Who made the first submachine gun?

[Johnny Guest]

konig - -
Your observations are valid, but . . .

My sweet wife is much amused when I grumble about firearms or police procedural errors on the screen. It is a running joke in our household. I comment; She points to the TV and says, “Tell-ee-vision.” Waves her hand around the living room and pronounces, “REE-AL-I-TEE.”

I recall the Last Crusade scenes one way, others another. A matter for discussion until I can find a copy and look at it again. No biggy.

It makes no sense in any way. . . . I seriously doubt the twin mounted tail gun unit on that german biblane in "Indiana Jones and the last crusad" was a V-P. . . .
A. According to IMDB, the film is set around 1938.

Okay on the 1938 setting. I figured ’37, but hey - -

Why a VP in the movie? Well, probably because the prop master was looking for a gun emplacement that could easily be mounted without modifications to the airframe. Some collector or gun rental place (Stembridge??) had this little rig (I still think a V-P) available. It is notably easier to adapt a 9mm SMG for full auto blank fire than most other calibers.

Agree with your premise that the Germans had several standard, full caliber, flex mount machine guns They were/are large and heavy. I dunno if the little plane was actually flown with gun(s) in place for filming the movie, but the little gun used is substantially lighter than a twin mount MG-17, ammo or no. Not to mention the length in proportion to the little biplane used in the movie.

C. It was a movie, I bet the biblane used wasnt even german, . . . .

(Emphasis added.) Right-oh, ol’ chap. I’m not up on my 1930s-era British aircraft, but I’m certain the biplane was a DeHavilland - -- Gypsy Moth, Tiger Moth, one of those. I’ve never read of the Germans using a parasite aircraft being carried aboard any of their Zeppelin airships. The USA had a few, for a while, though.

As to anachronisms in the Indiana Jones movies - - They are replete with ‘em. Tams mentioned one, the flying wing. The Nazis played with such a design, sure, but there were none operational during the war, much less in 1936 (Lost Ark.) Same movie - - The Nazis used P38 pistols and MP40 SMGs. (Though I note that in Last Crusade, there was an MP18 in use. ) Indy threatened to blow up the ark with a panzerfaust anti tank rocket. A bit early for those, as well.

I don’t recall any glaring out-of-era examples in Temple of Doom.

Fun topic, this.

Best,
Johnny

[BigG]

The first sturmgewehr is generally considered to be the Federov Avtomat of 1916 (IIRC). It was a self loading weapon with a flapper locking system chambered for the 6.5 Jap cartridge. May have been select fire, can't remember.

[konig]

Johny Guest,

Good observation, I also forgot that I believe almost all the germans are wearing Africa Korps M40 field caps before they were ever designed. Go figure.

But I made a much more glaring overlook, I completely overlooked the "flying wing" you mentioned that they used in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".

In that case, anything goes.

[Gothiq]

it was a mock up of a VP. not a real one and since it was a british tigermoth biplane painted in german colors why cant it have an italian machine gun? LOL

pertanant points

1 last crusade did feature a mocked up italian viller perosa
2 it was on a british made biplane
3 launched from a german zepplin
4 you figure out where the BS in this movie starts(like the 1938 mps being used in 1936 which is when i believe the movie takes place)
5 did you notice the 2 stroke single cylinder dirt bikes being used by the germans in the famous jausting sequence?

the point is its a movie not a historical document watch it and laugh and point and enjoy.... or dont LOL

[Kordyte]

M1 might be the first assault weapon, although the Stg-44 might also work in that category as well...

I've shot an M1, its a little snappy rifle, it shoots kind of like a big wooden semi-auto submachine gun.

[Edmond]

First SMG used in combat? http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...43/m/589109167

[Edmond]

For the MP 44 here you go http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...43/m/750108067

[SDC]

The Villar Perosa was the first true submachine gun, but it wasn't designed that way from the begining; it was originally designed for and issued to Italian mountain troops ("Alpini"), as a lightweight machinegun that could be carried without too much difficulty. The trouble is, an MG in 9mm Glisenti doesn't have nearly the range that mountain troops would require, so most of them were stripped down and rebuilt as OVPs (the Villar Perosa is just two blowbacks that sit side by side in the same frame, each fed with their own magazine, and the OVP is just ONE of those firearms placed into its own stock).
As far as "assault" firearms go, I think a good case could be made that the first one was the Russian Federov Avtomat; it's a select-fire rifle chambered for a lower-recoil cartridge (6.5mm Arisaka).

[rem870hunter]

the rocket launcher that indy used in raiders of the lost ark was. an R P G. "rocket propelled grenade". not a panzerfaust. the panzerfaust was'nt fired from the shoulder. but held under the arm it had a flip up sight. did not have a long range but was more powerful than the american bazooka. the panzerschreck is similar to the bazooka. shoulder fired but a larger shell than the bazookas 2" shell.

[max popenker]

It is all depends on the angle and term definitions.
On submachine gun side, it is either a Vilar-Perosa (pistol-caliber automatic gun, but with tactical role of a crew-served short-range machine gun) or Bergmann-Schmeisser MP.18.I (a true, one-man SMG)

On assault rifle side, it is somewhat more complicated. In fact, Fedorov "Avtomat" was an automatic rifle firing standard rifle ammunition (just not the most powerful one). Considering other automatic rifles, the infamous Chauchat M1915 could be considered in the same class (individual automatic rifle); it appeared a year before Fedorov and was made in large numbers (well over 200K) as opposed to several hundreds of Fedorov avtomats built (hand-made) prior to revolution of 1917.
The third gun in the same class is the BAR M1918, which was in the same tactical niche as Chauchat and Fedorov - an automatic rifle for assault troops - just heavier than others because of bigger cartridge.

The first intermediate round automatic rifle was probably Winchester 1907 converted to select-fire and fitted with extended mags, as ordered by French during WW1, following the Swiss experimental M1921 automatic rifle in 7.65x35, designed by Furrer.

[carguychris]

B. Why would any 30's era airplane, biplane or monoplane, mount pistol calliber weapons for air defense against fighters wich were at that time armored and mounting up to four or more machineguns and light cannon in an array of callibers from .303inch to 20mm???

OK, it's a bit off topic, but I'll take a stab at it anyway...

1) All-metal armored monoplane fighters were newfangled high-tech in 1936. Most planes in service at the time were built the old-fashioned way- cotton fabric over welded steel tubing, wood, or some combination thereof. In this case, small-caliber firearms are effective because the primary goal is to hit the enemy flight crew. WWI air combat started out with crew members firing at each other with handguns.

2) Slow, lightly-armed, "obsolete" biplanes were used throughout WWII for attacking "soft" ground targets. The Soviets used Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes for this mission with devastating effectiveness. Losses to German fighters were minimal because the Soviet biplanes flew at night at treetop level, making them almost impossible to spot from overhead.

3) It's a movie.

[wiking]

The Madsen LMG could also be placed among the early assault rifles. If my memory serves me right, they were used as cavalry weapons by either the Russians or the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war.

There is one problem with finding the first when it comes to guns, because the idea is often born long before the gun is, the gun itself usually is not one gun but a range of diffrent designs, prototypes and conversions going from the ludicrous to the stupid to the outright ingenious. And it is an incredible fact that smart people who think up new and smart things, are often born in the same generation and think it up allmost paralell to each other.

Also, the period from about 1880 up to WW2 was a period where weapon design was changing at a rate that never was, or ever will be, matched again. Nations adopted a design, 2-3 years later it was declared obsolete, over the next 2-3 years they tested new designs by the week, finally found one they liked, set it into production, and by another decade or so it was obsolete as well. And the process started again.

This was the golden age of firearms design, and in adition to the excellent stuff that we know today like the Mauser bolt action, the Maxim machine gun, John M. Browning's pistols and Machine guns, the open-bolt SMG's, The Garand rifle and a hell of alot of other designs there was alot of stuff that never made it past the prototype, drawing board or inventors mind.

After WW2 it slowed down, most nations setteled for something they liked, or accepted a compromise such as Britain, when they binned their EM-2 project and the .280 British Cartridge to adopt the 7.62X51 NATO and FN FAL to comply with the NATO caliber standard in the 50's

Today new designs still come, but invariably most of them also go. The good old stuff however, is staying on. The Russians, and countless other nations, have adopted and modified the Kalashnikovs system, a design that is now good and well 60 years old, and still going strong. The US and many of the nations within its sphere of influence are sticking to Eugene Stoners flawed system with the AR15\M16 system. Some do go new ways, like Britain resurrecting the Bullpup idea of the EM-2 from the 40's, yet basically rearranging the magazine and fire-controll placement of Armalite's AR18.

Some manufacturers, like Heckler & Koch do invent new and improve on other designs to a degree that is amazing, such as the A2 upgrade of the British L85, and the recent HK 416 improvement, replacing a gas piston system for Stoners direct gas impingement system, creating a proper workhorse from a borderline ridiculous weapon that should never have reached front-line service, and only did so due to politicians.

Truly new and revolutionary designs in conventional guns may never come again, after all there is only so many ways to make something perform a fairly simple mechanical operation, and we've more or less perfected it over the last 100 years to the point where it will do it almost indefenitely.

[rbrgs]

There is a select fire artillery luger (8" barrel, 32rd snail drum, detachable stock) that was made in 1913 (it's in a museum in Ireland). It's one of a kind, but it is the earliest pistol caliber, full auto, stocked firearm that can be documented.

I thought Sean Connery took down the plane with his umbrella (by scaring a flock of birds into it's path).

What about the Mondragon. Patented in 1907, used by German aircrews early in WW1, a few were select fire with a 30rd drum, in 7mm Mauser.

[alan]

As reading memory serves, both or perhaps it was one or the other, the Russians or the Japanese, think it might have been the Russians were "experimenting" with selective fire rifles (Assault Rifles) period to or during WW 1.

As to submachine guns, the term applies to an automatic or selective fire weapon chambered for a pistol cartridge.

[44 AMP]

Back before the gun-banners got the politicians to (wrongly) define certain semi-auto rifles and pistols as "assault weapons", the commonly accepted definitions for pistols, rifles, automatic rifles, assault rifles, light machineguns and machine guns were (roughly) as follows:

pistols/handguns - intended to be fired held in the hands - no shoulder stock actual caliber didn't matter, as a bolt action handgun firing a .308 Winchester was still a "pistol", just as a .25ACP was.

rifle - stocked and intended to be fired from the shoulder. Again, caliber didn't matter. The subvariant of rifle was "carbine" which is a rifle with a shorter than standard barrel length. Originally intended for easier use by mounted troops, back when mounted meant "on horseback".

machineguns - fired standard rifle cartridges (by normal military definitions), and fire full auto, being either belt fed, or magazine fed. Generally, light machineguns weighed less than heavy MGs, and while there were variations, generally LMGs were air cooled, while heavy MGs were water cooled. Over time this changed, with water cooled guns falling out of use, and the term heavy machinegun came to mean heavy caliber machineguns (.50, 12.7mm, etc.) more than anything else.

automatic rifles - this term overlaps light machineguns somewhat, the key point being that they fire regular rifle rounds. They may be selective fire, or they may be full auto only, depending on design.

Submachine gun - is a machinegun that fires pistol rounds

Assault rifle - fires an intermediate power round (as defined by WWII standards), and is selective fire.

The first gun that fits the submachine gun definition is generally accepted to be the Villar Perosa. The Russian Federov would be an automatic rifle, because of the 6.5mm round it uses. The M1 carbine (or the select fire M2) would not be a true assault rifle because the .30 carbine round is essentially a pistol round, although a powerful one.

The first true assault rifle is the German MP43/MP44 (Stg 43/44). Indeed, the definition of assault rifle is derived from these guns, along with the name. Although originally called MP (Maschinen Pistole - machine pistols), this was a subterfuge to decieve Hitler into allowing the guns to be built, as at the time Hitler had forbidden any further weapons developement except for machine pistols. Once small numbers of these guns were fielded, requests from the troops for more of them revealed how well they worked, and Hitler agreed to their manufacture, naming them Sturmgewehr. Sturm translates into English as assault or storm (as in assaulting or storming an objective)

In US legal defintion, assault rifles are legally machineguns. The irony of the "Assault Weapons Ban" is that the law did not effect a single assault rifle, only semi-auto guns that just looked like assault rifles.

[alan]

44AMP wrote:

In US legal defintion, assault rifles are legally machineguns. The irony of the "Assault Weapons Ban" is that the law did not effect a single assault rifle, only semi-auto guns that just looked like assault rifles.

-------------------------------

To true, which is why, in reasonably polite parlance, the Clinton "Assault Weapons Ban", was, is and remains a POS. Ditto for any/all efforts to reinstate or to reconstitute it, toreauthorize it or to "re" anything with or about it.

[4V50 Gary]

A MOVE THREAD and a comment - -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was remiss in not moving this thread from Rifles to Full Auto previously. I believe it will get more reactions here. Or not. Sorry.


dfariswheel wrote:
Quote:
They first pistol-caliber automatic weapon was the Italian Villar Perosa of 1914. This was the "first" SMG.

This was originally developed for aircraft use, but was adapted for infantry use. This was a double barreled weapon with two vertical magazines.

Actually, it depends on which account you read. The Italian Army probably mounted them on bicycles (!) and motorcycles first, and then on aircraft. Somewhere in the chronology, some enterprising armourer got the idea to split the little double gun, mount a stock on each half, and, Vo-alla, a highly portable pistol caliber machinegun was implemented.

Only time I've ever seen one depicted in movies was in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Sean Connery managed to shoot down his own biplane with a Villar Perosa.

Best,
Johnny

You can see a Villar Perosa gun mounted on the handlebars of a bicycle if you visit the Indiana War Memorial in Indianapolis. Admission is free but you can't ride away with the bike. The nice police officer at the entrance will have some harsh words with you if you try.

[Edmond]

CSRG 1915 CHAUCHAT live fire, enjoy! http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...43/m/938103477

[FirstFreedom]

Wow - my 2004 thread resurrected. Thanks (I guess) - good discussion.

[kfb2b]

It was the Villar-Perosa, and yes that was tooboth it and was used in the Indiana-Jones movie! it was chosen by a prop-guy to be there to fit into the camear-shot, not from historical accuracy:

http://www.landships.freeservers.com..._smg%20(4).jpg

[SDC]

It's been quite a while since I saw the movie, but I honestly doubt that they would have put a Villar Perosa in the flying scenes, and I think some of the people here are confusing a dual Lewis mount with the V-P; the V-P is much smaller than the dual Lewis mount, and uses next-to-useless single-stack mags, instead of the drum/pan mags of the Lewis.

Villar-Perosa:




Dual Lewis mount:

[alan]

44 AMP writes:

What's in a name? Lots!

--------------
Just so!!

[Edmond]

About H&K inventing the gas piston system for the AR15, not really.. http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...43/m/638107267

[alan]

If I remember correctly, and this asumes that what I had read was correct, Eugene Stoner, the guy wo designred the thing told the government which propellants to use, which to stay away from, and what would happen with the refles if the wrong propellant was used.

The government didn't listen to Mr. Stoner, and what happened is history, sad history for those who died as a result of weapons that quit working when functioning weapons were needed. There were other problems too, but propellant problems were a biggie.

Not being a gun designer, Oil Refinery Piping Systems were my bag, I've always wondered as to why Stoner opted for the direct impingment system rather than some sort of long or short stroke piston operation method, which would have avoided propellant problems. Stoner has long since departed, so we can't ask him.

[Edmond]

The French MAS rifles used the direct system without problem. http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...43/m/316109667

I think it was a mistake to let gasses vent into a space with close tolerances between receiver and bolt carrier. THe AR 18 worked like a swiss watch and was far more superior from my experience with it.