The Swiss Suomi: MP43/44 (With Bayonet)
Submachine Guns
•
6m 56s
During World War Two, the Swiss had adopted Adolf Furrer's toggle-locked MP41 submachine gun, and they found it too fragile, complex, and expensive. Looking for an alternative, one easy choice was the Finnish Suomi. Used and appreciated by the Finns, Danes, and Swedes it was reliable and available. It was adopted into service in the fastest set of trials in Swiss military history, and a batch was purchased from Tikkakoski along with a license to produce them at Hispano-Suiza in Geneva.
The initial Finnish-made guns were designated MP43, and the Swiss-made ones were the MP43/44. A total of 5200 MP43s were imported and MP43/44 production resulted in another 22,468 made between 1944 and 1951. The Swiss-made guns have a few distinctive features including an aluminum buttplate, two-position notch sights (100m/200m), and after the first few thousand, a bayonet lug to fit the standard Swiss K31 bayonet.
Up Next in Submachine Guns
-
Samopal vz 38: Czechoslovakia's Inter...
Military interest in a submachine gun was late in Czechoslovakia, but by the late 1930s a development program was put into place. Interestingly, the main use case for an SMG was seen as being a replacement for a rifle-caliber LMG in fortification mounts. The thought process seems to have been tha...
-
ZB47: A Truly Weird Czech SMG
The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; video on that is coming a bit later) but production did not begin before the arrival of German tro...
-
STEN Mk.2, Mk.5 and Sterling On The R...
Eric, @neutral_af and Mike went to Kudu Tir in Sion, Switzerland, and had a chance to shoot Mike's STEN Mk.2, Mk.5 and L2A3 Sterling Mk.4 alongside each other. These are all open-bolt blocked-at-semi subgats, and are a lot of fun! Plus it was Eric's first experience on a STEN, he's more of an U...
