Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at an exquisitely rare and super-cool pistol, a Norwegian Model of 1909 Sunngård. And this thing was actually competing in Norwegian military trials which ended up resulting in the adoption of the Kongsberg 1914, which is effectively a slightly modified Colt 1911. But one has to wonder if they made the right choice because this holds 7 rounds, where this has 50 rounds in the gun, plus another 25 held in the magazine pouch within the holster. This thing ... in its holster (little holster, not very big) has a grand total of 75 rounds of ammunition
in that package, and that's pretty awesome. So what makes the Sunngård a
really mechanically distinctive pistol is that it actually holds two
magazines in the grip simultaneously. And you shoot the first one empty, and then you
drop the first one, and then you slide the back one into the front position and you
have another 25 rounds to shoot. And if you're still not done shooting stuff at that point,
you can then pull your third magazine out of your holster, load it into the gun and you've
got a third set of 25 rounds. So this was ... designed in 1909. The US patent was issued
in 1910. I presume there was a Norwegian patent for it as well, although I have not located that patent. It was designed by a guy named Harald Sunngård (soon
guard or sun guard, I'm honestly not quite sure which). And it is mechanically just a simple blowback pistol. ... There were versions for two different cartridges.
A grand total of only about 30 of these guns were made, although there is actually a substantial
amount of variation within those. Most of them apparently were made for the ... 25 calibre,
[6.5mm] Sunngård cartridge. It was [6.5x19mm], so actually kind of a reasonably long case.
This was a skinny but long cartridge. That of course made it all the more
practical for stuffing into the magazines, because each one of these double-stack
magazines (by the way, this is a quite early pistol to have a double-stack magazine)
each one of those mags holds 25 rounds. Now there was a second cartridge that was used in
just a couple of the guns, and that was 8mm Sunngård. Same overall length, so it was an 8x19mm case. And what's interesting is both of these cartridges used
... the same weight of bullet, and it was only a 29 grain bullet. Now if you compare that to something else in a similar
bore diameter, especially the 8mm version, you know a .32 ACP is basically the same diameter as 8mm,
and those run 60 to 71 grains for typical bullet weight. This was ... less than half of that, so this had to
be almost like a semi-wadcutter sort of bullet. But I think the reason for that was Sunngård
was trying to get a very high velocity. He claimed 2,000 feet per second,
like 600 metres per second. I don't know if that's legitimate, but maybe in the 8mm. By the way, the 8mm case was larger in diameter, of
course, so it's magazines held only 18 rounds each. Still like more than any modern military service
pistol, although, granted, in a smaller cartridge. Anyway, let's take a close up look at this. Let me show you how
that magazine functionality works, and we'll take the gun apart. Well, you do get 50 rounds in the gun, the
consequence is that the grip is really pretty awkward. It's actually slightly forward canted which seems like it'd
be a problem, but isn't really, but the grip is really long. You can certainly see that if we
compare it to a Kongsberg Colt here. Yeah, see how much longer that grip is. ... Overall, this is about the size of a real service
automatic, although it is narrower than most of those. This may not look like a whole lot, but this feels
much narrower in the hand than the 1911 is. But yeah, it's that really long grip
that is the most distinctive feature. There are a couple different types of grips out
there. This one has this really kind of interesting almost like mythologically inspired design on the grip
panels, which are some sort of Bakelite type material. There ... are pictures out there showing
a version that has solid flat metal grips, also without the safety,
interestingly. And without this lever. There is ... at least one example of
a gun that doesn't have grip panels. It has a sheet metal magazine box assembly with viewing hole perforations in that, so that you can
actually see the ammo status of the gun through the grips. And then of course we have this pattern. It is marked on the left side Sunngård Patent 1909. And on the right side. It is actually
marked 50 cartridges, Calibre 6.5. I'm sorry, I said 6.35 earlier, 6.5mm. And
then the 7.2 Hg and 9.2 Hg is a measurement of [the weight of the gun unloaded and loaded,
720g (25 ounces) and 920g (33 ounces)]. This is a striker fired gun, you can see
the striker here in the cocked position. And if I go ahead and fire it, that
drops down into the base of the gun. The sights are a little bit unusual in that we have two
big protective wings around a little teeny front post, and kind of the same setup here for the rear sight. So
kind of line everything up and, well, there's your sight picture. This is a simple blowback mechanism, so
when you fire the slide's going to cycle back. It does not lock open automatically when the gun's empty, but
you do have a manual hold open that you can engage, like so. There is a safety lever on the side here. So all
the way up is safe, down is in the fire position. We have a lanyard ring on the back of the frame. And then the most relevant control
is the magazine release here. So, you can see we have two
magazines staggered in the grip. ... The front one is fired from
and the back one stays in reserve. The magazine release is pushed down like
that, and then we can pull out the magazine. 25 rounds double-stack and double-feed,
it's really a pretty remarkable magazine. Now with the front magazine out We pull the rear magazine down, and it's
actually retained in here by a little wire clip that we'll see in a minute, you
then nose it forward to the front, and snap it in position there. And then rack the slide. ... If you are counting,
and you fired 24 and then reloaded like this, you'll have one in the chamber. But otherwise
you'll then rack the slide and go on shooting. You can then ... fire another 25 rounds. Now you cannot reload another
magazine in behind this one. Because it'll fit until it hits, right about there,
and then it runs into this protruding rib, which again we'll see on this magazine. If you use up your second magazine, then what you have to do is pop this one out, move it back to the rear, and then you can take your
third magazine out of your holster and load that one. Speaking of the holster, it is a
pretty typical type of affair here. Opens up and you can see down in the
bottom there there's a little divider, right here. So the ... barrel goes in the front, and
a magazine is stored in the back here. There we go. Flap goes over, and there is your carry package
with 75 rounds of ready ammunition. So this pistol did participate in the
Norwegian military trials which ultimately led to the adoption of the
Kongsberg 1914, basically a Colt 1911. I don't have the actual trial documentation, ... I can't tell you the
original results. But ... I'm pretty sure I know what happened. And that was this gun was judged very awkward
to handle, because it is a really long grip there. And it was almost certainly
judged to be of insufficient calibre. Even if the velocity was really quite
high, like Sunngård was claiming, that bullet weight of 28.5 grains actually, not even 29,
that was too light to be particularly effective on anything. So, I'm sure that's what got it kicked out of the trials.
Which is I suppose the correct decision to have been made. But it's kind of a shame that something with
50 round capacity in 1909 didn't get adopted. You know, short of something like a
Calico, we really don't even have that today. In fact, it'd be really interesting for someone to
make a reproduction of a gun like this in say .25 ACP, should be just about the
right calibre to duplicate this. There is also a grip safety built into it, which is on the front
strap, spring-loaded on the front strap of the gun right here. If you don't depress that, of course the trigger is locked. Alright, and now on to disassembly.
This is pretty simple, it's almost too simple. So there's a section of rail holding the back end of the slide
onto the gun, and what we need to do is ... open the slide about an inch
and it will lift up off of these rails. So we can pull the slide back to right there, and then it tips forward. And then at this point it's being held in place by this
lug on the barrel, and so we can pull that forward and take the slide off of the frame. Once we have this separated, now
we have to take the nose cap off here. The first thing we're going to do is unscrew this little threaded
cap, this just ... makes sure that nothing bounces out of place. And then the end of the recoil spring is
actually bent downwards like a pin here. That locks into a little notch in this plug. So what we have to do is actually push this
backwards to take the tension off of this plug, you can then rotate this about 30 degrees and it
will then disconnect from the front of the slide here. And this will come out and then the recoil spring
comes out. And the recoil spring is really quite hefty for this pistol, probably because of
the intended velocity of the cartridge. You're going to need a stiff recoil spring and a heavy
slide, even if it's a light bullet, if it's going that fast. So we are going to push the spring back like so, that lifts it out of its little notch,
then we have to rotate that collar, and then we can remove this little collar at the front. Pull out the recoil spring. There is a lot of
recoil spring in this thing, it is quite hefty. And then the barrel comes out. Also a pretty long barrel for this sort of service pistol, or maybe it just looks longer than it
really is because it's so small in diameter. And then lastly, of course, we have the body of the slide.
So there are a couple things we can look at here. Normally on a Browning style of pistol, we would
expect the striker to be right back in line here. And Sunngård did it differently. So this is striker-fired, there is no hammer or anything in here. And the sear is actually offset from the striker,
so this is the firing sear right over here. And if you watch the tip of the firing pin that's
protruding, when I push this back, that disappears. So what we would normally expect on a Browning to
see in the centre here, we actually have over on the side. Now looking at the frame, we have two
parts that are going to interact with that sear. We have this piece, which is both the disconnector and the bolt hold
open, which is a really clever duplication ... using one part for two purposes. And then we have the trigger, ... well the trigger
connected to the actual sear bar right there. This is the safety which likes
to kind of move around a bit. So I can show you this a little better
by reassembling it without the spring. And you can see the actual sear catch right there, And when this starts to close, right there
it is caught by this ... hold open lever. That acts as the disconnector, so whether you're holding the
trigger down or not, this is always going to catch the sear. And then right now this is holding onto the sear, and
you can't pull it down far enough to actually release. So there's no way that the striker
can drop forward in this position. And it continues like that to right here, and then this
angle on the slide is going to push this lever down and that drops it out of
engagement with the striker. Now the striker is being held in place by the trigger,
waiting to be pushed up ... when you fire, so right there it fires. And then the slide's going to come back under recoil, and
right there you can see the ... sear being pushed up and caught. So ... there's your semi-auto
disconnector, it has disconnected. Come all the way back, forward
and then the process repeats. So this not only acts as disconnector, it also ensures
that the gun can't be fired out of battery, because right here, even if you push
the trigger up on the sear, it's still being held securely by this lever
until it's all the way in battery, like that. Here's the view from the inside of the trigger bar moving
up. And it's not this shark fin that actually does the work, it's not the shark fin, it's actually
this little flat section right there. So you can see when this lever is engaged upwards, it's
going to hold securely no matter what the trigger does. Until it gets pushed out of the way and
then you can pop the ... striker up over it. Here's the view of the inside of the
frame with both magazines inserted. You can see how the rear magazine is lower, so the bolt's
only going to catch cartridges in the front magazine to fire. And then once that's empty, pop that magazine out, and then the rear magazine
comes down, and it's hanging from this hook. And you put it in nose first and then pop it
into place there. And now it's locked in place. With the gun apart, I can actually ... disconnect that hook,
it's right there, and it hooks over this little bar in the back. So the rear magazine is ... made with this extra
little retention bar and this dangly little connector. You can see our standard magazine
does not, nor does our spare magazine. All three of these are
actually numbered to the gun. You can see that right there: 7, 7 and 7. So you've got your front magazine, your rear magazine with
the hook, and your spare magazine that lives in the holster. That's why this one's finish is so much rougher,
it's been basically stuffed up against tannic acid in the holster for who knows how many decades? The magazine catch here is
just a simple hook in the front. You've got a notch right there. ... This is the grip safety, and then the magazine spring is actually
a long flat spring that runs underneath the grip safety there. So pulling this lever down
pushes that out to release the mag. And the safety, of course here in the upward
position, locks the trigger, prevents it from going up. It's really very subtle, but there is just a little bit of surface
area right here on both sides at the top of the magazine well that protrudes inward, so that you can't take a
magazine and just slide it directly from front to back. If I try to do that here you can see that the
magazine will only move if it's dropped down like this. Once I've got it all the way up, right
there, it catches on this little protrusion. That has to be tiny so that it ... basically fits
in the curvature at the nose of the magazine. And that's it. So you do have to pull the magazine down,
pivot it forward, and then you can lock it in place. If that's not the coolest early high-
capacity pistol you have ever seen, then I need to know what other cool early high-capacity
pistols you've seen, because this is just really awesome. ... We had a text blog post on this years ago on Forgotten
Weapons, and this is another one of those guns that I never thought I would actually get my
hands on to take a close look at. However, I had the chance here, so a big
thank you to the pistol's owner for letting me check it out and bring it to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching. [ sub by sk cn2 ]
ffs my dudes, i watch the channel too.
Guns that show up on forgotten weapons are the very least likely thing that will show up in H3. No 3d models exist prior, there is very little info on them beyond the single video, making them very time consuming and challenging to model.
Wait, so you have to disassemble the gun to load the second magazine? Weird...
gun jesus at it again