Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today I want to address
an issue that comes up in comments a lot, something I get asked about a lot,
and that is box magazines versus drums. Really the question is: why not drums?
Why aren't there more drums? I often see this when discussing the BAR,
"Hey, look the BAR had a 20 round magazine. It was intended as an automatic rifle sort of
pushed into the light machine gun role, wouldn't it have been better with a bigger magazine, especially
a drum, like, why didn't the BAR have a 50 round drum on it?" And this also applies to, in some cases
rifles, and also submachine guns. I think the problem is there are a couple of downsides
to drums that people don't generally think about. don't take into consideration. So the first
one is drums are more complicated to make and more complicated to make reliable
than basic simple box magazines. When you are having to push cartridges
in circles that's a lot more difficult dealing with two axes instead of just
"push cartridges straight through box". So that's one element. You also have, and maybe I think this is actually even
more significant, drums are a pain in the butt to carry. It's one thing to have a drum magazine in a gun, but
if you are then trying to carry a load of ammunition on your person, stick magazines, box magazines,
are far more convenient to actually carry than drums. Think about an AK drum, or a Thompson drum, or
a Suomi drum or a Lewis gun or a DP pan magazine. These things are, you know, they range from
yea big to, you know, DP pans are huge things. How do you hold those on a belt? They take up a
lot more belt infrastructure than stick magazines. And anyone who has, say, taken a drum fed
submachine gun into a combat style match, like an IPSC style match where you need a lot
of ammo and you need reloads, will recognise this. You know, I can fit a whole bunch of say, 32 round, 33 round, block
stick mags in the exact same space where I could fit one drum. And you'll get more ammunition in the same
space with stick mags than you will with drums. And I think we see ... these two issues
(and those are the two main ones, it's harder to make drums reliable because they are more
complicated, and it's a lot more awkward to carry drums), and what we see is that this idea of drum
magazines being good keeps coming back, like it's a persistent, compelling idea,
and a lot of people have tried it. However, if you look at the people, the countries, the military
forces specifically because that's what I want to focus on here, if you look at the militaries that adopted drums,
look at what they adopted after they adopted a drum. And you'll find that it is virtually never another drum. So, we have a bunch of examples here.
The Thompson gun. When the US military first adopted Thompsons they had
both 20 round stick magazines and 50 round drums. Now there were also 100 round drums for the Thompson.
Those things are ludicrously heavy and ludicrously large to carry in any way, even in the gun. And I don't
think the military ever used 100 round drums. They are really rare, very few
people bought those things. But they did use 50 round drums. Once the war got going they realised these drums were awkward,
they switched to 20 and then added 30 round stick magazines and when the Thompson was simplified during World
War Two, the new M1 version of the Thompson couldn't even take drum magazines.
It didn't have the cuts in the receiver to actually use the drum magazines
for the Thompson that already existed. The US military just was not interested in those things. Let's see. We have the Lewis gun. The Lewis of course there was no follow-up gun to the Lewis that used its
pan magazine, instead the Bren gun used a box magazine. Same thing with the Soviet DP, the Degtyaryov, they went from a pan magazine ... that
gun was replaced by the RPD which used belts. Now it did have a round drum-like thing, however this was
just a hollow box that held a 50 round belt of ammunition. And there's no complexity involved in that. ... You can carry those things, you don't have to,
you can carry belted ammunition and put it into that. So the RPD did not have a drum
despite the fact that it looks like it does. The Suomi is an excellent example,
the Finnish Suomi submachine gun, which was the inspiration for the Soviet PPDs and
Papashas, all of which used this 71 round drum. Now the Finns also during World War Two designed and
manufactured a 50 round quad stacked box magazine, which is sort of in between a drum and a box. It has the compactness and the easy portability
and storage of a box magazine but it's going from four stacks of ammunition, like
narrowing up to ultimately a single feed at the top. So it was a very complicated magazine, and it
wasn't reliable enough for them to keep using. Ultimately, in the 1950s after the war, when they went back
and started manufacturing magazines for the Suomi again they went to a simple double feed
double stack 36 round box magazine. The Soviets did the same thing. Now they did
keep a drum from the PPD into the Papasha 41. The PPD didn't really see all that much service,
or any service, before they got to the PPSh. When they replaced the Papasha with a newer,
simpler, better gun, the PPS-43, the Sudayev, they went to a 35 round double stack
double feed box magazine that was easy to carry, and very reliable and easy to make.
Cheap to make compared to drums. You know, you can get like two 35 round box
magazines compared to a single 70 round drum, the two box magazines are going to be smaller, they are
going to be cheaper, and they are probably going to be lighter for both of them put together
[rather] than the single drum. So the only downside you have is that you actually have to change
magazines once during that same expenditure of ammunition. The benefits far outweigh that disadvantage. Let's see there are another couple ... Oh, the other one that I am thinking of is
the RPK, the light support version of the AK. When it was first developed it was
developed with a 75 round drum magazine. When that got replaced, first off, some countries saw
the writing on the wall and didn't even build the drum. Yugoslavia went to a 40 round box
magazine instead, as did other countries. Romania made 40 round box magazines,
as did a bunch of other people. When the Soviet Union developed
the RPK-74 in the new 5.45 cartridge, they experimentally tried a drum magazine,
and then ditched it and went with a 45 round traditional double feed double
stack box magazine instead. The drums are just too complicated, too
expensive and too bulky to carry to be justified. Again, ... we've got two different calibres here, but
90 rounds worth of 5.45 ammo in two box magazines are going to be easier to carry and
lighter than 75 rounds of 7.62 in a drum. So, I guess ... So there are a couple other questions
where this comes up. I alluded to the BAR. This is why they never developed a drum for the
BAR is it wasn't going to be a practical replacement for a cheap, effective and
reliable 20 round box magazine. This question also came up a lot with the
German MP40/I where they had this complicated, weird mechanism to allow you to have
two MP40 box mags in the gun at all times. And a lot of people asked, "Why didn't they just design a
drum?" The answer is, well all the things we just talked about. Drums are complicated, expensive and clumsy to carry. And so that's why the Germans
went to a double box magazine instead. And of course that they, not surprisingly,
found to be heavy and awkward putting that much ammo way out at
the front of an already front heavy gun. So, hopefully that has brought a little
bit of enlightenment to this question. Hopefully it answers it for a few people, and thanks for watching.
I was hoping he would include a mention of the helical magazine option. Pretty rare in personal weapons though. The only one I know of off the top of my head is the Calico.