Yugoslav M52 Sniper: East Meets West
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- Опубликовано: 3 мар 2019
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In 1947, Yugoslavia received about 4600 Russian M91/30 PU sniper rifles as military aid, which were basically not used, as Yugoslavia had standardized on the 8mm Mauser cartridge. In 1952, however, a new sniper rifle was requested and the 91/30s were put to use. The Zastava factory took 4,618 M48A rifles of particularly good accuracy and fitted them with the rails and scope mounts from the Soviet 91/30s. Onto this, a domestic Yugoslav copy of the PU scope was mounted, and the result was the M52 (or M53, depending on the source) sniper rifle. The new optic was necessary because of the difference in ballistics between the 7.62x54R and the 8x57 cartridges.
It is unclear whether these rifles were all made and were actually put into service or not. In addition, some appear to have had the scope mounts welded into the rails and some had threaded muzzles for suppressors. Documentation is very sparse on these rifles, and I suspect there are some inaccuracies in the story as we currently understand it. Regardless, this is a very interested type of east/west hybrid design with a Mauser action and a PU optic!
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Yugo officer: sir should we adopt a mauser system or a nagant?
Minister of arms: yes
DA
@@tvojamama7807 daj sta das!
MA DA JEBOTE!!!
Yugoslav be like, mauser nagant
Lol the moist mauser insted of the moist nugget
@@525halo
Do not lewd the Mauser, pls
@@Vincent-S The world already lewded the mauser, 10 at a time, covered it in jelly, and spread it's bastard spawn all over the world. garbage rod that smells like piss and sauerkraut. A barely competent design only known because of how cheaply effective it is at breaking only 10% of the time instead of 20%. Have a cookie.
As Serbian-I approve.
Wauser, it's pronounced Wauser.
The legend says that if you say tito 3 times in front of a dark mirror exactly in 3:00 am you are gifted with one of these rifles!
aahahahhahah
*runs to try it* I hope it comes with a few boxes of 8mm
@roland oops, i forgot to mention results are not always the same, as an example, when i did this experiment i woke up dressed in a full yugoslav marshall uniform with an m70 zatasva on my hand... Weird stuff!
@@rodrigogascagomez5190 i hope so aswell comrade
*TITO INTENSIFIES*
ON1952B mean "optički nišan 1952 god. B varijanta" wich translate "optical sight 1952 year (of production) B variant" (mean there also been A variant). Some of rifles this type has been issued to Yugo special forces (military police, scouts, etc...)!
Sorry for my bad english
Ne znam Engleski
Vladimir Ralić dobro ste rekli.
More Yugo stuff pls
I support this motion.
YES
7:57 Yup, sounds alot. Yugoslavia had Europe's largest army. The standing was 200.000.but reserves was +3mio. This might explaine the large amount of sniper rifles.
at that time 4 place by the number of armed forces in Europe
@@vasamaric1243 yes, when looked just at standing army. That's why i write the way i do.
To be fair, he is on to something. Yugoslavia was more serious about keeping its own arsenal of arms than most countries during the Cold War. NATO half-arsed standardization while the Soviet Union just told people to use its guns or else (Czechs were just about the only outlier). Yugos actually ran the line between by arming themselves while not just towing the Soviet line. They liked German ammo, but respected Soviet guns, so we get the whole panoply.
There were WAY more active soldiers than 200,000 if i remember correctly.
@@genericpersonx333 not really, Czechoslovakia still had alot of manufacturing capability after the war becouse it didnt suffer as much devastasion as for say poland at the time and even before that they had a superior arms industry than their eastern neighbours, thats why they could afford to make their own guns the way they liked it, Meanwhile Poland, Romania, Bulgaria thought it more worwhile to just licence produce russian stuff. As they were in the warsaw pact it was a necessity to use the same caliber as the USSR but other than that they could have easily made something of their own if they really wanted to. And afterall even the licence produced stuff mainly had it's differences to the original.
Tito: We shall remain non aligned. Make me a perfectly non aligned rifle. I shall call it... Mauser-Nagant.
4612 sniper rifles is probably in line with the needs of the Territorial Defense forces.
props for actually pronouncing Ljubljana sort of right
its a city though, not a town
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge the fact that he didnt go full Đ with all the J in ljubljana makes it respect worthy
The pronunciation was close enough. It's a city even if just barely.
I just call it Laibach. Greets from Austria :)
Well, that was pointles;)
it is not a city, by USA standards.
One interesting aspect of Yugoslav armament politics is, they were very pragmatic and used whatever worked best (and could be afforded and imorted). It helps that they were not inthe Russian sphere of influence (in fact, it seems to me that Tito got kicks from aggravating Stalin at any turn) AND that Yugoslavia had a decent mechanical manufacturing base. Not great, but decent and sufficiently capable.
It's worth noting that USSR was very close to invading Yugoslavia in late forties just like they later did Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia was never a member of the Warsaw pact and did not have any Russian bases or soldiers stationed in it, despite the fact that the Russian Army took part in the last stages of the WW2 in Yugoslavia.
BTW, Yugoslav SKS (M59/66) has a NATO-style grenade launcher built in:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22_mm_grenade
@@SikterEfendi yeah russian aggression towards yugoslavia was kind of the impetus for their armament policy - it was a big political issue up until the two entities started to dissolve in the 90s. happened to albania too, which is why hoxha put a billion bunkers all over the place
@@bugeatingfreak It was much more complex than that. Stalin didn't tolerate any independence and sent many assassins after Tito over the years. It all changed pretty quickly and fairly dramatically after Stalin died. Albania was a very different case, more similar to North Korea than to Yugoslavia.
Indeed, Yugoslav military hardware is rather fascinating to look at because it's generally a similar blend of western, eastern, and occasionally local ideas, so you ended up with things like this Mauser with a Mosin scope and its successor the 8mm AK. I suppose that's both the blessing and the curse of being the neutral power of the cold war, you absolutely have to do your own thing.
@@asteroidrules Both world wars in those parts were fought with German firearms on all sides. Serbia entered the first war armed Mauser rifles, just slightly different then the ones Germans had (Austro-Hungarian arms were not bought by Serbs before the war for various reasons, technical, economic and political, and little was kept after the war). Second war was almost the same, except that the weapons partisans fought with were almost all captured German arms. After the war Yugoslavia continued with whatever was already at hand (I was issued an impeccably refurbished WWII MG42 in 1980), but soon started licensed production of SKS, AK47, Tokarev pistols, etc. As you noted, almost all of the original designs were more or less tweaked, from increasing the Tokarev magazine capacity to adding a NATO style grenade launcher to the SKS, to a better engine and aiming system for T72 tanks. Tito was pretty good at playing both sides and that's visible in Yugoslav armament. Although they were never given the latest and greatest designs from either side, Yugoslavs had a long tradition of gunsmithing and were capable of improving original designs and producing them with higher quality. Zastava Arms factory continued the tradition. www.zastava-arms.rs/
I love Yugo firearms, a bit rough on the machinework and finish but built like a tank, reliable and accurate. Their Mauser history pre and post WWII is pretty interesting.
Than y talk about serbian, they're in fact serbian but beeing falsely called yugoslav
@@ankrapek12 doesn't matter who used it, what matters is who made it.
@@ankrapek12 is it also ukrainian now, African and Middle Eastern? They've been using it extensively as well
Oh boy 3:00 AM!
Yep
Pfft! Who gets a Mauser at 3 in the morning?
Jesse
Eats Krabby Patty.
The first AR15 Frankin-Rifle was a Yugo Mauser-Mosin Nagant. Yugo Bubba!?!
IAN LOVE YOUR SHOW KEEP IT UP. I LOOK FORWARD TO WATCHING A NEW EPISODE EACH MORNING!!!!!! THANKS FOR YOUR PROFESSIONALISM.
Thank you Ian, very cool!
looking forward for an yugo sks, great video!!
AS always Gun Jesus a nice and interesting video. Brings up some memories.
Holy crap. Didn't know the original scope production was in Ljubljana.
FYI Ljubljana is the capital city of Slovenia
Lovely city it is too. Went three times in the eighties before everything broke up. Nicer ice cream than Italian!
ZRAK ("lightbeam") optics factory was (and still is) in Sarajevo, IRRC. I'm not discounting the possibility that there was a ZRAK subsidiary in Ljubljana.
@@SikterEfendi maybe there was zrak in ljubljana but it was air not lightbeam :^)
@@daidabus Yes, it depends on which dialect you are using. It would be "air" in Slovenia or Croatia, but it's a tossup in Bosnia because they were using both. However, I would bet that it did mean "lightbeam" because it's an optics factory.
First batch of scopes was made in Ljubljana, the production then moved to ZRAK in Sarajevo.
Look at all of that cosmoline! When I got my M52 is spent weeks cleaning it, I stripped it down to the smallest screw to get it clean. Great weapon!
Thank you , Ian .
Nothing beats a Yugo rifle
@@vaultql4643 What manufacturer?
O course nothing beats a Yugo rifle, especial when it's German design. ;)
@@vaultql4643 and still costs like an average lunch...
Except 13 yugo rifles. Mine all make me happy.
I have been having fun reloading and shooting my scoped M48. I am getting great results with Nosler 180 grain Ballistic Tips.
Hey Ian, the bent bolt handle is a feature of the m48a rifle.
ON is short for "Optički nišan" which means "Optical sight" :)
Good looking rifle!
Cool! Thanks Ian :)
That is phenomenal!!! Would love to have an obscure rifle like that, and still have readily available ammunition for. Definitely be a conversation starter at the range.
Saw a few of these while deployed to Bosnia in the 90's. They really got the most out of what they had.
This rifle, like so many, looks gorgeous in the white.
There was a similar rifle for sale awhile ago on Egun. Except that it was a Spanish Santa Barbara M98/43 made in '57 and had a original PU scope (from 43 or 44 i think it was) attached.
Unfortunately didn't have spare money at the time. Ending price was less then PU scopes alone are generally sold for^^
...interesting combo...PU Mauser...I like it...
M48A iron sights go out to 2000 metres, the sniper optic goes to 1000 metres, slightly more realistic.
Sniper rifles are not used as indirect fire. The 2000 meter sight is meant for indirect fire. As in harassing enemy regiments.
@@RealCadde The actual use of indirect action rifle fire was history by 1918. For some reason the German army persisted in specifying 2000m sights on 98k rifles even into WWII. Even more bizarrely the post WWII copies made in other countries, not just Yugoslavia, e.g. Czecheslovakia, carried on with the same range markings. I guess every country wanted to pretend their soldiers were excellent shots and needed such sights even if the rifles had no hope of hitting anything, a little like having unrealistic speeds on a car speedometer.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot I'm not so sure about that. Some countries might have abolished the idea of indirect fire but that doesn't necessarily mean you stop including that ability on rifles.
It doesn't cost them that much more to make the sights that way and it leaves an option for armies.
@@RealCadde As we see in most countries' wartime production there are considerable savings to be made in switching to a simple two or three position rear sight that provides all the practical functionality soldiers can handle without an optic. For indirect fire rifles are an order of magnitude worse than than machine guns and even those had been superseded in that role by other infantry support weapons, typically mortars, and by utilising combined arms tactics.
This is why I love Forgotten Weapons. You think you know something about a rifle, after reading so much and owning it yourself, and coming from ex Yugoslav country, and you are absolutely sure there was no "true" "sniper" variant of M48 apart from the homemade stuff. Then Ian proves you still know so little.
I like the two-tone finishes
Cool looking rifle
I would love to buy one of these
The reason those huge numbers were used, was because of the yugoslav doctrine. Following successful partisan actions during ww2, yugoslavs strategy was to arm the majority of its population. The idea was, that in case of an invasion, everyone would have a couple of rifles, and the attrition would be so high, that no nation would attempt to hold any of its ground. Since there was almost no armament in ww2 and regular partisans were very effective regardless, this kind of warfare would be brutal.
I’ve been meaning to pick up Bogdanovic’s book for a while now and am only now looking at the price, even for a used paperback. Holy.
Yeah, it's out of print and hard to find.
Yugoslav rifles are so cool.
I think that 4x PU scope is featured in the game Rising Storm: Vietnam. In the game it's the standard issue scope mounted on a mosin-nagant for the PAVN and NLF sniper classes
Well obviously
Yugo always doing something just a little different from the platforms they received from others. M48 and the Yugo AK come to mind. Some parts interchangeable while others aren't (ie AK furniture just doesn't fit on Yugos).
Thank you sir.
For a so, correct video 🔰🌺
The mauser with that PU scope is miles ahead of the nagant which I feel was crude even though they shoot ok for military use they are lousy on target. The Russian scopes are really clear and well made even though some feel they were crude but in reality were using the same special sand zeiss used. What you have is really a decent example and wish I had loads of money to buy it.
Yugoslavia fielded AK's alongside MG42's and used a copy of the SIG p226, now that's weirder.
The CZ99 came fairly late, in '89 just a few years before the civil war.
Fun fact: Becouse of that it was suppossed to be called the cz89 but what seems to have been a typo at its premiere or whatever in an US gun show made it end up as cz99, a pretty dumb series of events.
Ljubljana as in capital of Slovenia, ZRAK as in military and civilian optical devices factory located in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Fun fact: the M48 were used as basic recruit training rifles in the Yugoslav People's Army till the mid eighties. Many of those had original Mauser parts dating to ww2 with Wechrmacht markings
No M48's had Wehrmacht markings or used WWII military parts...as intermediate length acton M48 production started in 1952. There were however, full-length K98's captured and re-arsenaled alongside or just prior to M48 production.....you might be thinking of these, all done at the same Yugoslav factory.
I have an m48 with a ak scope mount on it (with scope). Fit perfect on my ak. 300 bucks a couple of years ago.
Love to mount one on my 1952 fn 3006 as it not far off a model 48
I own an m24/52c it does not have any rails it is quite similar to the m48 but with the standard Mauser action length. It is stamped m24/52c
Reminds me of my PTR with PSO scope. Babba Yugo!
2,40 Onwards. Talking about the scope *"The scopes themselves couldn't be interchanged. Because these are in 8mm Mauser the original Soviet rifle was in 7.62 and the ballistic {cams}? didn't match."* What are ballistic cams or whatever word Ian said? What stops swapping one scope between differing rifles one you have the scope bedded?
I love Yugoslav Mausers, I wish I would've bought more of them when they were cheap.
I really doubt the mount was welded because you could never get to the mounting screws if you needed to perform any maintenance.
Finally some love to yugo too :D
It's like M. Night Shyamalan was the Quartermaster General of Yugoslavia. Everything has a twist.
Was wondering when you would find one of these. Also that Mosin sniper is not original sniper and has a reproduction scope and mount.
ooo never put into service, that bore must be pristine
[Tito intensifies]
The madlad smoked Cuban cigars right in front of Nixon!
@@darthpanzer I never understood what's wrong with the USA and the cuban cigars, I heard it's prohibited there smoke them.
@@Thrashgu The US embargoed Cuba due to the Cuban missile crisis, that means anything produced there is banned in the US of A.
Tito just loved his cigars, even smoked in front of Kennedy, who imposed the embargo.
It's often a good idea not to insult those who invited you on a diplomatic mission, but Tito gave no shits.
@@Thrashgu I'm not certain on the brand I think it was Cohiba but my brain almost fried when I looked at the Cigar boxes Hickock 45 used to use for his ammunition. I looked it up and there was also a non Cuban version of the brand.
@@darthpanzer Kennedy also imported a large number of Cuban cigars prior to imposing the ban himself!
so damn cool
I own a Portugese Mauser from 1937 and it has an original PU scope mounted on it. Is there a possibility that the Wehrmacht used these rifles because they were exceptionally well manufactured and at the beginning of the War the PU scopes were just better? Does somebody know anything on that topic?
The the scope concentric with the bore of the rifle?
Lovely gun i bet. Its a mauser (always runs great) and a pu scope (incredible easy to zero and use) i really dig it
Thank you for saying "Yugoslav". Too many people say "Yugoslavian" nowadays and that makes me cringe.
Oh so the correct pronunciation is Yugoslav? Huh, learnt something new. Thanks, bratuha.
@@ArcturusOTE That's what I was taught by my English teachers, both in Yugoslavia and Great Britain. "Yugo" means "Southern" and "Slavia" would be best translated as "the land of the Slavs", so yugo-slav makes sense as southern-slav instead of southern-slavian, just like there are Slavs, but no Slavians.
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge I hope a linguist will pitch in because I'm not one, but I was taught English in the 70s. No one was saying "Yugoslavian" back then, and if they were they would be quickly corrected.
@@SikterEfendi It would depend on usage. The -ian suffix would be an adjectival modification to the base, so Yugoslavian would be correct adjectival construction for "Yugoslav", meaning "a Yugoslav attribute of the base noun". So, I'd say that this Yugoslav manufactured rifle is indeed Yugoslavian, as relates to the features that are particular in nature to Yugoslavia.
@@Celebmacil Interesting, I see your point. Yet, all my English teachers (all of whom were university educated in linguistics) insisted on Yugoslav. Yugoslavian was never used and I only started seeing it on the Internet relatively recently.
Were there ever any Yugo Mosin PU Sniper rifles?
gun jesus are you ever gonna do a video on the serbian m93 black arrow?
Mozda, uskoro dolaze u ameriku pa ce snimiti vrv
Up for sale in may 2019, not yet in march ?
The threded barrels. May it be as in sweden, that they where used to have a cap, for training with blanks? We used wooden bullets on 6.5x55 and 7.62x51. On .223 Nato, I do not know. On 9x19 it was brittle plastic and the m/45 smg had a conical barrel and a cap. All this was to prevent debris to go into someones face.
To understand the reason why such a large number of rifles were made, you must understand the Yugoslav military doctrine of "Opštenarodna Odbrana" or "General People's Defense"...Which is based on the successful Partisan war during the second world war. The role of the Yugoslav People's Army was to bog down an invader, while the general population is armed and begins a partisan war against the invader. Yugoslav high schools at the time had a class where they would take the students and teach them general weapons maintenance and use, first-aid, etc. so that in the event of an invasion a capable partisan formation could be formed with ease. So, although the YPA would certainly have these rifles in their ranks, many more would likely be given to partisan formations. Also, the use of a suppressor makes sense in that context, as suppressed sniper fire in the forested mountains of Yugoslavia would terrify even the most determined invading soldiers.
Ian’s exemplar 91/30 PU scope appears to be a modern copy based upon the flat headed turret screws...
Yes, I expect it is.
thanks alot for reply,is there any different between 8×57 and 7.92 ×57???thanks alot,by the way i have one m48A which shoots high in 100 meters, is there any thing wrong??the ullet grain is 172. thanks alot
my m48A is built on 1943,i dont know the exact bullet grain for it and please tell me the name of the scope which is good for this rifle,many thanks, awaiting for your reply
You have a reworked k98k, if the lowest sight setting is a 2 then it will be ~1in high at 100 meters. If it is a 1 it is probably just that lot doesn't impact where military heavy ball does. Also 8mm Mauser and 7.92x57mm, 8x57mm are all the same.... Until you get into the I , JS/IS, and JRS then it gets complicated.
Josip Broz Tito je bio najbloji vođa ikad!
That bears to mind the old saying; shot straight but late, with the military throwing all of them away, except of coarse
for the Marines, who knew that they had something that was worth keeping. Thank God!!!
Funny little sniper rifle!
Aesthetic.
I got a m48 zastava is it like this but with a sight on it
Yugoslav #1: Should we use Mausers or Mosin Nagants?
Yugoslav #2: We should make both of them into one gun!
There was the same modification during WW2 in the german army, don’t know why one soldier would take the cloudy PU scope instead of the crystal clear ZF but hey, it’s here
So basically it is an okay scope and a really good rifle,
Welding the scope on seems like a not so good idea. If we completely put the ability to take the scope off aside for a second,
you might be able to put it on and do the "gross elevation adjustments" with the two screws there but then welding it on after the fact would distort the scope again (hot weld contracts after cooling down, pulling the scope around) so anything you've done before this would've been fruitless and you might not be able to fix the distortion from the weld with the scopes adjustments.
Maybe they brazed them to the scope mount? Brazing is not as strong as welding but doesn't contract as much, causing less distortion. Also much easier to take off again at some point.
Probably just soldered with lead, to stop being lost/stolen.
Now that is a sexy gun
Did anyone ever make a small arm with a completely detached trigger for free recoiling a rifle? Something in 50 BMG would be expected, but I am wondering more about a 308 or even 6.5 sniper rifle.
You bet it’s coming up in May.
Bushmaster/Remington ACR next Ian! Totally fits the bill as a more modern forgotten weapon!
This guns are replas bay M69 after that white M76 all are in7,9x57
What type of elm is the stock made from??
It was threaded for projectile louncher attachment not for suppressor.
Projectile was called "tromblon" whit two kinds of charge,anti personnel and anti material. Propelled by no bullet round.
Holy crap. 2:52 they had red dot sights back then ?!?!
My father was in the people’s army and had gotten a kar 98 k
Curious as to actual gavel price.
Can the copy of the PU Optic be set as a Scout configuration on a Mauser M48?
Most likely not, the PU scopes have very short eye relief
@@bombtheblah Thank you for the help.
They manufactured new scopes instead of just new adjustment knobs? But they still reused mounts and rails? It definitely _sounds_ like a weird trials thing that wouldn't have worked out....
Ian should watch "underground" to learn how Yugoslavia rifles were made and why so many went unused 🙏
plemmplemm6666 best movie ever.
I have one of these rifles!
Nice
The first gun I shot was a 8mm mauser shit hurt I didn’t have the rifle tight on my shoulder
I used to live in Yugoslavia, until it broke apart, I have not moved. That period in Yugoslav history is very shady and records are not accurate at best, almost everything was done by spoken word and various deals (it still is in this region, although much less). So I have no exact proof, but it is very possible that all or most of the guns were issued, or that far less were made. But knowing the military at that period it is almost impossible that they have made 4 k for testing or that they were made and not used.
Also, thanks a lot for covering a part of Yugoslav military history.
Like Mauser, only yugoslav
Go weeeeeest, where the sky are bluuuue !
Is the bolt in the white?
In Ljubljana was Vega , Zrak was in Bosnia. ON means optički(optični) nišan.
Well Ljubljana is the Capital city of Slovenia so it is a bit more than just a town. And the pronounciation was acceptable.
I wonder if anyone ever tried to design a curved or angled stripper clip for scoped rifles like this one.