Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm out here today at the lovely shooting range at the James D. Julia auction house up in Maine. And I'm taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming fall of 2017 firearms auction. And when I saw that they had this, I could not resist the opportunity to take a look at it. And I'm really excited that we're gonna be able to do some shooting with it today. This is a Solothurn S18-1000, and it is a self-loading anti-tank cannon. Light cannon, but cannon all the same. This fires the 20x138mm rebated rim cartridge. That's the same cartridge that's used
in the L-39 Lahti Finnish anti-tank rifle. ... It was also the German 20mm Flak cartridge. This was produced by Solothurn, which was basically
a subsidiary of Rheinmetall going into World War Two. And it existed in that kind of brief time
period between the two World Wars when pretty much all the major military powers
wanted some sort of infantry weapon that could defeat light armoured
vehicles, or rather armoured vehicles. Because when these things were all being
developed, tank armour was thin enough that something like this could actually
defeat pretty much any tank on the battlefield. Unfortunately for the guys who made, and used, and
had to carry these things around, that didn't last long. This would defeat, for example, a
Panzer I or a Panzer II, but by the time the Germans were making Panzer IIIs
and IVs, this wasn't gonna cut it. Now you could still use one of these on the treads, or
if you could get a hit on something like a viewing port, maybe manage to stick a turret ring and, you know, damage
a tank. And they were certainly very effective on pillboxes, fortifications and light armoured vehicles, things
like trucks and half-tracks and armoured cars, these would be very effective.
But you know, this is a really heavy and bulky and awkward item to be schlepping
around a battlefield. This thing's over 100 pounds, so it really takes two guys to move
this thing in any practical manner. And so as a result they didn't see
a whole lot of use during the war. Primarily the Swiss, the Italians
and the Hungarians bought this gun. And this is, by the way, the big version,
there was also a slightly smaller version that Solothurn made, the S18-100 (instead of
1000). That fired a 20x105mm cartridge. That's kind of the wimpy version, and a bunch
of countries bought small numbers of those. Actually I should say my Finnish cap here is
appropriate because Finland had one of these guns. It's not known if it was ever
actually used, but they did have one. The one use I was able to find for sure
was a Dutch anti-tank gun team in the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, actually
effectively used one of these at a river crossing. They destroyed a couple of German armoured
cars, forced a third one to retreat, and that's kind of about the extent of the
actual combat effective use of Solothurns. Now the Russians would use this sort of
gun, much smaller, much simpler versions, the PTRS and PTRD rifles. They would
use those pretty extensively later in the war. But the Solothurn was a magnificently
made, expensive, really high-end anti-tank rifle. Let's take a quick look at the controls, and
then I'm gonna put a couple of rounds through it. Alright, well here is our magazine. This is
an 8 round magazine of 20x138 rebated rim. The Solothurn is a short recoil gun,
so you will actually see the barrel reciprocate backwards when we fire. Magazine goes in here, that's our
mag release, that is our bolt release. This has, I should say, a nice magazine cover there
to keep it clean when you're not actually shooting. Alright, the bolt handle here. Because this thing has to
have such a monstrous recoil spring in order to work, you can't just have a straight pull bolt handle
because you'd never be able to pull it back, so instead, it has a ratchet crank. I'm gonna
pull this out to unlock it, and then three full turns open the bolt. We're also going to open our ejection
port cover in the process, there we go. That's locked the bolt back, and
then I wind the charging handle back. There is an automatic safety on this,
right here, if that button's not pushed in, the gun's not going to do anything
because you need to have this locked in the ... back to
normal position in order to use it. So life pro tip: don't stick your finger in the breech of an anti-
tank cannon. This should be obvious, but in case it's not. The bolt Is closed here, and that is our rather massive
bolt. So I'm gonna go ahead and crank it open. There we go. There is the bolt head, which you
might note looks an awful lot like an MG34 bolt head. Parts of the MG34 were absolutely derived from
Rheinmetall patents and guns, kind of like this one. Anyway, it is a rotating bolt head,
so we've got 8 locking lugs up there that are gonna rotate from vertical to
horizontal up in here, in the barrel extension. Now, let's crank this all the way open. Bolt's locked open, so now you're
ready to load a magazine. And you can also see at the back side
of the receiver here that little chain. That's what actually cranks
the bolt forward and back. Not a whole lot of guns actually have literal chains in them,
that's kind of like the equivalent of a timing chain in your car. Alright, I think we're ready to
actually do some shooting. You guys ready? Whoo, that's definitely nicer than
a Lahti to shoot. It pushed me back... felt like a couple inches. I think
the bipod actually swivelled a bit, I need to stake that down a little bit
more securely, but you know what? As long as you pull this thing tight into your
shoulder, it gives you a push back but - that's it. Honestly that didn't hurt in the least.
I think we need to do another. Alright, we're gonna do one more shot here. By the
way, I think you probably have noticed in the high-speed that nobody is putting their face right on the receiver.
It's like, why doesn't anyone have a cheek weld? Well the answer is we're
using the iron sights up here, and these are kind of offset away from
the side of the gun, so you actually don't have your face in contact with the
receiver when you're using the iron sights. Ahhh, oh yeah. Phew, well hopefully you guys enjoyed
watching that. It was certainly a kick, literally and figuratively, to do
some shooting with one of these. I've also shot a Lahti, and this really is
a much nicer experience than the Lahti. The Lahti as a gun is less
expensive, I don't want to say cruder, but it's definitely a simpler gun,
and that kind of shows through. It's a more brutal gun to actually shoot. These are
kind of the Cadillacs of anti-tank guns, and I can tell. It's really not nearly as bad a gun to shoot as
you might think. How's that for an endorsement? So at any rate, if you'd like to own this one
yourself, take a look at the description text below. You'll find a link there to James Julia's catalogue
page on the gun, you can take a look at their pictures, their description, all the accessories that
come with this one, and place a bid for it on-line, or ... over the phone, or by showing up
here and participating in the auction live. Thanks for watching.
PLEASE ANTON
This will come in handy when the Sosigs upscale the tank fireworks into a the real thing