My dad had the M55 wire stock Reising on Guadalcanal, when in back line defense of Bloody Ridge and Henderson Field. He only had one malfunction, when the trigger mechanism would not release, and it fired full auto until the mag was empty. He cleaned the firearm and had no other problems. He was PFC Chas W. Lyon 1st Marine Div. , 1st Marine Air Wing, Marine Air Group 14, Service Squadron !4.
Alternative theory; the Marines heard about the PPsH's trick of dumping a full box mag before the first brass hit the floor, and decided it was easier to do the same by making the magazines much smaller!
@@shadowwolf2608 I think they had the lowest average asvab, and the lowest asvab score to enter. I don't know how true it is anymore, don't care. it's funny. and if you're a marine and get upset by it... well that makes you a pussy, even if you are a marine. like if the navy got mad over gay jokes.
And the price of Reisings everywhere just went up, and for good reason. Underrated gun. The mag dump at the end demonstrates rather nicely how controllable the gun is. I'd still like to track down one of the aftermarket 30 rounders.
I wonder if it could have been modified for .30 carbine - it almost looks like an SMG version of the M1 Carbine. As a semi-auto .30 carbine a twenty-round magazine mightn't have been so bad.
My grandfather, who was a gun afficanato all his life remembered quite clearly, when he was a Charleston SC police officer the department bought surplus M1 carbines and a few of these in the early 60s. He really liked them as a LE officer.
It's always nice to see someone who knows what they're doing when they fire an automatic weapon. 3-5 round bursts was what I was taught way back when at Parris Island...and today, 39 years later, I still prefer semi-auto... EDIT: This is another rifle I'd love to see someone reproduce as a semi-auto PCC...
If you want a wood stocked .45 ACP carbine, the Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 is an option. However, it is direct blowback, has a 16" barrel, and it uses 1911 mags. But overall length is almost identical.
They did make one of these which was semi-auto only and had a 16 inch barrel, so it's not an NFA item. It's called the Reising Model 60. They are not super common but you do see them on auction sites now and then.
Always appreciated the looks of the Reising when perusing "Small Arms of the World" as a kid, more than sixty years ago. Even modeled one in wood for playing army back then. What a cool gun. Thanks, Ian!
I've had a later version Reising since 2001. In the 1942 Marine Corps manual it says: "Note.-- Before moving the selector from "F.A.", retract the action bar about one-fourth inch to allow connector to disengage from the action bar, should it be so engaged." That's probably why you had trouble getting it to "S.A." at the 4:40 mark. They are sweet shooting guns, just fired mine yesterday after watching your first video.
We had one of these in our armory for some time. It been there so long that no one really knew the story behind how it got there. Got to shot it once before it was finally cut up.😢 We also had a PIAT anti-tank ‘gun’ that some guy turned into the department. That we gave to a company that supplied arms for military movies.
@@oktayyildirim2911 Just letting you know that my phones keyboard did it on its own and you shouldn’t care about it enough to reply to a random strangers RUclips comment to try and correct them.
I see what you mean by the values. This lot (2030; Nov 15-16, 2022) is currently bid to the middle of the $5-6K sale estimate. I somehow think it'll blow past that by the time the auction is finished. Looks like a great "first NFA" gun to buy and shoot.
Years ago, I had a choice of buying a Reising or a M10-.45ACP. After shooting both, I bought the Mac. It just had that lethal look to it. Today, I think if I had gotten the Reising, I might shoot it more.
If you still have the M-10, look at the Lage Mfg uppers. Lage Mfg has transformed the MAC from an undesirable piece of junk an extremely popular subgun. The M-10 routinely sells for $10k+, while I recently saw a Reising for $8.5k. In other words, you could sell your M-10, buy a Reising, and have enough money left over for a few thousand rounds of ammo.
The gun my grandfather carried in the Army, 82nd Field Artillery in the Battles of Los Negros Island, Leyte Gulf, Manila, and the Flying Column to rescue the POW Camp then on to the Occupation of Japan. Only problem he had was rust so he Shellaced the outside of it. He was smarter than the average military guy making CW4 and being into guns and target competition so maybe thats why he had no trouble
"A really great semi-auto short-barrelled forty-five carbine" may explain why it was replaced as much by the .30" M1 carbine as other .45" SMGs. On another firearms channel (yes, they do exist) a few years ago, one of these was seen being tried out by several shooters, of various ages. Most of whom obviously wanted it to be a burp-gun, which it clearly wasn't. Then they came to the old guy with a full grey beard (not sure what war he was a veteran of) and he explained that the Reising was _meant_ to be militarily effective in semi-auto and and then he showed what he meant, by scoring more hits, more quickly, than any of the younger men who'd used it in full auto. The reason for the limited magazine capacity and excess friction when feeding double to single stack is simply the diameter of .45" ACP rounds. That's why most SMGs are 9mm (Luger, Mauser, Steyr or Largo) if they are not 7.62mm Tokarev or 7.65mm Longue: you can make a simple 32-rounder that works. The other good point of the Reising is that it has the absolute minimum of sticking out bits which might foul on the undergrowth in any sort of jungle. George McDonald Fraser, author of "Quartered Safe Out Here" absolutely hated being made to carry a Thompson in Burma instead of his No4 Enfield, because when he was carrying the Enfield he always got the _first_ shot off in any encounter and since he tended to hit what he was aiming at, the encounter would end there. He simply couldn't do this in dense undergrowth with the Thompson so when he recaptured an SMLE from Indian deserters he "lost" the Thompson in a river. I think the Reising would actually have suited the way that he and other Black Cat Division soldiers fought, had it been available and if it had proved reliable in the conditions. (Apparently, it took _constant_ cleaning to keep Thompsons working in Burma.)
One of the few SMG’s I think would look “normal” with an NFA compliant 16” barrel for easy purchase. Shame there aren’t more and collectors are basically limited to either the M1 Thompson or the M3 Grease gun.
This was (intentional or not for this point) a super good demo of what automatic fire brings to the table. The few rounds fired on semi-auto were some hits, some misses. But there was at least *a* hit with ever burst fired.
I love that it's a closed bolt subgun, if used basically in the doctrine of a modern assault rifle with semi auto being prioritized it was a great service weapon for its time. I would just give it a 30 round mag and relocate the charging handle to the side.
When i was in law enforcement in the 80s my dept. had about a dozen of these in the armory, never got to shoot one, sadly they were auctioned off and prices quickly soared out of my range.
I have a late production (1957) Reising M50 and unfortunately mine has required a lot of work to make it run properly. There is an issue where there is no good way to change the barrel and make sure it times correctly and someone must have changed the barrel on mine and it would keep coming loose until I tack welded the barrel to the receiver. The design also has a bunch of parts which wear out or break quickly (the operating rod slams into part of the receiver and eventually the rod cracks). It is also a fairly complex design with multiple levers, springs, and pivot points to implement the semi-auto disconnector as well as the auto-sear. I can definitely see why the military did not like it and also how it can be a great weapon if used in a less demanding environment. I think it could be greatly improved by a few minor design changes.
The Code Talker Memorial in Arizona shows a Navajo with a Reising. They were perhaps not front line assault troops, but to issue them Reising fire power indicates the value of these troops to the Marines.
Have you ever heard of or done a video about Carlos Hathcock, the guy that used a M2 Browning (modified) to snipe with? He has the 7th longest confirmed kill shot (2286m) with it. This was during Vietnam.
Camera work has markedly improved over the past few months. Keeping everything centered and focused, and especially the automatic sound adjustment has been better. Gotta pause after shooting before talking. 😂
230 grainers at 900-950fps appears to be optimum. About 875rpm. But I’ve found you can significantly adjust the rate of fire by using powders with different burn rates, even without changing the ballistics.
tbis is the earliest ive been to one of your videos and i just want to say, ive been watching you for years, i love your content and thank you for teaching us for all these years, keep up the good work :)
Can we take a minute to appreciate that Ian's videos are always straight to the point. None of the teaser or some "comment, like and subscribe" non-sense.
Well $300 in 1970 would be $2300 in today money. Still more affordable than some high-end rifles but that certainly would have been a buy that stung your pocket.
The other difference from the 1970s is that the receipt for the car was smaller than the one I get for buying $5 of shaving cream at Rite Aid. I swear to God I'm not exaggerating. The owner was a small general contractor and he used a standard receipt book, the ones with a write-thru pink copy. Was about 4x6 inches.
@@patricknaughton6636 Going purely by inflation doesn't produce meaningful figures. Look up the average wage for an American man in 1970 or some such then see how many hours/days/weeks he would have needed to work in order to save up that $300. In most cases in regard to things like cars, houses, land, guns, etc...you'll find that the average working man needed to work FAR fewer hours in order to afford these things in the 1950s/60s/70s than the average working man does today.
The 12 rd mag makes sense for the Marines' role for the Reising. In your companion video you note it was for the paramarines, a unit equipped solely with Reisings and Johnson automatic rifles/LMGs. It's likely the riflemen would be issued 12 rd mags and assigned to shoot semi-auto only except in emergency. NCOs would have 20 rd mags. NCOs and Johnsons would fulfill the role of SMGs and BARs. The riflemen would fulfill the role of... rifleman, and 12 rds was more than the Garand's 8 or the 1903's 5. This makes a lot of sense when sustaining a supply of ammo to the unit.
Mine has never jammed. I usually shoot 230 grain ball. With handloads you can get the rate of fire down to 7-800 vs. 900-1000. Also quite accurate, no problem on semi putting very round on a torso sized target at 200 yards.
@@bowlofsoup12 Because it's not accurate to the original gun and collectors typically want authenticity. I'm ambivalent about it myself but then I'm not a collector.
I used this gun in Enlisted for my medic squad. Its a decent gun for players and AI. I was surprised where the position of the charging handle was on the M50 Reisings. 😏
I have a model 60 I use in some small comp's. It's semi with a 16" barrel but identical to the M50. The only difference is they cut part of a receiver stud off so a transfer bar can't be mounted. Mine even has the full auto position on the safety/fire lever. They are incredibly accurate and I would sport it for my Tommy or my Valkyrie M3 in terms of accuracy. Also not all marines didn't like them. A lot actually liked them well, they just suffered from things like parts interchangeability. Bolts were typically hand fitted. In fact there are several well published pictures of marines carrying Reising M60's with sawed off barrels in the pacific. Its a very interesting and fun gun to shoot! Mine is the model 60 with US proofs and I have a model 65 .22 trainer with US proofs as well. Haven't shot that yet.
love your detailed descriptions and analyses of these weapons, Ian, not all forgotten 😁 and I especially enjoy the range tests - big difference between talking about it and squeezing the trigger 👊
Ever since that SIG submachine gun (HKPS or something like that?), I've started to expect a full-magazine shooting at the end of automatic gun videos. It's just fun to watch.
I will have to say that 12-round of semi-auto and a box mag replacement, in close quarters combat, is a better option than a 5-round longer ranged bolt-action with a clip reload. All it's missing is a bayonet.
The Reising's look, especially with the M50's wood stock, reminds me of a gun you'd see in the game Foxhole. It's got that interwar look about it. Would love to see what Ian thinks of the models of fictional guns from that game ;-)
Thanks Ian. My Father and I both served as Sentries for a time and it's nice to see you firing the weapon he carried. It seems like not a bad little gun - and - for a lot of things like Base Security and Law Enforcement - it's not that bad. One of the things here - is that a .45 ACP - isn't going to go through a lot of structure and kill people you don't want to kill on the other side. I can well understand how the Marines on Guadalcanal felt though ... Say what you will about the M-14 but it was a good reliable weapon - and I liked it. I served in '70 and '71 and every Marine I knew - and myself - despised the M-16s we were given. I was first acquainted with the M-16 in High School when they brought one in and gave us a class on it. I remember it had the plastic, bipod that worked like a clothes pin to clamp around the barrel. They actually told us that the weapon was "self cleaning" ... if you can believe that .... So - I have some idea how the guys equipped with Reisings on Guadalcanal felt ... though - ironically, with both my Father and I doing Base Security - a Reising would have been fine for us. And - one thing about a 12 round magazine - is - it would hold more than the 1911's I carried on some posts. .
Anyone else experience the optical illusion with that tree where it appears to be a a giant tree growing above the forest into the clouds, but really its a half dead tree that's actually closer?
I like it. The wood furniture on a subgun is such a contradiction in terms to modern "tacti-cool" full auto submachine guns that they have their own distinctive beauty to them. Besides that, hearing "God's Caliber" go Full auto is very satisfying.
Ruger makes a modern semi-auto pistol caliber carbine, and now I can see where they got the inspiration. It's a straight blowback design that uses a tungsten weight to increase bolt mass, but it works pretty darned well. Doesn't have a "fun switch", of course, nor the charm of a classic like the Reising, though.
Between your good burst technique and the compensator, it was very controllable. Nice to see. I bet it was very effective in semiauto. Reising (built by H&R i think)also made an NFA compliant semiauto carbine, the model 60 i believe. Marketed to LE and i believe some were used for guarding munitions plants, etc during the war. I bet they were nice to shoot. I had a Marlin Camp 45 for awhile, and it was very accurate. Small groups at 35 yards or so, sometimes a ragged hole. Worked great with a Pentax red dot i put on it. PCC's are both useful and fun
Hardly any muzzle climb' look's like a sweet little Carbine, and hard hitting heavy slug! Also I like the extended mag well, it would be nice if they did that on the M1 Carbine...
A part of me wonders whether this would've been a better replacement, not for the Thompson, but for the M1 Carbine. Think about it: the Reising has a similar capacity to the carbine, is actually controllable on automatic fire, and doesn't introduce a completely new and exclusive to it caliber the way the Carbine does. .45 ACP will have less effective range than .30 Carbine but the whole point of the M1 Carbine was as a support weapon for auxiliary troops, not as a frontline weapon, so that lowered lethality isn't as big a factor, and with that in mind, simplifying logistics by removing .30 Carbine entirely certainly seems like it would've been a sensible move.
While Wyatt Earp was speaking of revolvers, other handguns, rifles, and other personal weapons in use in the last third of the 19th Century said, "Fast is fine, accuracy is final!". Earp's words are still true today. The need for full Automatic fire in the primary infantry weapon is more in the planner's mind than the soldier carrying the ammo. Had bugs been worked out of the Reising sub-machine gun, it would have seen much more use. I know of no other use of its delay system. The delay system deserves to be explored in higher-powered cartridges. An inexpensive delayed blowback action for 9x19mm, 10mm, 30 Supper-Carry, and possibly 357 Magnum with a fixed would be a valuable firearm.
Ian! What are your thoughts as to why such a lightweight weapon as the Reising would be so easy to control? Would you ascribe this to the relatively low mass of the bolt, or perhaps to the complex looking muzzle brake? It is fascinating to watch the slomo parts of the video; there is a lot of redirected gas coming out of the brake. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Reising is that it had to go through the seemingly inevitable trial and error / mostly error development cycle in super humid jungle hellholes in the Pacific. In spite of its faults, I think the Reising is cool and a genuine piece of Americana. Thank you, Ian, for yet another cool video from Forgotten Weapons!
My dad had the M55 wire stock Reising on Guadalcanal, when in back line defense of Bloody Ridge and Henderson Field. He only had one malfunction, when the trigger mechanism would not release, and it fired full auto until the mag was empty. He cleaned the firearm and had no other problems. He was PFC Chas W. Lyon 1st Marine Div. , 1st Marine Air Wing, Marine Air Group 14, Service Squadron !4.
Thank you!
Semper fi.
God bless your dad.semper fi.
Alternative theory; the Marines heard about the PPsH's trick of dumping a full box mag before the first brass hit the floor, and decided it was easier to do the same by making the magazines much smaller!
Lol 😊👍
Sounds like a very SA80 way of doing things.
"redefining our success matrix"
@@moosemaimer In the SA80's case it was, "can I fire the first round before the mag hits the ground?"
@@andreww2098 You've never shot one then
You used that comma wrong
They might have only wanted 12 rounds to make counting easier for the Marines.
Give them a little credit. Marines can count to at least 24 because that's how many crayons come in a box.
@@patricknaughton6636 ha haha
@@patricknaughton6636 they just count to 12 twice
as funny as this is, where does this joke come from?
@@shadowwolf2608 I think they had the lowest average asvab, and the lowest asvab score to enter. I don't know how true it is anymore, don't care. it's funny.
and if you're a marine and get upset by it... well that makes you a pussy, even if you are a marine. like if the navy got mad over gay jokes.
And the price of Reisings everywhere just went up, and for good reason. Underrated gun. The mag dump at the end demonstrates rather nicely how controllable the gun is. I'd still like to track down one of the aftermarket 30 rounders.
Hey Arm&Gun :) love your vids
Bro, world's biggest fan of your vids!!! Also a Canadian myself and am really POed that handguns are illegal now.
@@maniac9721 *buying new handguns is illegal now. All the handguns people currently own are perfectly legal.
I wonder if it could have been modified for .30 carbine - it almost looks like an SMG version of the M1 Carbine. As a semi-auto .30 carbine a twenty-round magazine mightn't have been so bad.
@@Panzermeister36 For now.
5:43 with the three cases spinning in the air is a thing of beauty!
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Loved the three round burst slow mo, the 3 cartridges almost spinning in the same tempo, and how nicely you can see the next round being loaded.
link to the great slo-mo ruclips.net/video/pHunmA-Yeqw/видео.html
@@leemktm or just write 5:40 and RUclips inserts the link automatically
Some of the best slow mo I've ever seen. The dancing group of shells. 5:36 wow
Indeed, it was a thing of beauty.
almost felt like they were about to sing a song
I totally agree with you!😄
Check out svt 40 slow motion on internet you won’t believe it. It vibrates a lot!
I love it when Ian does a show about a lesser known WW2 small arm
Gun Jesus can miss if:
-the sights are not zeroed
-the gun is not french enough
If I remember correctly some of these were sent to the FFI.
My grandfather, who was a gun afficanato all his life remembered quite clearly, when he was a Charleston SC police officer the department bought surplus M1 carbines and a few of these in the early 60s. He really liked them as a LE officer.
Love the slo mo of the synchronized spinning brass.
Would be interesting to see this go through a PCC course of fire.
I'd love to see it on the clock at a match.
What’s a PCC course of fire?
@@xpvtcoochtrooperx5731 pistol caliber carbine shooting competition
Parti Communiste Chinois?
OH YES!
It's always nice to see someone who knows what they're doing when they fire an automatic weapon. 3-5 round bursts was what I was taught way back when at Parris Island...and today, 39 years later, I still prefer semi-auto...
EDIT: This is another rifle I'd love to see someone reproduce as a semi-auto PCC...
I've NEVER used full! When in a fight! Diemaco/Colt Canada: C7A1..A2+
Three tours in the 00s. KFOR DANCON ISAF. Royal Life Guards(Denmark)
As a .45 ACP PCC that's simple and light without the ergonomic challenges of some of its contemporaries I agree, I'd buy one in a heatbeat.
I mean it has the look of a Ruger 10/22 but in 45acp. Ger a modern Ruger PCC and put it in a wood stock. Pretty sure those are in 9mm though.
If you want a wood stocked .45 ACP carbine, the Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 is an option. However, it is direct blowback, has a 16" barrel, and it uses 1911 mags. But overall length is almost identical.
They did make one of these which was semi-auto only and had a 16 inch barrel, so it's not an NFA item. It's called the Reising Model 60. They are not super common but you do see them on auction sites now and then.
Always appreciated the looks of the Reising when perusing "Small Arms of the World" as a kid, more than sixty years ago. Even modeled one in wood for playing army back then. What a cool gun. Thanks, Ian!
Hahaha, that's great! I'm happy to know I wasn't the only kid weird enough to make my own toy guns out of scrap wood...
The slow-mo shot with three cases floating through the air was super cool.
Considering the Marines were stuck with bolt-action Springfields early on in the war, even a semi-auto Reising would be a step up...way up.
Quick tip
When moving the selector pull back on the charging bar slightly. It will take pressure off of the selector and allow it to move easier
I've had a later version Reising since 2001. In the 1942 Marine Corps manual it says: "Note.-- Before moving the selector from "F.A.", retract the action bar about one-fourth inch to allow connector to disengage from the action bar, should it be so engaged." That's probably why you had trouble getting it to "S.A." at the 4:40 mark. They are sweet shooting guns, just fired mine yesterday after watching your first video.
Such a beautiful gun. The bolt and trigger mechanism is so different then others it makes it very unique. Love it.
Love the shot at cca. 5:45 with all 3 cases next to each other :)
Ok, so the slow mo shots of 3 45 cases spinning through the air was a good shot. Love your videos.
Definitely love that fun mode. I think if they just had a larger magazine it could've been a real competitor as an SMG.
and further refined the takedown procedure and the internal components to be more rugged in the field
Ruger just released their LC Carbine in 45 ACP, in semi auto (of course).
What the construction of the Reising reminds me of, with the simple wood stock and sheet metal bits, is an old Crosman pellet rifle.
I look at it and think of a Ruger 10/22.
Some say 10/22 but I do see the Crosman 140/1400 proportions/aesthetic also.
That was such consistent ejection and rate of fire, all the empty cases were floating through the air in sync with each other. Very cool firearm.
Really impressed with the choreography @5:35 - 5:45 !
Love the slow motion ballet dance of empty cartridge’s in mid air 👍👏!!!!
We had one of these in our armory for some time. It been there so long that no one really knew the story behind how it got there. Got to shot it once before it was finally cut up.😢 We also had a PIAT anti-tank ‘gun’ that some guy turned into the department. That we gave to a company that supplied arms for military movies.
I had a pile of Christie 30 round mags for mine. 100% reliability and 10 rounds more fun! Mine fed my cast bullet reloads reliably, too.
The slow-mo at 5:33 is awesome!
The shot with the triple spinning brass was super cool
When I was first getting into NFA stuff in the mid 90s, several people told me I should get a Reising. I wish I’d listened.
I need an infinite loop of the shells spinning at 5:42 or so. It's like a loading screen!
Really impressed with how controllable that looks given it’s fire rate seemed pretty considerable. What an interesting weapon.
I'm a full auto novice and can confirm it's pleasurably controllable.
Just letting you know, "it's" is a contraction of "it is", so you should've used "its", a possessive.
@@oktayyildirim2911 Just letting you know that my phones keyboard did it on its own and you shouldn’t care about it enough to reply to a random strangers RUclips comment to try and correct them.
@@oktayyildirim2911 Pompous pedant!
@@MopTop88 Actually you are wrong since, "It Is pleasurably controllable." is what he meant.
What a beautiful range. The weather looked perfect as well
I see what you mean by the values. This lot (2030; Nov 15-16, 2022) is currently bid to the middle of the $5-6K sale estimate. I somehow think it'll blow past that by the time the auction is finished. Looks like a great "first NFA" gun to buy and shoot.
That look on Ian's face when he hears the truck horn is pure meme material!
Enjoy seeing your live fire testing of these various firearms
Years ago, I had a choice of buying a Reising or a M10-.45ACP. After shooting both, I bought the Mac. It just had that lethal look to it. Today, I think if I had gotten the Reising, I might shoot it more.
If you still have the M-10, look at the Lage Mfg uppers.
Lage Mfg has transformed the MAC from an undesirable piece of junk an extremely popular subgun. The M-10 routinely sells for $10k+, while I recently saw a Reising for $8.5k.
In other words, you could sell your M-10, buy a Reising, and have enough money left over for a few thousand rounds of ammo.
The gun my grandfather carried in the Army, 82nd Field Artillery in the Battles of Los Negros Island, Leyte Gulf, Manila, and the Flying Column to rescue the POW Camp then on to the Occupation of Japan. Only problem he had was rust so he Shellaced the outside of it. He was smarter than the average military guy making CW4 and being into guns and target competition so maybe thats why he had no trouble
The Triple Brass Ballet at 5:33 is so freaking satisfying 😌
"A really great semi-auto short-barrelled forty-five carbine" may explain why it was replaced as much by the .30" M1 carbine as other .45" SMGs.
On another firearms channel (yes, they do exist) a few years ago, one of these was seen being tried out by several shooters, of various ages. Most of whom obviously wanted it to be a burp-gun, which it clearly wasn't. Then they came to the old guy with a full grey beard (not sure what war he was a veteran of) and he explained that the Reising was _meant_ to be militarily effective in semi-auto and and then he showed what he meant, by scoring more hits, more quickly, than any of the younger men who'd used it in full auto.
The reason for the limited magazine capacity and excess friction when feeding double to single stack is simply the diameter of .45" ACP rounds. That's why most SMGs are 9mm (Luger, Mauser, Steyr or Largo) if they are not 7.62mm Tokarev or 7.65mm Longue: you can make a simple 32-rounder that works.
The other good point of the Reising is that it has the absolute minimum of sticking out bits which might foul on the undergrowth in any sort of jungle. George McDonald Fraser, author of "Quartered Safe Out Here" absolutely hated being made to carry a Thompson in Burma instead of his No4 Enfield, because when he was carrying the Enfield he always got the _first_ shot off in any encounter and since he tended to hit what he was aiming at, the encounter would end there. He simply couldn't do this in dense undergrowth with the Thompson so when he recaptured an SMLE from Indian deserters he "lost" the Thompson in a river. I think the Reising would actually have suited the way that he and other Black Cat Division soldiers fought, had it been available and if it had proved reliable in the conditions. (Apparently, it took _constant_ cleaning to keep Thompsons working in Burma.)
One of the few SMG’s I think would look “normal” with an NFA compliant 16” barrel for easy purchase. Shame there aren’t more and collectors are basically limited to either the M1 Thompson or the M3 Grease gun.
This was (intentional or not for this point) a super good demo of what automatic fire brings to the table. The few rounds fired on semi-auto were some hits, some misses. But there was at least *a* hit with ever burst fired.
I love that it's a closed bolt subgun, if used basically in the doctrine of a modern assault rifle with semi auto being prioritized it was a great service weapon for its time. I would just give it a 30 round mag and relocate the charging handle to the side.
Always wanted to shoot one of these, kind of looks like what would happen if a Marlin Camp Rifle and a Thompson SMG had offspring🤔
When i was in law enforcement in the 80s my dept. had about a dozen of these in the armory, never got to shoot one, sadly they were auctioned off and prices quickly soared out of my range.
I have a late production (1957) Reising M50 and unfortunately mine has required a lot of work to make it run properly. There is an issue where there is no good way to change the barrel and make sure it times correctly and someone must have changed the barrel on mine and it would keep coming loose until I tack welded the barrel to the receiver. The design also has a bunch of parts which wear out or break quickly (the operating rod slams into part of the receiver and eventually the rod cracks). It is also a fairly complex design with multiple levers, springs, and pivot points to implement the semi-auto disconnector as well as the auto-sear. I can definitely see why the military did not like it and also how it can be a great weapon if used in a less demanding environment. I think it could be greatly improved by a few minor design changes.
The Code Talker Memorial in Arizona shows a Navajo with a Reising. They were perhaps not front line assault troops, but to issue them Reising fire power indicates the value of these troops to the Marines.
Now I'm curious if the movies of the code talkers were accurate enough to show them bearing M50's.🤔
Have you ever heard of or done a video about Carlos Hathcock, the guy that used a M2 Browning (modified) to snipe with? He has the 7th longest confirmed kill shot (2286m) with it. This was during Vietnam.
3:11 - lol
5:42 - Wow, the pattern of those cases flying
Camera work has markedly improved over the past few months. Keeping everything centered and focused, and especially the automatic sound adjustment has been better. Gotta pause after shooting before talking. 😂
230 grainers at 900-950fps appears to be optimum. About 875rpm.
But I’ve found you can significantly adjust the rate of fire by using powders with different burn rates, even without changing the ballistics.
Slow powder cycles slower?
tbis is the earliest ive been to one of your videos and i just want to say, ive been watching you for years, i love your content and thank you for teaching us for all these years, keep up the good work :)
HOLY COW. we have the 22 version, dad grew up shooting groundhogs with it lol! Just got it fixed as our extractor decided to enter orbit.
12 round magazines for an SMG? USMC’s Procurement Team must have been chewing the good crayons that week.
Can we take a minute to appreciate that Ian's videos are always straight to the point. None of the teaser or some "comment, like and subscribe" non-sense.
With the aftermarket 30 round mags this would be fun. Pity they ain't still 300 bucks like in the 70s.
Nothing is still 300 bucks like in the 70s, lol. IIRC I bought a nice 5 year old used car for $500.
Well $300 in 1970 would be $2300 in today money. Still more affordable than some high-end rifles but that certainly would have been a buy that stung your pocket.
The other difference from the 1970s is that the receipt for the car was smaller than the one I get for buying $5 of shaving cream at Rite Aid. I swear to God I'm not exaggerating. The owner was a small general contractor and he used a standard receipt book, the ones with a write-thru pink copy. Was about 4x6 inches.
@@patricknaughton6636 Going purely by inflation doesn't produce meaningful figures. Look up the average wage for an American man in 1970 or some such then see how many hours/days/weeks he would have needed to work in order to save up that $300. In most cases in regard to things like cars, houses, land, guns, etc...you'll find that the average working man needed to work FAR fewer hours in order to afford these things in the 1950s/60s/70s than the average working man does today.
Awesome video!
Btw, the U.S. Coast Guard also used M50 in WWII.
Ian mentioned that in the previous video
@@redbyrd64 Yes he did, as in post WWII when they sold the surplus.
@@johnsmith-gk4td he also said during WWII.
@@redbyrd64 oops, my apologies! I was referring to this video, not the one I didn't watch. You win
The 12 rd mag makes sense for the Marines' role for the Reising. In your companion video you note it was for the paramarines, a unit equipped solely with Reisings and Johnson automatic rifles/LMGs. It's likely the riflemen would be issued 12 rd mags and assigned to shoot semi-auto only except in emergency. NCOs would have 20 rd mags. NCOs and Johnsons would fulfill the role of SMGs and BARs. The riflemen would fulfill the role of... rifleman, and 12 rds was more than the Garand's 8 or the 1903's 5. This makes a lot of sense when sustaining a supply of ammo to the unit.
Thank you , Ian .
🐺
I know I'm not watch a Cutting Edge Engineering out of Australia video, there'd be a 'F*ck off train!' after the horn 😅
Mine has never jammed. I usually shoot 230 grain ball. With handloads you can get the rate of fire down to 7-800 vs. 900-1000. Also quite accurate, no problem on semi putting very round on a torso sized target at 200 yards.
5:42 love how the fired casings seem to all line up in the same orientation there.
Unfortunate as the glossy finish may be, it does look pretty nice.
Serious question. How come some people don’t enjoy the glossy finish? Me personally i like it
@@bowlofsoup12 In this case the gun didn't have it originally. My guess it was put on to protect the stock.
@@bowlofsoup12 not original. They were just oiled wood.
Which if you put enough linseed oil onto the stock will end up nice and glossy.
@@bowlofsoup12 Because it's not accurate to the original gun and collectors typically want authenticity. I'm ambivalent about it myself but then I'm not a collector.
I used this gun in Enlisted for my medic squad. Its a decent gun for players and AI. I was surprised where the position of the charging handle was on the M50 Reisings. 😏
I have a model 60 I use in some small comp's. It's semi with a 16" barrel but identical to the M50. The only difference is they cut part of a receiver stud off so a transfer bar can't be mounted. Mine even has the full auto position on the safety/fire lever. They are incredibly accurate and I would sport it for my Tommy or my Valkyrie M3 in terms of accuracy.
Also not all marines didn't like them. A lot actually liked them well, they just suffered from things like parts interchangeability. Bolts were typically hand fitted. In fact there are several well published pictures of marines carrying Reising M60's with sawed off barrels in the pacific.
Its a very interesting and fun gun to shoot! Mine is the model 60 with US proofs and I have a model 65 .22 trainer with US proofs as well. Haven't shot that yet.
no THANK YOU ian for showing us an incredible piece of history, it in action and some target shooting really incredible
I think the 12rd mag was for standing guard. I could be wrong.
love your detailed descriptions and analyses of these weapons, Ian, not all forgotten 😁 and I especially enjoy the range tests - big difference between talking about it and squeezing the trigger 👊
5:43 synchronicity.
Ever since that SIG submachine gun (HKPS or something like that?), I've started to expect a full-magazine shooting at the end of automatic gun videos.
It's just fun to watch.
I will have to say that 12-round of semi-auto and a box mag replacement, in close quarters combat, is a better option than a 5-round longer ranged bolt-action with a clip reload. All it's missing is a bayonet.
The slow motion was really interesting to see the muzzle device influence on the gas leaving the barrel
My dad has the model 60 and it's a very nice shooting rifle. He calls it his burglar gun. 👍
I don’t think I would shoot a burglar with such a rare firearm… only 3500 or so of those model 60s produced.
@@nhminuteman3715 exactly, that's where you use the hi-point carbine. So when it gets confiscated it's no loss.
Thanks to Ian for making me appreciate guns that look like this - I assumed all good SMGs looked like Sten's or MP41'...
In the slo mo you can see a little bit of a spark blowing back from the barrel to the ejection port.
I like how the small magazine that was designed for “better reliability” had the problems.
The Reising's look, especially with the M50's wood stock, reminds me of a gun you'd see in the game Foxhole. It's got that interwar look about it. Would love to see what Ian thinks of the models of fictional guns from that game ;-)
It still looks quite neat!
Thanks Ian. My Father and I both served as Sentries for a time and it's nice to see you firing the weapon he carried.
It seems like not a bad little gun - and - for a lot of things like Base Security and Law Enforcement - it's not that bad.
One of the things here - is that a .45 ACP - isn't going to go through a lot of structure and kill people you don't want to kill on the other side.
I can well understand how the Marines on Guadalcanal felt though ...
Say what you will about the M-14 but it was a good reliable weapon - and I liked it. I served in '70 and '71 and every Marine I knew - and myself - despised the M-16s we were given.
I was first acquainted with the M-16 in High School when they brought one in and gave us a class on it. I remember it had the plastic, bipod that worked like a clothes pin to clamp around the barrel. They actually told us that the weapon was "self cleaning" ... if you can believe that ....
So - I have some idea how the guys equipped with Reisings on Guadalcanal felt ... though - ironically, with both my Father and I doing Base Security - a Reising would have been fine for us.
And - one thing about a 12 round magazine - is - it would hold more than the 1911's I carried on some posts.
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Let's be honest, we all watched 'til the end for him to do a full mag dump. It was worth it. Great video again.
Until this video around 2:36, I never noticed that Ian has a cameraman.
I sorta assumed the camera just floated around him.
that is the part you notice and not the zombie sound?, I just went "why the fuck do I hear a zombie?, is the camera guy a zombie?"
The camera work on the slow-motion side-shots is fantastic!
Anyone else experience the optical illusion with that tree where it appears to be a a giant tree growing above the forest into the clouds, but really its a half dead tree that's actually closer?
I like it. The wood furniture on a subgun is such a contradiction in terms to modern "tacti-cool" full auto submachine guns that they have their own distinctive beauty to them.
Besides that, hearing "God's Caliber" go Full auto is very satisfying.
The MP5 with wood are very beautiful.
Ian, the last Mag Dump didn't hit Steel, but it doesn't mean the enemy would've been safe if they were near your point of aim.👍😄😄😄
Ruger makes a modern semi-auto pistol caliber carbine, and now I can see where they got the inspiration. It's a straight blowback design that uses a tungsten weight to increase bolt mass, but it works pretty darned well. Doesn't have a "fun switch", of course, nor the charm of a classic like the Reising, though.
Between your good burst technique and the compensator, it was very controllable. Nice to see. I bet it was very effective in semiauto. Reising (built by H&R i think)also made an NFA compliant semiauto carbine, the model 60 i believe. Marketed to LE and i believe some were used for guarding munitions plants, etc during the war. I bet they were nice to shoot. I had a Marlin Camp 45 for awhile, and it was very accurate. Small groups at 35 yards or so, sometimes a ragged hole. Worked great with a Pentax red dot i put on it. PCC's are both useful and fun
My uncle Bill was with the 1st Marines on the Canal. Chesty Puller had these in his command dumped in the Ocean...
You can almost hear the clicking sound unique to almost every video of Reising firing in full auto
Hardly any muzzle climb' look's like a sweet little Carbine, and hard hitting heavy slug! Also I like the extended mag well, it would be nice if they did that on the M1 Carbine...
"Perhaps the truck disagrees with me" We love you Ian
A part of me wonders whether this would've been a better replacement, not for the Thompson, but for the M1 Carbine.
Think about it: the Reising has a similar capacity to the carbine, is actually controllable on automatic fire, and doesn't introduce a completely new and exclusive to it caliber the way the Carbine does. .45 ACP will have less effective range than .30 Carbine but the whole point of the M1 Carbine was as a support weapon for auxiliary troops, not as a frontline weapon, so that lowered lethality isn't as big a factor, and with that in mind, simplifying logistics by removing .30 Carbine entirely certainly seems like it would've been a sensible move.
I just learned the existence of this weapon. Thx Ian!
While Wyatt Earp was speaking of revolvers, other handguns, rifles, and other personal weapons in use in the last third of the 19th Century said, "Fast is fine, accuracy is final!". Earp's words are still true today. The need for full Automatic fire in the primary infantry weapon is more in the planner's mind than the soldier carrying the ammo. Had bugs been worked out of the Reising sub-machine gun, it would have seen much more use. I know of no other use of its delay system. The delay system deserves to be explored in higher-powered cartridges. An inexpensive delayed blowback action for 9x19mm, 10mm, 30 Supper-Carry, and possibly 357 Magnum with a fixed would be a valuable firearm.
It's wild that many modern pistols, like the glock 21, have higher capacity than those later marine magazines.
i have lived so close to Morphys and never knew!
and youre there often!
pretty dang neat
5:36, synchronized swimming for spent shells
Ian! What are your thoughts as to why such a lightweight weapon as the Reising would be so easy to
control? Would you ascribe this to the relatively low mass of the bolt, or perhaps to the complex looking
muzzle brake? It is fascinating to watch the slomo parts of the video; there is a lot of redirected gas
coming out of the brake.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the Reising is that it had to go through the seemingly inevitable
trial and error / mostly error development cycle in super humid jungle hellholes in the Pacific.
In spite of its faults, I think the Reising is cool and a genuine piece of Americana.
Thank you, Ian, for yet another cool video from Forgotten Weapons!
Just look at the slowmo at 5:42 - three ejected cases pirouetting in perfect formation!
I think Ian just invented cartridge case ballet. :)
They should have added music to that clip.