is kind of the unappreciated, red-headed stepchild of US World War Two automatic weapons. This is a Reising Model M55 submachine gun. It's chambered for .45 ACP, and these were actually adopted in fairly large numbers by the US Marine Corps. Now, the Reising has gotten itself a pretty bad reputation. They were in fact pretty much discontinued. They went out of service in the Marine Corps
as soon as other guns, other options, came along. But at the beginning of the war, this was what
the Marine Corps had for submachine guns. Now the reason for this is that
historically the Marine Corps has always ... played second fiddle to the Army in terms of equipment. So for example, the Army got M1
Garand semi-automatic rifles first. The Marine Corps got them when
the Army was done getting equipped. So the Marine Corps actually went into several island
campaigns in World War Two using bolt action Springfield rifles. Well the same thing applied to submachine guns, the
supply of Thompson guns was pretty darned limited. A lot of them were going to the United
Kingdom, they were being bought by Britain. A lot of them were being bought by the Army. And they
were expensive and time-consuming guns to make, and there just weren't any left for the Marine Corps. So when they started looking around
the gun they were able to find was this submachine gun, designed
by a guy named Eugene Reising. He was actually a pretty accomplished
gun designer. He was born in 1884, and by World War Two he had worked for a whole
bunch of different major gun companies in the US. He had actually worked under John Browning. ... He
had over 60 firearms patents by the time of his death. And some of his ideas were involved, for example,
in the iteration and the development of the 1911 pistol. So he was a qualified guy. He had
designed this submachine gun, and it had a number of advantages over the
Thompson, primarily it was a heck of a lot lighter. This is something like 6.5 pounds, where the
Thompson is not quite double that, but close. The Reising fired from a closed bolt, which meant it
was potentially a lot more accurate on the first shot. You didn't have that mass of the
bolt flying forward to disrupt your aim after you pulled the trigger,
but before the bullet actually fired. So the Reising would go on after World
War Two to actually be a pretty popular and pretty effective and
well-regarded police submachine gun. In police hands it was excellent. It was a
closed bolt gun, it was nice and accurate. And the problems that it had during World War Two
didn't really affect it in the civilian police role. So, speaking of which, the
problems that it did have were: the finish on them wasn't very good. They
tended to rust very, very quickly in the Pacific. You'll see veteran's accounts of the guns rusting
overnight, no matter what they tried to do to prevent it. They were a somewhat complex,
overly complicated mechanism. They are actually a delayed blowback gun,
despite being a .45 ACP submachine gun. ... The delayed blowback mechanism is what allows
them to be a lot lighter than some of their competitors, but it did have the downside of being potentially
fouled up by dirt and, say, volcanic sand on Iwo Jima. ... One of the good things about them was they were in
production right now, we can buy them, and they'll be here. And we need submachine guns like right now, so
that's a definite plus for the Reising is we can get them. Well, part of being able to get them was that the production
line hadn't been refined to make every part interchangeable. There was still some hand fitting in these
guns, or at least trial and error fitting. And what they discovered was, yeah, that made for
really good availability. Right now we can get the guns. But if you disassembled them in the field and
tried swapping parts between different guns, it might or might not work. Some units of the Marines had a standard policy
of a whole squad would clean their guns together, and you'd disassemble them and everyone would
throw all the bits in buckets of cleanser together. And then when you went to reassemble the gun you'd pull
out a bolt, and pull out a spring, and all the different parts. That worked fine on M1 Garands which were completely
interchangeable, that didn't work on Reisings. And they didn't realise that
before they started trying it. So incidents like that lead to a lot of dissatisfaction with
the guns among soldiers, who need them to work right now. So this particular version is the M55,
which has this incredibly cheap and it's not quite flimsy, sort of. But it's like the
crudest folding stock ever on a submachine gun. They also had the Model 50,
which was basically the same gun. It had a half inch longer barrel, and usually
had a compensator, and it had a full stock on it. A full fixed wooden stock without a pistol grip. The ... M55 here was specifically for
paratroopers and for tank crewmen. It was initially obtained in part for the Paramarines,
the Marine Corps set up a paratrooper unit. They didn't end up actually jumping anywhere,
but for those guys they needed ... firearms that were compact and you could
easily jump out of an airplane with. And that led to the M55 Reising being adopted.
It also led to the 1941 Johnson rifle being adopted, because you could pull the barrel out of a Johnson
very easily, and then you had two nice compact pieces. At any rate, in total between 1942
and '43 about 80,000 of these guns were contracted for by the
US Marine Corps and received. And a pretty even split between 50s with the
full stock and 55s with this folding stock. They were initially ... sent to specific units,
but there seems to have been a lot of swapping back and forth amongst
Marines in the field, and you'll often find them in the hands of guys who probably wouldn't
have had them issued in the first place. They were apparently quite popular with tankers.
The alternative at the time was a Thompson. And a Thompson is a lot bigger and bulkier in
the confines of a tank than these guys are, so. Why don't we go ahead and take a look at how
this disassembles, and a few of its foibles. And then why don't we take it out in the field
and actually try doing some shooting with it. Before we do a disassembly, let's start with a
couple basic controls because there are only a few. We have our selector lever right
here on the side of the gun. All the way forward is "FA", full-auto. Then I can pull
it back to semi-auto and back all the way to safe. One of the Marine Corps complaints was that you cannot
tell in the dark just by feel what selector setting you're on. And that's legit. Alright, the magazine release right here,
we're gonna take this lever, push it up, and then you can pull out the magazine. The magazine catch is a peg that
goes into that round hole right there. Now this is a 20 round magazine, later in the
war they did have some issues with these. You'll see by the way they are marked "H&R - Reising",
these guns are all made by Harrington & Richardson. This is a double-stack, single-feed
magazine, meaning that it goes from two stacks of cartridges, and then it has
to compress down into a single stack here. That often causes issues, ... it makes
it a little easier to design the gun because you only have a single position
where the bolt has to be able to feed a round, instead of alternating left and right. But it makes the magazine
a little more finicky to feed. The magazine feed lips also weren't as
strong as they probably should have been. Again, this is an issue of a civilian gun that really
just wasn't adequately hardened for military usage, so. You will also find magazines that look like this,
but they have a pair of deep ribs on each side. Those are actually single stack magazines,
those ribs force only a single column of cartridges. And they only hold 12 rounds,
so they adopted some of those as well. Obviously 12 rounds in a submachine gun isn't really a
very good solution. But standard mags like this were 20. Alright, looking at the front end of the gun. You may notice there is no bolt handle
sticking out anywhere. That is because the charging handle is actually on
... what's called the "action bar", which is here inside the fore-end of the stock.
We grab that, pull it back, that opens the bolt. So ... the plus side to that is that there's
no bolt handle on the outside reciprocating. The downside is this does reciprocate, so you don't
want to stick your finger in there when you're shooting. There is also no hold open, automatic or
manual, so it's a little tricky to do basic things like swabbing the barrel because you
have to hold this thing open the whole time. And it's easy for that to be kind of obscured
under the sling and a little tricky to get to, especially if you're wearing the sling
and it gets tied up in some position. Again (this will be a recurring theme you'll see),
civilian fine - military use, no, maybe not so much. Lastly we have our shoulder stock,
which is just a bent chunk of wire, that is held in place by tension on this little metal tab. And held open by tension on
these two little metal tabs. So it opens to there and I snap
it in place, and presto, a stock. Not the most comfortable stock ever,
possibly the least comfortable stock ever. But it works, and if you're jumping out of an
airplane sometimes it's more important that the gun be easy enough to carry
that you'll actually have it with you. Let's take this apart shall we?
We're going to start by loosening up that screw. That screw is captive in the stock, so it
won't actually come out, but it's what locks the barrelled action and all the
mechanical bits into the stock. So, loosen that up. There we go. This pin was not supposed to
fall out, we'll get to that little guy in a minute. Now we will begin to see why the
Marine Corps really didn't like this gun. Disassembly (you get this theme again?),
not bad for a civilian gun where you don't have to do this all that often,
and you can do it in your living room, and it doesn't matter really how finicky it is.
Not a good thing for a military gun. So the first thing I'm going to do is
take this screw plug out the back. The outside of this is knurled, I'm using
a screwdriver because it's easier. There are a couple of spring-loaded
detents to hold this in place so that it won't actually come out
unintentionally. That's a good thing. So. Alright, this is our hammer spring and guide rod. The hammer does not look like a normal hammer. That is the hammer, we'll get to this in a minute. Now the next thing I need to do is take
out these two pins, they are tapered, you saw the one fell out because I didn't
have it in tight enough to begin with. You are supposed to use the gun's
hammer to tap these out if they're too tight. I'm going to use a little gunsmithing hammer instead. ... I'll go out on a limb here and say that
a military weapon should not require hammers and punches to
field strip in the field. That's just me. So we now have these two pins,
they are tapered top to bottom here. They are also curved to put tension
on the magazine well to hold it in place. Now we need to take the magazine well off,
which we do by taking the action bar off. But before we can take the action bar
off we have to have it back here, and we need to hold it in place,
but there's no catch. So, and I swear to you this is
what the manual says to do, we pull it back until we can
see the little disassembly hole. We then take the hammer spring, and you insert the end of the hammer spring
(... this end), into that hole, right there, and then
let the spring come forward on it. So our hammer spring end is actually what's holding
the action bar and the mainspring compressed. Now that we've got that,
in order to take the action bar off (and it will pop the magazine well out with it), we have to hold these up with one hand and then the action bar lifts up and forward.
And all this stuff kind of wiggles off. What could go wrong? Right? No problem doing this in a volcanic
foxhole on Iwo Jima, right? Piece of cake. Now last step. Now that the action
bar is off I can pull the trigger and the bolt comes out the back. OK, now that we have this thing apart we can see how it
actually functions, because it is a delayed blowback system. There are also a couple of little
clever bits that I do want to show you. For example, we have this
bar in the magazine well. That bar actually hits this extended
rib on the back of the magazine, and that's what sets the magazine insertion depth. So you can see the bar there, once I've got
the magazine as far up as it's supposed to go for proper feeding, there is no way
you're over-inserting that magazine. So, well done, good thing. Alright, now our bolt and action bar.
So this would be sitting in this position, and it has this hook on the back that
fits into that recess on the bolt. Goes back and forth like this. At the forward-most travel the
bolt face hits the chamber, the action bar keeps going forward,
and it pushes the back of the bolt up. There is a recess in the receiver which is a little
bit hard to see, but ... you can see the line where it goes from dark to shiny.
That is the recess where the bolt locks in. When we dry cycle this when it's complete, you can watch how the bolt tips up
into the back of the receiver there. Now the back end of that recess is not square,
it's tapered. And the back of the bolt is also tapered. So the delaying action comes from simply
the friction of these two inclined surfaces. The bolt has to push itself back
down like that before it can travel. And that's enough to allow a
gun in .45 Auto to function safely with this really fairly light bolt
and not an overly stiff recoil spring. So in that way, again, good design. This allows you to have a
full-auto .45 calibre sub gun that only weighs like 6.5 pounds. That's a good thing. Now, I mentioned we would get to this hammer, which does not look like a hammer
you're probably used to seeing. And in fact when you think about it,
there's a hole right in the middle that matches this firing pin on
the bolt. How does that work? It's actually exactly the right diameter, so that when
they're lined up this hammer can't do anything. Well, think about the fact that the bolt
tips up in the receiver. Once it tips up now this (which you could call a hammer,
you could also call it a striker, sort of) now that hits the firing pin. This is actually a safety so that the gun
cannot fire unless the bolt is up in its recess. Because if it's straight in line, the hammer
goes forward, misses the firing pin completely. It's only when the [bolt] is up there
that it can actually detonate a cartridge. Pretty clever. Eugene Reising
wasn't stupid, this gun isn't stupid. This gun just isn't adequately hardened
for military use in military conditions. This is why it made such a
great police gun after the war. So that is pretty much all
of our functional detail there. I'm going to go ahead and reassemble this, and then I
think it's time we took it out on the range for some shooting. Alright guys, so we're going to put a few rounds
through this guy. I've got a 20 round mag loaded. I am going to shoot right-handed today
because of the stock on this thing. Let's go ahead and see how it is. One thing that I read was that these were
advertised as being a very slow rate of fire, because that's what the government wanted. But that they were actually more
like about 800 rounds a minute, which is pretty darn fast for a .45, so we will find out. Do the first couple of rounds in semi. It's an extremely light-shooting
gun in semi-auto. Let's try it in full. That's neat. ... Actually I was expecting a reasonably
heavy kick because it is such a light gun. But you really don't get it, even with
this absolutely horrendous wire stock. It's not bad at all. Doesn't climb all that
badly, although it does climb some. It's ... definitely not as controllable
as the equivalent 9mm gun, but I can see why ... Marine Raiders would have
really liked these as long as they run reliably. It's very handy to carry, with this stock
folded this thing is super-compact. It's nice to carry. ... You know, the thing is you will find
battlefield pictures of Marines using these guns even after things like M1 carbines and Grease Guns
were available. So not everybody hated them. Let's do some more shooting. These are really slick actually. I think I would want one. If I had the choice,
and if I wasn't going to carry it all day, I can see why people would want the ... fixed stock. But man, when you fold that thing,
this is just super-compact and short compared to anything else that was
available at the beginning of World War Two. Thanks for watching guys, hope you enjoyed the video. You don't often see M55 Reisings,
although the Reising is actually one of the more common and more affordable
guns on the NFA market in the US. If you're looking for a machine gun, you know
these aren't nearly as expensive as you might expect for a genuine Marine Corps issue
World War Two submachine gun. So it can be a really cool starter machine gun
for someone who's looking to get into it. And there's a lot of neat history behind these, despite
their bad reputation which is partly deserved, and partly not. If you're interested in this one, check
out the link in the description text below. That'll take you to the Julia
auction catalogue page about it. You can see their pictures and their description,
and between that and what you've seen here today if you think you need to have it,
well, you can place a bid on-line, or you can come up here to Maine
and participate in the auction live. Thanks for watching. [ sub by sk cn2 ]
