WW2 German Semi-Automatic Rifles: The G41 vs the G43

thank you for tuning into an episode of in range today I've got a unique opportunity to talk to you about the two most prominent semi-automatic German rifles of world war two there were others of course like the FG 42 which was select-fire and of course the STG 44 which was select-fire but these were these semi automatics these were essentially Hitler's Garren's there's a book called Hitler Garon's in fact and it's a good resource for this documentation but in that regard since we have both of these rifles here for a short duration of time what I thought I would do is talk to you about the differences between the two why they went from the g-41 to the g43 and how these things handle not only in the field but on the clock as well cuz I've actually used the g43 in some matches too kind of matches I have never used the g-41 and probably never will the g-41 especially one in this condition is particularly rare gun and one that's an all matching specimen like this one really doesn't warrant being beat up the way it might add a two gun match this is truly a collectible the G 43 s are collectibles as well but they were produced in much larger numbers than the G 41 and that's for good reason but let's first talk about the story here so of course when World War 2 starts the Vermont is standardized on the car 98k a bolt-action rifle chambered at 7.9 to buy 57 Mauser 190 game bullet 98 grain bullet very potent cartridge and as there the war continues the need for a semi-automatic rifle is certainly one that everyone comes to realize is a reality they're facing the svt-40 and of course later the m1 garand and there was design going on for quite a while that to figure out a solution for that on the German side of the conflict the High Command issued an equesticle and the request had a lot of very strange features required in it one of which was to not drill a gas port in the barrel another was one for the gun to actually be able to be functioned and manipulated with the same manual of arms as a bolt-action rifle to manufacturers tried to address this initially Mauser and Walther Mauser developed the G 41m and that was a dumpster fire of a rifle in trying to conform to all of the requirements of high command meaning that it was actually functional as a bolt-action rifle as well as a semi-automatic no gas port in the system they developed a very fragile overly complex gun was developed in very small numbers and in the field was universally hated in fact there are accounts of soldiers receiving the g41 em a semi-automatic rifle and just giving it to someone else because they'd rather stick with their car 98k to actually go back to a bolt-action rifle from what is ostensibly a semi-automatic tells you a little bit about how bad the G 41m is they're very scarce today very rare very valuable but they're very bad not good rifles g-41 W Walther didn't conform to the requirements of high command they read them and someone at Walther essentially was switched on and went this is a ridiculous set of requirements and we're not going to attempt to fulfill nearly all of them what they did do is conform to the requirement of having no gas port drilled in the barrel other than that they developed a reasonably reliable resilient durable some automatic rifle with that one strange gas requirement the gas system in this gun is called the bang system in fact the original m1 garand was developed with the same and quickly removed that out and we went to a long stroke gas piston this system is unique and very unusual and that it's one of the very few military rifles ever issued that use this a gas system any large numbers so how this functions is you have the barrel which acts as essentially a essentially a guide rod and then there's a puck which acts like the piston that rides around the barrel and then this slides on the barrel and this cone then screws onto the front end as gases leave the muzzle the gases are pushed around of the barrel and that puck is reciprocates over the barrel like a piston striking two AA prods on each side of this gun which then cycles the bolt carrier unlocking the gun and cycling in another round here is your vent holes the pucks right here we'll get into that more in a moment what this does do is not have a gas port in the barrel which everyone at that time thought or at least in the Germans thought that was going to erode and cause issues really their lifetime of these guns in the field it didn't matter it would have never mattered however what it does do is break a bunch of weird parts laying at the end of this gun which makes the total balance of this very front heavy it's very hard to shoot this offhand accurately can be done but it's difficult makes the gun heavier in general and the reciprocating mass and such also makes the the recoil impulse also challenging to get shot-for-shot recovery even though it's a semi-automatic gun I will tell you that this gun shot from a prone or supportive position is very comfortable the gas system in that regard is quite mild because you can wrest the weight of this on something and then the weird balance issues are sort of mitigated but this turned out to be a disaster in the field the soldiers didn't like it it required a lot of field maintenance and field maintenance on the eastern front in the winter in the mud is not something you want to be required to do regularly and as a result there were a lot of complaints and there was a decision to fix the gas system on this gun the fixing of the gas system came in the guise of the g43 now the g43 gas system uses a short-stroke gas piston they copied the gas system essentially directly off of the svt40 the russian sample the Russian semi-automatic rifle and in the process what they did is they intentionally over gassed this gun dramatically to keep it reliable in the field this is when it's interesting that the original requirements were not having a gas port was to increase the durability and lifespan of the rifle and then at this point they purposely intentionally increased the gas system to the point where the gun essentially shoots it's off the pieces over time and they did that for a liability in the field because they realized that the lifespan of these guns in the field in the hands of a soldier on the Eastern Front could be measured sometimes in minutes and as a result the reliability and durability of the guns long-term capabilities was no longer relevant that said if you were to get a g43 today to shoot it you need to modify the gas system with an aftermarket gas system I have one in here I'll talk about that later but what that does is allows you to shoot the gun safely a number of things changed on these guns throughout the course of their development and that's what I want to talk about today one of which was the g41 originally was designed to have a saddle mount scope system with the ZF 41 the Ziya 41 is a 1.5 XDM r-type optic it's not really a cipher it's Knifer rifle sniper scope it allows you to have a little bitter accuracy in the field because you have a single point of focus you don't have to focus on a front sight and a target you just focus on the target and of course using an optic you can superimpose the reticle on it this saddle mount was issued in extremely small numbers it does not hold zero very well and as a result they kind of ditched this idea very quickly although a number of them were still manufactured with these scope rails built into the receiver for that purpose actual field use of the saddle mount and the ZF 41 on the G 41 is close enough to zero to consider it never really being used they decided to increase the capabilities of the G 41 43 when they went to it by adding an integrated scope rail this one actually does retain zero but it does not mount the Zia 41 it mounts the Zia 4 which is a 4x optic that right there gives you a much better optic sighting system this is a really good optic 'it is 4x it is adjustable for both elevation and windage and you can still use the iron sights with the relatively high offset optic now that said this was intended to be a sniper rifle accuracy however in field trials turned out to not present itself for what a sniper would want this really is a DMR designated marksman rifle and there's a number of accounts from books in which snipers use these as DMR's out to 300 meters and within 300 meters this gun does a very good job after that for precision shots this starts falling off the system that was developed for this just is not that inherently that accurate and as well as late-war manufacturing and materials lent itself to not being a very accurate rifle it's a good combat gun for its short lifespan is a good DMR with a scope on it it is not a good sniper rifle while many of them or all of them have this scope rail milled into the frame or the receiver of the gun they very few of them are actually issued with the scope so this scope is kind of an anomaly you'll see them very frequently with scopes collectors like to put scopes on them but the reality is scopes were not really that much of a thing in the field and there were snipers that use them as DMR's but that's about that however another thing there's a very interesting analysis between these two guns is to watch how the manufacturing process is changed to be able to manufacture more of them rather than less of them because the loss rate on the eastern front of men and rifles was extreme so in that regard if we look at the g-41 you'll see that it seems to function very similar it's got a cover here it's got a dust cover it's got a bolt carrier group g-41 locks back on the last fired round has a stripper clip died here to chamber two five round stripper clips for a capacity of ten rounds in the fixed box magazine this entire unit is one giant explosive spring unit so what happens it's a disassembly the gun you bring it back lock it like that put it on safe depress this spring right here and as a result this will lift up and out and this is your field strip of the gun you can then wipe this down you can take this down further it is currently completely held by spring tension by this little latch if you were to release this latch right now this thing will explode across everywhere pieces will fly I'm not joking far away in fact it's dangerous to your eyes if this were to open up with this pointed at you and you were not being careful cautious you could actually hurt yourself with this there is a lot of spring pressure and tension in this unit but to demonstrate how similar the g-41 is to the g43 i'm going to go ahead and show you that real quick so this is the g-41 bolt carrier group for lack of a better term and now let's go ahead and take a look at the g43 one so a couple things changed first of all the bolt carrier group or the dust cover or guide cover on the g-41 is milled this is a piece of milled steel and that was part of the original design requirements this is actually quite durable and even in an over gas system this milled system will do quite well and be very resilient you have to realize that this entire unit is slamming back into the rear of this if the springs get a little weak and as a result there's a lot of pressure being applied force I should say being applied to the rear of this system this is your bolt stop right here it's not the gun this is the bolt stop which comes out like this this being milled made it strong enough and safe enough for that design however milling metal and materials is costly and expensive as well as very resource-intensive so when they went to the g43 a very small number of them were manufactured with this milled type system but they went to stamped sheet metal this was a - expedient cost as production of the gun as well as the reduced the raw materials required to do this however this stamped sheet metal piece is extraordinarily weaker than the original milled one it functions the same but what happens is almost all of these guns every sample I've ever seen with rare exception is a few I maybe I haven't the rear here especially when they're still over gassed and someone hasn't changed the gas system starts cracking at the rear of this stamped sheet metal cover guide as a result this starts failing here and when it gets bad you'll actually see that it'll start bending pieces in the rear of the gun the safety will pop out and this is all based on not only a reduction of costs and raw materials by using stamp sheet metal but the over gas system of the g43 again in the field the loss rate was so extreme this wasn't relevant but nowadays if you're going to use one of these guns and you don't down gas the gun these will fail and even when you down gas the gun these stamped sheet metal pieces will eventually start cracking i've seen two or three of them now and i've even had a few do it myself and this gun is properly gassed i was able to acquire one milled cover that i use with this gun that was off of a g-41 that when i want to shoot it but i have the stamped sheet metal on because this is how the gun was typically issued now and produced in the largest numbers so let's go ahead and show you how similar the field strip is bring this back lock it on safe push the button and that comes right out now so those of you paying attention these are essentially identical with a few small differences a reduction of quality I mean you can tell here we've gone from really quite high quality production of the bolt carrier and this unit the general cover slash guide and you're now looking at this which is of course roughly finished on the outside but properly finished on the inside for a liability stamped sheet metal this is a this is a solid charging handle this is hollow these are all reduction of cost and time to make more of the guns in fact it got to the point where they even started emitting this little button here so you couldn't lock this as one unit like this which made it harder to field-strip but that was near the end of the war so let me show you how similar these guns are in fact and then I'm going to take the unit off of the g43 and I'm gonna actually install it into the g41 that's how similar these parts are in fact the interchangeability of parts between the g-41 and the g43 is very high with the exception of the gas system and the detachable box magazine these guns are virtually identical another difference which the keen-eyed of you might have noticed is that the charging handle is on different sides and that's because they decided to put as I mentioned earlier in the video a scope rail on the right side of the g43 and the charging handle being on the left would of course impede that and would cause a problem so they just merely moved the charging handle to the right now let's go deeper dive into how these guns function both of these guns function the same they're both flapper locks so I'm gonna go ahead and take the g43 system apart as that's the less valuable of the two push this down on a hard surface unlock it this is going to be under a lot of spring pressure these two pieces come apart this now stamped the sheet metal piece can be set to the side the dust cover is reciprocal they went through multiple different versions of this dust cover on the g43 all of them in the effort of cost reduction this was the earlier version which is automatic it is actually open and closed as the bolt carrier guide as the bolt carrier reciprocates on this guide later versions were manually have to push it forward just to reduce one cost of material and manufacturing things were getting that bad at the end you have your spring guide rod two Springs it's a dual spring unit like this then you have your bolt carrier which comes out again interchangeable with the g41 with the exception of the side charging handle and then you have flappers so if we put the guide the carrier back in and I start moving this you're going to see those flappers open like this when the gun is in battery these are now would be locked into recess in the receiver then as gas strikes the gas system on a g43 the opera rod strikes the front right here of this carrier this slides back which then unlocks these locking lugs or flappers which then reciprocates the gun back forward and then when it goes back in the battery those flaps go out and lock into two sides of the receiver the g-41 works identical to the g43 the only difference is the charging handle side these parts are all essentially interchangeable you could take this part on here put it on here you could take the bolt put it into this one you could take the flappers off now you are messing with headspace when you do that but otherwise these parts aren't changed the G forty-one and G 43 are mechanically and dimensionally the same or close enough that it doesn't matter in that regard so imagine this in the field however I want to go ahead and clean this you could pull this whole unit apart and keep it contained but if you need to clean this further you pull the bolt carrier off then you pull out the firing pin assembly like this and then watch this alright so we have our bolt firing pin assembly and wedge this is what causes the flappers to actually engage and then you have these flaps that are now just loose and floating around they do have a notch on one to indicate the proper side to put it in but this is how you have these parts now in the field imagine this on the Eastern Front trying to deal with this on top of having to clean the bang gas system that was not well received let me show you what it's like to put this back together so you have to kind of put the flaps in this when you put the other one in this is I'm serious this is not I just screw that up alright that flapper just fell out probably what I fell into the dirt and mud of the Eastern Front okay there we go be easier if you do it like this so now I have the flaps installed into the bolt then I put the firing this can go down further I'm not gonna go further with it in fact you see that it was coming out when I put the wedge back in you can see the flaps went out as I put the wedge back in and now that's essentially back together ish we then have to guide the bolt carrier into that recess then we have to put the springs back into the system then we have to guide this die it and cover on until the little plunger comes out the rear let's do that outside of that actually so we put this in there you go then you put the spring over the guide rod like that then you have to get the dust cover to be underneath this while you guide the guides in to the sides of the bolt care of the bolt carrier then you push it back under strong spring pressure and then lock it in place this is now once again under extreme spring pressure if I were to unlock this this would explode everywhere the g-41 is no different these are exactly the same with the exception of the quality of manufacture milled parts and the sides of the charging handle otherwise they are functionally the same the g43 does also still retain a charge I excuse me a stripper crib guide but these are stamped sheet metal and they do eventually Bend out of shape I can tell you that's the case I've actually done it on the clock you kind of push it back into shape afterwards the milled gun has no such issue as the quality is much higher however that would be the field strip of the g 43 and G 41 bolt carrier group put that to the side another issue to mention about the flapper locks is that those flappers there's one on the left and one on the right and when these are going into battery into the receiver it is possible to only get a locking surface on one of the two flappers if this is out of spec you can actually be firing this gun with only having one side locked the flapper system turned out to not be the best and of course later on that wedge turned into a development for the delayed roller g3 and of course very late more experimental STG 45s but that wedge system imagine those flaps being turned into rollers going into recesses and then you can see the origins of what became the g3 delayed roller system in the G forty-one and the G 43 alright so let's talk about the gas system on this let's start with the G 41 which is the bang gas system the one that was the high command's requirement to not have a gas port drilled in the barrel I'm going to go ahead and push the plunger there's a plunger right here that keeps this colon off so you press the plunger in I start turning this I do it my finger might be easier yes so much you just keep turning this this little column that's all the Komen comes off now this is a clean well-maintained gun in the field if this had been fired and carbon DUP this would have been much harder to take off and in fact there were sometimes tools for that purpose and you can see that there are cuts on this to be able to use a wrench around it if you should need to and it's rusted in place so that little plunger is depressed that comb comes off this is the forcing cone that the gas is escaping on the Mosel and then go down into this gas chamber here this then comes right off like that this is essentially your gas cylinder and you've got vent holes here here here and here you'll notice the front sight comes off with that that's another issue as the gun gets worn and the splines start becoming deformed your windage zero will get weird this gun is really tight in perfect condition however that's a real problem and taking your front sight on and off probably not the best idea this is the puck I was referring to earlier do you guys have ever used a Saiga 12 this might look familiar to you this is what rides around the barrel with the barrel being essentially the guide rod for the gas system this is the opera which then cycles back and forth like this thus striking the bolt carrier and cycling the gun so you have to clean this in the field and all of the carbon and remember we were using corrosive ammo at this time of course all of those corrosive salts are depositing on the barrel and around this action so this has to be cleaned reliably or it will definitely seize up and freeze so put this back on then start screwing the cone back on you have to depress the plunger and they don't click and that's it that's the gas system you can see there's a lot of mass and weight at the front of the gun you see that that puck is there this will get fouled up eventually and this is a problem it was never a good system and it was all based on the requirement to not drill a gas port in the barrel from High Command it was a stupid concept it was never should have been done that way all right so the Germans encounter the svt40 in the field and they look at the gas system on that it's using a short-stroke gas system I'm gonna go ahead and also loosen the sling on this one just because it makes things easier and so you're gonna see the gas system here has changed dramatically so we push this little plunger down and open up this nose cap okay that comes right off that can stay on with the sling the barrel of course stays there the front sight is not being removed at this point this little wooden handguard comes off and now this is an aftermarket gas system it's functionally identical to the original done the difference is that it's port diameter has been changed so that the amount of gas being put into the system is less and I have a little rubber buffer here to not deform this apparat against the receiver that's so I can shoot the gun safely so we pull this to the set to the back this little part comes out right there yep and that so here we have our we have our piston and cylinder we have transfer assembly and an opera with a return spring this is now what strikes the bolt care your group well carrier to unlock the gun this of course is where the gas fills this cylinder until it comes back and it starts venting out there are some that have vent holes and some that do not and then you have this transfer assembly on the aftermarket third-party gas systems this is where you put in a essentially a hole you have you can take out different screws allen headed screws and change the gas diameter hole and a gas port diameter and that's how much gas is going into the system so you can down gas this gun and not destroy it in the field this is what you replace I put the original parts in a bag and so much easier to clean it is no longer fouling around the barrel is no longer house long it was a puck in it this is obviously a much better system so to put this back together cylinder back on op rod go to the rear put in the transfer assembly close it and you are good to go so once again how this would cycle fire the gun gas comes now out of a gas port in the barrel oh my we are now violating that principle gas comes down the piston fills the cylinder it reciprocates vents out goes back into battery cycles the gun now a couple things I've done to make this gun less likely to beat itself apart I have of course replaced it with a third-party gas system I have this rubber buffer to ensure that I'm not damaging the receiver or this ah prod and I've added a little washer this may look crazy to you but there's a washer here and that washer is actually there to change the overall dimensions between this and that so what I mean by that is when this is in battery and closed you want this opera to be in contact with the front of the bolt carrier if the opera is a little bit back what happens is when the gun fires the opera slams into this starts deforming the front of the Opera and mushrooming out bad steel end of the war and that may be not a good or inconsistent hardening processes and then it also starts causing problems on the front of your bolt carrier so you want to make sure that the opera is touching this in a gun that you plan to actually be firing consistently or with some regularity when it's in battery and by adding a little washer there you can increase the overall length of the opera just a little bit so that it's in contact with the bolt carrier when you fire the gun anyways that's a little bit eccentric once you're done cleaning this you just put this cover back on close this spring boom you've now cleaned the gas system as you can tell this is a much much better system than that original bang gas trap system the m1 garand when it used it was called a gas trap but it's technically the bang system this is a huge improvement directly copied from the svt-40 other big differences between the G 43 and G 41 we should probably mention the obvious one I mentioned that there are stripper clip guides both on the G 41 unit and on the G 43 G 43 one's a little bit fragile but there are stripper clip guides both can be charged with five rounds standard k98 stripper clips but the g 41 has a fixed box magazine and the g 43 has detachable box magazines these are 10 round capacity this is 10 round fixed box magazine these are detachable ten round box magazines and unlike Russian guns these are actually interchangeable between guns so a German g43 mag from another g43 will fit and function in every g43 i've never found one not work i've played with the svt-40 quite a bit and the SBT 40 magazines and parts are not and generally not interchangeable there's serial number to the gun if you take one magazine from one svt40 and try to use it another gun it's probably not going to work reliably but you can take a chi 43 mag from any g 43 put it in any g 43 and it will work these were typically issued one mag in the gun two mags in a pouch and then a bunch of stripper clips from then on out so you had 30 rounds in magazines and then you had stripper clips after that as of course the war continued to progress badly for Germany they started issuing just one mag with the gun and just stripper clips started not even having pouches you were lucky to have the one mag and some stripper clips and enough ammunition to keep the gun fed but those are the major differences otherwise these guns are virtually identical in every other way they function identically they lock identically the cleaning of course is much different between the G 43 and the G 41 but practically oriented in the field the G 43 is the much better rifle because you can keep it maintained the gas system is simpler it doesn't cause corrosion at the front of the gun it doesn't have a bunch of weight and strange cycling parts at the front of the gun easier to fire and be accurate with and have follow-up shots so the G 43 became the standard-issue semi-automatic full of power eight millimeter Mauser gun for til the end of the war the G forty ones continued to be used if they were around loss rates on the G forty-one and the forty three are extreme the only reason there's a lot more G 43 still around is because they made more of them and the as a result there's more of them they made less of the G 41 s and the loss rate on the Eastern Front was extreme in both regards let's go ahead put the guns back together and then have some conclusions so we have our milled part right here you go ahead and slide it into the receiver cuts push the spring down locks into place you can take the safety off at this point you can take that off you can depress the follower in the fixed box magazine and boom that's it that guns back in to continue ready to go condition and you'll see but the G 43 really isn't any different lock that into the receiver cuts pushing the plunger take it off safe pull it back unlock that it will lock into the follower take off magazine it's easier close it the magazine back in the guns ready to go so those are the major differences from a practical use application of both of the G 41 and the G 43 in the field and I think that that will bring to light why of the G 41 wasn't around all that long and why it was a developmental dead-end and why the G 43 became the more standard issue gun why the G 41 is not that great in a practical environment and the G 43 is better both of these guns are plagued with some issues in terms of flap or locking as I mentioned that wedge system will ultimately turn to the delayed roll or g g3 so what's right interesting to see the guns origin and how that landed up to be the case what I would contend that if they were able to keep up the manufacturing quality capabilities that they were with the G 41 such as the milled parts versus the stamp arts you might have seen more developmental efforts with the G 4143 system post-war but neither one of these guns were optimal and really the m1 garand was a far superior semi-automatic rifle fed faster even though these are ten round box magazines you can keep an end round and block gun fed really quickly and it was a much more reliable resilient system hopefully you guys enjoyed this it was a rare opportunity this g41 was only gonna be here for a little while g43 is mine the 41 is not hopefully you enjoyed this kind of stuff I know this is more like a forgotten weapons thing but I wanted to give you a more practical application of what these are like to use not only but for shooting but cleaning and maintenance in the field and hopefully this video did a good job of that guys in range is entirely supported by patreon only we take no monetization from any ad revenue anywhere it's stroke ly you the viewer that actually keeps in range alive if you are already a patreon supporter we thank you for that you are a why we exist if you are not maybe you'll consider it we have perks at all dollar levels $1 and above as well as if you can't do that or you already are please share this video with your friends and subscribe to one of our multiple distribution points you can find them all on in-range TV thank you very much you

Channel: InRangeTV

Views: 134,423

Rating: 4.976625 out of 5

Keywords: G41, g43, gewehr, gewehr 41, gewehr 43, k98, 8mm mauser, 7.92x57, m1, garand, WW2, inrange, inrangetv, forgotten weapons, kasarda, mccollum

Id: XwgF1kowRlY

Length: 32min 0sec (1920 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sabo_cat]

Hello and I'm Karl, and thank you to tuning into remembered weapon's.