SITES Spectre: Think of it as an SMG, not a pistol

hi guys thanks for tuning into another video on Forgotten weapons calm imean McAuliffe and I'm here today at the Rock Island auction company taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to have coming up for sale in their February of 2018 regional auction specifically today a 9-millimeter cites Spectre pistol now when we're looking at this the important thing to keep in mind the whole time is that this was designed to be a submachine gun and the fact that it is in pistol form is a secondary priority for the company so sites was founded in Torino in Italy in the early 1980s it is the Society italiana the technology especially si T Bass acronym is cites and what they were what they initially intended to do was come up with the best most modern submachine gun design for government counterterrorism police sort of use so they looked at a bunch of the different designs that were out there figured okay what do we need to do what are some of the common shortcomings of police submachine guns and they came up with a number of interesting conclusions they wanted to keep the gun compact they wanted the gun narrow they wanted the gun unobtrusive and they really did pull that off the specter while again this it this is why we have to consider this as a submachine gun and not as a pistol because as a pistol its massively huge and bulky and awkward as a submachine gun remember that the stock is not on it so that it can be legally a pistol as a submachine gun it's quite narrow it's something like thirty five millimeters wide less than an inch and a half wide it has no major protrusions on the side it is in this form set up with a 30-round magazine which is substantially shorter than a typical magazine because they used quad stack mags instead of double stack so the controls are unobtrusive the bolt handles unobtrusive they came up with a number of good ideas for this gun the problem came that there wasn't really a whole lot of demand for a new police submachine gun while they may have the head the best one the second best one was really just fine as it was so that's where site started running into problems and they eventually they've put this into production as the model - this is model for in 1985 fairly quickly upgraded it to the model for they made a number of changes they simplified the take down they improve the sites they improved the stock which originally was a top folding stock to again keep the the gun nice and narrow allow it to be short for concealment if necessary side folding stocks of course typically double the width of the gun so they wanted with a top folding stock instead but they just weren't able to make any sales so one of their solutions was to redesign it slightly as a semi-automatic pistol and carbine these were imported innocent into the u.s. from the late 1980s until 1993 at that point import shut down because of the u.s. assault weapons bans this absolutely qualified as an assault pistol under that law because of things like the barrel shroud the magazine being forward of the grip assembly various other features the company stayed in business well we'll touch on where this eventually went after we take a closer look at how it actually works all right the basics first it is chambered for nine by nineteen millimeter standard nine millimetre parabellum we have this is a 30 round magazine as I mentioned this is a quad stack magazine so four columns of cartridges in there which narrow to two columns up in the top of the magazine and then narrow into a single column for actual feeding into the gun so I suspect a loading tool would be very helpful in actually loading this thing we'll take the floor plate off in a minute and I'll show you what's actually inside a quad stack magazine this thing is pretty heavy as a pistol for a submachine gun it would be not too terribly bad it comes in at just under six and a half pounds unloaded that's just under three kilograms balanced well add a stock to it and it would be very nice controls are pretty basic and completely ambidextrous so the magazine release is here inside the magazine well or inside the trigger garden and then we have a safety in front fire on top safe hello and a decocking lever in the back this is another one of those elements that make sense in the context of a submachine gun and not so much in the context of a pistol the idea there is basically to give you a double-action style of much longer and much heavier trigger pull rather than a manual safety so rendering the gun safe simply because of the weight of the trigger pull like you would with a double-action revolver however it's still allowing the gun to be fired with just a straight trigger pull without the shooter having to use any controls and then the bolt handle is up here just laying across the top of the gun grab that cyclic words like so this is one of the changes they made between the model two in the model for the model two had a more easy like of kind of a charging handle knob on top and they replaced it with this flat piece which I think does make sense now this is a closed bolt gun and it was a closed bolt gun from the very beginning of design in many cases you'll find semi-automatic variations of submachine guns where they had to convert guns from open bolt to closed bolt this is not one of them that closed bolt design gives the gun a number of advantages you don't have the crank of the entire bolt mechanism dropping forward when you actually fire the first round that makes some closed bolt guns typically more accurate you know as a practical matter then open bolt ones you'll see the HK mp5 is a closed bolt submachine gun and a large part of its reputation for accuracy comes from that fact and you get the same thing here having a closed bolt also takes care of a lot of the well the couple of typical submachine gun open bolt safety issues about you know what happens if the bolt bounces backwards and strips a cartridge off well as a closed bolt gun it doesn't have a fixed firing pin you don't have to worry about any of those issues so that was something I think sites did write closed bolt really does make sense for a modern submachine gun I think there are just a couple of markings on here to take a look at sights company name Spectre this is of course the pistol model made in Italy and patented and the on the side we have our importer marks fi e out of Miami Florida and the ever helpful read warnings before using manual free from F ie Miami Florida I don't think anyone ever pays attention to that on firearms any more than they do on any other commercial product and we have a serial number up in front of the ejection port which is repeated on the bottom of the barrel as well the front sight is just a standard round post adjustable for elevation a couple of nice big protective wings on it the rear sight is just a rear notch no provision for windage adjustment this is just a pin to hold it in place you may be looking at that at that and saying that looks an awful lot like a big spring-loaded catch and you would be correct this is a big spring-loaded catch right now the grip is the trigger assembly is locking it in place but this is a critical part of our disassembly so let's move on to that there is one pin that you take out and it is also the sling swivel here it is held captive by this little doodlee bit alright there so if we flip that out then I can take the pin pull it out now normally the idea of having a sling swivel and a disassembly pin on the same component seems a little unwise but in this case they had a couple of extra precautions so that if you should manage to actually yank that pin out which thanks to the little locking tab right there isn't all that likely to happen but even if you do the gun still doesn't just fly apart so the grip assembly comes off but only when you push the recoil assembly here there we go I should have dropped the bolt first but when I pushed this in and pulled the grip assembly down it dropped the bolt for me so just to go over that one more time you push this end plate in just slightly that allows the grip frame to come out because there is a locking bar or locking catch right there you can see that that is locking into the a slightly angled wedge on the back of the grip frame so there's our trigger assembly we'll take a close look at how this all works in a moment see now I push this in and push down the latch and that allows the rear cap and it's two dual springs to come out and we get our bolt and striker there is the field-stripped Spectre interesting to note that they have actually used the same system that is typically used for a semi-auto conversion of an open bolt gun namely they have a bolt that goes all the way forward with a firing pin in it and then this separate you could call this a linear hammer or linear hammers actually probably the correct term this thing is what's being on what's under pressure from one of these two main springs you've got one that pushes on the bolt and one that pushes on this block and when this goes forward it smacks the firing pin and fires the gun so this is the front part of the bolt assembly in fact this is the bolt itself we have a firing pin there it's spring-loaded and in fact you have to hit it pretty hard to get it to come through in fact even if it just pushes flush it doesn't protrude out the front so it has to be given enough impact to actually get some inertia and push farther forward than just flush against this so that is an extra safety precaution if the the linear hammer doesn't come far enough back if this jumps over the sear and closes without enough force it still won't fire the gun anyway note that there is a hole for the recoil spring in the back so the smaller diameter recoil spring goes in there that's a blind hole so this spring is pushing on the bolt the whole time this is our linear hammer which sits on top of that guy there we go so this small spring goes right through the linear hammer and doesn't do anything to it it's always on the bolt itself now when this fires the hammer here hits the back of the bolt like so and pushes the firing pin out the second of our main Springs goes over the top of the first one and it sits on a shoulder you can see that it doesn't go through there there is actually you can see it right there there's a little stepped shoulder on the inside of the hammer that stops this mainspring so as with pretty much all guns of this design you need a spring for the bolt and a spring for the hammer and this does that does it with two Springs that are nested over at the top of each other one of the neat things about the hammer on the specter though the whole fire control group is that it has a disconnect er here that's actually sideways so you'll see that there is a hole in the receiver there this hammer is going to travel in here forward and back and at its rear most point of travel it comes to right there so when it's running backwards there's a slot right here that allows this which is the single action firing release that travels in that slot like so and when the bolt when the hammer is going backwards you can hear it snap right there it pushes this out of the way comes in front and then this pops back into place and that angled surface locks against this to hold the thing ready cocked ready to fire then when you pull the trigger the relevant part here is this sort of t-shaped piece at the bottom so when I don't have the trigger pulled this piece can't go far enough down to release the hammer when I pull the trigger that bar goes back now that release can drop all the way that releases the hammer and the gun fires now when the striker goes forward it's going to push over the top of this and that's going to disconnect the trigger this doesn't really want to return there we go it disconnects it so that the trigger is now held below this bar and can't do anything until until I fully release the trigger at which point it pops back up sorry misbehaves a bit when the rest of the gun is not there then you can see now when I pull the trigger it's able to push that bar back once it has fired and we pop it down that can't happen the safety does pretty much the same thing when I engage the safety it drops this sear right here so that the trigger no longer engages on this t-shaped piece doesn't push it backwards and thus doesn't fire the gun so actually a pretty simple safety now the other bit here that gets trickier is the decocker and the double action mode and in double action we actually have this little finger that pushes backwards and not very far as you can see however that is pushing on this surface of hammer and you can see that it forces the hammer backwards when you pull the trigger what that is doing is pushing the hammer back against its spring not so far as to back here which is where it would fire from single action but far enough that it can still drop and set off a primer so this is why if you use the decocker you only get one shot before it has to actually cycle or you have to cycle the bolt in order to do it a second time this isn't like a double action revolver where the double action pole can be run as many times as you want you only get one chance of this because once you drop it to here that finger can no longer reach up and grab the hammer so when it's back here and then you release it with the decocker what you're doing is dropping it to this position and then when you fire this finger pushes it back until it drops under the hammer the hammer then goes forward and that's your one chance now the way the decocking lever actually works is that this lever has this little sort of shark fin look to it right here when you pull it down it's going to pull that t-bar backwards far enough that our firing release can actually drop the bolt however it's not release saying it's not moving this guy so if I pull the trigger this guy goes back and down at the same time that this drops that leaves everything free to fire if I use this lever to do it this can drop down remember this is always under spring pressure from the bolt it's being pushed downward this drops down the hammer goes forward and it gets caught by that finger ready to fire double action whoa that is a doozy of a fire control mechanism to explain now in theory what I read is that there is a forced air ventilation clever forced air ventilation system to this gun would like help cool it I don't see any evidence of that maybe there was something that was on the submachine guns that they simplified and removed from the pistols but until I have a chance to take a look at an actual legitimate submachine gun Specter I have no way to tell so one last thing to take a look at is the magazine I said we take this apart there is a floor plate with a hole and I can use the recoil spring guide to pop that down the inside of this magazine is a little bit grungy but we have one floor plate that has guides for two recoil springs or two magazines brains we've got two springs in there one for each column of this magazine and then if I just pop it down we have one kind of interesting looking follower so the follower here is split in two halves and the left side has this steel roller in it you'll notice that there are slots cut in the follower and on the inside of the magazine you don't actually have a complete separation between the two columns just a pair of guide rod guide rails like that so the follower and sit / yeah yeah it's hard to hold this up into the camera when it's upside down the follower can sit here and run on those rails and so you don't have to have two separate followers this roller is just there to help the cartridges converge from four to two to a single stack at the top there are a couple of witness holes on the side so you know when you're loading it when it's fully loaded this is the 30 round version there is a 50 round version that was also made and as sites was very proud of the 50 round quad stack mag is approximately the same length as a typical 30 round double stack magazine in order to minimize cost of the gun the whole trigger assembly frame the grip assembly was made out of a polymer or a resin fiberglass plastic II thing and then the whole upper receiver so the rear end of the receiver itself the magazine well the barrel shroud all of that started out as one flat steel stamping which was then bent around a mandrel you can see there's a pair of rails that are stamped into the receiver here to help make sure the bolt stays in its proper track and then you can see where it was welded on the bottom SEPA the weld seam on the inside of the magazine well there they finished it much better on the outside kind of like the PPSh this was this gap was left open because why bother you don't really need to close it and then it was welded pretty nicely right up there at the muzzle just to put it in context the single single action trigger bolt it has a lot of travel a lot of travel and then at the very end you can't really tell when it's gonna break but it's got a pretty nice light break to it when you decock it you then have a far heavier I mean that's like a really heavy trigger pull because you're hamming me the linear hammer backward and then it finally breaks and fires so eventually sights the original company went defunct in 1997 the rights and production and everything to the gun were purchased by a Swiss opening called Greco sport they continued manufacturing the gun until 2001 remember this wasn't of course imports into the US had ended in 93 but they were selling these in other countries and places in Europe other places where they could sell a semi-automatic pistol or carbine and of course they were still trying to sell submachine guns Greco sport went out of business in 2006 and that's kind of the end the line for the Spector submachine gun I should also point out in Europe I believe this was sold under the name Falcon specters specifically for the US market not sure why they thought they needed different names but they did ultimately while this one is in nine-millimeter you will also find them in 40 Smith & Wesson in the US and they also manufactured a version in nine by 21 IMI I would presume for the Italian market which at the time had a restriction on civilian ownership of military cartridges like 9 by 19 they also apparently made a 45 acp version although I don't think those ever were sold in substantial numbers in the US so it is a again you have to look at this thing as a submachine gun because as a sub gun it's actually a pretty cool done and a lot of its features make a lot of sense in a pistol form it's obviously been substantially handicapped for that original role but it does make a pretty cool piece of well there are a lot of people interested in semi-automatic conversions of actual submachine guns so this is a pretty cool 1/4 of a modern submachine gun that you don't typically see because of course they never managed to sell very many of the actual submachine guns anyway if you'd like to have this one take a look at the description text below there is a link there to rock island's upcoming auction for this on their catalog page you can see although all their details their pictures etc and place a bid right through the web if you're inclined thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 603,806

Rating: 4.9597158 out of 5

Keywords: spectre, sites, smg, pistol, gun, Forgotten Weapons, 9mm, Video Game, sites spectre, semiautomatic pistol, Technologie Speciali SPA, call of duty, Airsoft, double action trigger, Spectre M4, good SMG, rifle, Spectre design, ambidextrous controls, best police, improved sights, history, development, mccollum, conversion, closed bolt, semiauto, counter terrorism, police, subgun, model 2, model 4, import, ambi, quad stack, italian, cod, modern warfare, blowback, imi, security, special ops

Id: q1sbYHR0jxk

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2018