Prototype Hungarian 33M Bolt Action Rifle
Hungary
•
11m
When Hungary separated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War One, it began to slowly rebuild its military equipment. The eventually led to carbine conversions of old M95 rifles using the new 8x56mm rimmed cartridge, which were designated the 31M. However, the Hungarians were not satisfied with the Mannlicher straight-pull system. In cold conditions during the war, these rifles had sometimes become very difficult to operate, as the grease in their bolts solidified at low temperature. Hungary wanted to adopt a new turnabout rifle, and the 35M was eventually chosen. Building up to that, however, was the prototype 33M design.
The 33M was a rifle with a lot of fine machining and expensive, sometimes delicate, features. It used a sliding dust cover on the bolt that never would have survived field conditions. It also had a quite large oil bottle in the buttstock, accessed by pivoting the whole buttplate off to one side. Eventually the most egregious of the fancy bits would be removed, and the resulting 35M adopted by Hungarian forces (and later adapted to 8x57mm as the 43M and G98/40 for German troops).
Many thanks to Joschi Schuy for giving me access to film this extremely rare rifle!
Up Next in Hungary
-
GM6 Lynx: The Hungarian Long-Recoil ....
The Gepárd M6 is the result of nearly 3 decades of development. The Hungarian military first requested a .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle circa 1987, and the M1 design submitted was a single-shot rifle chambered for the 12.7x108mm Russian cartridge. This was an accurate gun, but slow to reload, an...
-
Hungarian WWII Rifles (35M, 43M, G98/40)
After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hungarian army was armed primarily with Steyr M95 straight-pull rifles and carbines, chambered in the 8x56mm rimmed cartridge. In 1935 they adopted a new Mannlicher turnbolt rifle, the 35M, which used the same 8x56R ammunition and en bloc clip...
-
Bolt Disassembly: Hungarian 35M, 43M,...
A new set of videos will be starting next week, and one of them covers the family of three related Hungarian WWII rifles: the 35M, 43M, and G98/40. I figured that some folks would be interested in just a tutorial on their bolt disassembly without sitting through all the other material, so I decid...
