@@witssen9954 If you want to see a man in true pain and being tortured watch Jonathon during some of CoD videos. Esepcially the ones where they have serious "modified" the guns.
Without having the bolt lock in any way, and not having the vent to the gas block until the bullet has left the barrel, what they made was a really, really complicated simple blowback rifle. Those crazy Germans!
I'd be a bit concerned about shooting a rifle where the breech isn't actually locked in place until a (very) short time *after* you've fired it. Simple blowback system usually have no delay and only use pistol calibers.
Indeed, when the bullet travel thru the barrel, the bolt is closed just by a combination of inertia and faith your calculations are precise. Then the pressure of the muzzle break grabs the runaway bolt forward. I mean, I trust the law of physics, but...
* Mr. Jonathan Ferguson, keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in UK which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.
Hello there, Jonathon Ferguson, keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history!
@@brynntall6811 It’s a pun on “Somewhere it all went wrong” using German pronunciation of the gun name. It’s cheesy, geeky and totally seems like a joke Jonathan would make 😂👍
For those wondering why they were working on this weapon when the war was going so badly, remember that the engineers needed to show that they were busy with important work or risk getting put in uniform and sent to the front.
Good point. But it was also partly the "effect" of the "every man for himself" hierarchy that ran the Nazi bureaucracy. So much busy work, so much wasted time and resources. I for one am totally happy the Nazis worked this way, made their downfall nearly inevitable.
Except that is a blatant misconception on how German army (any other armed forces) works, unless they prefer giving up arms race, otherwise they would keep the weapon technicians around as every one of them had years of arms experience and they couldn't just hire another around the street corner, there were much better and cheaper source for bodies. And one often-missed point was as soon the StG44 were in production, there was little sense for German engineers to continue research the obsolete Kar 98k or MP40 (other than how to make them cheaper, but that is more on the effort of manufacturers themselves), so most of German small arms research got redirect to Sturmgewehr direction, and with the gun and Kurz ammo being a novel concept then, German engineers tried many different idea to see what works with it and what nots. Most late war German small arms development was about the StG44, namely the Night Vision Vampir StG, or the curved barrel of Stg44, the MP43/1 was one of many proof-of-concept, and one clearly hit a dead end unfortunately.
You underestimate the over-engineering of the Germans. If it works, it doesn't work good enough. There's always room for improvement, even the Soviets themself was busy with gun development even when they were about to win the war.
The "who did this" gave me flashbacks to Masterchef when one of the contestents did a shit job of butchering a chicken and Gordan said "WHO MAULED THIS?" which I think is oddly appropriate here 😆
I read this too fast and got super excited to see a cooking show starring Master Chief. The grunts are busy making noxious soups, while a jackal is going to town on a chicken with an energy sword.
Grarand used the gas trap as a alternative to a hole in the barrel to work a piston attached to the oprod. As this gun above is described as a gas delayed blowback, I assume this is using the gas trap to momentarily delay the blowback action, in other words it’s doing the opposite job to Garand’s Bang gas trap.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 Apparently, this firearm uses gasses at the muzzle to operate a rod that opens the action. Doesn't seem to me, to be a delay of straight blowback.
@@kbjerke It uses a muzzle brake to delay opening of a n unlocked bolt. Gas-delayed blowback. There is a slight similarity with blow-forward gas-operated rifles like the Danish Bang, but the bolt is not locked.
Total shitstorm. Damn thing can run down a battery in just a few seconds of holding down the trigger. Though I guess if they had any lithium back then they should've been taking 600 mg thrice daily anyway.
Modern .460 Rowland pistols also use muzzle breaks to delay their actions. It'd be interesting to see that tried with a modern blowback, as it's among the simplest delay mechanisms.
I recall a presentation by Barrett regarding the XM109 grenade rifle noted that the giant three-baffle muzzle brake could be used on the bolt action Barrett M95 and M99, but not on the M82 due to causing reliability issues when doing so.
Never heard of this weird variant, thanks! 11:01 ...Or, indeed, much like contemporary ZB-26/ZB-30 & BREN machineguns, of which this is a derivative. 15:41 So, Special comission on infantry weapons.
But but but... DID IT WORK?? No records of a test fire, either german or post-war? My gut feeling is that the inertia of the bolt group would be insufficient to keep it from accelerating until the muzzle blast started to act on it, but gut feelings do not a gun designer make...
@@jonathanferguson1211 I could never do your job. No way I could leave that untested, even at the risk of damaging a priceless unique piece of history.. Go on, you know you want to.. With a bench and a high-speed camera.. It's just one round of 8 kurz after all.. what harm could it do? 🤣🤣 FOR SCIENCE!!
It really seems to me that this action must not have been delayed in any way which matters, and that it would probably have been unsafe to shoot this gun.
Your Sonderkomission Infanteriewaffen was spot on but if you have names like Volkssturmgewehr (peoples/folks assault rifle) the Volks part sounds like folks (english didn't made the second germanic consonant shift) so if a V is at the beginning of a word you will spell it like a english F
it is not unusual that having a firearm pointed at you is unnerving to you. It is the only rational response a person could have to having a deadly weapon pointed at them, whether loaded or not, and harkens back to the very first thing most of us learn about guns.
That I understand, but the whole bit about not pointing a gun at a camera is just silly. It's not like someone could be shot through a video broadcast on the internet.
Excellent find, thank you! Gustloff's effort would still have been within the term of that patent, I believe. Hardly a concern for the German authorities of the era I suppose.
@@wills2140 I’ve just been doing patent searches and research in the field of small arms for quite a long time. The topic of gas braking of a blowback shutter was familiar to me. I decided to show off my erudition :)
I know for a fact that the Germans had much more important things to be worrying about in June/July 1944 than an overly complicated blowback system for an already functioning rifle, which begs the question what the hell were they even doing.
Wasting time and resources "exploring" alternatives that were not needed. The usual thing that happens when you have a crazed racist madman controlling an adversarial fascist regime. I personally am happy the Nazis saw fit to waste so much time on nonsense.
the bolt start moving before the bullet leave the barrel, so it's not a delayed blowback, it's a gaz buffer like the volkssturmgewehr 1-5. ti's only limit the kick of the bolt at the end of is rear movement. but the risk of case head separation is the same with a bolt of the same weight without the gaz system .
'Delayed blowback' is colloquially used so much and so often in English to mean 'retarded blowback' that most people don't actually know they're different things.
The stronger spring is more likely intended to delay the bolt opening (greater force to overcome), rather than extra force to close the system. Exactly how blowback pistols work.
The big steel thing just adds weight to the bolt as theres no place to add weight in the recvr. I have several AR blowback .45acp rifles and have played with weights and springs in mine. Interesting video. STG44 has always been a cool rifle to me.
that's fairly bonkers, but yeah i guess it makes some sense for a cheaper higher calibre machine pistol testing edit: the bullet is pushing (very little compared to gasses from the powder) air already when it's moving out, you could draw it on a whiteboard like that and have someone who doesn't think things through think it would be enough I reckon for some funding.
In R&D its normal to take for an idea/a proof of concept what lays around and use it. Saves money. In that time it’s also possible they just played around, since there was no time to introduce new products…
It's unbelievable what the German engineers designed even when they knew how the war was going to end. In a short period they developed the designs still in use today, like the H&K and Cetme. The other side was busy too, the SKS and AK just missed this war.
Wondering if bits are missing. Anyway.. this is basically a proof-of-concept test prototype of a modification to the rifle; definitely not a production unit.
18:21 I'd argue that the gas-delayed concept was "successfully" adapted to a cheaper version of the Sturmgewehr because the VG-51 exists even though the VG-51 was not a "storm rifle" per se. (My understanding is the VG-51 was part of the cheap, simplified, "last ditch" weapon category.)
@@WolfoftheAurora "Storm rifle"... 🤣 It's fun translating languages like German words if your first language is English. There's so much nuance, with the same word used multiple ways and then shunted together to form new ones. Someone I know had two German guys in his local pub ask him where the "food weapons" were! 🤣
Not really the exact same concept: the main difference is VG15, crude as it was, has a hole in the barrel and the "delay piston" of sort is pressurized immediately after the bullet is fired: the bolt is sorta blocked/delayed from the beginning. This "thing" has the bolt free-floating after fired for a relative long time untill the bullet leaves the barrel and the "muzzle break" blasts excessive gases and start pull the bolt back.
Right, so the STG-44 is fairly rare piece of kit, and Jonathan has just dismantled what I'm guessing is a one off prototype of where Germany was playing with the design. That's one hell of a flex. It's 3:20 am where I am and the insomnia has kicked in again, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy. Does the Royal Armouries Museum encourage volunteers? Right / wrong side of the pennines arguments aside Manchester is not that far from Leeds...
Just a very beginner's question: if nothing locks the bolt, only the spring keeps it closed? So you need a stronger spring to prevent motion until the gas pressure in the blow back is high enough to bring the bolt back. Is this right ?
We've just made possibly the finest smallarm of the war, let's spend valuable resources on messing with it...why are we losing again? Thanks for the content.
Ironically, this was probably an attempt to simplify the gun. Getting rid of the breech locking mechanism was probably envisioned as a way to simplify manufacture and speed up production. Unfortunately, it appears they added as much complexity with the gas delay system as they eliminated by doing away with the locked breech.
@@JohnSmith-lf4be I hear from a number of sources that Germany is rapidly descending into a technical backwater WRT some new technologies because they can't just make a simple informed decision, they have to work out the precise consequence and cost/benefit of every option because it goes against their nature to do something that might be sub-optimal. The result, they get left behind. I hear their internet infrastructure is absolutely sh1te because they didn't hop on the fibre bandwagon with everyone else.
So is that bolt a precursor for the G3 bolt/lock? The H3 carrier and bold are together compared the the loose part carrier/bolt you also showed from the MP44?
Wait.... wouldn't the muzzle break vent gases onto the hand gripping the non-existant handguard? Would the hand be safe that close to the vents of the muzzle break or would you fire this with gear similar to the original panzerschreck? Great video regardless!
The more I thought about a firearms plushie, the better and better it sounded. I really like my Chococat and Snoopy, but an "Stg plushie" (or AK) would become my new favorite.
16:23 came for the weirdest MP 43 I had ever seen, was delightfully surprised to see American Nazis "chucked off a cliff" (highway bridge, actually) - from _The Blues Brothers_ movie (a classic Chicago caper movie).
Hey, hey, hey- watch it with that 'American Nazis' yer throwin' around so freely up there in your comment. Those were ILLINOIS NAZIS being thrown off that bridge. Give the rest of the country credit for not having their particular branches of that demented ideology appearing in that classic & uniquely hilarious film.
We know about greenly painted steel cartiges for the StG'44 in particular and Volkssturm (semi)automatic weapons till Dec'44/Jan'45. These fired cartiged got sticky and stayed into the barrel chamber very fast when fired a few shots - jamming the hole rifle. This is proven by several eyewitnesses of Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and Waffen-SS to us but not spread very widly.
Jonathan, could a later video offer a comparison of the different operating systems? Terms like long / short stroke, delayed blowback, direct impingement etc., are used a lot but their nuances are difficult to fully grasp when described verbally. Perhaps showing the evolution of design of automatic weapon recoil systems could take us through the thinking of the designers and give you the opportunity to offer some words on the pros and cons of each...
Thanks very much Jonathan and team. This indeed a crazy invention and I agree with what you say John Henshell (sp?) thought about it. It looks to me like a straight blowback action, until the bullet leaves the muzzle, then some of the propellant gas might then be used to retard or brake the mechanism (bolt and (sort-of) operating rod). I don't think this would be very effective at all, because almost the full recoil energy and momentum will be transferred to the working parts before the gas retardation comes into play and because not enough of the muzzle blast will be harnessed. So I think it is confusing to call it a "gas delayed blowback" as distinct from a "gas retarded blowback". Sometimes, inventions like this get trialled because a person with a lot of influence or power kicks off the project, leaving others to demonstrate that the idea was never going to work in the first place. I think the WW1 Blanch-Chevalier grenade discharger is another example of a crazy design that got as far as the construction of s single prototype.
At least in Canada (and I very much get the feeling this is a worldwide gun safety rule), the number one rule of gun safety is that you never point it at anything you don't mind destroying. Even if it's unloaded, even if you checked yourself 2 seconds ago and have been constantly looking at it since, you treat it like it's loaded. Anyone who's properly internalized this rule will be a bit wary of having even an empty gun pointed at them. It's a good rule. Because if you're wrong and it *is* loaded, all it takes is a split second and whatever it's pointed at gets a hole in it, and for anything alive, that's really unhealthy.
It's an excellent rule, but if you're making a video, under controlled conditions, where the weapon has been checked, and you need to film it from the barrel end, I don't see a problem. Being terrified of going anywhere near the muzzle with anything at any time whatsoever is going to cause you all sorts of problems with recrowning the barrel or even using a pull through.
@@jacklurcher5813 Oh, you can definitely point the gun at a camera, just not at a person. Which means if you're setting up to film the inside of a barrel, you just need to set up a static camera that doesn't need an operator monitoring it. (And obviously the rule doesn't apply if you've already taken the gun apart. If there's no firing pin set up to trigger something to fire down that barrel, then it's just a tube of metal with some rifling. You just...don't do what Elmer Fudd does, you're not that durable.)
So what we have here is a 1 off experimental design of "simplifying" the STG-44 even more? Of using a gas trap system instead of a vent hole style gas port? But still be classified as a gas delayed blowback I mean in theory it should work but exactly what was the end goal? Make the STG-44 fire 9mm rounds? Or make the gun easier to produce which would be "norm" as per dwindling material supply at the end of the war in europe
That Sturmgewehr needs it's own Emotional Support Sturmgewehr.
"What did they do to my boy" 2.0.
@@witssen9954 If you want to see a man in true pain and being tortured watch Jonathon during some of CoD videos. Esepcially the ones where they have serious "modified" the guns.
it gets worse: "sees image of Gustloff VG1-5"
Without having the bolt lock in any way, and not having the vent to the gas block until the bullet has left the barrel, what they made was a really, really complicated simple blowback rifle. Those crazy Germans!
I'd be a bit concerned about shooting a rifle where the breech isn't actually locked in place until a (very) short time *after* you've fired it. Simple blowback system usually have no delay and only use pistol calibers.
these are Nazis, Donnie. These men are cowards.
@@alltat i think gas delay pistols technically work on that principle
Indeed, when the bullet travel thru the barrel, the bolt is closed just by a combination of inertia and faith your calculations are precise.
Then the pressure of the muzzle break grabs the runaway bolt forward.
I mean, I trust the law of physics, but...
@@thecommissaruk interesting point, does that mean all muzzle trap systems are just blowback and don't really work as intended? Like blish
It is a great day that we have weekly Firearms History Class from Mr. Jonathan Ferguson
* Mr. Jonathan Ferguson, keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in UK which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.
@@rogo7330 & millennial connoisseur of classic games and funky shirts :)
@@rogo7330 Thank you for fixing the glaring omission.
Hello there, Jonathon Ferguson, keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history!
He seldom replies so I’m going to greet you in his stead and wish you the very best.📚☘️
BTW, his name is "Jonathan."
Gotta give you props for that pun on the thumbnail 😂👍
Not to be needy but I don't get it, could you please explain
@@brynntall6811 It’s a pun on “Somewhere it all went wrong” using German pronunciation of the gun name. It’s cheesy, geeky and totally seems like a joke Jonathan would make 😂👍
Really appreciate the separate shot explaining the gas block arrangement. Always love the rare and odd stuff. 👍
The Jonathan cam is funny because I can imagine that Jonathan has Terminator vision
He's a C800 Curator sent back in time to preserve Sarah Connor's gun collection.
Always had an interest in the history of firearms. I am no way an engineer but could listen to Jonathan talk all day long. Thanks
7:41 '...forget everything I just said.' - No Jonathan, now I just can't stop imagining stuff that I didn't think about before.
I appreciate the use of the Blues Brothers clip, very appropriate theming for the weapon
Indeed!
For those wondering why they were working on this weapon when the war was going so badly, remember that the engineers needed to show that they were busy with important work or risk getting put in uniform and sent to the front.
Good point. But it was also partly the "effect" of the "every man for himself" hierarchy that ran the Nazi bureaucracy. So much busy work, so much wasted time and resources. I for one am totally happy the Nazis worked this way, made their downfall nearly inevitable.
Except that is a blatant misconception on how German army (any other armed forces) works, unless they prefer giving up arms race, otherwise they would keep the weapon technicians around as every one of them had years of arms experience and they couldn't just hire another around the street corner, there were much better and cheaper source for bodies.
And one often-missed point was as soon the StG44 were in production, there was little sense for German engineers to continue research the obsolete Kar 98k or MP40 (other than how to make them cheaper, but that is more on the effort of manufacturers themselves), so most of German small arms research got redirect to Sturmgewehr direction, and with the gun and Kurz ammo being a novel concept then, German engineers tried many different idea to see what works with it and what nots.
Most late war German small arms development was about the StG44, namely the Night Vision Vampir StG, or the curved barrel of Stg44, the MP43/1 was one of many proof-of-concept, and one clearly hit a dead end unfortunately.
Surely it was dews and pow’s working on this stuff
You underestimate the over-engineering of the Germans. If it works, it doesn't work good enough. There's always room for improvement, even the Soviets themself was busy with gun development even when they were about to win the war.
@@macobuzisuper super true.
You learn something new every day - what a muzzle break actually does! Enjoy your videos so many thanks.
The "who did this" gave me flashbacks to Masterchef when one of the contestents did a shit job of butchering a chicken and Gordan said "WHO MAULED THIS?" which I think is oddly appropriate here 😆
I read this too fast and got super excited to see a cooking show starring Master Chief. The grunts are busy making noxious soups, while a jackal is going to town on a chicken with an energy sword.
Great content and even better shirt!
Jonathan, your German pronounciation is great. Thanks for sharing your work with us!
Love Jonathan's shirt!
We need a definitive guide to Jonathan's shirt collection
Hellooooo!
Thanks for all your hard work mate.
🙂
sweet glad you talked about a Sturmgewehr. I always liked that rifle funny enough in video games and the story behind it is funny to me
Someone need to bring the "Jonathan cam" into this century.
Isn't that kind of similar to the really early Garand "gas trap" experiments? Fascinating bit of historic hardware!!!
Grarand used the gas trap as a alternative to a hole in the barrel to work a piston attached to the oprod. As this gun above is described as a gas delayed blowback, I assume this is using the gas trap to momentarily delay the blowback action, in other words it’s doing the opposite job to Garand’s Bang gas trap.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 Similar, but different? 😎
@@mickvonbornemann3824 Apparently, this firearm uses gasses at the muzzle to operate a rod that opens the action. Doesn't seem to me, to be a delay of straight blowback.
@@kbjerke It uses a muzzle brake to delay opening of a n unlocked bolt. Gas-delayed blowback. There is a slight similarity with blow-forward gas-operated rifles like the Danish Bang, but the bolt is not locked.
@@jonathanferguson1211 THANK you, Jonathan! That clears it up quite well. I really *was* a bit confused, LOL.
Ahh, yes, the classic Sturmgewehr laser cannon.
Total shitstorm. Damn thing can run down a battery in just a few seconds of holding down the trigger. Though I guess if they had any lithium back then they should've been taking 600 mg thrice daily anyway.
Wunderwaffe!
ID!ot!
Modern .460 Rowland pistols also use muzzle breaks to delay their actions. It'd be interesting to see that tried with a modern blowback, as it's among the simplest delay mechanisms.
I recall a presentation by Barrett regarding the XM109 grenade rifle noted that the giant three-baffle muzzle brake could be used on the bolt action Barrett M95 and M99, but not on the M82 due to causing reliability issues when doing so.
When Jonathan Ferguson keeper of Firearms and artillery posts a video on the Sturmgewehr i need to watch it
Quite impressed with myself that I recognised that as a MG42 spring!
Never heard of this weird variant, thanks!
11:01 ...Or, indeed, much like contemporary ZB-26/ZB-30 & BREN machineguns, of which this is a derivative.
15:41 So, Special comission on infantry weapons.
Quality Blues Bros. clip!
Why is the “Jonathon Cam” such low quality? Love your videos.
But but but... DID IT WORK?? No records of a test fire, either german or post-war? My gut feeling is that the inertia of the bolt group would be insufficient to keep it from accelerating until the muzzle blast started to act on it, but gut feelings do not a gun designer make...
Apologies if I wasn't clear but no, no records. Hence offering the opinion of our former Technical Manager that, no, it did not "work".
@@jonathanferguson1211 I could never do your job. No way I could leave that untested, even at the risk of damaging a priceless unique piece of history.. Go on, you know you want to.. With a bench and a high-speed camera.. It's just one round of 8 kurz after all.. what harm could it do? 🤣🤣 FOR SCIENCE!!
It really seems to me that this action must not have been delayed in any way which matters, and that it would probably have been unsafe to shoot this gun.
When even the german refused to try it, it's a sign, IMHO.
@@yoochoob1858 How about the risk of the bolt coming back through your head?
Your Sonderkomission Infanteriewaffen was spot on but if you have names like Volkssturmgewehr (peoples/folks assault rifle) the Volks part sounds like folks (english didn't made the second germanic consonant shift) so if a V is at the beginning of a word you will spell it like a english F
I keep forgetting this! Thank you.
What a fantastic title!
I like how Jonathan always goes full Canadian ("Sorry!") wenn trying so pronounce complicated German words... 😁😁
Great video thanks for sharing 🫡👍🍻
it is not unusual that having a firearm pointed at you is unnerving to you. It is the only rational response a person could have to having a deadly weapon pointed at them, whether loaded or not, and harkens back to the very first thing most of us learn about guns.
That I understand, but the whole bit about not pointing a gun at a camera is just silly. It's not like someone could be shot through a video broadcast on the internet.
Patent GB350631A. Inventor - Joseph Destree. 1929 year.
Excellent find, thank you! Gustloff's effort would still have been within the term of that patent, I believe. Hardly a concern for the German authorities of the era I suppose.
Totally amazing patent research, thank you!
@@wills2140 I’ve just been doing patent searches and research in the field of small arms for quite a long time. The topic of gas braking of a blowback shutter was familiar to me. I decided to show off my erudition :)
I know for a fact that the Germans had much more important things to be worrying about in June/July 1944 than an overly complicated blowback system for an already functioning rifle, which begs the question what the hell were they even doing.
Wasting time and resources "exploring" alternatives that were not needed. The usual thing that happens when you have a crazed racist madman controlling an adversarial fascist regime. I personally am happy the Nazis saw fit to waste so much time on nonsense.
the bolt start moving before the bullet leave the barrel, so it's not a delayed blowback, it's a gaz buffer like the volkssturmgewehr 1-5. ti's only limit the kick of the bolt at the end of is rear movement. but the risk of case head separation is the same with a bolt of the same weight without the gaz system .
'Delayed blowback' is colloquially used so much and so often in English to mean 'retarded blowback' that most people don't actually know they're different things.
Clever use of the name in the thumbnail
Marvel Jesus' left thumb. That is an amazing shirt, Jonathan.
The stronger spring is more likely intended to delay the bolt opening (greater force to overcome), rather than extra force to close the system. Exactly how blowback pistols work.
The big steel thing just adds weight to the bolt as theres no place to add weight in the recvr. I have several AR blowback .45acp rifles and have played with weights and springs in mine. Interesting video. STG44 has always been a cool rifle to me.
you been usin' that finger grip strengthener i got ya? very impressive
Early gang reporting for duty!
We see you, we see you ❤
With no front sight I would say that's a bad rifle even if it runs well.
that's fairly bonkers, but yeah i guess it makes some sense for a cheaper higher calibre machine pistol testing
edit: the bullet is pushing (very little compared to gasses from the powder) air already when it's moving out, you could draw it on a whiteboard like that and have someone who doesn't think things through think it would be enough I reckon for some funding.
In R&D its normal to take for an idea/a proof of concept what lays around and use it. Saves money. In that time it’s also possible they just played around, since there was no time to introduce new products…
It's unbelievable what the German engineers designed even when they knew how the war was going to end. In a short period they developed the designs still in use today, like the H&K and Cetme. The other side was busy too, the SKS and AK just missed this war.
Have got any info on the WW2 Knorr Bremse bullpup rifle prototype ?
good video
Jonathon now does "Cursed Gun Images"
Wondering if bits are missing. Anyway.. this is basically a proof-of-concept test prototype of a modification to the rifle; definitely not a production unit.
Nice shirt! Was about 10 minutes in before I noticed it :)
18:21 I'd argue that the gas-delayed concept was "successfully" adapted to a cheaper version of the Sturmgewehr because the VG-51 exists even though the VG-51 was not a "storm rifle" per se.
(My understanding is the VG-51 was part of the cheap, simplified, "last ditch" weapon category.)
Vg-15
@@WolfoftheAurora "Storm rifle"... 🤣
It's fun translating languages like German words if your first language is English. There's so much nuance, with the same word used multiple ways and then shunted together to form new ones.
Someone I know had two German guys in his local pub ask him where the "food weapons" were! 🤣
Not really the exact same concept: the main difference is VG15, crude as it was, has a hole in the barrel and the "delay piston" of sort is pressurized immediately after the bullet is fired: the bolt is sorta blocked/delayed from the beginning.
This "thing" has the bolt free-floating after fired for a relative long time untill the bullet leaves the barrel and the "muzzle break" blasts excessive gases and start pull the bolt back.
Excellent pun 12/10
Nice shirt, sir.
Right, so the STG-44 is fairly rare piece of kit, and Jonathan has just dismantled what I'm guessing is a one off prototype of where Germany was playing with the design. That's one hell of a flex. It's 3:20 am where I am and the insomnia has kicked in again, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy. Does the Royal Armouries Museum encourage volunteers? Right / wrong side of the pennines arguments aside Manchester is not that far from Leeds...
Just a very beginner's question: if nothing locks the bolt, only the spring keeps it closed? So you need a stronger spring to prevent motion until the gas pressure in the blow back is high enough to bring the bolt back. Is this right ?
We've just made possibly the finest smallarm of the war, let's spend valuable resources on messing with it...why are we losing again? Thanks for the content.
All that matters is how accurate it is in Squad 44.
Love the Deadpool shirt!
Dig the Deadpool shirt, Jon.
"Creates STG-44"
Germans: *Its not complicated enough.....*
Ironically, this was probably an attempt to simplify the gun. Getting rid of the breech locking mechanism was probably envisioned as a way to simplify manufacture and speed up production. Unfortunately, it appears they added as much complexity with the gas delay system as they eliminated by doing away with the locked breech.
The stg is a great example of German simplification.
@@JohnSmith-lf4be I hear from a number of sources that Germany is rapidly descending into a technical backwater WRT some new technologies because they can't just make a simple informed decision, they have to work out the precise consequence and cost/benefit of every option because it goes against their nature to do something that might be sub-optimal. The result, they get left behind. I hear their internet infrastructure is absolutely sh1te because they didn't hop on the fibre bandwagon with everyone else.
At first i thought it was a moving barrel prototype something like the an-94 or maybe a rifle grenade launching assembly😅
The STG-45 which never went into full production because the war ended used roller delay blowback like the G3 and CETME.
So is that bolt a precursor for the G3 bolt/lock? The H3 carrier and bold are together compared the the loose part carrier/bolt you also showed from the MP44?
He explain its not... just reminiscent en some way
Wait.... wouldn't the muzzle break vent gases onto the hand gripping the non-existant handguard? Would the hand be safe that close to the vents of the muzzle break or would you fire this with gear similar to the original panzerschreck?
Great video regardless!
Nice shirt!
I'm commenting solely for the pun in the title
That's a smashing Deadpool shirt :D
Have you considered making support Sturmgewehr plushies? I'd buy one lol
Ha! I have now...
@@jonathanferguson1211 dewit, just please try and make EU shipping reasonable xd
The more I thought about a firearms plushie, the better and better it sounded. I really like my Chococat and Snoopy, but an "Stg plushie" (or AK) would become my new favorite.
What would be the potentional benefits with this design?
It's remarkable the amount of time and resources the germans wasted close to the end.
Eek! You pointed it!!😂
16:23 came for the weirdest MP 43 I had ever seen, was delightfully surprised to see American Nazis "chucked off a cliff" (highway bridge, actually) - from _The Blues Brothers_ movie (a classic Chicago caper movie).
Hey, hey, hey- watch it with that 'American Nazis' yer throwin' around so freely up there in your comment. Those were ILLINOIS NAZIS being thrown off that bridge. Give the rest of the country credit for not having their particular branches of that demented ideology appearing in that classic & uniquely hilarious film.
i would be curious to see if the project got further how it wouldve be like
I think Jonathan needs another table
This was clearly designed specifically to be used as a prop in a star wars film
The H&K P7 owes something to this design...but not by much.
We know about greenly painted steel cartiges for the StG'44 in particular and Volkssturm (semi)automatic weapons till Dec'44/Jan'45. These fired cartiged got sticky and stayed into the barrel chamber very fast when fired a few shots - jamming the hole rifle. This is proven by several eyewitnesses of Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and Waffen-SS to us but not spread very widly.
Jonathan, could a later video offer a comparison of the different operating systems? Terms like long / short stroke, delayed blowback, direct impingement etc., are used a lot but their nuances are difficult to fully grasp when described verbally. Perhaps showing the evolution of design of automatic weapon recoil systems could take us through the thinking of the designers and give you the opportunity to offer some words on the pros and cons of each...
A Sturmgewehr worthy of CoD: Vanguard multiplayer.
Thanks very much Jonathan and team.
This indeed a crazy invention and I agree with what you say John Henshell (sp?) thought about it.
It looks to me like a straight blowback action, until the bullet leaves the muzzle, then some of the propellant gas might then be used to retard or brake the mechanism (bolt and (sort-of) operating rod).
I don't think this would be very effective at all, because almost the full recoil energy and momentum will be transferred to the working parts before the gas retardation comes into play and because not enough of the muzzle blast will be harnessed.
So I think it is confusing to call it a "gas delayed blowback" as distinct from a "gas retarded blowback".
Sometimes, inventions like this get trialled because a person with a lot of influence or power kicks off the project, leaving others to demonstrate that the idea was never going to work in the first place.
I think the WW1 Blanch-Chevalier grenade discharger is another example of a crazy design that got as far as the construction of s single prototype.
Jonathan saying "who did this" in the tone of the detective at a murder scene...
Do you have cannons too?
Or just small arms
They sure do :)
I wonder about the shooting experience when muzzle gasses/force is directed back toward the shooter. But very interesting experiment.
It is totally nonsensical and bound to fail. "Fail" like having a cartridge rupture out of battery...
I think you just pulled Ian's card with this one.
At least in Canada (and I very much get the feeling this is a worldwide gun safety rule), the number one rule of gun safety is that you never point it at anything you don't mind destroying. Even if it's unloaded, even if you checked yourself 2 seconds ago and have been constantly looking at it since, you treat it like it's loaded. Anyone who's properly internalized this rule will be a bit wary of having even an empty gun pointed at them.
It's a good rule. Because if you're wrong and it *is* loaded, all it takes is a split second and whatever it's pointed at gets a hole in it, and for anything alive, that's really unhealthy.
It's an excellent rule, but if you're making a video, under controlled conditions, where the weapon has been checked, and you need to film it from the barrel end, I don't see a problem.
Being terrified of going anywhere near the muzzle with anything at any time whatsoever is going to cause you all sorts of problems with recrowning the barrel or even using a pull through.
@@jacklurcher5813 Oh, you can definitely point the gun at a camera, just not at a person. Which means if you're setting up to film the inside of a barrel, you just need to set up a static camera that doesn't need an operator monitoring it.
(And obviously the rule doesn't apply if you've already taken the gun apart. If there's no firing pin set up to trigger something to fire down that barrel, then it's just a tube of metal with some rifling. You just...don't do what Elmer Fudd does, you're not that durable.)
So this was just to see if the operating principle of the Volksturm Gewehr would work with the 8mmKurz?
Elbonia infiltrates the Nutzis
So the Germans have a history of taking a good design and trying to modify the gas and operating system, making it more complicated and expensive
So what we have here is a 1 off experimental design of "simplifying" the STG-44 even more? Of using a gas trap system instead of a vent hole style gas port? But still be classified as a gas delayed blowback
I mean in theory it should work but exactly what was the end goal? Make the STG-44 fire 9mm rounds? Or make the gun easier to produce which would be "norm" as per dwindling material supply at the end of the war in europe
Some elements of firearms design seems more like sorcery than science.
How many late war German weapons projects were engineers trying to avoid the Eastern front?
Nice deadpool shirt
I'm always struck by how similar it looks to the MP5.
DeadPool Shirt ? Lol love it
It would be great if you could upload those tiktoks as youtube Shorts for those of us who dont have or use it
Listen, I can only ignore so many things! 😆. Also, what was wrong with the conventional MG44???
Looks like a stormtrooper blaster
I like the title.
Really odd, i wonder what problem the Germans were trying to solve to make this odd modification?