People and weapons. It has always been and will always be so: somewhere there is an excess of people-traditionalists, and somewhere, on the contrary, there are rationalizers. And traditionalists, with their hands and teeth, hold on to the familiar, old, time-tested, but somewhere they easily go for changes. That is why in the armies of some countries weapons serve for a long time, while in others new and more and more improved models appear with enviable regularity. And then there are people who, to their delight, use both. Offering good old things to some, new and original to others. Who likes what! You just need to understand what kind of people you are dealing with, and then your business is in the bag. Again, the authority of the proposer also plays a role. Well, perhaps the best confirmation of this fact is the story with some weapons of a country like Switzerland. This country has not been at war for several centuries, but it has a well-equipped army, and it is also an expensive country, so its inhabitants prefer to buy even “Swiss cheese” in neighboring France, and sausages in Germany. It is cheaper to go there by car and buy there than to buy at home. Such is the country, this Switzerland.
And it so happened that, although Switzerland itself did not participate in the First World War, it was actively producing weapons and developing new models of it. So Adolf Furrer, director of the government arms factory in Bern, which produced the famous Parabellum pistols, was no stranger to invention.
On the basis of "Parabellum" with an extended barrel artillery model, he designed his own submachine gun MP1919 and aviation coaxial submachine gun for observers flying on reconnaissance aircraft. Both submachine guns had the same device, differing only in details: on the first, the magazine for 50 rounds was located on the right, and on the "twin" - on top, which was due to the peculiarities of its placement in the cramped cockpit of the aircraft.
Both the one and the other sample went into small-scale production: the MP1919 produced 92 copies, and "Doppelpistole-19" by 1921 the plant in Bern produced 61 copies. They were sent to the air unit in Dubendorf. Where they were placed on airplanes, but this design did not deserve special reverence because of its greater weight - 9, 1 kg without cartridges. Actually, the "basic" sample itself did not cause much enthusiasm. The fact is that Furrer, without further ado, simply took and put the "Parabellum" mechanism on its side, so that the locking system of levers was on the left, and the store (so that the soldiers could not grab it!) Was placed on the right. The barrel was lengthened, the store was installed "aviation", a wooden forend and a rifle butt were attached to the long barrel. And it turned out … a submachine gun, which, the war lasted another year or two, could well compete with the famous Bergman MP1918. Why could you? Because the need for such weapons would have increased dramatically, and those factories that made "parabellums" would have switched to the production of submachine guns, albeit more complex and expensive. But what did not happen did not happen.
Moreover, when Switzerland itself needed submachine guns after the First World War, it did not continue to produce the MP1919, but adopted the same "Bergman" MP-18, which the SIG company began to produce. Model 1920 was produced from 1920 to 1927. It was MP.18 / I of Theodor Bergman. Moreover, the SIG Model 1920 was also called "Brevet Bergmann" because of the stigma on the neck of the store that meant "Bergman's patent". The main difference was that the cartridges were fed not from a snail magazine, but from a two-row sector box magazine for 50 rounds. In the 1920 model, it was adjacent to the submachine gun on the left, but already on the 1930 model, it was installed on the right. SIG Model 1920 were supplied to Finland - chambered for 7, 65x22 "Luger", and were also exported to China and Japan - chambered for 7, 63x25 "Mauser". The SIG Model 1930 was also sold abroad: traditionally high Swiss quality was the best advertisement not only for watches, but also for Swiss weapons.
In 1934, SIG also began production of the MKMS submachine gun and its "police" shortened version of the MKPS. The bolt on them was semi-free, the weapon turned out to be complicated and expensive, so in 1937 they were replaced with externally similar models "SIG MKMO" and "MKPO", but which already had a free bolt. For the first time, magazines folding along the forend were used on them, which made the weapon more convenient to carry. The magazine opening in the receiver closed automatically, so that dust and dirt could not get inside through it. The fire mode was set by pulling the trigger. The SIG MKMS submachine gun provided for the installation of a bayonet knife. But in the case of the previous samples, they were not in great demand, so until 1941 they were produced in only 1228 pieces, some of which were sold to Finland in 1939.
Well, then the Second World War began, and, as often happened in the past, the Swiss military suddenly found out that they actually had no submachine guns in their army, but they were needed, as evidenced by the experience of military operations. Well, the MP-19 is already very outdated, and there are too few of them released. Therefore, in May 1940, the Swiss military technical unit (KTA) published a specification for a new design of the submachine gun. Due to the political situation in the country and the urgency of the order, only two firms were involved in the project: SIG and the government arsenal Waffenfabrik Bern (W + F). The manager of the latter was just Colonel Adolf Furrer, a person and designer highly respected in the relevant circles of Switzerland. The reason for the rush was due to the fact that Swiss intelligence received information about the German plan for Operation Tannenbaum (Christmas tree), according to which 11 Wehrmacht divisions and about 500 Luftwaffe aircraft were allocated for the invasion of Switzerland. The Swiss counterplan Operationsbefehl # 10 relied on rapid mobilization, a retreat into the alpine core of the country, and a protracted ground war with the usual Swiss infantry that would force the Germans to agree to a truce. However, the military realized that this kind of conflict would require a large number of submachine guns in the troops.
And here it should be noted that Furrer was a completely clear adherent of the lever principle of Maxim's automation and saw in him the future of all firearms. A certain role in the formation of this conviction was played by the fact that the famous "Parabellum" by Georg Luger chambered for 7, 65 × 21 mm was adopted by the Swiss army back in 1900! And the fact that its production was quite laborious did not bother anyone at that time. Although with a mass of 0, 87 kg, 6, 1 kg of metal were needed to make a pistol. That is, more than 5 kg of high-quality metal was transferred into shavings! And the fabrication process itself required 778 separate operations, 642 of which were carried out on machines and 136 were performed manually.
A competition was organized, for which a sample MP41 was received from SIG, which became the logical development of the 1937 submachine gun. It was designed for a standard 9mm round, powered by a 40-round box magazine. The shutter is free, it was a solid piece of forged steel. Rate of fire 850 vst. / min. The SIG sample was almost ready for production, but the Furrer sample (also MP41) represented only a set of drawings and intermediate layouts showing how one or another part of the mechanism would work. And then … Furrer simply began to ridicule the competitor's model, use his influence in political and military circles, and promise that his submachine gun would be better, but the main thing he pushed for was the obviousness of the Luger pistol's merits. All the decision makers were officers who fired this pistol. Everyone held it in their hands, everyone liked it, and now there was a man who offers to turn it into a submachine gun and, moreover, start production immediately. Naturally, there were more traditionalists among the Swiss military than innovators, so they chose the Furrer model. Another factor that determined this choice was the Lmg-25 light machine gun, also developed by Adolf Furrer and put into service in 1925. The military had no complaints about him, and they thought that a submachine gun created according to a similar scheme would work just as well. And it was their opinion that turned out to be decisive, so that Furrer beat SIG solely thanks to "existing opinion".
In fact, the MP 41 was exceptionally complex, with no particular advantages over the much simpler submachine guns. In all respects, it also turned out to be worse than the SIG sample - it was heavier to carry, the bullet speed was lower, and there was no need to talk about the complexity. Furrer himself even went for rigging data: the weight of his machine gun was given without cartridges, and for SIG - with cartridges! As a result, it turned out that its fully equipped sample weighed more than 5 kg, that is, it was about as heavy as an infantry rifle. The rate of fire was 800 rds / min. The accurate firing range was indicated at 200 yards (180 m), but in reality it was less, especially in burst mode. The stock and stock were first made of Bakelite to reduce weight, but it cracked and had to be replaced with wood. For convenience's sake, a foldable front handle was installed, which was held in place by an internal spring mount. The barrel had a ventilated casing to which a rather long bayonet could be attached.
Soldiers armed with MP 41/44 (as it began to be called after the modernization of 1944), relied on a unique bandolier. These were two closed metal boxes, each containing three loaded magazines. The boxes were spring-loaded to prevent the magazines from rattling, which, unfortunately, only made it difficult to retrieve them quickly. All this was fastened to the soldier using a complex system of belts. Like the MP 41/44 itself, it was all a lot more complicated than it needed to be.
It is clear that if the system for locking the shutter of the Luger pistol worked, then it, even if laid on its side, should have worked in the same way. But it is completely incomprehensible why it was necessary to do this, when in the same Soviet PPS-43 everything was much simpler and cheaper in terms of mass production.
And it is not surprising that almost immediately after signing the contract with W + F, the Swiss army regretted its decision. The first 50 machines were made only in the summer of 1941, and their mass production began in the fall, six months behind schedule. The MP 41/44 was incredibly expensive and took a long time to build. By January 1942 (by that time the threat from Germany had already passed) only 150 copies had been made, by August 1, 1943 - 2,192, and by New Year 1944 - only 2,749.
Finally realized that placing the store on the right side was a mistake. After all, most of the soldiers were right-handed; and on most submachine guns with horizontal magazines, they are on the left, so the soldier's right hand remains on the grip and the weaker hand is used to change magazines. With the MP 41/44, the soldier had to either take it in his left hand or flip it over to charge with his left. In June 1944, after the release of the 5200th assault rifle, the design was changed. The new version received the designation MP 41/44, but since almost all earlier samples were later modified, today this designation is used for all variants in general.
The submachine gun was fitted with a new rear sight, adjustable to 200 meters (218 yards), and all the plastic parts were made of wood. Production ended in 1945 with the 9700th copy. Since the weapons were very expensive, in post-war Switzerland they decided to keep these submachine guns in service. A proposal was made to introduce a recoil spring tension regulator, so that it would be more convenient for a soldier, for example, to shoot uphill and downhill, for example, from a mountain to a valley. But this complication of an already complex design was abandoned, since it was obvious that the soldiers could not really do this in the event of a real war.
In the meantime, SIG prepared a replacement model - MP 46. But the best, often the enemy of the good, and the project remained a project, and the Furrer machine gun continued to serve. By the way, it was also impossible to sell it, since there were plenty of cheap American and British submachine guns left over from the war on the arms market.
MP 41/44 were withdrawn from the army only in 1959-1960 and placed in warehouses. In 1970 they were declared completely obsolete and scrapped. As a result, they became a museum rarity, so in 2006 one working MP 41/44 was sold in the USA for 52,000 dollars. Today, even decontaminated museum specimens cost $ 10,000 each. By the way, the Swiss themselves have a very negative attitude towards the “episode” with MP 41/44 and do not like to remember it!
But the colonel's machine gun turned out to be quite good. From 1925, when it was adopted by the army of the republic, it was used for quite a long time, until the late 1950s - early 1960s, when it was supplanted by the new automatic rifles Stgw. 57, which fired the same cartridges and with characteristics that were close to the light machine gun. Like many other Swiss-made weapon systems, the Furrer Lmg-25 (that was its full name) had a high quality workmanship, excellent reliability, survivability, firing accuracy, but also high cost.
The Lmg-25 machine gun used automation, which acted with the force of the recoil of the barrel with a short stroke. The shutter was locked by a pair of levers in the horizontal plane. But the Lmg-25 also had a third thrust, which connected the rear lever of the locking unit with the receiver, which achieved a constant kinematic connection of the bolt with the movable barrel, which should theoretically increase the reliability of its automation. However, a very high accuracy of fitting all rubbing parts, of which there were many in this design, was required. A sector box magazine for 30 rounds was adjacent to the right and had a through slot for visual control of the ammunition consumption. The fired cartridges were thrown horizontally to the left. The cutout in the left wall of the receiver, in which the locking levers moved, was closed in the stowed position with a special dust cover. The machine gun barrel is cooled by air. The possibility of its quick replacement was also allowed, but at the same time it was necessary to replace the entire bolt block, since it was connected to the barrel by locking levers. The firing was carried out with the bolt open, when its moving parts rolled out, which reduced the peak recoil values. The machine gun had a wooden pistol grip and a stock and a metal two-legged folding bipod. Under the forearm or butt, it was possible to install an additional handle or machine gun on an infantry tripod.
P. S. About this machine gun in more detail on "VO" was described in the article by Kirill Ryabov "Machine gun W + F LMG25 (Switzerland)" dated February 17, 2016, it is a pity that only one person commented on it then.
