Very nice pictures and details, thanks a lot.

Just out of curiosity, would you mind telling us a little about the circumstances those people inherit or encounter these guns?

France has been awashed with weapons due to the major conflicts on its territory and many people have picked up weapons on the battle fields and hid them. Then in some regions, air drops to resistance groups and weapons seized on german troops are an important part of what can be found.

War bringgbacks are often found when a veteran dies, he brought them back from WW1 or WW2 service or Indochina, Algeria, Chad, Africa..

Someone buys a house, demolishes a stair case or walls or a roof and finds a Lebel clip, a MP 40 magazine, a LMG 24/29, grenades..
A few years ago, someone bought the old water tower in the center of the town here and it was being demolished to build a house. When the trucks were unloading the bricks, concrete etc at a dump, some metal boxes appeared.
They contained german mortar shells, it appeared the cave was full of them and the crane loaded them with the debris in the truck.
the work stopped, an EOD team of the Civil Defense was called.
An old person remembered this place was used as the ammo depot for the Kommandantur that was nearby between 1940 and 1944.

I have been asked about prices in Europe.
Here is a gunsmith site in Germany.
This MP 44 is offered for 5500€/US$ 7000

http://www.waffen-bellmann.de/2007/05291305/02.html

Same shop has a MKb 42H, precursor of the MP 44 for 35,000 €/ US $ 50,000

it is converted to semi automatic.

Only time I heard of one registered in US the price was over 135,000..

Edmond,

It's amazing how close the M16's dustcover looks to the MP44. Perhaps we copied that?

Joe

Yes.
all armaments used during WW2 have been evaluated by US and many things were picked up from them.
I remember reading a few studies years ago. Too bad the wrong things where picked up sometimes. Instead of a direct copy of the MG42 and its sturdy beelt feeding mecanism, the M60 is a copy of the FG 42 with a very week feeding mecanism.
But a copy of MG 42 had been made in 30.06, if I remember correctly it did not work very good because of a mistake when taking the measures from metric blue prints.
Just like it happened in 1917 when converting Chauchat to 30.06 or more recently sending this robot to Mars..

FG 42 1st version .....FG 42 "G" version...T 44.....M 60

MP 44 in 22 lr is available since 2006 in Germany, I heard some will cross the pond.

http://www.waffen-technik-withum.de/index.html



http://www.waffen-technik-withum.de/fertigungsteile-e.html

Long time no eye candy..

My two very favorite guns bare none! STG/44 & a FG/42.

April, May 45? Are you saying this could have been manufactured a couple of weeks after the war ended?

Grizz

This double letter serial number has been manufactured end of April, beginning of May. Most of the MP 44 were not given to units and kept in arsenals since the production of 7.92x33mm ammunition was only up to 10% of the needs. For this reason, the manual was clear that automatic fire was not allowed unless the squad leader allowed it.
A large quantity of MP 44 have been completed under allied control. Not only MP 44, it was the same for Mauser plant under French control, Walther plant and Krieghoff plant under American Forces control.
The Soviets complained a lot about it.

Edmond

TOP OF THE SEASON TO YOU.

How accurate are those rifles.

Jim

Thanks Jim. Same back at ya!

The best I could get with reloaded ammo using 123 grains Hirtenberger bullets and spherical powders to duplicate the original load were groups 10" x 10" @ 300m for a full mag.
The original ammunition produced groups around 12 to 15".
With one that had seen some use, the results were not that good..

Averagely speaking, an AK does better. My East German made MPiK 72 was doing much better with Czech ammunition producing average 8" groups despite having had some use.. I used Korean, Chinese, Romanian, Soviet AKs and if I had to choose one weapon for harsch conditions and no armourer nearby...

I like AKs.

Edmond
Thanks for the reply.
I'm a dinosaur, my favorite 'asault rifle' comes in bolt action or lever action. Those new fancy self feeding rifles spew their brass all over God's half acre and are a right royal pain in the lower regions to find.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
...it was the same for Mauser plant under French control, Walther plant and Krieghoff plant under American Forces control.

At least for the P-38 pistols, when under French control in the spring of '45, they stamped the parts with a star to identify them as being assembled from previously made German parts. No star in any of the pics of that machinegun.

Edmond, thanks for the picture of the FG 42, it and the Stg 44 were ahead of their time...
As a lot of the German "stuff" was.
However less not forget that the French were one of the the first to adopt smokeless powder...

You are welcome; my pleasure.

The concept of intermediate cartridge and the weapon that used it is born in France during WW1.

Here is the Ribeyrolle 1918 that was not produced since the war ended in November.

Its cartridge was a necked down .351 Winchester Selfloading case loaded with a 8 gram 8mm bullet.

The weapon was named Carabine Mitrailleuse, Machine Carbine, MaschinenKarabiner







Since 1915, the French developed weapons based on the concept of "Fire and Movement"

The CETME was developed in France, not much people knowing that..

Here is the .30 Carbine version





A version using an intermediate cartridge was adopted but never saw service because of budgetary reasons (France being the biggest NATO contributor after US and being engaged in Indochian war)

Here is one sample compared to 7,92x33 mm

..

I would love to see an MP44 semi auto of any kind in the states, even if it's a 22LR! I hope this happens as the GSG MP5 did...

I heard many MP44 semi autos are in Canada. I can't understand why AKs roll in like crazy here but we can't import MP44 repros for $1500. I would buy one in a heartbeat... They would sell them before they even arrived here...

Aesthetically, they have no equal in my view.

Thanks for the pics. I have a parts kit on an aluminum receiver that I only wish worked!

Because AK are still mass produced and cost less than 100$ to produce. MP 44 is nowhere near this production cost..

I agree, but it seems the high cost of tooling up for the MP44 receivers would lead to building more and shipping them to the states.

I'm not sure how many they currently new semi-auto models they currently produce, but it's weird that they wouldn't turn out more for US import.

There is a market for them here. I'd say $2,500 would be a fair price. $4,000 for when they first imported them was pretty insane...

up to make it easy for request I got

Schmeisser along with other weapon designers and their families, were relocated to the USSR. On October 24, 1946, the German specialists rode a train to Izhevsk in the southern Ural Mountains, where the center of Russian firearms development was located.


German specialists with their wives in Izhevsk.

Schmeisser is the second from the left.

According to the publications in Russian Internet the famous AK-47 was in fact designed not by Kalashnikov, but by Schmeisser and his German colleagues. Schmeisser’s work while in Izhevsk (1946-1952) is shrouded in darkness. The most of historical documents of the period are still classified. But some facts are known and they make the version presented by Internet very believable.

AK-47 strongly resembles Schmeisser’s StG44.

Mikhail Kalashnikov admitted in 2009 that Schmeisser “helped” design him the famous AK-47.

But Schmeisser couldn’t “help” him. Schmeisser was working in Izhevsk while Kalashnikov, a senior sergeant lacking special education, was supposedly developing his AK–47 during three years period from 1945 to 1947 in a different plant, in the city of Kovrov.

Several times several committees dismissed his design as unacceptable. Self taught mechanic Kalashnikov was a leader of the local Young Communist Organization and obviously it was pretty difficult to just fire him as professionally incompetent.

Instead he was transferred to Izhevsk in 1947, where Schmeisser and his team worked and almost immediately the AK-47 was completely changed and was released as the perfect machine gun of the future. The name Schmeisser was known at the moment by every Russian schoolboy, as the name of Nazi guns. To use this name for the new Russian weapon was absolutely impossible.

The name of the active young communist Kalashnikov was a perfect substitute.

http://newslanc.com/2013/12/30...shnikovs-real-story/

Fascinating story Edmond. Thanks for posting the pictures.

Glad fellow shooters can enjoy discovery as I did.

They are not retired , yet..
Al Tawid Brigade, syrian rebels, seized 5000 of them from a Syrian Arab Army depot in 2012

In the late 70's I had the opportunity to meet an elderly Czech gent who escaped Prauge right at the time of the soviet invasion + made it to America.Vaclav lost everything when he escaped but he was a machinest + told me that he started making his American dream come true by manufacturing Shmeissers.He's been dead now over 40 years but he had some great stories.

He probably reactivated DEWATs, that was legal and easy with the proper paperwork.

I remember seeing that in the news . Got to shoot one in Vegas.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/...hr-rifles-coming-us/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnQZZpR10rA

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
They are not retired , yet..
Al Tawid Brigade, syrian rebels, seized 5000 of them from a Syrian Arab Army depot in 2012

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6EsCle4ooM0" width="420"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

At his funeral, the guards are carrying Simonovs, developed by his rival .

Grizz

at least Simonov did not plagiarize foreign weapons, his design was his own brainchild. The SVT is a great rifle.

found under a roof in Poland

https://zbroya.info/uk/blog/13...4-v-idealnomu-stani/

A fake legend holding a fake gun (airsoft gun)

https://bg.rbth.com/science/20...t-kalashnikov_651497

The real story of the Kalashnikov rifle and more!

https://www.facebook.com/DCB.HUET/

Schmeisser's life after World War Two and his work in USSR where he fathered the Kalashnikov is surfacing slowly.

https://www.facebook.com/DCB.HUET/

Secret
Artillery command of the North-West front Headquarters.
To the chief of the Main artillery department of the Red Army

Sending you via technician-lieutenant Troitsky N.N. a German carbine-machinegun and 4 cartridges, captured in June in area of 22nd army near city of Holm.

Soviet troops captured Mkb42(H) (Ger.: MaschinenKarabiner-42 (Haenel)) with a serial number 1334. It was most likely one of the prototypes by the Haenel factory, sent for testing to the 93rd infantry division, located at the Eastern front just by the city of Holm. There is also some evidence that the first gun with serial number 503 was captured earlier, but the is no documented proof of it today.