Five or so in the World

For many years this was the only Maroszek SLR officially known to exist in the world – but it turned out it was not the only one as the Polish Army Museum’s vice director was to discover several years later, and much closer to Poland than Arizona. In Moscow’s Central Red Army Museum he found another one, s/n 1027, but it took more than a decade to repatriate it, just before the whole Eastern Block came crumbling down. At the very last moment, in 1989, they were able to swap it for some Soviet memorabilia, and finally a Maroszek rifle, or rather what was left after it was viciously deactivated when it arrived home in Poland.

In subsequent years several more cropped up, but still only five are known to exist for sure, as photos showing serial numbers are known: 1014 in Germany, 1019 in U.S. (recently repatriated to Poland, now exhibited at the Warsaw Uprising Museum), 1027 (in Polish Army Museum), 1030 and 1048, both in private collections in America. Additionally, two other rifles, s/n 1017 (Germany) and 1054 (USA) are rumored to exist, but no photos are in evidence to corroborate that as of yet.

The SLR Contest

Józef Maroszek (1904-1986) was born to a peasant family at Boglewice, near Grojec, in Mazovia (40 miles south of Warsaw). The family sent him to be educated in Warsaw, and encouraged by his physics teacher, who discovered his technical gift, he enrolled into the Warsaw Technological University in 1923. There he quickly joined the Armament Section – a joint academy-military probe to find potential future engineers for the then-organizing Polish armaments industry. The Section’s member allowance greatly alleviated the financial burden carried by the family, paying his stipend and then leaving some change. Membership carried with it other perks: it greatly enhanced chances of a solid, stable, government-paid employment. In 1930, he wrote his final thesis on Technological Improvements in Current Service Rifle, which was a Mauser 98-based wz.29 carbine. He did not limit himself to the improvements of production methods, but instead designed a simplified Mauser rifle. That made quite an impression and he was given a temporary job at the Warsaw’s Rifle Factory (the FK for Fabryka Karabinów) to build and test prototypes. These were tested in 1932, found promising, yet requiring too much time and effort to perfect. But it put his foot in the door and he was hired by the ITU (Armament Technological Institute) in Warsaw.

On March 14, 1934, two weeks after his simplified rifle was finally rejected, the ITU announced a contest for a self-loading rifle for the Polish Army. The requirements were: weapon chambered in the service caliber (7.9mm Mauser), not heavier than 4.5 kg, with a magazine capacity of 10 rounds, barrel length equal to the service wz.29 carbine (600 mm), easy to operate, simple in design, reasonable number of parts and manufactured with simple production methods. The deadline was 31 December, 1934. Nine rifles were proposed, but unfortunately most are only known by the codenames: 14895, ABC-34, BK, Celer, ES, Gajos, Samopal, SKS and Turniej.

The jury, under ITU commander Lt. Col. Czeslaw Kunart, selected on 8 January, 1935 three rifles for further development: SKS by Engineer Stefanski (unfortunately the given name is absent from all correspondence), ES by Edward Szteke and Turniej by Józef Maroszek.

The Stefanski SKS rifle was a gas-operated weapon with the gas cylinder on top of the barrel. During development the original SKS got ‘thoroughly redesigned’ into kb.sp. wz.34 but the details are missing. In 1938 due to no progress evident in subsequent testing it was discontinued.

Edward Szteke’s ES rifle was a lever-retarded blowback recoil-operated weapon, with fixed barrel; somewhat along the lines of the HK G3, but with kidney-shaped levers instead of rollers. It was patented in Poland, Europe and the U.S. in 1933-1937. Mr. Chinn may be right on many things in his monumental series of books The Machine Gun, but how he managed to find in it a predecessor of the MG 42 is a mystery. Perhaps he mistook MG 42 (short recoil gun, roller locked with recoiling barrel) with MG 42V, Vereinfacht, or Simplified, prepared to be introduced into the Wehrmacht’s inventory as the MG 45 – a retarded blowback with fixed barrel, like the ES…

Maroszek Rifle

The Maroszek ‘Turniej’ was a gas-operated weapon, but the details of his original design, especially the lock, we cannot ascertain for lack of documents. Polish ordnance archives were pretty thoroughly sieved, vetted and dispersed, first by the capturing Germans and Soviets in 1939, then by Germans re-capturing them from the Soviets, and then in 1945 by the British, American, French and Soviets, capturing them once again from the Germans.

Szteke’s rifle was judged the best while Maroszek placed third. Regardless, he was too busy designing his AT rifle, which was given much higher priority, and so he was given a respite, while ES and SKS were toiled upon.

In 1936 the rifles were progressing steadily, but as the AT rifle was then ready for production, the SLR board requested Maroszek to submit a prototype. Meanwhile, he had an epiphany as to the locking system of his rifle, and instead of starting to build his original rifle, he turned it inside out to accommodate his new idea of tilt-locking the bolt into the ejection opening of the receiver – what we now call a Browning-Petter locking, generally associated with handguns. The new receiver was much shorter, with no need for barrel extension. The return spring is similar to the BAR – but the original M1918, not the wz.28 Polish one – being stored inside the bolt-carrier and gas piston. The new ideas seemed plausible enough to grant him six weeks deadline extension in which to redesign the rifle from scratch. In mid-1936 at the No.2 Armory at 2/4 Szwedzka Str. in Warsaw’s Praga district, a three-man team which last year cooperated with Maroszek in preparing the AT Rifle production set to manufacturing parts for his second design for the Polish Army, now re designated the ‘kb.sp. M’ (kb.sp. is an abbreviation for ‘karabin samopowtarzalny’ or self-loading rifle, the SLR, while M stands for Maroszek). The finished rifle was tested at the Ballistic Research Center in Zielonka, and evaluated positively. The only fault was the firing pin, which accounted for nearly all of the jams, triggered by the tip breakage.

Arrested Development

The first time the FK’s Bureau of Studies budget indicated expenditure towards the Maroszek SLR was in FY 1936. The rifle’s development was funded to the tune of zloty 10,314.42 (of which Zl 7,409 was paid to Zbrojownia Nr 2 for manufacturing the functional model and five prototypes). [Polish Zloty exchange rate to USD at that time was Zl 5.14 to $1]. The real costs were certainly higher as some of the development was paid for from the Zbrojownia Nr.2’s own budget, while Maroszek was the ITU employee, so he was paid only a salary for his work. This sum was more than already was paid for the ES rifle over past two years (Zl 9,918.64 zl) – but still half of the cost incurred by the Stefanski’s SKS rifle over that same period – Zl 20,096.24. It was not that the SKS was that much worse – simply Stefanski was an outside man, so all his costs were paid directly from the Bureau of Studies budget. On the other hand, Szteke was employed by the FK, so the cost of his prototype work was paid from their budget – hence the difference.

In 1937, five pre-prototypes were subjected to military testing, and another round of improvements was introduced. The Stefanski rifle program was terminated with the end of FY 1937, with kb.sp. M substituting for it. In May of 1938, a complete set of manufacturing drawings were ordered from the State Armament Works Central Laboratory in connection with the planned ordering of 72 rifles for military testing from the Radom Fabryka Broni (FB). FB, however, politely declined – it was already fully busy with orders for wz.29 carbines and still saddled with wz.35 (Vis, the Radom pistol) orders, already two years in arrears. The order was then extended to the FK in Warsaw, with the same answer – thanks, but no thanks. Finally, it was the latter’s experimental establishment, Zbrojownia Nr.2, which accepted the order on 13 July, 1938. However, it was reduced to just 55 rifles with delivery date extended to 1 January, 1939. Lacking the barrel-making facilities, Zbr.2 ordered 63 barrels from FK. The order was worth Zl 277,000.

The final wz.38M SLR is a semiautomatic, gas-operated weapon with a tilt-locked bolt, fed from a 10-round fixed internal magazine. The rifle had 68 parts, which was quite reasonable against the background of the contemporary designs: the SVT-38 numbered 63, the G41(W) 66, but the M1 Garand only 55. For cleaning it can be broken down into just four components: barreled action with buttstock, gas cylinder, bolt carrier with return spring and bolt.

This was not the end of the road neither for the Maroszek rifle, nor for the SLR for the Polish Army. The contest was still hot, the Szteke’s kb.sp. wz.37S (former ES) was also still under development and tested in November 1938, where during the durability testing it still did not reached the goal of 10,000 shots, having failed (receiver hairline crack discovered) after 8,000. This was the final failure, but earlier on the 37S chewed through three firing pins (after 300, 550 and 1,800 shots), extractor (859 shots), and bolt bumper (4,923 shots). Despite all that the project continued with new, improved 3rd Gen prototypes ordered for further testing in 1939. On 26 February 1939 one each ‘enhanced accuracy’ wz.37S and wz.38M rifles were ordered for a shoot-off to determine which rifle would serve as a basis for a sniping rifle. This is unfortunately the last paper trace left by either of the rifles.

As the delivery deadline for the 55 rifles was 1 January, 1939, and no trace of any further barrel orders was found so far, it is safe to assume that not more than that number of the wz.38M rifles were ever manufactured. All serial numbers known so far are contained within the 1001 – 1055 range, corroborating the quantity.

Maroszek Redux

This author had the opportunity to handle, strip and examine in detail the Maroszek rifle, s/n 1048 that was owned by Bob Farris in the U.S. but unfortunately firing it was not possible as it had a familiar Maroszek ailment: the firing pin point was broke off. Regardless, it was different from the one we had in Poland – with just one cross-bolt, instead of two. Later on, two other Maroszeks were found in America, both of a single cross-bolt variety, while another two-bolt rifle was found in Germany. With no hard documents to prove it, one can only assume that this might have been a last-minute addition, perhaps a result of the spring of ‘39 troop-testing, perhaps to reduce the lower receiver wobble. So, perhaps the 1014 and 1027 were prototypes for the new series-production model? How significant, that one ended up in Germany, and the other in Russia – two hoodlums conspiring against Poland in 1939… We’ll never know.

Or do we? Once at the Museum, I met a gunsmith from Piotrowo near Poznan, Mr. Ryszard Tobys, whom I knew as the Guinness’ Book of Records world’s largest cap-and-ball revolver manufacturer. He was planning to build a shooting replica of the Maroszek rifle. He was taking some measurements to reverse engineer some small bits, which in reality looked quite different from the blueprint. It transpired that Mr. Maroszek’s nephew in Bialystok inherited a set of production blueprints for the wz. M rifle. This was the penultimate version of it – those five prototypes of 1937, so several changes were introduced later, which he was then analyzing comparing blueprints with the real thing.

In November 2013 rifle s/n RT001 was ready, and I’ve been the first journalist to see it, handle it, and shoot it. The first rifle was more of a test-bed than show-piece, but I’ve seen three barreled actions in various stages of manufacture, so there would be better and prettier ones once all the bugs are ironed out of the first. The price tag would be enormous as the project already cost thousands upon thousands of hours of hard work, but fortunately Ryszard’s two sons, Blazej and Remigiusz can program his CNC machines for free, so he can avoid the most costly part. At first, the components were machined in aluminum and brass to check if they fit together, then real parts were made and fitted. This seems to be a really nice, well balanced, and smooth to shoot rifle – given it’s chambered in 8mm x 57JS Mauser.

Arrested Development

However, what was modern in the 1960s, in 1970s proved to be expensive and non-modifiable. As early as 1977 a program was thus started to design a modern replacement chambered for the smaller caliber bullet. In 1977 Miloslav Fisher of the Brno’s General Machine-Building Plants R&D Center (Vyzkumne vyvojovy ustav zavodu vseobecneho strojirenstvi) or VVU-ZVS (also known as the Prototypa Brno) started the ‘Lada S’ study, to examine the possibility of re-arming the CSLA with a domestically designed and manufactured rifle, chambered for the Soviet 5.45mm round. Several years of research and preparations resulted in green-lighting the design in 1984. The study’s cover name, Lada (a popular Slovakian female first name) became the cover name of the whole program, led by Bohumil Novotny. It aimed at creating the three gun ‘family’ of unified design small arms, consisting of a subcarbine with 185 mm long barrel, an automatic rifle with 382 mm barrel and a 577 mm barreled Light Support Weapon.

The similarity of the concept to the AK-74 family consisting of AKS-74U, AKS-74 and RPKS-74 was not at all accidental. The new Czechoslovak rifles were downright Kalashnikovian in both idea and detail. The only points different were the stiffer, slide-on / slide-off receiver cover, peep-style battle-sights, and the Galil-style thumb-operated safety-selector lever, but devoid of the AK-trademark long selector lever / cocking slot cover.

The design was ready by the end of 1985; prototypes were manufactured and tested in 1986. After many failures and recoveries the third generation of these was finally approved for production in November 1989. The new rifle was then running perfect, which sadly cannot be said for the state that commissioned it. In 1989 the Communist Bloc undermined by Gorbachev’s glasnost from one side, and Polish Communists sharing power with Solidarnosc opposition movement from the other, started to fall apart in a rapid ‘domino theory’ style. Then in late November and early December came Czechoslovakia’s turn. After several days of demonstrations, the Communist Party gave way and finally relinquished power in what became known as the Velvet Revolution.

Lada: The Little Orphan

As of February 1990, the Lada system was declared fit for production, but nobody was interested in it any longer. As the Czechoslovakian program did not involve production of the 5.45x39mm ammunition (as opposed to the Polish one), conversion to the 5.56x45mm was the only logical solution – more so as the country’s ammunition provider, Sellier & Bellot in Vlasim, was already making the .223 Remington with M193-style FMJ and JSP bullets.

At first there was talk of ordering 300,000 new rifles and a tender was held to choose the system integrator and future manufacturer. The offer by Czeska Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod (CZUB), a 1936-established national arms maker, was given priority due to its rich experience in individual small-arms manufacture, including the Sa-58 and the vz.61 Skorpion machine pistol manufacture for the CSLA.

But the Army was penniless, and state (at that stage called the Czecho-Slovakia, after what came down in history as the ‘hyphen war’) was now on the verge of separation, with political fire being stoked by extremists on either side of the national divide. Fortunately the ‘hyphen war’ was the only one fought there, and everything ended peacefully, in what was dubbed the Velvet Divorce. In 1992 the history of the Czechoslovakia was over after 74 years since November 1918, when Hungary’s and Austria’s Slavic lands were united, forming the new state under the influence of Thomas G. Masaryk, who became the first Czechoslovak president. As of January 1, 1993 there were two separate states: Slovakia and Czechia (Bohemia).

Now the new rifle was in dire straits indeed – the smaller the army, the less chance to be manufactured in numbers. At the same time CZUB got privatized, and as a private enterprise it had to earn what it was to spend on the new rifle design – not just draw it on the state’s budget, as previously. For five long years the Lada program got lost from the radar – gone, but never forgotten.

Enter Mr. Findorak

After the NATO doors were cracked open with the Partnership for Peace, giving a renewed hope of the full membership soon, the NATO-caliber rifle program was once again hauled forth from the backburner. NATO-caliber – but not the STANAG magazine: this conversion would have called for a wholesale re-designing of the receiver and so was deemed too expensive. The new Lada still had an AK-74 compatible magazine – but was now chambered for the 5.56mm (even though the surviving samples are stamped ‘.223’).

Several Czech designers and companies approached CZUB in the meantime, offering other rifles instead. One of them was Ladislav Findorak, ex-Army officer, who endorsed a delayed blowback system based on Soviet Anatoli Baryshev’s designs. This was a bold proposition – a complete weapon family called LCZ, made up of the same design but different size building blocks, which put together were to give anything from automatic rifle up to a .50 cal. heavy machine gun and even a 30mm grenade machine gun. CZUB partly financed his scheme and tested the resulting weapons, but chose not to continue. Findorak then started his own company, known under the English-language name of Czech Weapons in Slavicin, but both partners parted on good terms, and CZUB was impressed with Findorak’s ability in weapon designing.

Other than Findorak, two other rifles were considered, one designed by a British team for another English-named Czech company, the Moravian Arms Company and the other option was license from Colt’s to manufacture AR-15 rifles (M16/M4). CZUB had great designs for the then struggling Colt, but all that was left of it was a less-than-spectacular Colt Z40 pistol – and the starting of the CZ-USA subsidiary, who now owns the Dan Wesson Firearms.

CZ 2000 vs. Project 805

The Army of the Czech Republic (Armada Ceske Republiky, ACR) was once again interested in the new rifle, but this interest eventually failed to bloom into contracts. The CZUB was now left with no other way than to develop the Lada and find a buyer – if not at home, then abroad, trying to capitalize on the good standing of the CZ brand and the need for modern Kalashnikov derivatives in Western chambering. But to sell abroad the Lada needed a name that was (a) sexy and (b) involved ‘CZ’ to marry it to the brand. At the turn of the century ‘2000’ seemed to mesmerize buyers and sellers alike, bringing with it a promise of the modernity – more so for what was in fact nothing more than a face-lifted AKM. Thus the CZ 2000 was born, sometime accompanied by the name Lada, sometimes not. The CZ 2000 was a name used only for PR. For in-house use, the whole ‘Army Rifle Replacement’ program was dubbed the Project 805, according to the new classification scheme, in which model numbers were assigned according to the nature of the product. Assault rifles and SMGs were assigned series 800 – that’s why the civilian-legal Sa-58 was called the CZ 858, and the 9mm silenced Skorpion prototype with a fixed stock was the XCZ 861.

The New Rifle

It was only in late 2005 that CZUB decided to go whole hog and make their own rifle anew. The Army was not yet inclined to change the battle rifle for the entire military, but they nevertheless managed to buy a batch of Bushmaster M4A3s for the Special Forces. The situation could have slipped out of hand if the Army continued to re-arm itself piecemeal, instead of a large-scale re-armament – so CZUB bolted into action. A totally new specification was drawn, finally putting the stillborn Lada to rest. The new rifle was first called the CZ XX, then CZ S805. The S stood for ‘special’ to differentiate it from regular CZ 805 (no S), being a tricked-out Lada carbine with rails all over and an ambidextrous selector lever, designed for India (but never bought).

This new design was meant to get CZUB to the forefront of the world’s rifle evolution, constituting a totally new multi-caliber modular platform – much in the SCAR flavor. There were to be two sets of building blocks, one (with ‘A’ in model designation) for three intermediate rounds (5.56×45 mm, 6.8SPC and 7.62×39 mm), and the other (‘B’) for rifle calibers – and that’s not only 7.62×51 mm mind you, but .300 Win Mag as well. Each of these could have been fitted with three lengths of barrels, to became a Battle Rifle (‘1’ designator), CQB Carbine (‘2’) or the DMR/LSW (‘3’) fire support weapon. Thus a rifle in 5.56mm would be an A1, while a carbine in 7.62×51 mm would be a B2, and so on.

Close But No Cigar

CZUB had no design resources to speedily accomplish a design like that, and so they decided to outsource the designing phase and hired Mr. Findorak again. This proved to be an excellent choice – in less than a year the rifle was not only designed, but prototypes were built and tested. This also proved unfortunately to be Findorak’s last design accomplishment, as he died prematurely in the fall of 2006, in his early 50s.

In November 2006, CZ S805 was first demonstrated to the Army’s chief of staff, General Stefka, but the Army again didn’t order any – instead they bought another batch of Bushmasters. After that, CZUB decided to go public with their new accomplishment, hoping that patriotically-inclined public would affect the military complacency. For three years the rifle was regularly exhibited during the IDET fair in Brno as well as Prague’s ‘Future Soldier’ conventions, but success proved to be elusive. The big change came upon in 2009, when finally a tender was opened for the Czech Army’s new battle rifle.

Meanwhile at the factory, the Findorak rifle design’s development had been overseen by Vitezslav Guryca, a CZUB designer since 1984, whose previous accomplishments included the CZ 97B; Czech first ever .45 ACP pistol. Testing of the Slavicin-made prototypes revealed minor problems with lock timing, trigger mechanism, buttstock, return spring assembly, and barrel change method. These teething problems were ironed-out by Guryca, assisted by the CZUB’s chief engineer Radek Hauerland, chief designer Pavel Mahdala, with Jaroslav Bachurek, Jiri Kafka and Vladimir Simek. They were also designing the whole armament subsystem around the new rifle, including a novel 805 G1 40mm underbarrel grenade launcher, as well as the 805 UN/BN bayonet.

Racing against the clock, the design team decided to curtail the modularity of the system, and press on with development of only the A platform (SCAR-L equivalent) with two barrel lengths, rifle (A1) and carbine (A2). These were initially provided in two calibers, 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm. The first A1 demonstrated in November 2006 to the chief of staff was a 5.56mm A1, but the first to be hands-on publically demonstrated was the A2 in 7.62mm (during the Future Soldier 2008). Later on, the program got curtailed once again – only the 5.56mm system was exhibited since then, from early 2009 on with a re-modeled upper receiver.

The Multi-Optional Rifle

The caliber exchange in the CZ S805 rifle requires changing barrel, gas system, bolt-head and a magazine well. The magazine well is a separate module of the lower receiver, connected by a T-slot and the rail and (since 2010) stabilized with a pin – the idea resembling the MGI’s Hydra exchangeable magazine well system. There were three magazine modules demonstrated so far, two for CZ’s own plastic magazines and one for the AR-15 (STANAG) magazine.

The proprietary plastic magazine is a really bulky affair, patterned after HK G36 magazines – the 5.56mm variant claims interchangeability with the German rifle. These are opaque, semi-transparent to allow quick bullet count, and fortunately do not copy the G36 integral magazine couplings. The 7.62 and 5.56 plastic magazines differ mostly in shape with the 5.56 being much straighter than the 7.62 banana. There’s even a joke about these, stating that the 5.56 is a ‘Euro banana’ (hinting at the infamous EU regulation on the shape of banana, stipulating it should be almost straight – because such shaped bananas prevail in former French Guyana), as opposed to the 7.62mm ‘real banana.’ An AKM-compatible magazine well was announced, but never demonstrated, while the factory dismisses the speculations about Sa-58 compatible magazine well being ever contemplated.

Bought At Last

In November 2009, the long-awaited tender for the new Czech rifle was organized, but despite 27 initial submissions, only two rifles were finally pitted against each other: CZ’s offer, now referred to as CZ 805 Bren and FNH’s SCAR-L, with domestic design being finally selected after a reportedly hot contest, decided by a narrow margin. The results were promulgated on February 1, 2010, and on March 18, after the FN’s Czech partner decided not to repeal the results, the ministry finally ordered 6,687 CZ 805A1 rifles, 1,250 CZ 805A2 carbines and 397 CZ 805G1 grenade launchers. Each rifle and carbine was ordered with Meopta’s ZD-Dot red dot sight and a set of BUIS, and for the special forces 1,386 ‘enhanced optical suites’ were ordered, consisting of Meopta’s DV-Mag3 daylight 3x magnifier, NV-3Mag night 3x magnifier and a DBAL-A2 (AN/PEQ-15A) laser target designator.

But before the first rifles hit the shelves of the Army stores, the military demanded several changes that arose from the qualification testing of the samples delivered as stipulated in contract by May 2010. First of all, somewhat surprisingly, the Army requested a folding-only stock instead of the factory-offered folding/telescoping stock – said to be awkward. The stock is held by a T-rail on the receiver backplate, and can be replaced any time, for any style – providing it is fitted with a proper attachment. Second change concerned stabilizing the magazine well with a pin. The third request called for replacement of the fixed pistol grip with one fitted with exchangeable backstraps, just like the ones so popular since all new pistols’ frames became plastic. Another change was introduced in the bolt head – the seventh locking lug was omitted. Initially, the seventh lug was deeply undercut by the extractor claw channel, and it could possibly crack, so it was eliminated and now there’s only six. All these changes delayed the date of the initial delivery to July 19, 2011, when the first 505 A1s and A2s with 20 grenade launchers were taken over by the Army, with 2,745 A1s and 926 A2s scheduled to be delivered during the latter half of the 2011, and further deliveries made until 2013, when the initial order would be fulfilled.

The Inner Life

The gas-operated rifle has a gas opening on top of the barrel, where gas block with bayonet attachment on the bottom is fitted. On top there’s a large ring, into which the gas mechanism is inserted. The gas mechanism consists of a one-piece gas piston (somewhat resembling the one of the Sa-58), complete with a self-contained return spring and two-stage gas regulator. The whole gas system is held in place by a lug in the form of the regulator shield. When the shield is turned to either of the two working positions, the lug stays firmly in the abutment cut into the gas block. But if the gas regulator is turned a full 180 degrees, there is a flat undercut in the shield, fitting over the top of the gas block, and the whole unit can be pulled clear for cleaning or replacement for other caliber’s set. No other procedures or tools are needed. Whoever struggled with a SCAR gas mechanism once would appreciate that immediately and immensely. The piston hits the boxy bolt carrier and makes it recoil, while the operating cam unlocks the bolt. The unlocked breech opens and the extractor extracts the spent case, while the spring-loaded rod ejector in the breech face tilts it to the right. Then the ejected empty hits the deflector, changes the rotation direction and flies clear forward and to the right. The ejection opening is far enough ahead to allow left-handed operation without the need to change the ejection direction. The recoiling bolt-carrier compresses the return spring set on a single guide rod, but not anchored rigidly in the back plate. There’s no magic at all in the operation of the CZ 805 Bren: as with about 75% of modern military rifles based on the AR-18, if you know one, you know them all. The only unusual thing is a firing pin automatic safety in the rear part of the bolt carrier – a spring loaded lever that hooks in the pin, holding it immobile to prevent AD from pin inertia. It operates just like the HK MP7 firing pin safety, being swept out of the way by the falling hammer.

The upper receiver is monolithic, with a full length Mil-Std 1913 rail running on top. The upper is machined out of a forged aircraft-grade aluminum billet, has a form of an inverted U-sectioned through, completely open at three sides. Initially it was planned to be made of polymer plastic, but during the development an aluminum ‘interim’ receiver was used, and so it remained. The sides have (each) two cooling slots and three barrel screws openings, as well as a cocking slot with rounded cocking handle inserting opening. The cocking handle can be inserted from either side, without any adverse effects on operation. The barrel screws also hold the side rails, and their openings are filled with polymer sleeves to eliminate vibration and hinder heat transfer. The ejection opening is on the right side of the upper receiver. From the rear it is closed by a back plate, from the front by the barrel assembly, and from the bottom half by the lower rail, being the part of the barrel assembly, and the other half by the lower receiver. The interesting point here is, that the lower hinges not on the upper receiver, but on the rear end of the bottom rail.

The Barrel Assembly

The barrel assembly is exchangeable as a whole unit, and resembles the one used in SCAR – at least in the mode of fixing – very closely. The locking ferrule is screwed onto the rear end of the barrel. The rear two pairs of the barrel fixing screws are screwed into this ferrule from the sides. On top of the ferrule there is a piston guide, directing it on the way to hit the bolt-carrier. On the bottom another two screws fix the lower rail to the ferrule. At approx. 2/3 length of the barrel the gas port is drilled, covered with gas block. Just aft of the gas block there is a U-shaped former, into which the bottom of the forward bottom rail screw is screwed, and into which sides fit the forward barrel fixing screws pair. The locking ferrule and this former keep the barrel free-floating as much as possible in a gas-operated gun. The muzzle is threaded for a countering nut and muzzle devices – standard bid-cage flash hider/compensator, a blank-firing-attachment or a sound moderator. To exchange the barrel one has first to field-strip the rifle (the bolt head has to be withdrawn from the locking ferrule of the barrel, and lower receiver has to be detached from the bottom rail), then to unscrew six barrel fixing screws and withdraw the barrel. It can be done in field conditions, but it is by no means a quick-change barrel. Anyway, it takes a torque wrench to reassemble it in a rigidly-regulated sequence. Whoever changed a barrel on SCAR, knows the drill.

The A1 and A2 barrels are identical save for the length and theoretically they can be exchanged freely – but in reality the Army ordered the rifles in final configuration with no spare barrels. It is then a modular system, but not an operator-configurable one. The bore is 6 grooves, one right hand twist in 7 inches.

Lower Receiver

The lower receiver is divided into two parts: trigger mechanism housing with pistol grip and the exchangeable magazine well. Both are made of polymer, connected by a T-rail and corresponding slot, and pinned. The pin can be started out by bullet point, and then pushed out with a firing pin. After the pin is out, both parts can be slid one from another and separated. In both 5.56mm magazine wells the magazine release is fully ambidextrous – by bottom lever in CZ proprietary magazine, and by buttons positioned on both sides of the STANAG-magazine well. The bolt hold open is positioned inside the magazine well and provided with ambidextrous push-buttons. Caution: these can only activate the hold-open when there’s no magazine. The release is ALWAYS by pulling on the cocking lever. This is a drawback, but Czech soldiers used the same system on their Sa-58s for half a century, and 50 years of tradition is an undisputable power in each Army. The standard magazine well is the CZ plastic magazine one, but STANAG-magazine wells are going to be provided for the Special Forces to insure interoperability and also for the future A3 LSW variant, to enable the use of the Beta C-Mag and other high capacity magazines fitting the AR-15 magazine well.

The complete lower is a swing-out affair, fixed by two cross-pins. After the cross-pins are withdrawn, there are corresponding sockets in the stock where these can be stored. Nothing new for any HK user.

The modified (M2011) pistol grip has exchangeable backstraps, also secured with a pin. Two sizes are available, standard (M) which fits most hands, and XL.

The trigger mechanism is a modified AK with a burst limiter – not much changed since the Lada, except perhaps for the flat trigger/selector retaining spring, which is another of the Sa-58 left-overs. The selector has four settings, 0-1-2-30, all within a right angle, which means that separations are diminutive, just 22.5 degrees. Pictograms are dots in two colors: white dot means SAFE, and then there are red dot(s), for single, burst and continuous fire. The lever is well within reach and moves up to SAFE, down to FIRE, just like the 1911. A possible civilian-legal variant would perhaps only have two settings, SAFE and FIRE also in a 90 degrees arc, which would be best for it. The burst setting is pointless, with the two-rounds burst – fortunately it resets itself after releasing the trigger prematurely, unlike the M4.

Pros and Cons

This author had the opportunity to check out the CZ 805 Bren at a shooting range, and the occasion, however brief, left me with several remarks to make. A 4.2 kg heavy rifle has no right to display a noticeable recoil or muzzle flip with the 5.56x45mm round, and this truth was once again proven by the CZ rifle. It takes a long burst on fully automatic to swing the muzzle noticeably, although still keeping a full magazine-dump within a torso target at 15 meters was easy – as opposed to the Sa-58. The shoulder stock is made of plastic, and by contrast seems to be weightless at all, which means the rifle is heavy on the nose. That’s not bad for dynamic sweeps, but if you keep it ready for a long spell of time, your weak hand would finally become sore. And definitely make use of the 6 o’clock rail by attaching a foregrip. If you don’t, you have to watch your supporting hand thumb position – if you utilize the cocking handle on the left side of the gun and you’re not a southpaw, that is. Again, whoever shot the SCAR, knows why – the cocking handle is reciprocating, and with bolt in battery it is very easy to place your thumb in the way, if you support the gun by magazine well. Been there, done that – you better don’t. The cocking handle stripped the half of my thumbnail in no time. Nothing you’d like to repeat, believe me, although not incapacitating. The rifle is mostly flat, but has rails all over – waiting to skin your fingers alive if you don’t muzzle them with rubber covers or wear gloves, or preferably both. All controls are within easy reach (or at least – within MY easy reach) and work quite nicely – rotate easily, but firmly keep their positions, or spring back energetically after release of the push buttons. The only drawback in that area is the safety-selector lever, with four settings within 90 degrees – that’s way too cramped. The plastic magazines are said to be interchangeable with HK G36, but fortunately omit the integral coupling devices, sticking out from their sides. Anyway, they’re still wide and big – it’s hard to believe they only keep tiny 5.56mm rounds.

The long 40-centimeter overhead monolithic rail has enough room for any combinations of sights one is likely to haul. The factory sights suite consists of a set of CZ’s own BUIS and a Meopta ZD-Dot red point sight. Whoever used any variation of the M68 CCO would be at home with the ZD-Dot, housed in as big a tube with as many protuberances as most of the M-series Aimpoints, and utilizing the same time-proven red dot reticle. By the way, it’s the Meopta who makes most of the Aimpoint lenses. Each A1 rifle and A2 carbine was ordered with a ZD-Dot. 1,386 would get an ‘enhanced optoelectronic suite’ consisting of two 3x magnifiers, one day-time, one coupled with NV device and a DBAL-A2 laser module. The magnifiers, at least the daylight model, DV-Mag3, gives a very sharp, even image. The optics are really good – but Meopta still has a thing or two to learn in tactical optics. No quick release means – so while FIBUA you have to undo a lever and take the magnifier out, unlike the Aimpoint QD pivot mount. But the prototypes had both red point and the magnifier mounted with Allen screws, so that’s an improvement over the previous version, nevertheless.

Que Sera Sera

The future of the CZ 805 is still ‘not ours to see.’ It has just begun it’s travel, and the soldiers would no doubt find many ways to give the CZUB team a reason for headaches. For some reason or other the modular rifle have in reality became a fixed configuration one – perhaps the user had not matured yet to have too many choices left. The plans are still ambitious, though, and in May 2011 the existence of the new A3 was announced – but in a little strange way. The A3 ‘soon in a theatre near you’ is a bipod-fitted LSW/DMR – that’s more or less consistent with the program. But then the CZUB announced it would be a 7.62x51mm weapon, which then should be a B3 rather, and the first version of the long-awaited B full-power round configuration. The civilian-legal semiautomatic variant of the A1 has also been hinted to, so perhaps there would also be a U.S.-market version with a 16-inch barrel – which would certainly be greeted with much interest.

In the early 1970s, most submachine guns still in use with the armies of the world were replaced by assault rifles shooting the intermediate round. The days of the front-line SMG were over. In specialized application the surviving ones were replaced by a new breed of modern low-drag high-speed models, lighter and offering more firepower in an ergonomically superior package. New materials and production methods were applied: sheet stamping, spot welding, powder metallurgy and plastics. Seen against that trend, Polish PM-63 Rak submachine gun, so advanced just a decade earlier, but still machined from solid billet, was rapidly falling into obsolescence.

The rapidly passing Renaissance of the SMG in its new compact guise, created a passing demand for the new firearms of that type. The ComBloc countries, who were at the forefront of the new wave of the PDW-style submachine guns (Soviet Stechkin, Czech Skorpion and Polish PM-63 Rak) were willing to have their share of the cake, but they lacked a modern design chambered for the 9mm Luger – the old German round growing more and more popular all over the world. Attempts at re-chambering existing guns were frustrating, even though a vz.68 Skorpion and PM-70 Rak proved to be viable firearms. Both were however milled of a solid billet, which financially killed them from the start even taking into consideration Communist economics. There were no alternatives: a new, compact, modern and cheap submachine gun was a must.

The hunt for the new compact SMG in Poland was not however only about the elusive export income: human and tactical considerations of the army were taken into consideration as well. As the Rak hit the real military units, problems abounded. The reciprocating slide was hard to master for soldiers with no firearms experiences and seasoned shooters from the elite Special Forces, who tested Rak on its way to inception, had no problems with them at all. Novice shooters were quite the opposite. The reciprocating slide frightened most of them as horror stories of eye glasses or even eye-balls smashed with it began to circulate. Then there was a real problem of shooting with the NBC mask on, where cracks on the glasses really did happen once in a while. In the 1970s, the future war was envisaged as a nuclear conflict, with most of the war fought in NBC protective clothing. In a heavily radioactive fallout-polluted area, a mere cracked glass was a harbinger of a certain death.

The new submachine gun TTR (Technical and Tactical Requirements) set together by the Military Technology Research and Development Main Directorates of the Polish Army’s General Staff included a condition sine qua non for the future firearms: no more experiments with open slides except for the handguns. All future guns were to have a closed receiver with the bolt reciprocating within.

After the TTR of the new project, code-named Glauberyt (glauberite, or sodium calcium sulfate), was sent out to all small arms developing centers, three separate teams at two of these took to designing the new SMG. The code-name was issued according to the new code-naming guideline, allocating the new small arms projects the minerals (glauberite, pyrite etc.) or the Mendeleyev periodic table’s metals (beryllium, vanadium, tantalum, etc.).

The Zielonka Glauberyt

A Glauberyt team of the Military Ordnance Technical Institute consisted of three Lieutenant-Colonels, Henryk Adamczyk, Jerzy Okraszewski and Ryszard Szydlowski. Theirs was a concept of a compact, small SMG of very original – yet overly complicated design. The lower receiver integral with a pistol grip was meant to be eventually made as a single plastic casting, similar in concept to the then rave Austrian Steyr MPi-69.

According to the original concept, the gun was designed for both 9mm Makarov and 9mm Luger chamberings. The caliber change was to be executed by exchanging barrels only: the magazine and bolt were universal. It was a selective-fire blowback automatic firearm, firing from closed bolt. The rate of fire was retarded by a complicated multi-part pneumatic-and-inertia rate of fire retarder.

In 1972, a set of blueprints was fabricated, labeled Pistolet maszynowy wz¢r 1973 (M1973 SMG). Then in late 1974 and early 1975, two testing models were manufactured, s/n G-01 and G-02, sporting an aluminum lower receiver. The costs of manufacturing a die for the plastic receiver at this early stage was deemed far too high to even consider.

The testing proved the design criteria: rate of fire was reduced to about 750 rpm despite a very light weight of the reciprocating parts and the short track bolt. The gun was small, compact, handy, and seemed insensitive to field conditions. The cartridges were fed from 15 and 25-round magazines held in the pistol grip by a catch at the heel of the grip. A plastic cocking handle was placed on top of the receiver, reciprocating between the square front post and flip-over sight with two sighting notches.

Despite the initial plans, both models were chambered for the 9x18mm or 57-M-181S round, better known as the 9mm Makarov. The compact size enabled the SMG to be fired single-handedly or with both hands, using a telescoping shoulder stock and a folding foregrip. In 1976, further development was halted due to technological problems with the plastic lower receiver production. Before the project was closed, a new set of blueprints were produced for an altered, modified model, also with a plastic lower receiver called the Pistolet maszynowy wz.1977 (M1977 SMG). This was, however, never to be put in metal.

Zielonka Glauberyt s/n G-01

Caliber: 9x18mm
Muzzle velocity: 320 mps (1,053 fps)
Barrel lengthv150 mm (5.9 inches)
Sighting radius: 231 mm (9 inches)
Length, stock collapsed: 305 mm (12 inches)
Length, stock extended: 539 mm (21.2 inches)
Magazine capacity: 15 and 25 rounds

R-75: The Radom Glauberyts

At the same time there were two competing Glauberyt (Project R-75) research teams created in the Research & Development Center (OBR) of the General Walter Metal Works in Radom. Ryszard Chelmicki, Janusz Chetkiewicz and Stanislaw Bryx formed the first of these. Their submachine gun was a pure blowback design with the magazine well in the pistol grip and bolt telescoping the barrel for optimal equilibrium. The general layout was to resemble the Uzi, which was at that time deemed to have the optimal disposition for a compact submachine gun. Yet it was not to be another Uzi-clone, as their R-75-I was to fire from closed bolt position with an internal hammer and have a mechanical, inertia rate of fire retarder, oscillating vertically in the pistol grip’s rear channel, perpendicular to the bolt movements – vaguely resembling the one used in a Czechoslovakian Skorpion. The gun was to be manufactured with sheet-metal stamping and spot welding methods, with a bare minimum of machined parts. Even before the model was commissioned, the OBR’s management demanded the team to prepare an alternative model, chambered for the 9×19 Luger. This was a rare display of far-reaching perspective being taken by the industry with a view to possible export, as well as a way to vent-off the recent frustration of the aborted PM-70 Rak modification to take the 9mm Luger round despite its success. The solid front sight post was taken directly from the PM-63. The stock was made of wire, and folding to the top of the receiver, with a spring-assisted opening – again a clear indication, that the designers knew and appreciated the Skorpion. The bolt cocking handles were plastic, but the first ever shooting test left them shattered, and another Skorpion idea was then borrowed: the button-like cocking handles protruding from the receiver sides. Both the R-75-I test model and the prototype series R-81 SMGs retained these.

A peculiarity of the R-75-I was the sight, taking the shape of a triangular plate, rotating on an axis which was set parallel to the bore. This plate had three peep holes for shooting at 100, 150 and 200 meters, with a square notch filed between the 100 and 150 peep holes, used for aiming at 50 m. Right from the start, the R-75-I was planned to be fitted with an external bolt catch lever – which was a novel idea for the SMG at that time on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The characteristic sheet-metal safety-selector lever on the receiver’s left, right behind the pistol grip, survived from the first pre-prototype up until PM-06 model, when it was made ambidextrous. The bolt is oscillating inside a sheet-metal formed, square-sectioned upper receiver. The receiver cover was latched by the side projections of the rubber-bumper mounting-plate to which doubled return spring rods (another Skorpion idea) were fastened.

The other OBR’s team, lead by Wladyslaw Krawczyk and Marian Gryszkiewicz, came up with quite a different proposition. Their R-75-II (or R75-W2 as it was inscribed on the test model) was also a blowback design with sheet-metal stamped receiver, but there the similarities ended. The bolt also telescoped the barrel, but it was a striker-fired weapon with the striker cocked on the rearward stroke of the bolt. There was an investment-cast muzzle brake, bayonet-connected to the muzzle, which at the same time performed the tasks of the gasodynamic rate of fire retarder, bolt cocking device (inspired perhaps by the PM-63 Rak) and forward return spring attachment point. The sight was of a cruciform shape, rotating on an axis set perpendicular to the bore. The four plates of the cruciform were fitted with a notch for 50 meters and three peep holes for aiming at 100, 150 and 200 meters. The front sight was screwed into a drift-adjustable dove-tailed holder. The trigger mechanism used a two-stage trigger – enabling to fire single shots or burst according to the length of the trigger pull (as in PM-63 Rak).

The receiver was constructed from both stamped and machined components, spot-welded or welded together. The test model had a wooden lower receiver with two pistol grips – to be replaced by an integral plastic lower in the series-manufactured ones. The two grips combined with sliding wire stock were to facilitate accurate burst firing.

The design was made fully 9x19mm convertible by using a universal magazine and bolt face, by simple exchange of the barrel. In reality, only the 9×18 Makarov model was ever built and tested.

In 1975, test models of both designs were tested in Radom. The test minutes stressed the high efficiency of the R-75-IIs gas-dynamic retarder, enabling the rate of fire to be reduced to 635 rpm – deemed perfectly effective for such a weapon.

Radom R-75-II

Caliber: 9x18mm Makarov
Muzzle velocity: 313 mps (1,029 fps)
Barrel length: 150 mm (5.9 inches)
Sighting radius: 269 mm (10.6 inches)
Length, stock retracted: 363 mm (14.3 inches)
Length, stock extended: 590 mm (23.2 inches)
Weight, empty: 1880 g (4.14 lbs)
Magazine capacity: 15 and 25 rounds
Rate of fire: 635 rpm

R-81

Despite the encouraging results of the R-75-II trial, it was the other R-75, the R-75-I, that was selected for further development. Some of the rejected prototype’s ideas (namely the dove-tailed front sight, and four-position sight flip) were carried on to the winning proposition, which was deemed better suited for mass-production and adoption. The folding stock was replaced by the sliding butt of the R-75-II, fitted with a folding metal butt-plate in the PM-63 Rak tradition. The stock struts were now made of round bars, sliding through the stock hinge, dropping and getting latched upon extending. The extended and latched stock was oblique to the axis of the bore, enabling the shooter to use the sights placed low on the receiver. The stock latch positioned inside the receiver required extension of the receiver – which was used to provide it with a thicker rubber pad.

As a result of further development, in 1981 a test-series of 10 R-81s (pm wz¢r 1981) chambered for the 9×18 Makarov were ordered for testing. As a result, another batch of 20 was ordered with a different handguard, now sporting a folding fore grip in the PM-63 Rak tradition. At that point a suppressor was also designed for the new SMG and an external thread was added to the muzzle of the barrel extended because of that development from 150 mm to 165 mm.

The R-81 retained the Skorpion-style button cocking handles. These were later replaced by more extending ones due to problems with cocking the weapon in winter gloves. Button cockers were replaced by the ones shaped like the original plastic ones – but machined out of steel for durability.

Vibration during shooting trials caused the one-piece receiver connecting bolt to crawl out, despite the springing tab, cut from the bolt’s side. This was thus replaced by a two-piece one, with two concentric bolts, one within the other, inserted from either side and blocking each other – just like PPSh 41 receiver hinge pin, but of course much smaller in diameter. After the tests, the receiver was ordered to be made of thicker gauge of steel – but excessive flexibility of the receiver remained the number one problem of the Glauberyt ever after, right until the PM-98 radical modification.

After the specified amendments were made, the submachine gun was adopted by the Polish Army and security forces as pistolet maszynowy wz.1984 (PM-84), and ordered into mass-production about 1985 – but tooling and preparation for the initial series (serialed in “PP” – like Prototype Pistol – range) production took several years to complete. At that time a special modification for the internal security anti-terrorism unit was prepared, fitted with a suppressor and a 1st generation laser sight, not much smaller than the gun itself. The first complete guns were manufactured as late as 1990, which sealed their fate effectively. Despite positive test results and favorable reviews, the mass-production of the PM-84 never happened. A feeble attempt at conquering the civilian market was made with the semiautomatic-only version, called the Semi-Automat, but restrictive gun licensing policies killed that initiative and nobody abroad was interested in such a weapon chambered for the 9 mm Makarov.

The overthrowing of Communism gave an additional boost to the already discussed and prepared move of upgrading the personal-defense caliber to 9mm Luger. In 1992, a decision was made to introduce the 9mm Luger as a military caliber and seek a modern, polymer-framed handgun with companion submachine gun in the new caliber. The PM-84 project was shelved for good.

PM-84P

In its original concept, the R-75-I was to be the dual-caliber firearm. This was still a viable option at the time of the R-81, but only one 9×19 barrel for the 30 R-81s was made, as after Martial Law was declared in Poland by the hard-line Communists on December 13, 1981, all export contracts to the countries outside the Soviet zone of interest became a matter of fantasy. Besides, all the 9×19 ammunition at that time had to be imported, as its domestic production at Mesko was only complemented, and early experiments were conducted with it not earlier than 1983, with mass-production starting in 1991. So, when changes were made to the receiver, magazine and magazine well, nobody seemed to care if these modifications prevented shooting 9mm Luger. To make it dual-caliber again meant some degree of re-designing anyway, so a decision was made to abandon it altogether and re-design the PM-84 completely, this time basing it on the larger round.

ZM Lucznik’s management pre-empted the strike, starting the re-design as early as 1991, on its own initiative, and – not at all typically for the Radom factory – with their own money.

In 1992 when a decision was made to adopt 9x19mm and start developing a plastic-framed handgun (which led to adoption of the Wist-94 pistol), Radom was already able to bid a replacement for the PM-84 in the form of the PM-84P, a redesign of the older submachine gun.

Adding the P (for Parabellum, as the 9mm Luger round is called 9mm Parabellum in Poland) in the model name was a very modest token of what the change really meant. The redesign was complete, and thorough. Some changes were made to cater for the more powerful round, some to facilitate manufacturing. Most of the internal parts of the mechanism were left alone and are completely interchangeable between the two guns, but some parts had to be re-dimensioned, then other re-shaped to fit those re-dimensioned. The bolt had to be made larger and heavier, and so also the receiver and pistol grip, housing the larger magazine. Unfortunately, the magazine catch was among the few parts left alone, which was a dire mistake. The magazine catch was a temporary fix made overnight while building the R-81 prototypes, and left untouched later on, because it worked well with the 9×18 Makarov magazine. The design of that catch is truly horrible: it’s safety-pin style spring is impaled on the grip plates screw, which forces the shooter to set it anew with every thorough cleaning of the weapon. The screw in question is totally unsupported by any metallic surface – in the field, this part of the grip was frequently chipped-off, especially in winter, when the plastic parts were frozen. As a result, the magazine catch was lost – and so was the magazine, and the weapon became useless unless the magazine was held in the magazine well by hand.

As the 9mm Luger was a much more powerful round, the older suppressor was too small. A new one was not designed so the external thread was eliminated. Dimensional changes needed in the sights were also used to simplify them and change the layout. In the PM-84 the rear sight was fixed, only the flip-blades were moving, while all zeroing work was done by screwing the front post up and down in a dovetailed front sight base. The new front sight base was fixed, and the front sight post only moved (screwed) up and down. The rear sight riveted axis was replaced by a micrometric threaded bolt – the flips could be rotated about it, and the thread could be rotated to move the sight laterally between the sight protectors. As the 9×19 had a much flatter trajectory, only two settings were needed between 50 and 200 meters, instead of four. The cruciform sight leaf was retained tough – it was patented by the factory and thus a source of royalties. The two redundant arms of the cruciform were used to put sight notches doubling the peep-holes set at 75 and 150 meters.

A sling eyelet was added to the front part of the receiver. This was a result of the creeping change in the tactical role of the PM-84P. The PM-84, as well as the earlier incarnations, the R-75-I and R-81, had only a bottom rear eyelet, behind the pistol grip, where a PM-63 style, single-point sling was fastened. No more points were needed for what was deemed a holster-carried firearm. The PM-84P, though, was not handy and small enough to enable the holster-carry, and so a two-point sling was issued for it, enabling it to be carried across the torso in combat, with holster being only a transport container.

In 1993 after the prototype tests, which indicated among others a higher rate of fire in spite of the heavier bolt (the ROF climbed from 600 to 640 rpm), the PM-84P was ordered and mass-production preparation begun.

Another police laser-sighted version appeared, this time with a much smaller laser, stored in the underbarrel-box, under which the folding fore grip, carried from the PM-84 into PM-84P, was fitted. Several, up to a dozen units of these laser-sighted Glauberyts were made for the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Before manufacturing began, the old-style small cocking handles were replaced by much larger ones that protruded up. Only then the Army adopted the new SMG as the pistolet maszynowy wz.1984P (PM-84P) and true manufacturing started. Even today, the PM-84P are a vast majority of the around 60,000 Glauberyts manufactured to this date.

PM-98

The experience of use by the late 1990s of the PM-84P by the military and police enabled the realization that the requirements of the two services are different enough to warrant replacing the “universal” PM-84P with a service-specific police model. In the military, the SMG is a PDW, Personal Defense Weapon as a secondary weapon for tank crews, artillery gunners, drivers, clerks and cooks. In police service though, it was a basic source of deadly force, a main armed combat asset in patrol or escort duties and in combat against organized crime. As such, it was not to be carried in the holster, but slinged at port arms, or across the chest, with stock extended. Its predecessor, the PM-63 Rak was also employed for tactical use by the Police – mostly for the lack of the better gun, as it dramatically lacked pinpoint accuracy. Most of the Police special unit Raks had their fore grips folded and duck-taped shut, because they were not durable enough. After the political changes, SMG tactics was based on Israeli practice, which never used the fore grip for the simple lack of it in a Uzi. The Police assault teams needed means to put tactical lights on their SMGs rather than folding foregrips.

The first attempt at making a better suited Police Glauberyt was the so-called Police PM-84P of 1996. The grip was replaced by barrel-shaped handguard, returning to the original 1975 idea. The useless flimsy buttplate (in most cases duck-taped open anyway) was replaced by the fixed, oval, at least three times larger one, fitted with a concave rubber overshoe protecting against slippage of the butt-plate from the shoulder. At the same time the profile of the front sight was changed from rectangular to a conical one.

This were steps in a good direction, but not far enough, and the Police did not order it. Soon, after the military order was completed and not renewed, in 1997, ZM Lucznik SA set about another thorough re-design, this time with Police requirements as a guideline. The result was the ultimate Glauberyt, the PM-98.

The stock was completely changed; even though save for the fixed buttplate it looks identical. The stock struts were replaced with twice the diameter, and more robust rods. The retracting knobs were re-modeled again. First, a left side knob was abolished, along with its corresponding slit in both the receiver and the receiver cover – only the ejecting opening remained on the left. The retracting knob was enlarged again, thinned, looking like a raised canine ear – and so (“Ucho” or The Ear) it was nicknamed by the operators. The fore end was similar to the 1996 proposal, but with a socket in the front of the handguard for the light or laser module. If neither tactical light nor laser sight is used, the socket is filled with a screw-in plug to protect it from debris (or if plug is lost – duck-taped over). The sling eyelets were re-organized again, this time to enable using a three-point sling. The PM-84P had both eyelets placed on the bottom, which caused the slinged weapon to turn upside down. To counter it, the PM-98 had all the sling eyelets welded on the upper part of the receiver.

But the point where police and military models parted forever was in the magazine catch design. The military PM-84P had a magazine catch situated at the heel of the pistol grip, forcing the operator to remove the empty with a supporting hand, and only then allowing to grip a fresh magazine from the pouch. This was perfectly OK for the shooting range but for Police it was far too slow in reloading. The new magazine catch enabled to use the pistol magazine change method, with shooting hand releasing the magazine, allowing it to free fall from the pistol grip, while supporting hand grabs a fresh clip, ready to ram it home and hit the bolt “ear” releasing it from the hold-open device. The inevitable price of all that lightning fast reload was that there are two, almost identical yet not interchangeable types of Glauberyt magazines at the same time – one for the Police PM-98, and one for the Military PM-84P. That wasn’t dangerous when both SMGs were used by separate services, but for a while it seemed like the Army would buy PM-98s to replace aging PM-84Ps, which were no longer manufactured after the original ZM Lucznik SA went bankrupt in 2000. The new company, Fabryka Broni Lucznik-Radom, which was taking up traditions of the original Radom factory (opened in 1927 to manufacture Polish Mauser carbines and later on the famous Radom pistol, known in Poland as the Vis wz.), only tooled up for the PM-98 and flatly refused to retrace its steps. This was one of the reasons behind the recent replacement of the worn-out Glauberyt in the Army with the 5.56mm Mini-Beryl.

BRS

For its virtual absence in the Polish civilian market, strictly regulated by the Police, the Glauberyt has an astounding variety of civilian-legal semiautomatic only versions. As early as 1990, the emerging PM-84 already had a variant like that, called the PM-84 Semi-Automat. Also the PM-84P had similar Semi-Automat version, and in 1999 a civilian-legal model of the PM-98 appeared, called the BRS-99. This differed much from the previous semiautomatics, though. Those earlier ones were nothing more than a military-finish SMGs with alternative trigger mechanism and words SEMI-AUTOMAT impressed on the side, while the BRS-99 was intended for the U.S. civilian market and so it sported a 16.1-inch barrel and an entirely different lower receiver to keep users from installing military selective fire ones.

Despite all this effort, the BRS did not become an export hit while a mere two dozen were sold on the civilian market in Poland. This was due to the intervention by the Radom District Police HQ, which contrary to the level of internal changes, labeled the BRS as a reworked fully-automatic weapon, which is against Polish gun laws. Later on, the same interpretation stifled the civilian-legal Beryl-IPSC rifle and any other attempt at manufacturing civilian versions of any AK-platform weapons.

Several of the civilian owners got into serious trouble over that matter, and thereafter only security companies were able to buy the BRS legally. In the death throes of the former Lucznik factory, sometimes these civilian guns sold to the security companies were mixed up from everything that was on hand. The author once shot a PM-84 Semi-Automat in 9×18, but fitted with the BRS (or PM-98) stock. Several shooting clubs licensed to train security personnel were also able to buy some of these guns and one of Warsaw’s clubs had an even stranger combination: a PM-84P emblazoned with SEMI-AUTOMAT in block capital letters on the side of the upper receiver, which came from the factory fitted with a selective fire lower.

The BRS, as a modification of the PM-98 design, were retained in the production program of Fabryka Broni (FB). Since 2001, FB is offering the FX Simmunition force-on-force mock combat gun, called the BRS-00, being a selective fire military and police training firearm. Before the advent of the fixed Simmunition BRS-00-FX, the FX conversion units for the Glauberyts were made by BUOS of Warsaw and FB. Having to convert a lethal-force weapon and using that for force-on-force training was found disconcerting by the officials responsible for training, and so an FX-only gun was introduced instead, to avoid possibly dangerous mistakes. The BRS-00-FX has a standard receiver, marked for the FX ammunition, with a lightened bolt inside, propelled by only one (left) of the two parallel return springs – and of course a different barrel, preventing a live round from being chambered, fired and exiting the restricted bore. All FX-specific parts are clearly marked with a coating of sky-blue paint.

PM-98S and PM-06

Soon after the PM-98 was introduced, the world has gone through a bout of Picatinny-fever, starting in 1994 with the introduction of the world’s first standardized accessory mounting rail, the Mil-Std 1913 or Picatinny Rail. Polish police also felt the urge to festoon all firearms with endless lengths of “ribs” and demanded a mounting rail to be incorporated into the design, to enable it to choose changing tactical lights and laser sights, instead of being married once-and-for-always to a specific unit fitting into the fore-end socket.

At the turn of the century, the renewed Fabryka Broni started to develop a series of Glauberyt knock-offs for the Army and Police Special Forces. At first it was not an unqualified success – quite the contrary in fact. One of these early attempts was the PM-98S (like “Szybkostrzelny”, or Fast Firing). This version was simplified by abolishing it’s rate of fire reducer, after which the rate of fire rose from 640 rpm to 770 rpm. What amounted to a serious sin of wasting ammunition in regular military service was a virtue of higher firepower for the SF people. The S variant (also known as the “Specjalny”, or Special) has a different front sight protector – a full enclosed ring instead of the military model’s protective wings. One of the S version models was fitted with a 16-inch barrel (possibly a first BRS left-over) with a flash hider from the Beryl rifle. This “Pinocchio” variant, as it was mockingly known (just like with Pinocchio from the children’s tale, its nose rose from the not entirely truthful promises) was in fact ordered by several units for evaluation, and had spawned a heir: a PM-06S with 250 mm long barrel, fitted with external thread for the B&T Impuls II muzzle suppressor.

After these experiments a second wave of SF Glauberyts came, this time with the rails. At first, in 2002, as was the case with the first Beryl rails, these were rather of the Weaver, than true Picatinny profile. Because of the problems with access to the cocking handle the rail itself was put on the high support bracket over the front sight, which after fitting an already high EOTech holosight gained it the nickname of “the Rhino.” The Rhino was a disaster as it was clumsy, unbalanced, and worst of all, it made the shooter stretch his neck high, and lean forward at the same time, close to the ejection opening and – especially with a suppressor on the muzzle – the powder fumes blowing right into his eyes. It wasn’t also healthy for the sight itself, exposing it for the knocks and muzzle blast. In 2004, the next model was introduced, this time with the rail welded to the rear top cover, behind the ejection opening. Most of the Rhino problems were thus solved – only to be replaced by the new ones. This time it was hard to cock the bolt with the rail in place and again the rail made the shooter stretch his neck – but now to the rear. The sight had to be installed on the extreme rear of the rail to clear fingers cocking the bolt, or the cocking handle itself, if the sight had a side-sticking clamping knob. After another two years this problem was addressed by altering the cocking handle again – this time it was bent flat to the side, and a full-length rail was welded on top of the cover.

This wasn’t the end, however, as the Fabryka Broni was not relenting in their pursuit of better Glauberyt. During the 2006 MSPO arms fair in Kielce, Poland, a new variant was unveiled, called the PM-06. Though basic design of the submachine gun remained unchanged, many of the annoying details were put right at last. The receiver cover was made of thicker gauge sheet metal, being stiffer and vibrating less during the shooting. The safety-selector lever was made ambidextrous, and most importantly, the stock was redesigned to allow the optoelectronic sight as the main one. The old model of the stock was sliding out and dropping at the hinge, after being extended fully. This was made to allow the shooter to use the low mechanical sights placed at the level of the receiver top cover. With the coming of the rail mounted red dot sight, the gun, and subsequently the sight’s optical axis, were far too high for comfort, forcing the operator to stretch his neck in order to see through the sight, destroying what little the extended wire stock-struts offered in the way of stock weld. Moreover, the old style stock had to be either extended all the way, dropped and locked, or collapsed all the way and offered no rest at all. This was no longer suiting the tactical doctrine: first, modern tactical shooting stance doctrine called for shooting on the move with a gun held directly in front of the operator, not sideways from the short stops – which was the main type of shooting at the time when the stock was designed. As a consequence, the stock was too long for comfortable use. Second, SWAT teams operated in bulletproof vests full-time, which made a stock all the more uncomfortably long. As a result, a new stock was designed allowing it to lock in three positions along the stock struts. This, coupled with extended sheet-metal guiding tubes at the sides of the PM-06 receiver gave the operators a degree of latitude in setting the length according to the tactical needs. It can be extended all the way, beyond the guiding tubes, dropped and locked as in the old stock design for open sights shooting, but also it can be extended half-way or two-thirds length and locked in a straight line, to allow shorter straight stock compensating for red dot’s height, and front stance and/or vest shooting.

The 30-Years War

The development of the Glauberyt took more than 30 years and the end is nowhere near in sight. The basic design is getting older and dropping more and more from contact with modern technology or tactical requirements for this kind of a weapon. Right from the start this meant-to-be-compact PDW submachine gun had no chance to lead the way towards modernity, as it was marrying ideas taken from two designs that were respectively a quarter of a century (Uzi) and 30 years old (Skorpion). The Glauberyt was thus at least two decades late at the time of its birth – better and more technological submachine guns were not able to shake this kind of a handicap.

Moreover, the quality of the 50,000 PM-84Ps making up a lion’s share of all Glauberyts ever manufactured, had left much to be desired. ZM Lucznik SA was undergoing a particularly bumpy period of transition while making these – and it shows much. The PM-98, manufactured by the re-born Fabryka Broni has gone a long way towards repairing the lost reputation of the Glauberyt, but these are only used by the Police, Border Guards and the military Special Forces. A limited amount was exported: 3,000 were bought by the Iraqi National Police and several dozen were sold to an Indonesian Special Police Unit. The 9×18 variant displayed at the 2005 MSPO fair was a prototype of the model offered to (rumors had it) the Ukrainian Police, but no contract was signed eventually.

Today, many of the Glauberyt SMG flaws have finally been ironed out, but ironically nobody seems to care any more, as the days of the submachine gun in both military and law enforcement service appear to be numbered – and even if they’re not, a better and more modern design should replace the Glauberyt. The sooner, the better.

Glauberyt Field Stripping Procedure: For Series PM-84P, PM-84P Semi-Automat, PM-98, BRS-99 and PM-06

Before starting to field-strip any firearm, clear, check and double check the firearm. During the field-stripping strive to maintain muzzle awareness and point your muzzle in a safe direction at all times.

To unload and clear the weapon, first detach the magazine (PM-84, 84P and derivatives: magazine catch is situated at the heel of the pistol grip, and has to be operated by the supporting hand; PM-98 and derivatives: magazine catch is situated at the side of the pistol grip, can be operated with the thumb of the shooting hand – provided it is a right one) and cycle the action several times with trigger finger indexed outside the trigger guard. The bolt can be latched open for chamber inspection by rotating the hold-open button up with the bolt retracted.

Upon clearing the gun allow the bolt to close and remove the receiver top cover by pushing forward on the side projections of the bolt bumper plate until they clear the horizontal leg of the inverted L-shaped channel in the cover latching projection, then lift the cover (rear end up), rotating until the front end clears the front sight base.

Detach the return spring unit by pressing the latching projections against the springs until they clear the horizontal leg of another L-shaped cutout, this time in the receiver, lift, ease out the compressed springs and withdraw the complete return unit (bumper plate with spring rods and springs) out of the receiver.

Retract the bolt all the way back and lift by the cocking handle(s).

Depress the barrel nut latch and rotate the nut. After two revolutions it will clear the latch and can be eased off. After the nut comes off, take the barrel out of the front of the receiver.

Disconnecting the lower receiver is the part of the routine field stripping procedure. In a PM-84/84P one has first to unfold the foregrip (press the latch button on the left side of the hinge and rotate the foregrip down) and retract the stock by one-third (press the latch button on the left rear and pull on the serrated parts of the stock rods) until the folded butt-plate clears the lower receiver. In PM-98 no preparations are needed. Press both pins (first inner, then outer) of the rear connecting bolt out of the receiver in opposite directions. Both pins are symmetrical and they can be assembled in either direction. After withdrawing the bolt, pull down the lower receiver by the pistol grip, and continue rotating it until the front of the lower receiver separates from the upper receiver.

The XVIII International Defense Industry Exhibition MSPO 2010, in Kielce, Poland, September 6-9, 2010, has confirmed the MSPO as one of the leading European defense trade fairs – and the one with exceptional value for the Polish defense industry and Armed Forces as well.

This year’s fair was attended by over 360 exhibitors from 30 countries, and visited by almost 14,000 visitors from all over the world, having an opportunity to see up-close what’s best and most modern in military equipment. As in the previous years, a companion logistics fair LOGISTYKA 2010 was held together with the MSPO, showing off uniforms, equipment and vehicles for internal security and fire services.

The MSPO opening gala has hosted Poland’s newly elected President, Mr. Bronislaw Komorowski, along with many defense and state officials. A national exhibition by a guest nation at the MSPO has been a tradition since the beginning of the new Millennium. This year’s MSPO guest nation was the United Kingdom and the exhibition, opened by Britain’s Minister for International Security Strategy, Mr. Gerald Howarth, MP, showcased defensive and security manufacturers. The UK’s defense export volume and value have recently catapulted it to No. 2 in the world preceded only by U.S.

After last year’s dramatic fire wrecking one of the exhibition halls on the eve of opening, this year the visitors were amazed to see a beautiful, modern, bright new structure replacing it, fitted with an outdoor stage integrated under the entrance vestibule where the gala opening took place.

The fair has traditionally aimed at somewhat heavier or more complicated equipment than small arms, but nevertheless many interesting firearms, both foreign and domestic, had their Polish premieres there.

Radon – Poland’s Objective Modular Combat Rifle

Without a doubt, the star of the show and the most important domestic-interest event was the first public presentation of the Polish Army’s objective Modular Small Arms System-5.56 (MSBS-5.56), now christened ‘Radon’ (from elementary radioactive Radon gas, Rn, atomic number 86) in accordance with the Polish periodic table prototype codenaming procedure. The Radon, a joint venture between Warsaw’s Military Technology University (WAT) and Fabryka Broni Lucznik-Radon was shown in both configuration combinations, i.e. classic (lock, stock and barrel, MSBS-K or now Radon-K) and bullpup (MSBS-B/Radon-B), of the already two generations of the rifle: the shooting Technology Demonstrators (1st Gen) and mock-up of the future ‘Final Look’ designs (2nd Gen). Target Radon in both configurations would be a system comprising of: Combat Rifle, Automatic Carbine (CQB weapon), Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR), Grenade Launching Rifle (fitted with under-barrel GLM module) and an Infantry Automatic Rifle (high capacity magazine-fed heavy-barreled support weapon). All of these are to offer 80-90% parts interchangeability. The 1st Gen TD is somewhat blocky and sketchy, but it was just a working model of the concept, while the 2nd Gen ‘Final Look’ offers a much more ‘High-Speed Low-Drag’ design.

The main component of a thus configured system is a 100% common upper receiver, which is to be mated with different barrel modules, lower receiver modules, and butt-stock (or butt-plate – according to the configuration) modules. The upper receiver in both 1st Gen and 2nd Gen is to be made of light alloy. Radon is totally ambidextrous, including fire control levers, magazine and bolt release buttons mounted on either side, as well as reversible bolt handle, ejection port cover and a truly reversible bolt, enabling the ejection direction to be changed in seconds without the use of tools and requiring no parts to be exchanged.

The lower receiver module has a magazine interface for the STANAG 4179-compatible (AR-platform) magazine. The choice of lower receiver module governs the configuration of the weapon, as it comes in two different versions: one with the classical folding buttstock interface and the other butt-less with multiple fire control group configurations possible (military selective with fully automatic and/or burst capability, and semiautomatic-only for the DMR and civilian-legal rifle). The Radon offers a choice of interchangeable barrel subassemblies with different length barrels complete with muzzle device, gas chamber, piston and locking chamber. Individual barrel modules differ in length and thermal capacity or contour (e.g. the IAR or DMR barrels). If a classic configuration lower is chosen, a butt-stock is attached with a choice of folding telescoping or fixed telescoping; both offering an adjustable cheek-piece capability. The bullpup lower can only accommodate a butt plate module, as governed by the weapon’s overall canard configuration.

The modular rifle fires the NATO-standard 5.56×45 round, fed from various plastic or metal magazines of different designs – provided they are AR-platform compatible. Additionally, it can be fed from a large-capacity drum and/or double drum magazines, dedicated to the IAR support weapon. For the future, a 7.62×51 NATO standard rifle round system is being considered.

Radons (in its 1st Gen, or TD guise) are currently undergoing a rigorous testing program aimed at achieving total reliability in various operational environments. As these demonstrators are still more of test appliances than weapons ready for issue, efforts are being made at enhancing their ergonomics and aesthetics. Part of that effort are the ‘Final Look’ mock-ups, a sneak-peek into the Radon’s future, offering a mature, elegant form of the Radon’s 1st Gen TD. These were designed by a team of eager young men from WAT and elsewhere, combining a rich knowledge of technology, industrial design, and SF combat experience, promising that the finalized Radon, expected to be accepted and manufactured within several years, could be a superb combat rifle.

Other Polish Rifles in Kielce

Other than Radon, the FB Lucznik-Radom also showed another batch of now seemingly endless line of modernized Beryl rifles. After many years of design stagnation, we can witness a veritable fountain of Beryl modifications rolled-out each year since 2007. This year’s novel features were a hinged receiver cover and a STANAG 4179 magazine adapter, as well as a Beryl-specific Beta C-Mag, a joint-venture between FB and Beta, Co. The beefed-up hinged receiver cover, coupled with a Picatinny rail welded on top of it to offer a semi-solid (5 mm gap at the hinge) same-level 1913 rail all along the top from the gas block to the top cover edge, cured the most cursed-upon by the Polish military ailment of the Beryl: being the necessity of re-zeroing the sights on the overhead rail after each field-stripping requiring the rail to be detached in order to open the receiver for routine maintenance. The AR-magazine adapter for Beryl required a minor re-shaping (opening to full rectangular shape) of the magazine well – which however is still capable of holding an AK magazine as well. The Beryl-specific Beta C-Mag has an AK-style feed-tower enabling it to hook into most 5.56mm AK rifles. There was also a brand-new .22 LR training rifle based on the Beryl rifle, possibly offered to the Army for basic firearms course training.

New Czech Army Rifle and SMG Displayed

Of the foreign premieres, those most interesting were centered at the booth of the Warsaw-based MK Szuster company. Mr. Krzysztof Szuster, the proprietor, has a long history of representing hunting rifles and scope manufacturers in Poland (including Blaser, Krieghoff, SIG-Sauer, CZ, Zeiss and Schmidt-Bender), but also ventures into the military market representing the brands’ military lines, as well as Accuracy International and Colt of Canada. This year his booth showcased the SIG 516/517 (true AR) system, but the really exciting and new items there were the new Czech military long arms with old names:, the CZ 805 Bren and the Scorpion 3A1 9mm SMG.

The CZ 805 won the controversial Czech Army rifle tender in February, 2010, and is as of this writing (December 2010) in series-production, with first units already delivered to the Czech Army’s Rapid Reaction element. It is another Central European iteration of the modular rifle concept available in three different barrel lengths (Combat Rifle, CQB Automatic Carbine and DMR) and intended to be chambered in three principal calibers: 5.56×45 NATO, 6.8mm Rem SPC and 7.62×39 Russian. The CZ 805 Bren A1, displayed in Kielce, was a 5.56mm Combat Rifle. So far, only the 5.56mm system is manufactured but the first prototypes shown in 2008 were of the 7.62mm version. The caliber-changing kit consists of a barrel, bolt head and interchangeable magazine-well of the lower receiver (somewhat akin to the MGI Hydra concept). There are three different magazine-well adapters so far, two for 5.56/6.8 magazines (one takes a CZ proprietary plastic clip interchangeable with HK G36 and the other holds the AR magazine, and a third one is for the plastic 7.62mm magazine that is not interchangeable with the vz.58 rifle.

Just as the 805 has nothing in common with its great World War II-era namesake – the joint Czech-British-designed Bren LMG – so is the Scorpion. There is no overlap whatsoever between the new Scorpion and the former trademark small Czech SMG, be it in original .32 ACP caliber or the recently revived 9mm Luger variant. This is a hi-tech polymer-receiver SMG, like the HK UMP, but more along the lines of the MP5 but rather handier, shorter, better balanced and fitted with a much better stock. Atypically, this is not a CZ in-house design – but probably the first license built weapon there since the vz.24 Mauser 98 variant, even though still almost domestic. The new Scorpion, first known as LAUGO, was designed by Slovak engineer Mr. Jan Lucansky, then brought over to CZ and finalized. This is a very simple closed-bolt, hammer-fired blowback design, with just one movable part – the bolt, but still featuring a fully-ambidextrous 4-way fire control group (safe, single, burst, fully automatic), bolt hold-open device with an external release lever, as well as a pistol grip movable in a horizontal plane to adjust the trigger reach.

Rosomak

Polish-built, Finnish-designed KTO Rosomak (Patria Oy AMV) proves its mettle successfully in Afghanistan, spawning still new models and modifications with various specialist equipment, including amongst others a casevac and self-propelled automatic mortar vehicles. Rosomak, much maligned when first purchased, eventually proved itself one of the most successful licenses ever implemented by the Polish defense industry.

The Rak is a Polish-designed 120mm automatic mortar turret system capable of being fitted to multiple tracked or wheeled chassis. Last year its prototype was displayed on the MPG tracked carrier. This year, the first series-manufactured system was installed in a Rosomak, giving a Rosomak-carried mechanized infantry a bigger punch with a 15 km reach.

The SSG 08 is a new marksman bolt-action rifle intended to replace the aging Austrian sniper legend Scharfschützengewehr 69, or SSG 69; a weapon still shooting true and in demand world-wide despite 40 years since its debut.

The new rifle has nothing whatsoever in common with its famous predecessor, except maybe for a cold-hammered free-floating barrel and the fact that the magazine is of an exchangeable type. The new SSG 08 is actually a further development of the SSG 04 developed four years previously and, contrary to the martial name, the SSG 04 was more of a hunting rifle than a military or law enforcement weapon despite the all black furniture and a Harris bipod capability. Technically, both the SSG 04 and 08 are almost identical, and both stem from yet another of Steyr’s hunting rifles line; the Pro Hunter. The difference between the two is mostly in the furniture, which is side-folding aluminum for the SSG 08. The receivers and magazines are identical and perfectly interchangeable. This was proven true during testing at the shooting range at Kleinraming, Austria where the world famous Steyr-Mannlicher GmbH is now located. Both SSG 04 and 08 rifles do shoot – and very precisely at that – with exchanged bolts and magazines. The other difference was a new muzzle device; but recently the SSG 04s are also available fitted with the new model muzzle brake.

Safe Bolt System

In contrast to the SSG 69, the new rifles are built around the modern Safe Bolt System actions, deemed one of the safest bolt-action systems available worldwide. It’s been over-engineered to the point of providing absolute safety to the shooter even with catastrophic failures brought about by brass failure or shooting with an obstructed bore. The massive bolt head not only supports the case head, it encompasses it. Along the bolt a long, spiral gas-ditch is cut, also serving as a scrub-groove, or space into which debris can fall from the bolt-way in the receiver to avoid hindering the bolt.

Both the SSG 04 and SSG 08 feature the same roller-style manual safety, patterned after the earlier Steyr hunting rifles. The safety control is a plastic roller set on an axis perpendicular to the bore and placed on top of the stock, behind the bolt, within easy reach by the firing hand thumb. The roller is easily turned, but at the same time, protected against accidental releasing from SAFE to FIRE. There are three safety settings: FIRE, SAFE and LOCKED. Each is marked with a highly-visible mark. At LOCKED, everything is shut off, – neither bolt handle nor trigger can be moved. At SAFE, the bolt can be handled and the rifle can be loaded and unloaded, but the trigger mechanism is blocked. Only at FIRE can the trigger can be pulled and the cartridge fired.

Tailor-Suited to the Customer’s Demand

The Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 08 is obviously an important step towards creating an optimal precision rifle; not only for military or police marksmen, but also for civilian precision-shooting competitors as well. The folding stock offered also on the civilian market offers them at long last the opportunity to fit the long rifle into a somewhat shorter case, better suited to the average trunk width. However, even with the longest, 600-mm (23.62 in.) barrel, the folded rifle would be under 1 meter (3 ft) long. Only with the precision-crafted aluminum furniture can one trust putting a folding buttstock on a precision rifle. The butt itself is fitted with a variable-height monopod, and both the cheek-piece and butt plate are fully adjustable in both height and angle – all that comes as a standard feature. Additionally, the pistol grip is fitted with recently fashionable exchangeable portions, adjusting the size and shape to the shooter’s hand. The SSG 08 has a pistol grip with exchangeable front and back straps. There are three of each in the set, as well as an insert to plug the internal cavity, converting it into a handy compartment for small items like spare batteries for reticle illumination.

Contrary to the SSG 69 with its rotating Schönauer-type exchangeable magazine, the SSG 08 has a simple staggered row box-type magazine for 10 rounds (or 8 rounds of .300 Winchester Magnum). These are fully interchangeable with 10-round magazines offered earlier for the SSG 04 or Pro-Hunter – but will not take their shorter magazines.

Today, accessory rails govern the usefulness of a rifle and the SSG 08 addresses this quite admirably. The European variant has a 280-milimeter long UIT-style bipod slot rail on the bottom, and there are four strong-points at each side for bolting additional shorter Picatinny-compatible rails on the sides. There are two rails (one shorter, one longer) in the set and four points each side to attach them, which gives plenty of room for placing needed extras along the fore-end.

There is also a Picatinny rail for sight attachment on top of the receiver. The shorter barreled version features an extended monolithic receiver with an extra-long Picatinny rail on top, reaching the front limit of the fore-end. This type of receiver (even forged out of aluminum instead of steel like in SSG 08) would make the weight excessive with the longer barrels, so the long-barreled model has a different receiver along the classic lines with a shorter rail on top.

This rifle is fitted as a standard with a US-made Versa-Pod bipod, which can be mounted using two alternating methods: either with an integral bipod mounting pin imbedded into the front part of the fore-end and protruding under the barrel, or – using a special adapter – anywhere along the UIT rail slot in the fore-end’s bottom. The rifle is delivered with an abundance of extras and add-ons, including a full-length plastic case and ergonomics kit.

Testing

During tests at the company’s shooting range in Wiener Neustadt near Vienna, the accuracy was very impressive. This rifle shoots straight. A big leap towards that impressive accuracy is the barrel manufacturing method: these barrels are cold-hammered on a mandrel. This makes the metal internal surfaces at the same time harder and smoother than after traditional rifling, making it less corrosion-prone and enhancing the friction-resistance. All of these make for a longer barrel life. Some people say that hammering barrels is not a good idea, that cold-hammered barrels are strained and therefore unpredictable. These people should have a go with this rifle – we did and the results speak for themselves.

The SSG 08 is very handy, and can be tailor-suited to the shooter, but one should take care not to overdo it. Before one starts to loosen the myriad of screws keeping all the jig-saw parts together, one should read the manual first and consider the influence of each adjusted parameter on the accuracy. This would be a long read (the manual is a thick, very nicely edited book), but it would help to spare oneself an embarrassment. At the least, don’t try to adjust more than one thing at the time. It would take much time to find the factory settings anew.

The receivers of the SSG 04 and SSG 08 are identical, but the furniture is different – classic rifle stock with no separate pistol grip for the SSG 04, and much better handling folding butt aluminum furniture for the SSG 08. The latter also offers better bolt handle and safety roller handling. The magazine is quite long, and the magazine well is rigidly mounted in the stock. The SSG 04 had a replaceable magazine sleeve, enabling it to alternate between use of 10-round and also the shorter 5-round magazines. Both magazines, short and long, are held in the weapon by small plastic hooks integral with the magazine bottom, and hooked into recesses in the magazine well (or magazine well sleeve) mouth. The SSG 08 has a long magazine well, and therefore it would not take the short magazines. Actually, to be more precise, it will take the magazine, but the cartridges in it would be halfway down the magazine well, out of reach of the bolt.

The SSG 04 has a Harris bipod and the new SSG 08 has standardized the Versa-Pod model. This looks like a move in the right direction, especially with the addition of the bipod pin in the fore-end face. It moves the bipod axis closer to the bore and the rear monopod stabilizes the rifle even further. The only annoying thing with this stock is the ultra-stiff swivel catch springs. The sling swivels are ambidextrous and can be mounted on either side of the rifle, but the springs keeping them there are so stiff that it takes a considerable amount of hard labor with both hands to tear the swivel out in order to replace it – and then some more to hammer the thing against the pressure of the catch again. But, you only change it once in a lifetime so that’s really quite a desperate attempt at finding something (anything) fundamentally wrong with this rifle. The Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 08 is one of the best tactical rifles money can buy. A lot of money, to be sure, especially as the dollar plunges against the Euro making the price skyrocket up to $5,899. But there’s plenty to be had for that money, and this is a really cost-effective buy, with many extras included in the price. The metal stock is a unique design, very functional, and a rock-solid hinge is able to withstand a great amount of abuse. For handling ease in transport it can only compete with bull-pups – while offering much better handling in firing trim.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of change for Poland; shaking off the results of 45 years of Communist rule. Polish small arms development tried to cope with the challenges of modernity, while interacting with profound political and economic changeover of the era. By taking several far-fetched blind bets, the domestic small arms industry was able to cobble up a weapon system more or less capable of satisfying requirements at that memorable time. The problem was that history took such a fast pace that the requirements kept changing faster than the rifle itself.

Warsaw Pact enforced small arms standardization to a degree never dreamed of by the NATO STANAGs. In the ammunition field the Soviet rule was complete and unwavering – Soviet cartridge types were the only ones that Warsaw Pact countries’ martial small arms could fire. There was but one concession in that: the Czech Skorpion SMG chambered for the .32 ACP. This was for a long time a painful thorn in the Pact’s side, and finally in 1982 a “proper” Skorpion vz.82 model in 9mm Makarov was prepared – but then never manufactured because the arm itself was already considered obsolete at the time. More concessions were made in small arms manufacture: Czechoslovaks, Poles and Hungarians were allowed to have their own handguns and SMGs, and the Czechs even had their own rifle and GPMG. All of these were to be on the verge of extinction, however, with the coming standardization of the 5.45mmx39 M1974 ammunition, and matching small-arms system, consisting of AK-74 rifle (with its folding butt versions, the AKS-74 and AKS-74U carbine) and the RPK-74 LMG (with a folder sub-variant RKPS-74). East Germany and Bulgaria dutifully acknowledged Moscow’s dictate and footed a traditionally outrageous bill for the AK-74 license, but Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia opted for their own rifles in the new caliber. Of these, Poland chose to go the most ambitious way, claiming her industry capable not only of making its own rifle and carbine (codenamed Tantal and Onyks), but also the ammunition (codenamed Cez). These ambitious goals were set with mostly one purpose in mind: no more Soviets muzzling export sales the way they suppressed the license-built AKM sales, denying export licenses on “recipient’s possible political instability” grounds, only to sell their own rifles at discount prices a month later or so. If the Polish industry would have a rifle of their own design, shooting their own ammo, the license-right holders would have nothing to say about the export – at least on the license rights grounds.

The Tantal project initiated in 1981 led shortly thereafter to a functioning prototype of the wz.81 Tantal rifle – but as it turned out, the privilege of having an indigenous rifle called for many more years of hard work before it was finally fit for service. By 1989, when Tantal was at long last ready for introduction, both People’s Republic of Poland and the whole Warsaw Pact were on the brink of collapse. The General Staff’s ambitious plans to replace the 7.62 x39 weapons with domestic 5.45mm rifles stood no chance of fulfilling at that time. Despite that, both projects pressed on – and even a third one was initiated, when Precision Mechanics Institute with ZM Dezamet of Nowa Deba commenced work on modern bullet trap rifle grenade systems codenamed Fosforyt.

The outcome of the June 4, 1989 election made it clear that Poland wanted neither communism nor the Warsaw Pact any more. At first, the path to NATO seemed a long and arduous one with the Soviet Union still waiting for Yeltsin, and 40,000 Soviet troops still stationed in Poland, it seemed that the best thing possible under these circumstances would be some kind of neutrality, with maybe a distant hope to join NATO sometime in the far future. Plans were afoot to use the defense industry left over from the Communist times to achieve a position similar to pre-war Czechoslovakia: one of an “arms purveyor to the Third World” where Polish small arms enjoyed a reputation for good quality at reasonable prices. The Radom Lucznik factory was at that time still capable of manufacturing 70,000 rifles and 5,000 pistols per year, far more that the Polish Army – even if counting 400,000 soldiers at that time – was able to utilize. Export seemed the only way to save the factory, but for a chance to secure the more lucrative contracts, Polish industry had to go beyond the Soviet-influenced part of the world. The only way to get these was to offer models chambered for Western ammunition. That’s why Radom’s R&D Center (Osrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy, OBR) started their first serious conversion programs, after the 1970s attempts at re-chambering the PM-63 for 9mm Luger. Now, in 1989, the OBR started to develop the PM-84P (Glauberyt SMG chambered for 9×19) and Tantal/Onyks variants chambered for 5.56×45 SS109. The ‘export Tantal’ was to achieve 90% part interchangeability with basic wz.88 Tantal rifle. Design for the 5.56mm wz.1991 Tantal rifle was ready by 1991, and a year later a 5.56mm wz.1992 variant of the Onyks carbine was also ready. Three prototypes of the former and five of the latter model were manufactured and exhibited during the 1992 MTB Arms Fair in Sopot. Unfortunately, that was all, as later on the program was suspended for three years because of lack of money to buy enough military-grade 5.56mm ammunition for further testing.

Turmoil All Around

All the while, this part of Europe was undergoing an intensive overhaul in both political and economical plane, actuated by both domestic and foreign influenced factors. On February 25, 1991 an agreement was signed in Prague to suspend the military cooperation within the Warsaw Pact as of March 31, 1991. On July 1, 1991 the political structures of the Pact were dissolved, too. During the night of August 18/19, Gennady Yanayev staged a die-hard Communists coup in Moscow. The Yanayev putsch failed because of the overwhelming sentiment of the Muscovites led by the then president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. He led to the eventual suppression of the coup and then used it to wrench the remnants of power from the hands of the last President of the whole USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. The process leading to dissolving of the Soviet empire was crowned by the December 9, 1991 Viskuly agreement abolishing the USSR, and replacing it with a loosely-cut structure called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The new CIS started the withdrawal of the Soviet forces garrisoned abroad, including the Northern Group stationed in Poland. The last Russian Army soldier left Poland on September 17, 1993, right on the anniversary of the Soviet back-stabbing invasion in 1939.

All through this time the Central European countries repeatedly announced their readiness to join Western military and political structures to shrug off the last ties with the period of the Soviet dominance. The first time NATO responded to that was in March 1992, in Warsaw, when NATO Secretary General, Manfred Wörner declared that, “NATO doors are open for you.” It took almost two more years before in October 1993 the Pact launched the Partnership for Peace program, duly promulgated by the January 1994 NATO summit in Brussels. From that point in time on, the future NATO-partnership for ex-Warsaw Pact countries was granted. With that, the fate of Tantal was finally sealed.

Like Father, Like Son

The 5.56mm wz.91 Tantal rifle and wz.92 Onyks carbine did not differ much from their 5.45mm counterparts, or “parents.” Basically, the most remarkable changes were different magazines and all black furniture, with longitudinal AK-74 style bulges on handguards. Black plastic furniture, including plastic magazines, became a standard at that time, replacing the picturesque medley of tans and oranges of the early Tantal. Similar black all-plastic furniture was also fitted to the last batches of the AKMS made in Radom. The reason for introduction of the plastic magazines in all three calibers (7.62, 5.45 and 5.56) was a prosaic one: Wifama of Lodz, traditional manufacturer of sheet-metal magazines for the Polish small-arms manufacturers have gone bankrupt, and magazine manufacture had to be started somewhere else and possibly use some different, cheaper, technology. A different round brought a slight increase in muzzle velocity (Tantal wz.91: 900 mps vs. 880, Onyks wz.92: 710 mps vs. 700) and energy (wz.91: 1,620 vs. 1,316 J, wz.92: 1,010 vs. 857 Joule) ratings.

Apart from that aesthetical modernization, the only few really new features were brought about in accessories for the Tantal and/or future 5.56mm rifle. The Industrial Optics Center (Przemyslowe Centrum Optyki, PCO) in Warsaw designed prototype optical (LK-4 and LD-6), collimating (CK-1), laser (WL-1) and NV (PCS-5 Gabro) sights for the new rifle family.

The 5.56mm Project is Reborn

Under the PfP, Poland signed an Individual Partnership Program with NATO stipulating that the country would join the Pact by the end of decade. Therefore, the General Staff started several radical reforms in hardware acquisition politics. In small arms ammunition all post-Soviet calibers were replaced with Western equivalents – the new intermediate rifle ammo was to be the 5.56×45, replacing both 7.62×39 and 5.45×39. The former was still used in many units, and there were billions of rounds stored, so the M43 ammo was now considered Limited Standard, while the 5.45mm was rendered obsolete overnight, manufacture closed, and Tantal rifles were to remain in the units only until meager ammunition stocks lasts; and then replaced with either new 5.56mm rifles or the AKMS, whichever was available. At the same time two crash programs were initiated: one codenamed Granulit at the ZA Mesko SA in Skarzysko-Kamienna, to replicate the 5.56mm SS109 round, and the other, codenamed Beryl at ZM Lucznik SA in Radom, to design both an assault rifle and automatic carbine chambered for that ammunition. At the same time, the PCO in Warsaw was ordered to recalibrate their range of optical and optoelectronic sights according to ballistic data of the new round. Finally money was found for ammunition to finish testing of the wz.91/wz.92 system, which was chosen as a base upon which to design the 5.56mm Beryl rifle system. The testing proved that the proposition was viable, but the new rifle needed a stouter butt and stronger receiver to better withstand repeated rifle grenade firing with a more powerful cartridge.

As early as January, 1995, the Tactical and Technical Requirements document was prepared for the new rifle by the ZM Lucznik SA, calling for “assault rifle chambered for the NATO-standard 5.56mm cartridge, effective at ranges up to 600m against troops and lightly armored vehicles” – the latter meaning that the rife grenade capability was again requested – and separate “short automatic carbine of smallest possible size, intermediate between assault rifle and submachine gun, chambered for NATO-standard 5.56mm cartridge, effective at ranges up to 400m against troops and lightly armored vehicles.”

The TTR required that Beryl would:

• fire both 5.56mm SS109 (STANAG 4172) and the older M193 ammunition;
• have a trigger mechanism capable of single, burst (three rounds) and cyclic fire;
• fire both NATO 22mm boom inner diameter and Polish Fosforyt rifle grenades;
• be capable of attaching optic and optoelectronic sights of the 5.56mm modernized PCO family (CK-3 collimating, LKA-4 optical, CWL-1 optics with laser and PCS-6 NV)

The overall length of the Beryl with butt extended was not to exceed the limit of 944 mm – the AKM heritage still ruling the size of the rifle racks in barracks and vehicles. The latter limit was used to extend the barrel from 423 to 457 mm by replacing the Tantal’s grenade launching muzzle attachment with a much simpler and shorter one screwed and pinned upon extended barrel. Unfortunately for longer-limbed shooters, the stubby butt was left at the same length.

On April 19, 1995 a contract 35/UBR/95 was signed between the Ministry of National Defense and Lucznik in Radom, stipulating that the manufacturer would finish the design, initiate the manufacturing, furnish and test 11 prototypes of the two weapons (rifle and carbine), finish the qualification testing, prepare the blueprints, manual, instructional posters – all within just 9 months. The short term suggests the extent to which the ‘new’ weapon would replicate the Tantal.

The deadline was very short indeed, and each petty problem would endanger it. Indeed, it had to be extended until December 20 because of the problems with a timely delivery of the Israeli TAAS ammunition imported for testing. After the ammo had finally been delivered and cleared customs, initial qualification testing was performed in Radom between December 1 and 15, 1995, after which the initial batch was handed over to the Military Ordnance Technology Institute in Zielonka near Warsaw, where testing was continued. The final minute listed several minor modifications, due to be introduced until January 31, 1996. On May 20, 1996 the Ministry deemed both new rifle and carbine fully compliant with the TTR, following which on August 13, 1996 another contract was signed between the MoND and Lucznik for pilot batches (18 rifles and 6 carbines) to be delivered by January, 1997. After these were delivered on January 20, Lucznik started to manufacture components for the series-production. On March 20, 1997, the Beryl rifle and carbine were introduced into the inventory of the Polish Army as the “5.56mm karabin szturmowy wzór 1996 Beryl” (5.56mm M1996 Beryl Assault Rifle) and “5.56mm karabinek automatyczny wzór 1996 Mini-Beryl” (5.56mm M1996 Mini-Beryl Automatic Carbine), along with Fosforyt rifle grenades and PCO sight family.

Beryl – The First 10 Years

Despite the Zaklady Mechaniczne Lucznik SA going bankrupt and being liquidated in 2002, the 5.56mm wz.1996 Beryl assault rifle was still manufactured for the Polish Army. Out of the ruins of the ZM Lucznik SA a new company emerged, using the pre-war name of Fabryka Broni w Radomiu (Radom Arms Factory) together with the triangular FB logo replacing the Communist era Works 11 logo of ’11 in oval’ cartouche. The demand for its smaller twin brother, the wz.96 Mini-Beryl automatic carbine was initially rather far from overwhelming, to say the least. Frankly speaking, the Tantal and Beryl are distinguished only by an extended barrel in different caliber, a 5.56mm magazine, new buttstock and handguard. For the Beryl, a new optical sight attachment support was devised as an interface between the new rifle and the PCO’s sighting devices family. This sight rail, called Podstawa Optycznych Przyrzadow Celowniczych (Optical Sight Mounting Interface), or POPC for short, was attached over the receiver, instead of the customary Kalashnikov’s side rail.

A cold-forged, hard-chrome lined 457 mm (18 inch) barrel had six grooves, right hand twist, of the universal 228 mm (9 inch) pitch, enabling to use both SS109/M855 NATO standard or older M193 ammunition. Up to this date, the Polish Army didn’t have an opportunity to use that feature, as the Polish 5.56x45mm ammunition (RS steel-cored ball and SM tracer) are fully SS109/L110 compatible. In view of the recent deployment of the Polish troops to Chad, where their logistical support would be provided by the French, it would be an interesting opportunity to test the Beryl’s ‘universal-pitched’ barrels in actual firing the M193 ammunition, as France still has the M193-only FAMAS F1 rifle as their basic infantry weapon. The muzzle device combining flash hider, rifle grenade spigot and muzzle compensator is much shorter than the Tantal’s and it is permanently fastened (pressed onto and secured with pins) to the barrel. The actual muzzle of the muzzle device is threaded to attach a blank firing attachment.

The receivers are differing with small details only. The stock hinge was beefed up and modified to take a new model stock, fitted with the POPC anchor point, and riveted with an additional third rivet to make up for stronger ammunition.

The ash-poker buttstock of the Tantal was dispensed with in the Beryl and replaced by a much more elegant twin tube design resembling the Galil stock. It folds to the right side of the receiver, just like in Tantal. The stock struts were initially (until 1999) covered with shrinking plastic tubes, giving much better thermal insulation, both from cold in the winter and – as painfully realized at the beginning of the Polish troops deployment in Iraq – from the heat as well. The two tubes are connected with a steel buttplate covered with a thick rubber shoe. The stock latch is much improved upon as compared with the Tantal. The new model latch was copied from the Swiss SIG SG-550, which also influenced the G36 stock hinge. The stock is no longer positively latched when folded; in Beryl one does not have to press the button to extend the stock – all one has to do is grab and pull, or give it a slap with left hand.

The POPC sight rail is one of the most extraordinary points of the Beryl rifle, being complicated to the point of denying the very purpose of its existence. It is attached in a very stable way by inserting two front prongs into the grooves milled at the sight base and latching the rear end with an eccentric latch over the special pin provided on the stock hinge. Unfortunately, the POPC was fitted with PCO’s own proprietary rail interface, which precluded mounting any aftermarket sight. As a further point of interest, the PCO sights had no means of moving the aiming mark. To zero the weapon, it was the POPC that got fitted with internal, eccentric controls for windage and elevation, going back to the times of the Civil War-vintage Malcolm Telescopic Sights with its sight base micrometric regulation. These were obviously designed by some dyed-in-the-wool artillerymen, the scales being marked in mils. This was definitively not a user-friendly design, requiring as many as two tools to set (a flat screwdriver and a hexagonal wrench) and requiring fast mathematics from the poor guy trying to zero his rifle. And he had to constantly re-zero it after each field stripping, as one had to remove the whole contraption any time the weapon was cleaned. Additionally, it was only zeroable to one and only distance at a time – there were no stadia signs provided at the sighting mark.

All of these drawbacks were initially hidden, as POPC and optical sights on a mere assault rifle were few and far between in the Polish Army. But after Poland joined NATO and started to implement NATO procedures and take part in overseas missions, this was to change rapidly. Starting with the first Polish contingents to the ISAF in Afghanistan (March, 2002) and Iraq (as of May, 2003), the troops started to flood the General Staff with requirements for optical and red dot sights. Very soon it was obvious that the original POPC is not compatible with the Mil-Std 1913, or Picatinny rail attachments. Ironically, the POPC was early on designed to have one of both interfaces, but as the export plans for Beryl were shelved, so was the Picatinny-compatible POPC.

The handguard was modified to allow attachment of the 40mm wz.74 Pallad grenade launcher on each rifle. In Tantal, a special grenade launcher-handguard was required to attach one. Handguard, gas tube and upper handguard attachments were left as they were in late Tantals. The rifle is fitted for rifle grenade launching and Polish rifle grenades (275 gram ‘GNPO’ HEDP grenade, 320 gram ‘NGOs-93’ parachute flare, 220 gram ‘NGZ-93’ incendiary grenade and ‘NGD-93’ smoke) are all fired with a ball cartridge.

The only big difference in actual individual rifle kit is the cleaning rod is no longer carried under the barrel in the AK-way, but now carried in two sections inside the magazine pouch.

Improving the Beryl

There were some small modifications introduced during the production run of the Beryl rifle. The fire-selector retaining catch was reinforced to eliminate the unnerving tendency of switching the selector from ‘single fire’ to ‘continuous’ under vibration of the firing. Also, the selector switch got a second, perpendicular arm, to reduce the angle required to select the 3-round burst position. The soldiers were complaining that their thumbs were too short to switch the selector position to the 3-round burst without moving the firing hand from the pistol grip. Now it was finally possible to install a sector limiter for the selector lever – this taking the shape of a simple dimple pressed to the edge of the receiver cover, interacting with the new second arm of the switch lever. The receiver cover, previously notorious for separating from the receiver by recoil of the rifle grenade launching, was in 1999 latched down with introduction of the automatic latch, replacing the manually-actuated one, itself a carry-over from the wz.60 rifle-grenade launching rifle. This is the most annoying of the Beryl improvements as the cover still detaches most of the time a grenade is launched, but the automatic latch makes re-assembling a nightmare.

Also fitting the Beryl to modern firing techniques, utilizing the front grip, and ubiquitous red dot sights proved quite a challenge. The first attempt at putting the Picatinny interface on the rifle proved a disaster. The new 2nd Generation POPC was a short one, mounted solely on the sight base by a hand-screw. The sight rail was placed on top of an exceptionally high mounting bracket, enabling to use the mechanical sights at the same time – and in full spectrum, from 100 to 1,000 meters. Theoretically it was a great invention, enabling concurrent use of both sights, but the price for that was paid by the shooter, who had to raise his head very high to use the already very high-placed EOTech 552 sight that was selected by the Polish Army. The shooters quickly got their necks stiff and, as a result, red dot sights were long considered close to useless. Even that 2nd Generation POPC was – at best marginally – suiting only the short collimating sights. To put an optical or NV sight on the Beryl, a longer sight rail placing the sight closer to the shooter’s eye was required.

However, the honors of the first Weaver-compatible Beryl go to the short-lived civilian-legal version of the rifle, called first the Beryl-IPSC, and then Radom-Sport. Two Polish practical rifle shooters from Silesia, Mr. Michal Lubinski (now owner of the Works 11 Ltd. in Katowice) and Mr. Waldemar Lipinski, then on the factory shooting team roster, set forth a list of requirements that were duly incorporated in the rifle. One of these was incorporating a long, trough-shaped sight support bar, replacing the ordinary sight. At the rear end of the trough there was a folding peep hole to use with the folding front sight post as iron sights, and the upper edge of the trough had a Weaver profile, enabling to fix optical and red dot sights on top of the iron sight channel. Later on a similar, but shorter and permanently riveted bar was used in the Mini-Beryl carbine. The civilian rifle also used some of the technologies envisioned for the never-to-be-finished Polish Minimi look-alike, the wz.2003 LMG: a new bird-cage muzzle device, folding front sight base, and the bore of the longer barrel finished with a carbon-nitrogen (Tenifer) coating for better accuracy in lieu of the hard chrome. Radom-Sport was Poland’s first rifle with enlarged controls (safety lever finger shelf, P-shaped magazine release), larger ejection opening, new shorter (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25-round magazines fully compatible with the military 30-rounders). The demand from Polish and foreign shooters was overwhelming, but the Police soon suppressed the sales, by simply denying registration and export licenses. After several years of limbo, the factory finally surrendered and the Radom-Sport rifle is no longer offered.

Beryl wz.04

Cooperation with NATO and other modern armies during foreign deployments of the Polish Army revealed many drawbacks of the Beryl rifle, mostly inherited from the old and user-unfriendly AK-47, incompatible with modern infantry rifle usage doctrine and training regimens. The military establishment traditionally opposed any changes, but then soldiers take to tinkering, forming a large grass-root movement for the modernization of the Beryl rifle. The first Polish contingent in Iraq was totally unprepared for the climate: soldiers had to handle sun-baked rifles with their bare hands, which resulted in the common sight of white rags wrapped around buttstocks and pistol grips. The second contingent already had gloves and the picturesque pirate-gang look of the first contingent was gone – wiped-off with a steel fist by the 2nd Contingent’s CG, Maj. Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek. This was required to restore discipline, but as usual, some of his subordinates overdid it a bit and as a result many soldiers were charged with vandalizing military property for applying camouflage, fitting foregrips, Picatinny side rails and other sensible improvements. The spirit survived though, and many photos show the results of soldier’s ingenuity, including fitting a Rumanian AKM handguard with a forward grip, or Picatinny rails bought over the Internet or from US bases’ PX, bolted to the factory hanguards.

After two years of this shadow-boxing, as the 4th Contingent was preparing to go to Iraq in 2004, a new wz.2004 Beryl rifle was on display, fitted with several features taken from the short-lived civilian-legal model, including the bird-cage flash hider, P-handle magazine release, folding front sight base, extended safety lever and a new, translucent magazine. The latter was a disaster as the clear plastic was much more brittle than the black one, shiny, and offered much too much view of the ammunition supply for comfort. Most of these were later-on painted by the soldiers, leaving just a narrow stripe on the side to control the contents. But the most awaited feature of the wz.2004 Beryl was the handguard fitted with a fore grip and side Picatinny rails as well as the new 3rd Generation POPC sight rail. The foregrip used for the wz.2004 was simply another pistol grip, proving that the designer’s knowledge of the modern practical shooting techniques was nil, but even that was still a great improvement over the older model. The side rails were just bolted to the sides of the ordinary handguard with no reinforcements inside, so the rails had no required stiffness to work properly with laser sights. The 3rd Gen sight rail was a most welcome addition, though, being a streamlined version of the 1st Generation POPC, over-the-receiver, long sight rail, with Weaver attachment interface on top. The zeroing eccentrics were gone forever as the new sights had an all-internal regulation of the sighting mark. The new POPC was a cross between the old 1st Gen rail with the civilian-legal Radom-Sport trough-shaped sight bar. It was fitted in the same way as the old one – with prongs inserted into sight base slots and rear end latched on a POPC attachment pin on top of the butt hinge, but was itself a trough-shaped one, with Weaver slots on the upper edges. The new rail was rigid enough, but completely obscured the iron sights, so later on (2007) a new version (4th Gen) was prepared, with higher trough sides, enabling the iron sight to be used for distances of up to 600 meters – and this time finally with Picatinny slots on top. The new POPC is at last a fully usable and sensible design, of length sufficient to fix the EOTech 552 holo sight with the PCO’s MU-3 NV monocular at the same time, or replacing them with a large, 1.6 kg heavy, day-or-night CKW Bazalt thermal-imaging sight unit, also of the PCO pedigree.

In 2005, another version of the modernized Beryl was presented with a side-folding telescoping, 3-position stock of Radom’s own design. The same stock was proposed for the Military Police Mini-Beryl variant, but the MPs opted for a standard stock instead. In 2007, another two variants, presented at the Kielce MSPO fair, had US-made commercial (Leapers UTG) quad rail forends and 6-position folding stocks (one by TDi and one by Leapers).

In early 2008, still another modernized Beryl demonstrator was exhibited, known as wz.2007 – but this one is more of a marketing ploy than anything else. This is just a wz.2004 with a 4th Gen POPC and folding telescoping butt, uniformly sprayed light OG all over. The new magazine was finally opaque, not translucent, and the new flash hider was compatible with the Rotex-III sound suppressor by Brügger + Thomet. The safety lever was fitted with a new device – an extension enabling the safety to be taken on and off with a trigger finger.

The Mini-Beryl carbine

Mini-Beryl is the successor to the wz.89 Onyks automatic carbine in 5.56mm caliber. Compared with the Onyks, the barrel is slightly longer (235 mm), and the muzzle device is of slightly smaller diameter. In Mini-Beryl the handguards attachment has been modified in order not to require tools (screwdriver) to strip the weapon and the furniture is attached with a push pin and not rotated with a screwdriver, like in the Onyks. The sights are taken entirely from Onyks, together with their standard tritium night inserts. The Mini-Beryl has both iron sights and optics rail as standard. This sight bar is riveted to the sight base, extends halfway back over the receiver cover, and has a flip-sight with two U-notches (200-400 m) at the end. The sight bar at first had a PCO proprietary rail to enable the CK-3 collimating (red dot) sight to be mounted directly on the weapon without the need for a POPC rail. Mini-Beryl has a standard Beryl kit, different only by replacing one of the 30-round magazines with a shorter 20-rounder. Despite the short barrel, the Mini-Beryl is still capable of launching rifle grenades, which is easily a world record, as no other compact sub-carbine in the world has this capability – probably because of its redundancy. The idea was original enough to warrant a Polish patent PL 17078 in 1997, but on the battlefield it is totally useless. Carbines are usually issued to personnel whose tasks are more important than shooting a rifle – AFV crews, command staff and so on, with neither a need nor a desire to haul rifle grenades with them. And anyone who ever fired a grenade from the Mini-Beryl would understand why – shorter barrel means more pressure, so the grenade is launched further, but so is the shooter, and woe to anyone who ever dares to shoot that grenade without safety glasses on for the unfired powder particles can be found embedded deep in the skin everywhere on the face of the shooter.

The Mini-Beryl was not officially introduced into the inventory together with the “big” Beryl. It was tested however by various special units, who ordered short batches. The first big order was by the Military Police, and not sooner than 2004 – and then in the wz.2004 version with foregrip-and-side-rails handguard. The front grip of the Mini-Beryl is the same pistol grip as the rear one, which might even work in the Beryl rifle, but here the grip most often interferes with a magazine change, especially using the 30-round magazines. The prototype wz.2004 Mini had the same proprietary folding-telescoping butt as the wz.2004 Beryl, but this was replaced by the old model folder in series-production variant. The wz.2004 Mini has got a full Mil-Std 1913 conforming sight attachment interface on the sight bar sides enabling it to be used with all compliant red dot or other sights. Also, the flip sight was changed. The U-notches were replaced by a peculiar combination of peep hole and a U-notch, both set to 300 m. In 2005, the Military Police introduced the Mini-Beryl as their standard long arm and ordered several thousand. Now, finally with a good buyer in their sights, the FB Radom improved the Mini, replacing the Onyks-inherited gas block with a new one, modifying the gas piston, and introducing a completely new bird cage flash hider. Later on the Mini was introduced in the Army (airmobile and chosen mechanized units) as well, slowly replacing the inefficient and obsolescent 9mm PM-84P Glauberyt submachine guns. Some demonstrators of that model were also fitted with commercial Leapers UTG 6-position telescoping stock.

The newest model, painted light OD overall to match the wz.2007 Beryl has a new bird-cage flash hider for the Rotex-III sound suppressor attachment.

The Midi

In 2006 another variant of the Beryl rifle was tailor-suited to the needs of the 1st Commando Special Regiment of Lubliniec. This was a ‘midi’ version, halfway between the big Beryl and the Mini, with a 375 mm barrel, almost matching the M4 barrel length of 378 mm. The short rifle was called the Beryl-Commando and featured a folding and telescoping butt – not the Radom proprietary 3-position folder-slider, but a commercial Leapers 6-positions M4-style butt installed in a hinged attachment. Later on another demonstrator was unveiled, also along the lines of the Commando – but this time with ambidextrous safety-selector lever and without the 3-round burst capability. Both models were experiments and no series production midi rifles were ever ordered.

Pros and Cons

The Beryl rifle is the last link in the Kalashnikov rifle development in Poland, carrying with it most of the AK-47’s good heritage (simple design, easy operation, reliability and durability) but also the darker side of the Kalashnikov pedigree – bad ergonomics, inability to mount and operate optical sights without having to take them off for each cleaning session, the magazine change is slow and cumbersome because of the fore-and-aft lug arrangement requiring rotating the magazine in place instead of just pushing it up, and no bolt hold-open, slowing the magazine change even more, with cocking handle hard to operate with a supporting hand. With the flat trajectory 5.56mm cartridges enabling the direct shot to 350-400 meters, fitting of the tangent leaf sight scaled 100-1,000 with 100 meters increments is a plain anachronism. More so – fitting it with a U-notch.

The Beryl is a rifle already standing with its back to the wall – there’s no way to revive it again, its modernization potential is already used to the limit. Maybe there would be another handguard model, with or without rails and fore grip, another butt stock – but without major overhaul changing the receiver design to an ‘upper-lower receiver’ standard, nothing really important can be done with it.

Nevertheless, Beryls are here to stay with the Polish Army for a while. It is a testimony to the lost chance in the 1990s, when another, more modern design could have replaced it. Let’s hope the ultra-modern piston-driven MSBS-5.56 project being now developed would succeed and the Polish Army would finally replace Comrade Rifle with something newer and more user-friendly.

The Blyskawica (‘Lightning’, pronounced bwiskavitsa, with ‘wi’ to be read like in ‘wisdom’) was designed and manufactured fully clandestine, for the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), the mainstream Polish underground movement during the German occupation of Poland during the WWII. It was the first Polish-designed submachine gun ever to be really mass-produced – and that under the most difficult conditions imaginable.

Compared with their French counterparts enjoying generous arms airdrops from Britain, Polish resistance fighters were poorly armed. Airdropped weapons were scarce and scant prior to the autumn of 1943, when airfields gained in Italy enabled a (slight at best, judging by French standards) surge in the airdropping campaign. Submachine guns were virtually non-existent in the Polish Army prior to the war. After the defeat in the 1939 September Campaign, a resistance movement called the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK) was created as early as October 1939; at first under the name of the Union For Armed Struggle (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ), with the aim of preparation for the general national uprising to win the independence in front of the Allied troops, rather than idly waiting for them to come and liberate Poland. The submachine gun soon proved to be a very useful guerilla weapon, and with an agenda like that, the AK simply had to devise some source of SMG supply more dependable than incidental disarming of German patrols, usually provoking bloody retributions.

Let’s Roll Our Own

In September 1942, Waclaw Zawrotny and Seweryn Wielanier, two mechanical engineers with no prior small arms designing experience, proposed to the Home Army’s Warsaw Area Command an idea of designing and manufacturing a 9mm submachine gun of their own. They studied foreign models, the MP 40 and the Sten, and found both unsuitable for copying. Although the Sten was simple enough to manufacture under the most difficult conditions (later on to be amply confirmed by a conservative estimation of 2,000 Sten copies and look-alikes made in Poland during the war), but awkward to handle and hardly concealable with its fixed stock and side-sticking magazine. On the other hand, the MP 40 handled like a dream, and was highly concealable with the folding stock, but the manufacturing technology (making extensive use of die-stamping and spot-welding methods) was far too complicated to replicate with what little machinery and tools were available for the job.

The designers agreed that the new submachine gun should combine the best features of the two, while keeping the manufacturing technology as low-tech as possible. They decided to use plumbing micro-groove threads and machine screws for most of the joints – bayonet couplings and latches of the factory-made weapons were far too advanced to replicate with the available hardware.

Gradually, by April 1943 the Blyskawica took shape and prototype drawings were being prepared. After the design work was done, it was a time to find subcontractors and organize an underground manufacturing network, supplying the parts to the clandestine assembly shop. In the harsh conditions of German-occupied Warsaw, with tight control held over all machine shops’ activity, shortages and rationing of the cutting tools, with all suitable materials put on the ‘restricted supplies’ list and sold only with a permit from the German administration, this was a very hard task, indeed. Nevertheless, bribing and stealing their way, working in Wielanier’s private flat, by September 1943 they managed to manufacture and assemble the first working model minus a barrel and a magazine – which they chose to borrow from the British Sten to overcome the unsurpassable production bottlenecks.

Official Acceptance

The gun was submitted for approval to the Home Army Ordnance Command, for test-firing in the woods around Warsaw’s suburb of Zielonka, and approval. Formal acceptance into the inventory of the clandestine army meant, among others, that the designers would be refunded their private money spent so far on the gun. The acceptance test was the first opportunity for the Blyskawica to really shoot after a Sten barrel and magazine borrowed for the occasion were installed. Problems were therefore inevitable. At first the prototype refused to fire at all, and then suffered numerous malfunctions. But Wielanier was able to rectify the situation with what simple tools were available – and jams decreased. Finally, the gun fired an entire magazine in a single burst, and the project was given a green light to start.

The Home Army HQ Diversionary Directorate’s commander, Colonel Emil ‘Nil’ Fieldorf (a brave and intelligent man, a pre-war career officer parachuted to Poland as early as 1940; after the war murdered in a courthouse farce by the Soviet-backed Polish Communist regime), was briefed of the new invention and demanded an additional live-firing demonstration. This was held in the most daring – if a little cavalier – way. At high noon on September 27, 1943, right on the painful fourth anniversary of Warsaw’s surrender in 1939, right smack in the middle of the enemy-occupied city, a party of three raincoat-clad men stepped out to the center of the crowded Theatrical Square, in front of the Warsaw City Hall. One of them reached under his coat, raised a shiny silvery prototype submachine gun and performed a classic ‘magazine dump’ into the air, to the delight of the cheering crowd around and to the horror of the two bodyguards flanking the Colonel; himself grinning like a child on a Christmas morning.

After going through all the trials with flying colors, the gun was accepted for serial production, which meant that the designers had to prepare a complete set of drawings for the gun. These were ready in October, 1943. While en route to the Home Army Command with this complete set of drawings in his briefcase, Mr. Zawodny narrowly avoided being arrested in one of the frequent German Police raids, when a section of the street was cordoned-off, and all people rounded-up to be later sorted out by the Gestapo. Most of the people caught up in these manhunts were then deported to Auschwitz even if they weren’t suspected of anything – just to spread terror to the others. One can only imagine what would happen if he was caught with a briefcase full of clandestine submachine gun blueprints.

The name Blyskawica (Lightning) came from the three lightning bolts carved in the aluminum butt-plate. These were designed to prevent slipping of the plate but also served as a camouflage – the butt-plate’s blueprints were labeled ‘electric oven handles’ and the three lightning bolts were a trademark of the Electrite brand. The name was made official in November, when a first pilot batch of five was accepted by the Home Army Ordnance Command. To mark the unusual occasion, key personnel connected with the design and manufacturing of the first batch were presented with petrol lighters – which Wielanier was making as a business before he turned to gun manufacturing. Each lighter was engraved with two legends: ‘Polish Industry, November 1943’ on one side and ‘Christening of Blyskawica on the other.

A Lightning for the Failed Tempest

In order to avoid compromising the entire program should the Germans discover one manufacturing plant, and to speed up the delivery, parts were contracted from over twenty various manufacturers scattered throughout the entire city. A chicken-wire factory, Franciszek Makowiecki & Co., located at 20 Grzybowski Square in Warsaw, was tasked with the final assembly and test-firing of the submachine guns. The clandestine SMG plant was situated under the workshop, in the cellars of a nearby Roman-Catholic Church of All Saints. An additional concrete-lined tunnel acted as an underground shooting range for functioning tests. The walls of the tunnel were doubled, with space left between the two layers of concrete walls to suppress the report of the firing guns, and a sandpit was installed behind a wall of wooden railway ties as a bullet stop. Five people were assembling and test-firing the guns: the testing being performed strictly during the rush hours to use the street noise as means of additional sound camouflage. All through this time where people were present in the clandestine plant, there was a special look-out on duty in the official workshop tasked with switching the warning light to alarm the assembly workers if anything suspicious was going on topside. The facilities were mined with explosive charges to blow the workshop up should Gestapo raid the premises and find the camouflaged entrance.

The first pilot order was for five prototype weapons to test the cooperation network and for additional function and troop testing. Upon the trial batch acceptance, the Diversionary Directorate of the Home Army’s HQ placed the main order for an unprecedented 1,000 domestic submachine guns to be manufactured and assembled at the clandestine workshop. Close on the heels of this first order, a second one for 300 more was placed. Until July, 1944, most part kits for the 1,000 SMG order were manufactured, and as much as 600 Blyskawicas were taken over and accepted by the Home Army Ordnance Command with an additional 100 assembled in July in preparation for the uprising in Warsaw. After the uprising started, the assembling shop with most of the component stocks were evacuated to a larger armorer’s workshop, no longer secret and located in the city center. As many as 40 weapons were completed there, the main limiting factor being – ironically – the shortage of Sten barrels, which had to be left in Teofil Czajkowski’s shop at Leszno Street, in the now German-held part of the city.

Production numbers are the subject of a heated debate. The approximately 755 completed SMGs number has been based on the actual Home Army units’ materiel reports, some of which might be missing. There could have been instances wherein the assembly shop workers, devoted people as they were, may have had various favors to pay for and could have stashed several guns for their own use, or hand over some of the Blyskawicas to friends in the other factions of the Polish underground, thus making the overall number slightly higher. But even if these reports are inflated (which is highly unlikely) and the number was, say 655 instead of 755, this is still a fantastic achievement. To invent, design, series-manufacture in clandestine shops of the occupied city and then assemble in several hundred units, test-fire and issue an entirely original model of a submachine gun to the underground army is still a marvel of organization. Only Sten look-alikes manufactured all over Europe could compete in numbers with the Blyskawica, but none of them was of original design. The relatively high number of the surviving Blyskawicas, some of which even got abroad (at least one as far as Prague in the Czech Republic, where for decades it was mislabeled as a German Sten copy, and another reported as far as Italy) coupled with a multitude of photographs, and even movie footage showing this little gun in action, supports the high production number. The Uprising newsreel had a feature showing the assembly workshop at Boduena Street during the insurrection with row upon row of receivers in various stages of completion. Unfortunately, the majority of the guns assembled prior to July were transferred to the Eastern provinces, where units were readied to stage the aborted Operation Tempest in front of the Red Army, and subsequently lost.

Ready weapons were smuggled out of the factory, 10 guns at a time, inside hollowed wire-mesh rolls. Initially, the new weapon was restricted for the general uprising mobilization storage only, and any use of them closer than 100 km from Warsaw was strictly forbidden in order to camouflage the manufacturing area. The overall Burza (Tempest) plan written in the winter of 1943/44 called for a general uprising rolling gradually throughout the country in front of the Soviet offensive, to disrupt German transport and defenses by tying up German forces away from the front thus helping the Soviet push – while at the same time showing the Soviets that the Polish Underground State led by the London-based Polish government-in-exile is a force to reckon with. These plans generally came to naught, because the Soviets were unwilling to make any use of the proposed help, and treated all non-communist armed outfits in their front zone as hostiles.

The Home Army’s zeal to help the Soviet offensive petered out after the Vilnius liberation on July 13, 1944. It was the first major pre-war Polish city in the path of the Red Army, and it was liberated by the joint Home Army and Soviet forces. The liberation festivities lasted no longer than three days, after which the Soviet front troops were replaced by the NKVD who arrested all AK soldiers and deported them to Siberian prison camps.

Plans were also drawn up to liberate the capital of Poland, Warsaw, in front of the Soviet offensive, as part of the Burza. The Blyskawica production was thus intensified in June and July 1944, with a daily output in the last days of July, reaching up to 25 submachine guns assembled, checked, and shipped to mobilization storage. After the Vilnius fiasco, the issue of the Warsaw uprising was temporarily put on hold, but on July 22, 1944, the Soviets installed a puppet government in Lublin, the first major Polish city behind the 1939 Soviet-German demarcation line, thus clearly signifying, that they intended on permanently severing all the Eastern provinces (54% of the pre-war territory) from Poland. This was a major threat to the survival of the nation, and a symbol was needed to mark the presence of the Underground State and boost the nation’s morale. The uprising plans were reinstated and thus on August 1, 1944, the Warsaw Uprising broke out.

On the evening of the first day of the Uprising, parts and unfinished guns remaining at the plant were transferred to a reserve workshop, due to the heavy fighting around the original site, which became a no-man’s-land for weeks to come. The production recommenced on August 4, and lasted till August 20, when the assembly workshop was bombed. The last Blyskawicas made there were often lacking the aluminum barrel jacket, replaced with a simple steel threaded plug securing the barrel.

Blyskawica from Muzzle to Stock Plate

The Blyskawica is a straight blowback submachine gun firing from an open bolt. It has a folding stock, a vertical magazine well and is chambered for the 9×19 mm Luger round.

The Blyskawica SMG’s main component groups are: upper receiver, barrel, lower receiver, magazine well group, breechblock group, return springs group and the magazine. The design kept complicated machining to a bare minimum with most component parts turned rather than milled and most connections made by fine-threads and machine screws, to avoid troublesome welding.

The manufacturing technology, governed by availability of the tooling and production methods, was very primitive and crude even by 1940s standards. The guns were made mostly of the machined tubing with as few soldered sheet-metal parts or aluminum castings as possible. Components were connected mostly by means of threads and screws, which made field-stripping a time-consuming procedure.

The upper receiver is made of the length of seamless plumbing tube, with retracting handle slot, ejection, magazine well and sear openings. The barrel supporting plug is bolted inside the front end, while the rear one is threaded for the end cap.

The lower receiver group includes a folding stock pivot, trigger mechanism, trigger guard and a wooden grip. The trigger mechanism is a self-contained entity, inserted as a whole into the lower receiver – exactly like in HK weapons.

The magazine well is welded of the two halves, with a magazine catch assembly screwed to the back of the housing. A projection of the magazine catch external frame extends inside the receiver to serve as an ejector. The magazine well is fastened to the receiver with two bolts.

The barrel is 197 mm long, patterned after the Sten and made fully interchangeable, having six lands and grooves with a right hand twist. It is inserted into the barrel plug and then secured by screwing an aluminum barrel jacket on top of the barrel retaining collar. The Sten type barrels were mass-produced by the Teofil Czajkowski’s workshop in Warsaw, along with other 9mm barrels. The quality of Czajkowski-made Sten barrels was dependant on available steel grade, but manufacturing standards were usually better than the original – especially the two-groove Mk 3 barrel.

Blyskawica has a heavy (720 gram), massive breechblock with the feed/extractor channel and sear notch cut in the underside, and a hollowed-out rear, where a driving spring with its guiding/dividing tube fits. The firing pin is rigidly installed in the bolt-face, as in the Sten. A dove-tailed channel for the retracting handle base is cut on the outside of the bolt. The breechblock is machined out of solid steel rod with driving ribs machined along it to ease friction and channel the dirt, much like in post-war George Patchett’s Sterling SMG. The ribbed bolt is in fact a reversal of the MP 40 layout, whereas the bolt is cylindrical, and the receiver tube is corrugated to form the ribs for the bolt to glide along. This feature was very highly rated by the Polish designers examining the captured German SMG, but limited production resources prevented copying that. With no sheet metal die-pressing technology at their disposal, Polish designers had to devise something ingenious to retain the useful feature, while at the same time keeping the technology as simple as possible. Blyskawica receivers were made out of length of seamless tubing, much stouter than sheet-metal, so the pressing of the ribs was out of question. Wielanier then proposed a logical alternative: if we can’t groove the tube for bolt interface, let’s groove the bolt for tube interface. And so the designers reversed the procedure. After turning the breechblocks on the lathe, these were moved to a milling machine and ribs were machined along it, resulting in a ribbed breechblock and a smooth inner receiver.

There is another feature also strikingly resembling the Sterling: a dual concentric return spring dubbing as a buffer. The longer (320 mm) outer spring of 22 mm diameter acts as a main driving spring, while the much shorter (110 mm) bumper spring of 15 mm diameter cushions the bolt in the rearmost position and helps it gain initial momentum for the next cycle. The bumper spring is inserted inside the guiding tube of the receiver plug, dividing it from the return spring resting on the outside of it. As with the bolt ribs, the dual springs arrangement was also a part of the MP 40 legacy rather than having anything in common with the Patchett, whose development was completely unknown to the Polish designers at that time. The spring telescope of the MP 40 contains two springs – a longer mainspring, and a much shorter bumper spring installed into the front portion of the telescoping mainspring cover, with a bumper casing incorporated into the firing pin base. Reproduction of the spring telescope was out of question due to the complexity, and the general redundancy of it. Again, something simpler was needed, and again, the answer was to reverse the MP 40 idea. Both springs were installed in the rear part of the receiver, with the outer return spring fitted around the receiver end cap/spring guide, and the inner bumper spring inserted into it.

Making the rear surface of the barrel plug and bolt’s front facing surfaces convex is another interesting feature of Blyskawica, enabling the dirt to accumulate there without hindering the action. Both surfaces scarcely made contact except for dry-firing, as the Blyskawica employed an advanced primer ignition scheme, common for submachine guns firing from an open bolt. In connection with the bolt ribs, it proved especially useful in urban warfare during the Warsaw Uprising when there was plenty of rubble and tons of brick dust in the air, enough to jam most other, more renowned submachine guns. Breechblock cylinders were turned on a lathe in pairs, disguised as shafts. Then ribs were machined into these, and spring channels drilled into either end. After these operations, the ribbed hollowed ‘shafts’ were cut in two on a lathe, using a triangular-shaped cutter tool, then all other openings (for the extractor claw, dovetailed cocking handle slot, bolt face with a firing pin shaft) were executed.

The trigger mechanism is of very simple, bordering on crude, design but nevertheless fitted with an advanced automatic trigger safety. The spring-loaded safety forms a part of the trigger linkage. The safety lever extends into the trigger guard, while the nose of the safety is inserted into a notch in the trigger mechanism casing, thus immobilizing the trigger. To operate the sear, the shooter has to insert his finger between the safety lever and the trigger to unblock the latter. There is no means to make the gun safe with the bolt closed or retracted – in fact, apart from the automatic trigger safety; there are no further safeties at all. This was infamous as a very failure-prone safety, though, and many accidental discharges were noted after bumping the stock on the rubbles in a ruined city. There is no fire-selector either, but the heavy bolt kept the rate of fire low enough to make squeezing-off single shots relatively easy.

The stock is folding, twin-strut, with struts made of steel flats with a cast aluminum stock plate. The stock is folding underneath the receiver, and its length of pull is governed by the measurements of the receiver, which makes it a little short for the average shooter. A different butt-plate, hollowed to clear the magazine (like in AKS-47) would have helped to lengthen the stock. Here again the influence of the MP 40 is obvious – it folds under the receiver, even though a top-folder like the Soviet PPS 42/43 or a side-folder, like Reising 55 or Sten Mk IV, would enable to use a longer, more comfortable, stock.

The sights were rudimentary, with a peep rear sight and an inverted V, very low front post, difficult to shoot precisely at anything more than possibly 30 yards away. These are clearly patterned after the Sten sights, but reveal precious little experience with the peep sights on part of the designers. This is hardly surprising, as these were a novel feature for the Polish military weapon – in fact Blyskawica was the first and only Polish peep-sighted martial firearm until the advent of the PM-84P of 1990s. The peep itself was much too wide, of almost ghost ring proportions, while the pyramid front post was way too small, making it almost impossible to aim precisely. The peep is located on the receiver plug stop, on top of a dovetailed projection of the lower receiver, while the post is situated on the barrel plug, bolted to the receiver. The placement of sights on separate parts with a degree of play between them made precise aiming difficult, because it was possible to assemble the SMG with sights out of the line.

The magazine is of typical Schmeisser staggered-row, single-position system, widely employed for the German (MP 28, 38/40/41), as well as the British (Sten, Lanchester), the American (M3 Grease Gun) and the Soviet (PPSh 41) SMGs of the era. It has a wide body, containing a staggered row of rounds, culminating with a conical upper part, channeling the two rows into a single position feed. Inside the body runs a sheet-metal follower, actuated by a follower spring. The magazine is closed with a magazine bottom plate, locked by a projection of the spring pressure plate inserted into the bottom plate opening. Most reliable and coveted were the airdropped originals, as the Polish copy thereof often lacked in quality, mostly because of the follower springs made of improper – but readily available – wire.

Elementary Disassembly Procedure

1. Unload, clear, check and double check the weapon.
2. Unscrew receiver end plug bolt.
3. Unscrew the lower receiver retaining screw, then slide down the lower receiver until it separates from the upper. NOTE: the actual Blyskawica in the photos was shrapnel-damaged and the field-repair includes replacing of the torn-off retaining screw bracket with a curved brace held by two side screws. Check the cross-section drawing for correct shape and position of the retaining screw.
4. Unscrew the upper receiver end plug and withdraw the springs.
5. Unscrew the cocking handle retaining screw, separate the handle from the bolt and remove, then withdrew the breechblock.
6. Unscrew the barrel jacket and pull the barrel out of the receiver.
7. If necessary, unscrew the trigger pack retaining screws from the lower receiver and take the mechanism casing out.
8. No further stripping is needed or recommended. To assemble, reverse the above procedure.

Imperfect, But Genuine

For years the Blyskawica has often been mistaken for a German gun, which it never was. Even if authors do recognize the Polish pedigree of the gun, they most often mistakenly label it as a Sten copy (see World’s SMGs and Machine Pistols Vol.2a) – which is simply not true. The only Sten parts were magazine and barrel incorporated into the design only because these parts were already being series-manufactured by the underground factories in huge quantities, and their choice was governed by logistical factors, not a need, or desire, to copy them.

The chief disadvantage, especially in the dusty urban warfare conditions, was a time-consuming and complicated field-stripping procedure, calling for driving out numerous, small, easy to loose screws. The micro-grooved threads were vulnerable to dust, often jammed and got torn-off during field-stripping or reassembly by use of the excessive force. The worst idea of it all was the aluminum barrel jacket. In theory, it was designed to transfer and dissipate the heat from the barrel, but in practice no one in the underground had enough ammunition to make the barrel glow. The downsides of the aluminum barrel jackets were many, but two should be enough to get rid of it. First, it was left “in the white” and shined on, prematurely warning the enemy of the shooter’s position. This is confirmed by the original Warsaw Uprising photos – in most cases a shining barrel jacket is the first thing enabling us to recognize the Blyskawica submachine gun held by an Uprising soldier. Second, it was held by the same micro-grooved thread that secured all other components, and thus – if the dirt was enough to jam and damage the threads cut into steel components, then steel thread was sure to wear and tear the aluminum barrel jacket. These were frequently damaged, and after the threads were obliterated, the gun could be thrown away as well since it was the barrel jacket that held the barrel inside the receiver and took the hammering from the heavy bolt if dry-fired. Some late September and early October 1944 photos show at least one Blyskawica fitted with an exposed barrel and a short steel plug screwed into the receiver instead of the aluminum barrel shroud.

The abysmal sights could have been easily rectified by placing both sights onto the upper receiver. The sighting radius would be shorter by no more than an inch, and both would be finally placed in line. With a smaller peep and higher, pillar-contour, shrouded front sight, the Blyskawica would be very nice to shoot and a lot more accurate gun. When I fired a rare shootable survivor (held at the Police HQ Forensic Lab, unfortunately not allowing any photography) I found it a real pleasure to shoot, well balanced, and grouping nicely – even if a foot up and to the right off the aiming mark at 15 meters.

For no obvious reason the cocking handle of the Blyskawica was a very complicated affair, set into a dovetailed machined channel on the outer surface of the bolt and screw-retained there, with no provisions for securing the cocking handle in front or retracted position to preclude accidental discharge (AD) incidents. This is unreasonable at best, especially as the Sten with its rod-like cocking handle was one of the ‘organ donors’ – by copying of the Mk 5 push-thru handle with its projection inserted into the receiver hole, many later accidents could have been avoided.

But generally speaking, for the first gun ever designed by the two men never even remotely connected with the firearms industry, this is a remarkably original and successful design feat. Despite the primitive technology, surviving examples seem to be of exceptionally good workmanship and standard of fit and finish.

These guns were not enough to win the victory for the insurgents, who fought a 63-day long gallant and deadly battle after being left to their own devices by the approaching Soviets, who were watching idly the city’s ordeal from the other side of the Vistula River. Stalin ordered his huge summer 1944 offensive to a screeching halt, in order to let the Nazis sort out the Poles before he occupied their capital. Betrayed insurgents paid a tremendous price for their audacity, as the Germans pummeled the city with shells, bombs, arson, and controlled demolition (often on top of the inhabitants herded into cellars prior to explosion). Around 200,000 people died, 90% of them civilian non-combatants, caught between the rock and the hard place. The Western Allies were unable – or unwilling – to make Uncle Joe change his mind and save Warsaw. About 700 submachine guns, be it even of the most technically advanced mode, were not enough to secure the victory against such tremendous odds.

Specifications

Weapon designation: Blyskawica
Country of origin: Poland
Caliber: 9×19 Luger
Type of operation: Blowback
Type of fire: Fully automatic
Length w/stock retracted: 556 mm (21.89 in)
Barrel length: 197 mm (British Sten barrel)
Weight, unloaded: 3.22 kg (7.1 lbs)
Cyclic rate of fire: 450-500 rpm
Length w/stock extended: 730 mm (28.74 in)
Weight, loaded: 3.83 kg (8.44 lbs)
Type of feed mechanism: Stamped sheet metal box magazine, staggered row, single position feed
Magazine capacity: 32 rd (British Sten magazine)
Weight of loaded magazine: 0.615 kg (1.355 lbs)
Number of lands and grooves: 6
Rifling twist direction: RHS
Approx. muzzle velocity: 360 mps (2067 fps)
Sight, front: Blade, inverted V
Sight, rear: Fixed aperture, set for 100 m (110 yd)
Safety arrangements: The spring loaded safety lever blocks the trigger unless rotated forward by a finger reaching for the trigger. No other safety arrangements.
Means of controlling operation: The retracting handle is located on the right side of the receiver.

By Leszek Erenfeicht

Henryk Strapoc (pronounced: “Strompoch”) of Czerwona Gora-Podlesie in the Kielce region of southern Poland, was a village blacksmith’s younger son and a talented mechanic designer in his own, with a flair for amateur gunsmithing. At the ripe age of 15, in 1937, he made his first, entirely hand-made semiautomatic pistol patterned after his uncle’s cheap Spanish .25. He proudly demonstrated it to his classmates in a ravine behind the village, but got caught red-handed in the process by the school headmaster. He very nearly ended up in jail for illegal gun manufacturing and possession, but his early age proved his defense As a juvenile and first-offender, he was only chastised and ordered to report at the local police station once every week for a year’s duration. Despite this early setback, and his solemn promises not to stray again from the straight and narrow, he made three more pistols and a revolver before the war started.

In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and then, a little over a fortnight later, was stabbed in the back by the Soviet Union. Fighting on both fronts, she was eventually defeated despite a gallant defense. Hopes for a military action on the West, spurred by Britain’s and France’s declaration of war against Germany on September 3, were forlorn. Other than declarations, no tactile help was provided. The occupied country was divided, with “Uncle Joe” Stalin taking up 54% of the pre-war territory – more than Hitler did!

Almost overnight, various factions started to organize military underground resistance structures. The political spectrum of the Polish underground was as colorful and varied as was the pre-war society. Every party and a faction had its own underground military branch, running the gamut from socialists on the left wing up to crypto-fascist nationalists on the far right one; only the Communists kept out of it, obeying their orders from Moscow. Strapoc joined the conservative Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL, Polish Peasant Party) underground forces, called the “Peasant Battalions” (Bataliony Chlopskie – BCh, or phonetically misspelled: BH, hence the later name of his submachine gun). He was at long last going to do what he loved: gunsmithing for the local guerilla force.

After two years of re-vamping the small arms dug out from sites, when surrendering Polish Army units cached their weapons for further fight, by the fall of 1942, he commenced work on the submachine gun of his own design.

One class of arms that his and most other outfits most sorely missed were submachine guns. Pre-war Polish Army only experimented with submachine guns, which by then proved to be very useful guerilla weapons. At that stage, the SOE had not started their weapon air-dropping program yet, and the front, where first-line units abounded in SMGs was far, far away, out in the East, at the feet of Caucasus, where German offensive targeted their own “one bridge too far” at the city of Stalingrad. The only source of SMGs at that time were German police units, mostly armed with antique MP 18,I – sometimes even complete with their oblique snail-drums. Disarming German police units resulted in bloody punitive raids against suspected villages, and, besides, only one in ten policemen or MPs had the bloody thing. Having an SMG at your disposal was a great prestige between the guerillas, and his outfit was going to have one, come hell or high water. Several ambushes against German police units produced no demanded result: several rifles and pistols were captured, but no SMGs, and in reprisal several villages were burned. Then Strapoc proposed to better use the other alternative, and decided to design and built a SMG of his own. He set up a workshop in his brother Edward’s forge. The only tools he got there for the job were those he was able to find in a village smithy: a hacksaw, hand-cranked drill and lathe, set of screw-taps and die-nuts, a handful of files and a couple of drifters.

Submachine guns were novel firearms then, and starting his work in the deep hinterland, Mr. Strapoc only had a general idea on how the actual SMG worked. Despite this, by spring of 1943 the weapon was ready for testing and worked remarkably well from the first shot on. Jan Swat (nome-de-guerre “Orzel”), a draughtsman from the former Huta Ostrowiec (HO) metalworks in nearby Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, now renamed the Hermann-Goering-Werke, prepared a set of drawings for all component parts of the gun. His other friends, sworn-in guerilla soldiers from the HO works, started to turn out parts for the weapon in secrecy. Strapoc was tasked with finishing, fitting and assembling the submachine guns. The misspelled name “BH” struck to their sides was a matter of available letter punches, and not a testimony to the incomplete education – his brother’s set of punches simply lacked the letter C.

Preparations for assembling the first batch took a full year to complete. Parts manufacture began by October 1943, with the first finished components delivered in late November. First complete “series-production” submachine guns were test-fired and handed over to the partisans in the first days of 1944. Of the 11 weapons finished before the Red Army arrived in July of 1944, only one has been preserved in Warsaw’s Polish Army Museum.

Main Characteristics

Most of the dozen BHs manufactured (one prototype and 11 of the first batch) were chambered for the 9×19 Luger, though the two or three last ones were chambered for the Soviet 7.62×25 Tokarev ammunition. As the barrels were recycled from old rifles, it was way much easier to find a ready .30 caliber barrel for the Soviet round than having to re-drill and re-rifle these to fit the German round.

Though the BH was a blowback submachine gun, the design incorporated many novel and unusual features – more out of innocent ignorance, because Strapoc simply didn’t know that nobody used these in the real SMGs, than in the pursuit of the novel designing trends. The bolt is more of a slide, telescoping the barrel, the latter guiding the return spring in turn: just like in pocket semiautomatic pistols. The firing mechanism incorporates a hammer, and the weapon fires from the closed breech position. There is a three-setting safety/fire selector lever fitted on the left side of the receiver. In the fully automatic (FA) mode of fire, the automatic sear trips the sear for each shot, thus preventing the premature firing of the round. The trigger bar acts as a disconnector in semiautomatic (SA) firing mode. There is no hold-open device. The extractor claw is a spring-loaded rotary variation, also common for the European pocket automatics of the early 20th Century. Projection of the automatic sear serves as an ejector.

The weapon is fed from the 30/32-round staggered-row box magazine. The empty magazine weighs 0.31 kg (.68 lbs) and, loaded, weighs 0.7 kg (1.54 lbs). The sights are of open iron type, with a rigid, pistol-type V-notch and front blade, roughly set for 50 meters, with the sighting radius being 385 mm (15.15 in.). The bolt, incorporated into the slide reciprocating on top of the frame/receiver; again in a pocket-automatic fashion, can be retracted by hand or by pulling on the front portion of the sling attached to the underside of the slide’s front rounded portion. The weapon is 445 mm (17.52 in.) long overall. There is no stock of any type, nor a provision for one. The empty weapon weighs 2.43 kg (5.35 lbs.), and loaded 2.82 kg (6.21 lbs.).

Design Features

The BH submachine gun consists of six main groups and assemblies: a slide assembly, a frame assembly with rigidly installed (screwed-in) barrel, a trigger group, a hammer group, a magazine and a return spring.

The slide assembly includes front spring cap/barrel bushing, slide, and the breechblock, complete with spring-loaded firing pin and extractor claw, secured inside the slide by means of two screws.

The spring cap is secured by two screws, one on either side of the muzzle. There is a large ejection opening on the upper right side of the slide. The front sling swivel is brass soldered to the lower part of the front, cylindrical portion of the slide. The complete bolt assembly weighs 0.685 kg (1.51 lbs.).

The frame assembly consists of the frame, barrel screwed into the frame projection, magazine catch assembly, two slide rails bolted to the rear part of the frame and a wooden pistol grip fitted with the rear sling swivel. The whole assembly weighs 1.39 kg (3.06 lbs.). The barrel is 240 mm (9.45 in.) long, with 6 grooves, right hand twist rifling, one turn in 224 mm (8.82 in.).

The trigger group incorporates an ingenious and intricate duplicated firing mechanism for the two firing modes, consisting of a single trigger blade with two trigger bars, sear with two linking levers, automatic sear for fully automatic fire and a fire selector-cum-safety lever. The automatic sear prevents the premature firing of the round and carries the ejector.

The hammer group consists of a hammer with its spindle and the hammer plunger containing concentric, doubled hammer spring.

The magazine is of a staggered row double-position type, and consists of a milled body with a catch lug soldered to the front, a follower, a bottom lid with a snap-catch, and an ingenious staggered-coil follower spring.

The return spring is of helical variety, 20 mm (.79 in.) in external diameter, and has 32 coils made of 1.2 mm (.047 in.) wire.

Field Stripping and Reassembly

1. Unload and clear the weapon.
2. Unscrew the front cap retaining screws and remove the cap and spring.
3. Retract the slide, unscrew the barrel and withdraw it from the slide.
4. Loosen four frame-rail retaining screws, thus enabling the slide to be slid up and off the frame. Further stripping is neither needed nor recommended. To reassemble, repeat in reverse order.

Action of the Mechanisms

The weapon is ready to fire in a semiautomatic mode with the full magazine (31) in place, bolt (7) fully home, hammer (26) cocked, automatic sear (24) lowered, fire selector (16) set to the semiautomatic notch. Upon squeezing the trigger (18), the main trigger bar (19) rotates the upper sear link (21) and disconnects with it in its foremost position. The upper sear link pulls the lower sear link (22), which in turn rotates the sear (23), freeing the hammer (26) to fall. The hammer, propelled by the mainspring acting via plunger (27), strikes the inertia firing pin (9), which in turn strikes the primer of the chambered round, thus igniting the cartridge. The expanding gases blow the bolt backwards. The bolt extracts the spent case from the chamber by means of the extractor claw, while cocking the hammer. The case is then ejected through the opening in the slide upon hitting the ejector (28), forming part of the automatic sear (24). During the return stroke, the bolt strips the next round from the magazine’s (31) lips, feeds and then chambers it. The returning trigger makes the trigger bar (18) snap in place and contact the upper sear link. Upon pulling the trigger again, the cycle is repeated until all the rounds are fed from the magazine.

In the fully automatic mode the cycle is mostly the same. It starts with the same parts disposition, except for the fire selector being set to the full automatic notch. The trigger sets the hammer in motion by lieu of a semiautomatic trigger bar and both sear links, just like in the semiautomatic mode, but at the same time the secondary, external fully automatic trigger bar (20) raises the automatic sear (24). Upon the shot, the slide on finishing its return stroke rotates the automatic sear, which in turn pushes back the sear, thus triggering the next shot. The cycle repeats itself as long as rounds are fed and the trigger is held back.

The Technology Issue

To manufacture such a complicated device with the primitive tools at hand was a serious technological challenge; making the production difficult and time-consuming. It would take several months for one man to make the whole set of parts for one gun. This rate was unacceptable, and thus the manufacturing of the parts was delegated to the Huta Ostrowiec employees. They were responsible for production of the slides, bolts, frame groups, trigger and hammer mechanisms, magazines and barrels pre-fabrication. The latter were made out of rifle barrels from scrapped World War I worn-out rifles, found by accident in the far corner of the metal works scrap-heap. These were then supplied to Strapoc in 480 mm (18.9 in.) long sections, with external threads cut to either end. Strapoc was boring these out to about 9mm internal diameter, from the original 7.62mm (Mosin), 8mm (Mannlicher) or 7.92mm (Mauser), then rifled them with the use of ram-drifters. This was a very difficult operation because it called for accuracy, which was in a very short supply indeed with the tools at hand. Many barrel blanks were wasted in the process. Upon rifling the barrel blanks, chambers were drilled on either end of the barrel, and then the barrel was hack-sawed in half to make two submachine guns barrels.

The HO people manufactured the semi-finished slides out of 26 mm (1.02 in.) diameter steel tubing, cut down to 405 mm (15.94 in.) length. Then the tube was cut longitudinally for a half of a future slide, the sides were unfolded and hammer-straightened to become vertical sides of the slide. Strapoc then made the ejection openings and screw holes, soldered-in the end-parts of the slides, complete with the bolt attaching lugs, and riveted the slide rails in place. The frame group components were then brass-soldered or riveted together.

Design Analysis

The BH submachine gun is by all means an original weapon. It was – as far as it is known – probably the first submachine gun ever to fire from the closed breech with the swinging hammer-type trigger mechanism. Only the US Reising and Swiss Furrer MP 41 submachine guns were firing from a closed bolt before it, but both were striker-fired. The bolt is of the external slide variety, straddling the frame, much like in the automatic pistols, a design feature to be re-born in Mr. Wilniewczyc’s PM63 machine pistol of the late 1950s. At the same time, the hammer-fired submachine guns were also re-discovered, in the form of the German HK MP5 (then still known as the MP64) and the Czech Skorpion vz.61.

The setup of the weapon is readily inspired by the MP38/MP40 series with their separate pistol grips, folding stocks and vertical magazines. The vague knowledge of the actual principles on which a weapon like that operates caused Strapoc to built a very complicated hammer mechanism instead of some kind of KISS-principle (keep-it-simple-stupid) slam-fire one. Several parts bear some resemblance to various weapons, mostly the pocket automatics of the early 20th Century. The hammer plunger assembly is similar to that found in 6.35mm Walther Mod.8 or Belgian F. Delu 6.35mm pistols, while the disconnecting action is similar to that of the Hungarian 7.65mm M1901 Frommer pistol. The trigger mechanism as a whole, however, is a very unusual one for a submachine gun in those days, and it is very doubtful if a village blacksmith ever had an opportunity to see most of the designs listed above.

The positioning of the ejector (a projection on the automatic sear) is believed to be governed by the lack of space behind the magazine well – but no other gun has an ejector arrangement like that. The ability to cock the weapon by means of the sling is also an original idea, since then only once recalled, in the Austrian Steyr MPi 69, a quarter of a century later.

The hammer firing mechanism, then a rarity, nowadays is a standard for all high-tech submachine guns, such as the ubiquitous Heckler & Koch MP5, also designed a quarter of a century later. With such advanced design features, one can surely say that this out-back, middle-of-nowhere country blacksmith had preceded the professional submachine gun designers by at least that – a quarter of a century.

Polish BH Submachine Gun

Almost twenty years before the West went PDW-crazy with advent of micro-caliber rounds that made the concept viable at last, a machine pistol was created in Poland showing all the features required from that seemingly novel class of automatic weapons. It was officially called the Pistolet maszynowy wzór 1963 (PM-63), but most people refer to it as the “Rak” (Polish for cancer). It was lightweight, compact, capable of serious firepower, yet holsterable to leave the hands free for whatever job they were needed for. When boxy just started to seem sexy, those classy, curving lines of the Rak pleased the eye of beholder.

The re-armament of armies with automatic rifles chambered for intermediate ammunition throughout the 1950s and 1960s resulted in growing marginalization of the classic pistol-caliber submachine gun. Yet, it was this very same process of warfare modernization that nearly brought it down to the brink of extinction, paradoxically, brought it up back again – although in a completely different guise. A new wave of compact submachine guns, or even machine pistols, were meant to be the self-preservation weapon for commanders, gunners, drivers, pilots and the like. Thus, a PDW-style weapon had to be devised from scratch because the level of technology available in the 1950s did not allow for the intermediate-round assault-rifle to be cut down any smaller, and the classical submachine gun was too large and bulky to fill the need. Something completely new was needed – and quick.

There was one additional problem to the East of the Iron Curtain. Wartime experience had proved that the 7.62×25 Tokarev round was too powerful to have a controllable compact submachine gun chambered for it. Additionally, despite the remarkable energy level and penetration of this round, its terminal ballistics were less than stellar. It was even worse in its handgun ammunition role. The Soviet Army, having re-armed itself from a 19th century virtually recoilless, revolver (the M1895 Nagant), they loathed the large, heavy and kicking like a mule, yet inefficient Tokarev M1933 pistol. After the war in 1951, the Soviet military went to another extreme adopting instead a small-sized, blowback Makarov pistol. It was chambered for a new round, the 9×18 “57-M-181S”, designed by Boris V. Syemin, referred to colloquially as the “Makarov round.” It was reasonably accurate and efficient at pistol distances, but way too weak to have any effect at the classical “front-line” submachine gun ranges. On the other hand, its small size and limited level of energy allowed for creation of the compact machine pistols, like the Stechkin APS. In the field, though, where obsolete tactical doctrine called for it to perform a surrealistic role of the soldier’s primary combat weapon, it was soon deemed inefficient and replaced with a folding stock AKS-47 automatic rifle.

One of the facets of the post-Stalinist “thaw” in the Eastern Bloc was the drive towards legalization and solidification of the satellite-states dependency on the USSR and, in military terms, taking shape of an alliance to counter-weigh NATO. The treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland, in May 1955, and therefore it was called the Warsaw Pact – even though it was steered solely from Moscow and served solely Moscow’s interests. De facto, it changed the situation marginally – it was still the Soviet Union that commanded the “allied” militaries directly from Moscow, but in appearance they were now independent, national military forces – if only on paper. The Treaty allowed for a re-creation of the national façade in each member-state’s military, and loosened the up-to-then iron grip the Soviet Union had over their defense industries and armaments. At the same time the “allied” militaries were shown the hitherto top secret Kalashnikov rifle and Makarov pistol with their respective ammunition, whose appearance was met with amazement. A lot money was spent by the Czechs on their intermediate round while their new Big Brother already had such ammunition for several years. So much money was wasted to buy licenses to manufacture the “world’s most advanced” models like the M44 Mosin-Nagant carbine, the PPSh41 and PPS43 submachine guns or the TT33 pistol, while the seller knew perfectly well that they’re obsolete and even worse – that immediately after the new rounds and arms are de-classified, the “allies” would have to pay even more for another set of licenses. The growing concern over these practices made the new post-20th Party Congress Soviet leadership take an unprecedented step. As the military establishment was adamant that the 7.62×39 chambered rifle had to be the backbone of each “member-state” army, the manufacturing licenses for SKS and AK-47 were for a limited time offered at very reasonable discount prices, while in the handguns department they were left to their own devices altogether. This was a remarkable step aside from the Stalinist-era extortion-style marketing, and most Warsaw Pact states jumped upon the occasion. The neo-Stalinist Czechoslovak leaders of the era chose to literally “stick to their guns” – and became the only Warsaw Pact state to have their army completely kitted-out with domestic hardware.

Wilniewczyc Redux

Piotr Wilniewczyc, the creator of the most famous Polish small arms, the Vis wz.35 (a.k.a. the Radom) pistol and the Mors wz.39 submachine gun (SAR Vol. 8, No. 3) survived the war, and after the cessation of hostilities returned to work. His weapons designing abilities were not needed, though as the official position of the new rulers was that designing indigenous guns is pointless, as the superiority of the Soviet small arms design is prevalent. He started to teach mechanics again, at first in the Lodz Technical University, as the one in Warsaw was laid in ruins. He then returned to the capital, and while teaching the young engineers, he wrote several books that for years were the backbone of small arms designers’ education in Poland.

After 1955, the Polish small arms design school was revived; as fortunately many of the pre-war foremost designers survived both World War II and the subsequent civil war and political purges. In 1957, Wilniewczyc started the design of his first post-war semi-automatic pistol, the WiR wz.57, chambered for the 9×18 round. His design eventually lost to the competitors, the group of young military small arms experts who designed what later became the P-64 Army pistol.

While still honing his WiR wz.57 design, Mr. Wilniewczyc started to think about the compact, light automatic weapon for close-combat role, chambered for the pistol round: something along the same lines as the APS Stechkin, but from the first instant intended to be a purely self-defensive weapon, and not the primary armament. It was meant for platoon leaders, support weapon crews, airborne troops and the Ministry of Interior special services. In late 1956 and early 1957 he had already created a study of such weapon, with the grip-mounted magazine well and slide telescoping the barrel, something of a cross between a classic submachine gun and a semi-automatic pistol. It was an incarnation of the ideas developed by his former subordinate from pre-war times, Jerzy Podsendkowski, in his 1944 MCEM-2 weapon, designed in Great Britain. The MCEM-2 was an ancestor to the whole generation of the post-World War II submachine guns with grip-contained magazines and breech bolts telescoping the barrels. The Czech Holeczek submachine guns (Sa-23/25 chambered for the 9×19 and Sa-24/26 for 7.62×25) and Israeli Uzi being just two most famous of the lot.

The 1957 study weapon was blowback operated and already fitted with the rate reducer. The form of that slide proved to be the most outstanding (some would even say outlandish) features of the Wilniewczyc gun. It is an outside slide, reciprocating along the rails on top of the frame just like an ordinary semiautomatic pistol, but contrary to the APS, also with an outside slide, this weapon fired from an open, and not closed bolt. The barrel, fixed yet easily replaceable, was connected to the frame by five ribs – just like in John M. Browning’s FN pocket pistols.

At that time the code-name Rak was born. Several urban legends are connected with that name; the most persistent of them making it an abbreviation from Reczny Automat Komandosów (Commando Hand-held Automatic Weapon). The late Professor Stanislaw Kochanski, close associate and pupil of Mr. Wilniewczyc, disputed the theory. The word “Automat” was used in Russia when Mr. Wilniewczyc studied small arms designing there during the WW1, and later on, up to this date (e.g. Avtomat Kalashnikova, the AK), only for automatic rifle-class designs. Mr. Wilniewczyc was a terminological purist. He time and again chastised his students and co-workers alike for such blunders, and it is highly unlikely that he would ever call his work using the wrong term, as it was chambered for the pistol round. According to Kochanski, the name Cancer could stem from two things. First, the cocked weapon was very unusually shaped for those days as it looked as if it was positioned backwards, just like the canard airplane flying the horizontal stabilizer first. In the Polish language there is an expression “chodzic rakiem”, meaning “walking backwards”, like the cancer moves. The indirect proof that the name was used as a word – and not as an acronym – is Wilniewczyc’s own joking remark from the times, where he fought an uphill struggle against the terminal illness that eventually killed him in December 1960. He is reputed to say that, “Either the cancer is going to finish me first, or I would finish the Cancer earlier,” playing on the names of his gun and his illness.

The cancer got the better of him on December 23, 1960. After his death, the Rak design team with Marian Wakalski, Grzegorz Czubak and Tadeusz Bednarski took over the whole of the design and started to improve it.

The Novel Design

What started to emerge after a year of their work was a truly remarkable gun, with many novel and unconventional design treats. Rak was a selective fire weapon, yet the trigger had no selector lever of any kind. It fired semi-automatically when squeezed lightly and fully automatic if squeezed all the way back. This was pioneered in the Czechoslovak Sa-23/25 SMG, but the Polish design is radically different, using only the general idea. Soon, in 1969 the Austrian Steyr MPi-69 joined the dual-squeeze-selective-fire club, but the feature remained unique until in 1977 when the space-age Steyr AUG rifle made it a household idea.

The slide was still an outside-riding type, similar to the Danish M/1945 Madsen. According to Kochanski, Wilniewczyc deemed that a vital advantage of his design, making the Rak much more difficult to jam. He compared such a slide to the Roman sandal – if a pebble enters it, all the wearer has to do is shake it out and continue walking. If that pebble enters the high laced boot (or the bolt buried under bolt cover, deep inside the receiver) it takes much more time and effort to get it out. He might well be right – but on the other hand (or foot?) it is a lot harder for the pebble to enter the Boondocker than the Roman sandal.

The outside slide was provided with a muzzle jump compensator – a trough-shaped projection of the slide extending beneath the muzzle, which Polish soldiers christened the “spoon.” This spoon travels with the slide, which enables for another useful unique feature of the Rak; it can be cocked single-handedly by resting the spoon against some hard object and giving the pistol grip a shove until the slide trips the sear and remains in the cocked position. After depressing the trigger, the spoon would now travel back to battery with the slide and will be projecting under the muzzle at the moment of discharge deflecting some of the gases upward to reduce the muzzle jump.

The case extraction is also somewhat unusual. The extractor is conventionally placed in the bolt face of the slide but the ejector is actually a projection of the left magazine lip, as in the Webley & Scott M1909 pistol. Wilniewczyc liked that feature and to implement it he went back to where all burp-gun designers fled from: he revived the Schmeisser staggered-row, single feed magazine. Unfortunately, this was a very bad idea combined with a cartridge as short and stubby as the 9×18. The staggered-row, double feed Stechkin magazine is way easier to fill.

Another Rak gadget is an inertia in-line rate reducer. It retards the return of the slide in fully automatic fire to limit the rate of fire, which in a compact submachine gun is a good idea. The rate reducer consists of two parts: a weight reciprocating within the rear part of the slide, and a spring-loaded lever rising from the rear part of the frame. The weight travels back with the slide. When the slide hits the rear of the frame and rapidly decelerates, the inertia of the weight overcomes the action of the weight spring, continuing on its rearward movement. As the weight slides rearwards inside the slide, it reveals a slit in the bottom of the reducer chamber. Into that slit a spring-loaded reducer lever hook engages that holds the slide open. Then the reducer weight hits the rear end of the slide and, after a very brief interval, it’s the spring’s time to overcome the inertia of the weight eventually slamming it forward inside the reducer chamber of the slide. The conical head of the weight pushes the reducer lever hook out of engagement with the slide slit thus freeing the slide to return to battery. If the trigger is squeezed all the way, the sear remains depressed and the slide is propelled home by the return spring stripping another cartridge from the magazine, chambering it, and fires. If the trigger is squeezed just half-way, the sear is released by the disconnector and catches the slide and holds it until the trigger is released to reset the trigger mechanism.

The rate reducer weight of Wilniewczyc’s original project was truly cylindrical in shape: a single piece made of tungsten – a metal much heavier, but also much more expensive, than steel. This early reducer is set on a guide rod, along which it travels, which at the same time keeps the weight’s spring. It was only known from the patent drawing and it is not sure if it was ever actually made. The later reducer weight is also single-piece affair but longer, with tapering front and rear edges, and with a rear part of somewhat smaller diameter. The guide rod was dispensed with, the reducer weight was made solid, and the spring is much wider in diameter. The narrower rear part (stem) of the weight doubles as the spring guide. Such arrangement was retained as late as early production, and all the Polish Army field manuals, technical manuals and weapon’s charts feature that type of reducer. But after only one year of production, a military review board ordered several changes, mostly to decrease the unit price of the Rak. One of these was to get rid of the tungsten weight. Instead, it was made of steel, elongated to retain the weight. Shortly afterwards it was plain that the elongated one-piece reducer weight increased the wear significantly. As of the early 1970s, all single-piece reducers were ordered to be replaced with a new, two-piece design. This was also an all-steel one, with no tungsten, and consisted of two parts, that according to the late issue technical manual, are called “reducer” (the cylindro-conical forward part) and “inertia weight” (the rest), as if they performed some different roles. The laws of physics make them both travel together and act as a single unit – but now that they are separate, the tensions developed are smaller, and the weight breaks off less frequently than the one-piece model. In its final design, the reducer slows the rate of fire from well over 1,000 rpm to 600-650 rpm.

One of the most characteristic devices of the Rak is the folding forward grip. This is a late addition, though. At first the Rak was fitted with a wooden fore end and a top-folding metal stock with a rotating, U-shaped, arched butt plate that was somewhat reminiscent of the AKS-47, but narrower. The weapon could be fired with the stock in one of the three positions:

• folded with the butt plate folded under the fore end;
• folded with butt plate extended to form a fore grip;
• unfolded for firing from the shoulder.

The butt plate doubling as a fore grip was another Czech influence, even though the Czech Sa-25/26 had a side folding butt. Firing the Rak with both hands had to be inaccurate, as the need to use the stock as the fore grip precluded using it from the shoulder. Also, such fore grip was extended in front of the muzzle, leading – it was feared – to heat, blast and occasional bullet injuries to the weak hand. That is when the compensator “spoon” was first devised – to fight the muzzle jump as much as to improve the safety of use. The compensator shielded the hand from hot gases, precluded extending fingers into the path of the bullet, and if the firer did in fact place his finger in it inadvertently, the slide would have stopped short of igniting the round. However, fitting of the compensator also precluded unfolding the stock with the slide in battery. The firer had to cock the weapon before handling the stock which called for sweeping his hand in front of the muzzle of the cocked machine pistol. This was intolerable for obvious safety reasons.

Nevertheless, in January 1962, the design was sent to the Radom plant, then called the “General Walter” Metal Works, for further development and prototype work. There, in late 1963 and early 1964, a prototype batch of 20 weapons was manufactured; already with a completely redesigned stock. The top-folder gave way to the extendable butt stock with two machined flat stock bars connected by a small rotating sheet metal butt plate. As the new stock precluded using the butt plate as a fore grip, the fore end was also redesigned. It was then made of plastic, and part of the fore end was hinged to form a folding fore grip. That design feature can be traced to the Mauser 1957 prototype submachine gun. Now that the weak hand holding the fore grip was safely tucked under the fore end, the Rak could be fired with both hands holding the grips with the stock resting on the shoulder, which improved the accuracy in burst fire by enhancing control over the gun. The new stock and fore end were designed by two designers from Radom; Ryszard Chelmicki and Ernest Durasiewicz, who were given a Polish patent for it in October, 1972. One cannot help seeing something familiar when observing the ultra-modern HK MP7 with a folding fore grip of almost identical shape and purpose.

The price to pay for all these novelty features was a somewhat shaky and less user-friendly stock and fore end. It was found perfectly acceptable in a PDW-class firearm for second-line soldiers in the 1960s and 70s, when the marksmanship training for such users was tepid enough not to show the deficiencies of the new design. The attrition rate of firearms used in special units was high enough to cover them up, as well. If you got a bunch of snake-eaters tough enough to break a Kalashnikov rifle, then they’re poised to destroy any weapon in the world anyway. Nonetheless, to the objective eye, the fore grip and stock really did possess some design flaws. The flimsy, loosely-hinged butt plate was utterly useless for any purpose – intended or otherwise. It was designed with only one objective in mind: to fit snugly under the rear of the frame while folded. For that reason the plate was but a 2 inch long strip of flat thin metal that was too short and too flimsy to matter. To obtain that all-important flush fit under the frame, one had to rotate it through 270 degrees every time it was deployed or folded, which meant there were no butt plate catch or retainer to keep it open. Many special units of both military and police simply duck-taped it open spoiling the only purpose it ever served efficiently. They also soon developed the practice making the folding fore grip useless. They mostly fired the Rak with fore grip folded, because the hinge was weak and the fore grip soon developed an unacceptable degree of play.

The concept of the PDW-class weapon called for a compact, holsterable weapon. The size and weight of the folded Rak were ideal for that, but initially only the long, 25-round magazines were meant for it. This forced the user to carry the weapon empty – or else the long magazine sticking out from the grip would make his service life, especially the withdrawing, a nightmare. Thus, the next Radom implemented improvement was the creation of a shorter 15-round “holster” magazine, which could be kept inside the grip of the holstered Rak, to give the soldier a chance to fire off those most important first shots straight after the drawing of the weapon.

The first prototype batch of 1964 had all the plastic parts machined rather than molded. The moulds were too expensive to risk making them before the final shape of the stocks was sealed. On the left side of the slide, under the sight, all were decorated with an etched Polish Eagle, which was a clear reference to the pre-war tradition of Polish Eagle marked receivers and slides of Radom made firearms. The powers-that-be were not amused, though, and Radom was ordered that no other weapons be decorated that way.

After the military acceptance testing program was finished, the Rak was officially accepted into the inventory of the Polish Army as the “9mm pistolet maszynowy wzór 1963 (PM-63)”. In 1964, the Radom plant started to prepare for production.

PM-63

Mass production started in 1967, though, and it was only in the latter 1960s that the first new PDWs made their way into the hands of the Polish soldiers, soon becoming the regulation side-arm of tank crews, scouts, RPG gunners, ATG missile-crews and drivers. Soon the down-sides of the small machine pistol started to show, which gave rise to many, not always grounded, accusations leveled at the Rak. Some of these stemmed from the novelty of the design and the lack of experience on the part of the designers. Some were ironed out during the production run such as the twice redesigned magazine catch that eliminated the inadvertent dropping-out of the magazine, while the redesigned stock bars catch facilitated the deployment of the stock. Not all of the users were happy with these changes: the magazine catch, eventually buried into the grip plates, was now hard to release while shooting in gloves. Other problems were rooted in the lack of knowledge and disregard for gun-safety and/or gun exploitation rules. Many reducer levers were damaged during re-assembly, if the reducer lever was not positioned properly prior to re-attaching the slide. In late production Raks, a special bracket was added to eliminate the lever over-travel, which cured the problem completely.

Other design changes were aimed at reduction of the unit price. Already discussed was the all-steel reducer weight replacing the tungsten one, but the changes also included redesign of the frame to replace the deep-drilling of the return spring channel with just milling a groove for it. The chrome plated-all-over barrel of the first Raks was replaced with a blued one, retaining only the chrome plated bore and chamber. The captive recoil spring unit, consisting of a two-piece telescoping spring rod with end pieces holding the spring that enabled the return unit to be detached as one piece, was replaced by a simple spring and one piece short rod.

Two types of special replacement barrels were devised for the PM-63. One was a blank-firing drill barrel meant for troop training and movie industry use. On the outside, the blank barrel was identical to the real one, but the bore was constricted to enable the weapon to cycle fully automatically when firing blanks. It was designed by Marian Gryszkiewicz and Ryszard Chelmicki of the Radom factory, who were given a patent for it in 1978.

The other special purpose replacement barrel was the silenced version for the special forces. The barrel was made longer, sturdier, and the part extending forward of the slide’s spoon was threaded to accept an all-metal sound suppressor designed by Marian Gryszkiewicz (this project was code-named “Safloryt”). As the suppressor casing obscured the sights, the suppressor was fitted with its own set of sights, placed on top of the casing. As the “Makarov round” develops a sub-sonic muzzle-velocity, standard ammunition could be used for the suppressed version. No hard data is available as to how many of these were ever manufactured.

The PM-63 was exported in the early 1970s by the Cenzin Foreign Trade Office. It was at Cenzin’s instigation that a prototype 9×19 variant, called the PM-70, was designed in 1971. To accommodate for the new, more conical-cased ammunition of the significantly higher muzzle velocity and energy level, a heavier .55 kilogram slide had to replace the old model, with corresponding changes to the grip area and magazine. Despite the initial concern, the prototype was shooting well from the very start, and while the recoil was significantly higher, mechanically it fared surprisingly well. Nevertheless, Cenzin didn’t follow through on their marketing strategy and only one batch of 20 PM-70 Raks chambered for the 9mm Luger were ever manufactured.

All in all, within the decade of Rak production between 1967 and 1977, approximately 70,000 basic variant PM-63 PDW-class machine pistols were manufactured.

The Rak Heritage

For four decades the PM-63 Rak was a tool of trade for Polish Army soldiers, and never had to be tested in real combat by the original owner. Some of its critics would add here “fortunately,” which unfortunately, is true. Without a doubt, it was a remarkable achievement of the Polish designing and manufacturing capabilities, as the only (except Skorpion) Eastern Bloc burp-gun ever to be manufactured in a sizeable quantity and serving in front-line units of the major Warsaw Pact army. On the other hand, it is a weapon that added her own, inimitable, sins to the long inventory of the blowback burp-guns’ deficiencies. The wobbly useless butt plate, the breaking off fore grip and exposed magazine catch were already mentioned. But the most controversial feature of the PM-63 is arguably her exposed slide-style breechblock. Scores of urban legends surrounded it, while still serving in the Army. Not a single instance of eye-ball crushing contributed to that slide was ever corroborated, even though sporadically gas mask oculars were indeed scratched or even broken. The sights reciprocating with the slide proved no big deal in reality, too. After all, the Rak was not designed for sniping. It is a war time ultimate defense machine pistol: more of a saturation “spray and pray” area weapon. The first shot is more or less aimed, where the rest happen to hit is a matter of recoil, muzzle jump and physical strength of the shooter. Her accuracy was enough for self-defense, and the military users praised her as a handy, compact, well-balanced gun. A shooter unable to score at least Marksman with her was a rarity. On the other hand, Rak was practically useless – or could even be dangerous – for Police SWAT work, as a precision weapon for physical elimination of an armed and dangerous individual on a busy street. Nevertheless, back in the Communist days, where real submachine guns like the HK MP 5 were just something seen on TV, these were in fact used by SWAT teams of the Polish Police, and still can be seen carried by bank guards. Railway Police (SOK) also uses them, and recently there was a botched hold-up in Warsaw, in December 2004, when a railway cop opened up with his Rak wounding one of the would-be robbers.

The unusual design and appealing shape of the PM-63 triggered much interest in the world. Although no foreign army ever officially adopted it as a standard-issue military weapon, some Communist police forces did. Many of these were bought by the former East German People’s Police, where they were called the “klein-Maschinenpistole PM-63” and issued to the DDR SWAT teams (BV, Bereitschaft Volkspolizei) and to the anti-terror units. Some of these survived the fall of the Berlin Wall and even served for a while with the police of the Free State of Saxony in the re-unified Germany, along with the Polish-built helicopters. Smaller quantities of the Raks were imported by other ComBloc countries, like Cuba or Vietnam.

The latter export resulted in a copy-cat version manufactured in China. During the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979, the Chinese captured some of the PM-63s used by the Vietnamese tank crewmen. The Chinese were just on the look-out for a compact machine pistol for their Special Forces and Police, and so the state-owned Norinco Works copied the Rak and started a limited production of the Type 82 machine pistol. This weapon is known in two variations, differing in sights arrangement. One of these was an attempt at lengthening of the Rak’s sight radius by relocating the rear sight to the rear extreme of the slide. The other has sights identical to the Polish version. Both are copy-cat versions of the early production Rak, with old-style butt catch and exposed magazine catch. The Chinese Rak was also fitted with a second, front, sling eyelet, which points to the fact, that it was devised as a principal weapon, slung across the chest, and not to be holstered. The Rak copy had lost internal Chinese competition to the Schnellfeuer-style Type 85 machine pistol, but nevertheless, the Type 82 was frequently exhibited at the international arms fairs of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

As with all other Communist compact machine pistols, the Rak was frequently used as an urban guerilla weapon by the leftist terrorists of the 1970s. The PM-63 had the dubious distinction of being featured in several high-profile cases. It was probably the East German channel through which the Rak reached the Red Army Faction in Germany. On September 5, 1977, the PM-63 was used during the Hanns-Martin Schleyer kidnapping. In the 1970s it was frequently seen on TV, in the hands of various Palestinian factions roaming Beirut. This was probably the source of the Rak found by the SAS Pagoda Troop storming the Iranian Embassy at the Princess Gate in London, hijacked by the anti-Khomeini Iranian dissidents in 1980. Footage from Panama, taken prior to Operation Just Cause in 1990, show some of the General Noriega irregular “supporters” armed with PM-63s and shooting them towards the crowd of the anti-Noriega protesters. As late as the 1990s, the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, was photographed with a holstered PM-63 within reach on his desk.

The PM-63 was also used with tragic effect in Poland. On December 17, 1981, shortly after Martial Law was imposed, at the Wujek coal mine the Katowice riot police SWAT team armed with Raks shot 17 miners protesting against the Communist rules.

Shortly thereafter a new compact submachine gun was designed, to replace the ageing Rak. The Glauberyt Project led by the Radom Plant designers, culminated in the new PM-84, with enclosed bolt, but still chambered for the 9×18. Despite apparent success, it was never mass-produced. At that time the 9×19 Luger ammunition was introduced into the Army and Police, and the thoroughly redesigned PM-84 was accepted as the PM-84P. But that’s quite another story…

Magazines are direct descendants of a charger clip – an en bloc loading device inserted into the internal magazine together with the cartridges. If the chargers were so inserted, why not make a magazine that could be exchanged the same way? Indeed, why not, must have thought James Paris Lee, an American inventor who provided such exchangeable magazines for his prototype rifles of the 1880s.

The first country that adopted his rifle was England, but before the Lee rifle replaced the Martini-Henry as a new trademark of the Thin Red Line, the English introduced so many changes into his design that finally only two original features were left: the action cocked on closing and the exchangeable magazine. Why this was a feature the British wanted for their 1888 Lee-Metford and then Lee-Enfield rifles, nobody knows. The fact is that all through the long years when .303 Lee was the British rifle, NEVER were extra magazines given to or carried by the rank and file Tommy. Each SMLE had one exchangeable magazine in place and stripper clips with extra ammo supply to top it off. Leaving that aside, the first move was made in 1888 when the first exchangeable magazine made it to the hands of the major army.

Ever since then the magazine clips, often just called clips for short, expanded rapidly and now hardly anyone imagines an infantry firearm fed otherwise. Even the cartridge belts are now encased in small containers clipped under the gun, the magazine way. Internal magazines became a proof of obsolescence – pure and simple. When in the 1980s George Kelgren tried to sell his Grendel P-10 with an internal, stripper-filled magazine, he earned many raised eyebrows in response.

Exchangeable magazines come in various shapes, sizes and designs, which can roughly be divided into three main groups: the box magazine; the drum magazine; and the pannier magazine. There are scores of individual designs, but with a little bit of good will, each magazine can be attributed to one of the three groups.

Box Magazines

Box magazines are the most internally differentiated and the most numerous group of magazines. Generally speaking, the box magazine has cartridges laid parallel to the bore (with a few exceptions, like the Czech ZB47 or the German HK G11, where cartridges were set perpendicularly, pointing downwards, or the Belgian FN P90, where bullets are set perpendicularly, pointing sideways) and in layers of different size; mostly single row or double (staggered) row. The cartridges are pressed down between the follower and the magazine lips under the tension of the follower spring. The spring tension on the follower, a small platform pressing on the cartridges, is responsible for both retention of the rounds loaded inside the magazine, as well as for exposing them at the magazine lips, where from they are stripped by the bolt and chambered. Owing to the shape of the cartridge case, sometimes more cylindrical, or conical, the magazine box can be either straight-sided or arced (the so-called banana-clip). Pistol magazines are straight boxed, no matter how conical the cases are. With traditional materials and cutting tools it was too complicated and expensive to make a grip with a curved magazine well to suit a banana-shaped pistol magazine. But now, with all these new polymers, who knows what the future may hold? In automatic weapons it is different, because several dozens of conical cases forced the designers to curve the magazine at sometimes radical angles, including half-circular shapes, like the 20-round 8x50R French magazine for the Chauchat LMG, or the 100-round horseshoe shaped experimental AKMS magazine (fortunately never issued). Even with a radical shape like this, it is nevertheless still called a box magazine.

The fundamental difference in magazine designs is the number of the cartridges in a layer. A single row magazine has one round in a layer, and the width of the box is roughly equal to the width of the cartridge. Because of their early abundance, this type of magazine is unjustly deemed the earliest type of box magazine. In fact, the Lee magazine was of the staggered or double row type. These magazines are a little wider than a single cartridge, roughly a case-and-a-half in width. Such an arrangement enables more rounds to be packed into a lower stack: the main purpose of their existence. The name “staggered row” describes the arrangement of the cartridges more precisely than the name “double row”. The simplest rendition of this scheme is a “staggered row – two-position feed” magazine with two rows of cartridges all the way up to the feed lips. It was simple to make such a magazine, but then it necessitated some kind of ramp incorporated into the gun between the lips and the chamber to center the rounds fed from the left and right intermittingly on their way to the chamber. It was not a big problem in a bolt action rifle, due to the slow velocity of the moving parts, but in an automatic firearm problems were inevitable. Thus, single row magazines abounded in early automatic guns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cartridges from a single row magazine are always presented on the axis of the chamber, and there are no problems with indexing the round. It was simpler to set the cartridges in a single row and was easier to get the single row magazine working in an automatic gun. Even if it fired a rimmed-cased round, the magazine was straightforward in design and manufacture, but it had one big disadvantage: to get any sizeable capacity meant having to deal with an enormously long magazine. To ease that problem, magazines were set on top of the machine gun (Madsen) or on the side of it (Johnson LMG 1941), so that the long magazine did not stand in the way of a shooter firing it from the prone position. What was good for pistols, could not be found fit for a machine gun.

In 1916, German Hugo Schmeisser found an answer to the problem. He blended both ideas into what we now call a “staggered row-single position feed” magazine. It was a simple arrangement whereby the staggered row portion of the magazine that holds the ammunition fed to the chamber via a single row. These are connected by a so-called “Schmeisser’s Cone,” forcing the two rows of cartridges into a single one. Schmeisser’s magazine was much better than the snail drums he was forced to use with his MP18.I during 1918, but they were only introduced after World War One ended. At the same time an American, Oscar V. Payne, had at last solved the problem of a “staggered row-two position feed” magazine, designing his XX (20-round) stick magazine for the Thompson submachine gun. Both systems were then at each other’s throat for years, each with avid supporters. Another breakthrough came about after World War Two. In the late 1940s, at about the same time in Czechoslovakia and Sweden, a new type of magazine appeared: the wedge-section staggered-row. This was a development of the classic Lee’s “staggered row-two position feed”, whereby the shape of the section makes both rows converge a little so that the cartridges, despite being alternatively fed from left and right, have bullets already centered for smooth chambering without a need for feed ramp. The first wedge-sectioned magazine was introduced in 1948 simultaneously in Sweden (Carl Gustaf m/45B, or Swedish K) and Czechoslovakia (9mm vz.23/25 SMG, then converted to 7.62×25 as vz.24/26).

Another attempt at enlarging the magazine capacity was taken by Carl Schildstroem of Sweden. He designed a double compartment magazine with a single-position feed, giving, in effect, a four-row (twice the staggered row) single-position feed clip for 50 rounds. These were in fact two magazines sharing one set of magazine lips with a Schmeisser’s Cone. This magazine, called the “coffin clip” by the Finnish troops, was introduced for the Suomi SMG. It was too heavy (empty weight about 2 pounds), complicated, and failure-prone to be retained for service for any prolonged length of time. It was dropped soon after the war in favor of the wedge-shaped box. An interesting attempt at reviving the scheme was taken by the Italian company SITES for their M4 Spectre submachine gun. The M4 magazine also has a double compartment feature, but a two-position feed.

An additional novelty is a magazine for the futuristically designed FN P90 submachine gun. At first sight it looks just like a common staggered row magazine made of translucent plastic, but if you look at it closer, it is obvious that it’s single position feed lips are set perpendicular to the cartridge axis. Under the tension of the follower spring each cartridge is rotated through 90 degrees before being exposed in the feed lips for the bolt to strip and chamber. Thus, a submachine gun was designed, which is but a flat box with no projections vertical or horizontal, despite being ready to shoot with a 50 round capacity.

Drum Magazines

Another stage of magazine design evolution was the drum magazine. As the name implies, it is rounded, with cartridges set parallel to the bore, in a helical path, where a spring forces them one by one to the magazine lips. They were another way to extend the capacity of the single row magazine (which variation they really are) without growing to prohibitive size. The first were just that; a single row magazine with their bottom portion rolled. This type of drum was called the snail-drum, and the most famous of these was introduced in 1917 with the Ari-Para, or the M1917 Artilleriepistole variant of a Luger with an 8-inch barrel, tangent sight and detachable shoulder stock. A year later, the same magazine was forced upon Hugo Schmeisser for his MP18.I, becoming the soft underbelly of that weapon. Some see the origin of such a magazine in a rounded belt box with a spooled belt, attached to the machine gun’s receiver.

Another 1919 Oscar V. Payne invention, the L and C (50- and 100-round) drums for the Thompson submachine gun, gave origin to the true drum magazine and no longer had the extended box part. The magazine lips of Payne’s drum were cut in the drum’s side. The clockwork spring moves the “propeller” – a star shaped cartridge container-cum-multiple arm follower, exposing consecutive rounds in the lip’s opening. This was a complicated design, but operated much smoother than the single-follower models because each of the follower arms had to deal with just five or ten cartridges, and not the whole of the drum contents. Payne’s magazine’s most recent rendition is a 75-round drum for the Soviet RPK light machine gun, which provides sort of a missing link between the snail-drum and the Payne drum. It is a multi-follower magazine with a single file attaching part, which for manufacture convenience was shaped to represent a double-position staggered-row magazine box to fit the Kalashnikov magazine catch.

The other variation of the true drum was a design by Oskar Alfred Östmann of the Tikkakoski Oy, manufacturer of the Aimo Johannes Lahti’s Suomi submachine gun. It has a single follower, propelled by a very strong clockwork spring; necessary to overcome the weight and friction of the 70-round content of the drum. It was less complicated than Payne’s drum, but much more susceptible to dirt; increasing the friction and raising the burden on the clockwork spring even further. Despite that, it was the most widely mass-produced submachine gun magazine of the world. What, you never heard of Mr. Östmann and his magazine? What about Comrade Shpagin and his Pepesha drum? Oh, that you know? Well, that’s the same drum. The only difference was that Finns were the first, made it in 9x19mm and paid the inventor royalties, while the Soviets copied it in 7.62x25mm and never paid a dime – but that is another story.

A sub-variation of drum magazines are the double-drum magazines; also called “saddle-magazines”, a German specialty. The first such design originated for the prototype Vollmer’s machine gun from the period of the Germany’s clandestine re-armament after World War One. It was then retained for the MG13 light machine gun, the aerial MG15, and then with the MG34 general purpose machine gun. Contrary to the external appearances and what many so-called authorities state, the latter two were not interchangeable, as they were differing in the height of the magazine lips portion. Such magazines has two separate drums, feeding cartridges to the common feed box with lips on the end, placed between the drums and shaped like a staggered-row two-position feed box magazine. Then the bolt strips the cartridges from the lips, chambers them and fires in an ordinary way. Most of the German saddle-drums were attached from the top (MG 15 and 34), or from the side (MG 13). But the most recent rendition of the saddle magazine, the Betamag, or C-Mag for 100-round 5.56x45mm is attached from the bottom of the gun; their feed boxes emulating the shape of the standard AR-15/M16 or HK magazines.

Another variation of the drum magazine is the spiral magazine, which is kind of a stretched drum. The cartridges are placed along the helical path, but the rows are not wrapped one around another, like in a classical drum, but one in front of the other. This gives the extended capacity, without increasing the diameter of the drum. This could of course be so only with short, pistol rounds, and that’s why it is used mainly with submachine guns. The first spiral drum was designed for the American Calico 900 submachine gun, and the most recent rendition is the Russian magazine for the Krinkov-based Bizon-2 submachine gun.

Pannier Magazines

The last of the magazine design groups are the pannier (or disc) magazines. In these magazines the cartridges are laying flat on their side, bullets to the center, parallel to the bore. These may be set in one (Soviet DP LMG, Lewis 47 round) or multiple layers (Soviet DT tank machine gun or Lewis 96 round aerial), can have their own propelling spring (DP) or be rotated by the gun (Lewis). Most of the drums utilizes the force of gravity for presenting the cartridges at the lips and is placed on top of the weapon, but for the Soviet RPK 74 a prototype 100-round pannier was proposed, feeding cartridges from the bottom, and using the standard magazine well of the AK-weapons family.