Weapons and firms. Today we are unlikely to be able to find a middle-aged man who would not have heard the name Schmeisser. Moreover, even outside Europe, people know that the Schmeisser is nothing more than an angular German machine gun from the Second World War. In Soviet cinema, the Germans usually walk with him through the fields, roll up their sleeves and shoot in long bursts from the hip. However, the advanced ones also know that it is completely wrong to call this weapon a "schmeisser", since the German gunsmith Hugo Schmeisser was not its creator. But, however, he left a significant contribution to the history of small arms, and the arms company that bears his name still exists today.
The son must also become a hero, if the father is a hero
The future famous gunsmith was born on September 24, 1884 in the family of Louis Schmeisser, one of the leading designers of the Bergmann firm, which specialized in the development and production of automatic weapons. So Hugo inherited the profession of a gunsmith from his father and later got a job in the same company.
And then it was he who invented and embodied in metal something completely epochal - a short rapid-fire carbine that fired pistol cartridges, that is, the first submachine gun in the history of mankind. Actually, from a formal point of view, this machine was the second, since the first was the Italian "Villar-Perosa" M1915. However, in the original version, it was a real machine gun, moreover, with a shield and two barrels, developed for arming airplanes and only then literally accidentally hitting the infantry. This weapon did not become widespread, which cannot be said about the creation of Schmeisser. Here is his submachine gun, called MP18, not only proved to be convenient to use, but also became the prototype for all subsequent designs of this type of infantry weapon.
Weapons of a new type
Firing a 9 mm cartridge from a Parabellum pistol, it had acceptable overall dimensions that made it easy to use it in the trenches, a convenient wooden stock with the same stock. The store was located on the side and this gave the shooter a number of specific inconveniences, but he could snuggle close to the ground during shooting from a prone position - a very important property for an infantryman on the battlefield. Store designed by engineer Leer for 32 rounds, Luger from P.08 was also used. It was heavy, expensive, and difficult to manufacture. But time was running out, so Schmeisser used what was at his fingertips. Therefore, direct feed magazines with a capacity of 20 and 32 rounds for the MP18 appeared only after the war.
In total, at the end of the war, they managed to produce 18 thousand of these submachine guns in Germany - a seemingly impressive number. But here in the troops they got much less, no more than 10 thousand. So they simply did not have time to play any special role.
Outlaw pattern
And then Germany, which had lost the war, received the Versailles Treaty, which forbade her production of submachine guns - only a small number of them were allowed to be used by the police. All German arms factories, except for the "Simson" company, were closed under this agreement, so the armourers working for them had no choice but to move abroad. At the same time, Theodor Bergmann and Hugo Schmeisser had a very serious fight over the fact that he transferred the right to manufacture MP.18 to the Swiss company ZiG, while the patent for it belonged to no one, namely Schmeisser.
They parted already in 1919, and Bergmann began to cooperate with the Swiss, but Schmeisser, together with his relative Paul Koch, managed to found the firm Industriewerk Auhammer Koch Co. She was engaged in the production of spare parts for bicycles and air rifles, but Schmeisser himself continued to develop promising models of submachine guns. In 1925, Koch and Schmeisser's business went bankrupt, and they took a job at C. G. Haenel, owned by Herbert Henel (or Henel).
Meanwhile, the Reichswehr tested the MP28 / II submachine gun - an improved version of the MP18, which had a more technologically advanced design and a simple 32-round box magazine. He had to compete with Bergmann's MP34 and MP35 submachine guns, but it turned out that the design proposed by Hugo Schmeisser was still more reliable and more effective. The new model was immediately adopted by the German police, and its commercial sales began in Latin America and Africa, and was widely used in China, Spain, Belgium and Japan. It was used during a number of wars: the Gran Chaco war, the civil wars in Spain and China, as well as during the Second World War.
In 1932, Schmeisser, along with Genel, joined the NSDAP, a step completely understandable, and testifying to the fact that both of them understood very well that Hitler's coming to power promised military orders and new profits. And so it happened. As soon as Hitler threw away all the restrictions of the Versailles Peace Treaty, money flowed into their firm's pocket.
Throughout the pre-war years, Schmeisser continued to do what he loved: he designed the MK.34 / III submachine gun with a wooden stock from the 98K carbine and the 1936 model, which already had a folding stock.
Hugo Schmeisser had nothing to do with the MP38 and MP40 submachine guns - their designer was Heinrich Volmer, an engineer from Erma. Volmer even sued Schmeisser because he used a number of its structural details in his 1936 machine gun, and Schmeisser lost this process.
Schmeisser's submachine gun also had a chance to fight
But in 1941, Schmeisser created the MP41 submachine gun, in which the plastic console of the bolt box, the metal folding stock and the pistol grip were replaced with a wooden stock with a regular stock from his MP.28 / II. The MP41 was also able to shoot with single fire, and due to a slight increase in weight and size, as well as due to the presence of a durable butt, it became more convenient for the infantry to use it. Including to fight them in hand-to-hand combat. But despite all its advantages, the MP41, although it was released in a small amount, did not supplant the old samples of submachine guns.
And he also created the famous "Sturmgever"
Then Schmeisser created his most famous design: the Stg.44 assault rifle. It was one of the first adopted small arms development for special intermediate cartridges (many experts still consider the first American M1 carbine to be the first). The contract with Schmeisser for its creation was signed back in April 1938, but only in April 1942, its first samples were submitted for testing. In 1943, the assault rifle passed military trials and was named MP43. Then it was renamed to MP44, and then, finally realizing that the new weapon shoots a much more powerful cartridge than the pistol one, they gave the name Sturmgewehr, (Stg) - that is, "assault rifle". Produced in the amount of almost half a million copies of the Stg. 44, it was used at the final stage of the war, but there was a constant lack of ammunition for it - cartridges 7, 92 × 33. Then, after the end of World War II, another successful Schmeisser development was carried out in various countries of the world, including Argentina, the USA, China, Yugoslavia, Turkey and Czechoslovakia. He fought in Korea and Vietnam, found himself using in various local conflicts, and in Latin America, the police of many countries still use him, since there are now enough cartridges for him. In West and East Germany, after the war, this machine was used until the seventies of the last century, but only spare parts and cartridges were produced for it, since the machines themselves were taken from stocks even during wartime.
Schmeisser in captivity
When Nazi Germany was overthrown, Genel's factory, at the request of the Soviet commandant, was redesigned to produce consumer goods, but, in fact, people then had no time for hunting rifles. Nevertheless, in 1946, she was still allowed to produce and sell hunting weapons. But Hugo Schmeisser himself was "taken prisoner", that is, he was offered to work in the USSR for good money, where he was taken away in the fall of the same year, along with other German gunsmiths. He was supposed to work at the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant. The documents about the presence of the Germans on Izhmash were classified, hence all the speculation that the Kalashnikov assault rifle was the brainchild of Hugo Schmeisser. In fact, he did not particularly try to work there. Prepared a sketch of a submachine gun for a 9-mm "Luger cartridge, a couple of minor projects, and most importantly, what he was doing there was" consulting on the design of samples of infantry small arms."
I worked a little for the Bolsheviks and … that's enough
In the description that the party organizer of the plant wrote on Hugo Schmeisser in 1951, it is reported that "he did not bring any benefit during his stay", that he is unfamiliar with the secret work of the plant, which means that he did not know about any of his participation in the development of the latest models of Soviet small arms and speech is out of the question. In general, his involvement in cooperation with the Soviet side turned out to be a “blank shot”. The slave is not a worshiper, and that says it all. Although yes, indeed, the sector stores Stg. 44 and AK 1947 are very similar in appearance. However, outwardly similar, in general, and hammers, and all planes, since this similarity is determined by their functionality.
Hugo Schmeisser was released home to Germany only in the summer of 1952, and a year later, on September 12, he died in a hospital in Erfurt, at the age of 68.
Correct marketing is all over the head
And then, already in our days, there were smart people who thought that Schmeisser's name was a great brand and why not use it? T. Hoff and A. Schumacher, who owned the company Waffen Schumacher GmbH, did just that - they created a new company, Schmeisser GmbH. It is located in the city of Krefeld, not far from the famous Belgian city of Liege - the smithy of European small arms. And if their former company was only engaged in the wholesale of ready-made weapons and various weapon accessories from different manufacturers, but now they are engaged in its production.
Here, of course, a lot depended on marketing, that is, choosing the best model for the market. And they decided to produce the American AR-15 rifle, and for several segments of consumers at once: those who are engaged in sports shooting, for hunting, as well as for police units. Prior to this, AR-15 rifles were imported to Europe from the USA and Great Britain, but these supplies did not fully satisfy the market needs. Marketing analysis has shown that it is profitable to produce them in Germany, focusing in their advertising on traditional German quality, and this is exactly what the partners decided to play on!
Moreover, and this is the most important thing, no special changes were made to the design of the AR-15. Both rifles and carbines based on it work according to the direct gas exhaust scheme, that is, the powder gases act directly on the bolt without any intermediate parts, and they enter the receiver through a long tube placed above the barrel. Well, the breech of the barrel, like in the base model, is locked by a rotating bolt.
The cocking handle is quite traditional T-shaped, and, as in the original image, is located in the back of the receiver, above the butt. When firing, it remains stationary. And also on the right side of the receiver there is a characteristic device - a bolt rammer, so that the shooter can be able to close it manually in cases where it did not close due to clogging or due to insufficient force of its return spring.
Conveniently, the window for ejection of spent cartridges is closed with a special spring-loaded anti-dust curtain, which then opens automatically when the shutter is cocked. The main difference between the trigger mechanism of the German AR-15 is that it is single action, that is, these rifles cannot fire in bursts. Only single shots. The sights can be mounted in a variety of ways, depending on the model, and there can be a lot of options for their installation on weapons. Again, it is interesting that the barrels - the most important part of the weapon are made not by Schmeisser GmbH, but by Lothar Walther. However, not only the barrels, but also all the parts of the Schmeisser AR-15 rifle (both large and small) are also made to order and drawings by numerous third-party manufacturers, and the Schmeisers at their enterprise only assemble ready-made samples.
At the same time, all samples of Schmeisser AR-15 weapons fully comply with the latest NATO standard "Mil Spec", with 100% interchangeability of all its parts with already produced rifles and carbines of this type. The receiver uses tough 7075 T6 aluminum alloy and is of the same high quality as the materials used in military weapons. The shutter is made of the best Thyssen Krupp steel. In this case, the forgings are used with minimum tolerances using Schmeisser GmbH's own tooling. In this case, the forging process is carried out in such a way that the compaction of the surface and internal structures of the metal occurs to the same extent. Hence the excellent quality of all parts, even if the company works mainly for the civilian market.
The assortment of the company consists of a dozen AR-15 variants, which are available for cartridges of three calibers:.223 Rem,.222 Rem and 9x19 mm. The main differences lie in the length of the barrel and the options for its attachment. Well, this is understandable, because the design of the rifle is based on the development of J. Stoner. And all its advantages and disadvantages, as it is known, is low reliability and high care requirements, along with lightness and compactness, migrated to all "Schmeiser's" models. However, representatives of the company say that its engineers managed to cope with most of the shortcomings, and not only through the use of new technologies (for example, these are better materials and a "slippery" coating), but also through insignificant, at first glance, changes in the design. So the slogan of the company "Made in Germany" is by no means an advertising cliché. By the way, you can buy the products of this company today in Russia too, if you had money, you just have to order and pay, and they will immediately send everything to you by mail.
AR-15 M5 is a carbine with a 425 mm barrel. Telescopic, four-position stock. Forend with four Picatinny rails at once. The receiver is made of aircraft-grade aluminum, and the entire upper and lower forend, as well as the side surfaces, are Picatinny rails. The kit includes a removable carrying handle and a 10-round plastic magazine. You can buy 20 or even 30-charge magazines. Installation of a standard plastic forend is possible. Caliber.223 Rem (standard) or.222 Rem (customer choice)
The AR-15 Solid 1 is a new series of semi-automatic rifle, produced in accordance with the legal requirements for the army and police formations. The main feature of its design is that the upper bar of the receiver is made integral with the forend, which is why it has such a name - Solid (that is, a monolith). The attachment of the butt, and, accordingly, the attachments at the junctions of the receiver parts are reinforced. Barrel length can be 425 mm or 374 mm. AR15 Solid 2 is a civilian version of the same army rifle. But the top bar is detachable.
