SS77: South Africa Builds a GPMG on the Shoulders of Giants
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ค. 2024
- All the best firearms history channels streaming to all major devices:
weaponsandwar.tv
In the 1970s, South Africa began looking for a domestic-production GMPG to replace its inventory of FN MAG machine guns. The MAG was an excellent weapon, but the ones in South Africa were getting old and worn out, and with the country under international embargo over Apartheid, new guns and parts were not available from FN.
The SS-77 (named for its two designers, Richard Joseph Smith and Lazlo Soregi) began development in 1977, with initially prototypes built by Lyttleton Engineering Works in 1978. The design took elements from several other excellent machine guns - the side-locking action form the SG43 Goryunov, the barrel release and feed mechanism from the MAG, and the gas system from the PK. After an extensive series of testing and tweaking, the gun was formally adopted by the South African Defence Forces in 1986, and went into serial production. Despite the development cycle, the guns still proved to have significant problems in the field. The gas piston was liable to break, along with problems of broken extractors, loose pins, and other issues. The guns were actually recalled from military service and rebuilt in the early 1990s. Following that redesign program, the gun has proven very reliable and successful in service.
A Mini-SS design was also adopted, essentially the same gun scaled down to 5.56mm. Initial plans were to produce a conversion kit to allow the regular SS-77 to use either caliber, but these were never actually produced.
0:00 Introduction and history of South African machine guns
1:37 Designing and testing of the Vector SS77
3:33 Features, feeding options, and attachments for the Vector SS77
5:46 Disassembling the Vector SS77 and its various parts
10:44 Detailed look at the action and bolt of the Vector SS77
13:30 Examination of the receiver and firing pin of the Vector SS77
14:41 Issues, redesign, and production of the Vector SS77
16:33 Introduction to the mini SS machine gun and rarity of Vector SS77
17:30 South Africa's economic embargo and its impact on the weapon's export market
18:00 Wrap up, appreciation of the Vector SS77's design, and thanks to viewers
utreon.com/c/forgottenweapons/
/ forgottenweapons
www.floatplane.com/channel/For...
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! shop.forgottenweapons.com
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
That spade grip trigger mechanism is beautifully practical.
Watching that bit of the video as I type this, what a clever design! I'm so impressed by the sheer simplicity, it's brilliant
Right? It takes like 20 seconds to convert this from infantry to vehicle use, mounting included.
And it worked, really well.
We used to pride ourselves on being beautifully practical.
I’m surprised nobody else has copied that idea
As a South African I would like to thank you for your cataloguing and presentation of our small arms history, without your efforts these would be mostly forgotten weapons (ba dum tiss)
Your joke is worse than aparteid.
LMAO
Bro it's an Apartheid invention. Don't think it includes you.
@Peter-bg1ku
Ending apartheid was the worst thing SA has ever done.
@@griftinggamer ye
With a pear-sac as smooth as that, I'm surprised this video isn't sponsored by Manscaped.
There's something so interesting about South African firearms, you gotta love em, thanks for showing them off for us!
They've got this alternative history vibe to them, they're similar but different. Might be because they are so disconnected from Europe but still are influenced by it.
There's a charm to the whole "making do with (mostly) what you've got" situation that brought them about.
Before corruption completely destroyed our (South Africa's) government and weapon's developer, Denel (the old Armscor), we South Africans loved to play around with out of the box, weird and sometimes "sci-fi punk" ideas towards weaponry. You should see the Denel NTW-20, it looks like something from Halo! It was the rifle used in the movie District 9 to take out the mech. So yea, you guys in the States needs an anti kaiju or mech gun give us a call. (Heaven knows we need it)
They were very innovative.
Outside of the major American, European _(FN, Beretta, HK, SiG),_ and Soviet arms industries, you don’t see many domestic designs.
@@PrinceAlhorian I do. Where is it?
I carried the FN MAG a lot in the Swedish Army. This looks like a superb upgrade to both the FN MAG and PKM systems by mixing the best of two legendary systems.
Ss77 doesn't cycle fast enough for the bolt to hit hard enough and there's no gas regulator very unreliable compared to pkm or mag79
Never thought as I got older how much I'd be satified by cam tracks, captive pìns, sand cuts, and minimal part machines. But the amount of forethought in this engineering is amazing.
Real thought was put into this system! 🗜 🔩
south africans appear to have many very good firearms engineers
@@Enigmaticmuffin27
I have interacted briefly with Tony Neophytou, he is one of my design heroes.
@@BeingFireRetardant thats really cool, i love every single one of his designs. he has such a different way of thinking when it comes to firearms and i wish his guns were more available in the states
@@Enigmaticmuffin27
100% yes.
I firmly believe every squad should have a PAW in it, and that it is as revolutionary to ground combat as the GPMG was. Specifically in urban warfare. And a Denel NTW20, as well, as an organic platoon asset, particularly in checkpoint overwatch.
once again, as a South African, I love seeing SA guns. Thanks a lot
total mania in the pfp checks out.
As an engineering student with a LEW bursary in the late 80’s and early 90’s I spent one of my university holidays measuring up 100’s of breech blocks for this GPMG. If I remember correctly, the somewhat intricate CNC work resulted in out-of-tolerance dimensions on a large proportion. Witnessed test firing in the 100m indoor range. Scary enough standing behind the setup, must be terrifying downrange! Good memories, LEW/LIW was a world class facility with some extremely capable people back then.
Sad to see how we fell into what w have now......
@@andriesjacksonas a cappuccino South African, I didn’t get a bursary under the milky regime.
And when my children were of bursary age, they’re not going to get a bursary from swart coffee either.
So we’ve decided to sell drie hoekie cookies to survive
But everywhere we go there is a sign “Geen Smouse”.
No hard feelings, just having some fun.
@@TheKaiser12345I’m sure I’ve got the landline number for M-net somewhere here ….. you know … cause M-Net C…..
Just having some fun😉. ( now imagine if All 3 of us send a collectively ass ripping message to the Ant Nuptial Cuntry running idiots dividing our 3 generations And multiple races in OUR once beautiful and prosperous and continent economically leading land ) sounds like a revolutionary concept hey!!
This gun was added to Arma 3 not too long ago with the Western Sahara DLC. The notable differences between the SS77 and the Arma 3 SA-77 is that the SA-77 has a welded picatinny rail in front of the rear sight assembly, it has fire modes of 600 rpm and 800 rpm that you can switch between, it has a 100 round canvass sack with a stamped sheet metal attachment point with a nifty diagram of which way the bullets should be pointing it does not have the zipper on the bottom. There was also added a compact version of it which was fitted with more rails on the fore end so you could attach all kinds of doodads, a more compact stock, an entirely different gas port assembly with the front sight attached to that, and a shorter barrel. I do appreciate that Arma's fictional weapons are different in ways that imply a domestic production version as opposed to the original versions modeled poorly.
Indeed, fictional-but-plausible things are always neat. It's a form of historical fiction, I suppose.
I love that CDLC and the SA-77 in particular.
The design features of that gun are impressive. It appears to have had a lot of thought concerning reliability and maintainability put in during design.
Right on, the SADF fought against SWAPO and the communist Angolan Army in South West Africa/ now Namibia and Angola. An area very similar to the deserts of the US South West.
Definitely the most interesting Forgotten Weapon in quite some time. I have a feeling that Ian was trying so hard not to fangirl over all of the cool engineering that he forgot to show the markings, say how long it was in service, or add the link to the mini-77.
mini-77 here th-cam.com/video/GoDqrzUKPBQ/w-d-xo.html :0 also a playlist of south african videos th-cam.com/play/PLyvMT0kbJnvtZ-L6MWUfRh9QK87Em6Gdx.html
Sanctions and war are the mother of invention and innovation. Such a pity our weapons industry and development weren't more globally appreciated. Thank you for highlighting our great weapons.
True, the West has put Russia and China in invention overdrive with recent sanctions and the results are already showing.
Iran has taken our baton and are running with it
They were globally recognized, but the US stop most our sales,Suid Arabia wanted the Rooi fak helicopter but the Americans didn't like that,China bought some of those helicopters & make a copy the late Joe Modise former minister of Defense roport the to UN.
Really admire the thought that went into the weapon.
"Those legs come apart" was not a sentence I was expecting to hear from one of your videos, ever. :D
Greetings from South Africa 🇿🇦 I love the R4 hand guard with bipod. There’s a wire cutter built into the bipod. Very useful.
Broke mine... on a "little" padlock I had on my "trommel"... we were warned not to do it.. but hey... will a 18 year old soldier listen...
So did the fabric bullet belt bag have any nicknames among the soldiers? Nutsack? Ballsack? Etc?
@@skullfracture2 Interesting you ask.. pears are a commonly used instead of testicles in afrikaans. so peersak(pearsack) already says it.
@@skullfracture2 The ball sack "Balsak" name was already taken by the SADF kitbag/duffle bag.
R4 was not good on Battlefield, the bullets were Smaller, this helped as you could press around 50 bullets in the magasin (clip)... then precise, But it lacked firepower.
Bullets were of small caliber.
The MG42 continues to echo through history.
Until the end. The last MG fired by human beings will be a descendent of "La Máquina"
Spandau forever...or something like that
Had the pleasure and privilege to be trained on and work with both the FN Mag, and the SS 77. Loved them both.
South Africa made some cool stuff
Finally, a TH-cam video on the Vektor SS-77, and by Gun Jesus no less! Thank you Ian!
“Im sure it never had any sort of more colorful name in the field” 😂😂😂
Balsak… 😂
"The pear sack. I'm sure it NEVER had any more colorful name in the field........" 🤣
You do NOT want to take that buffer spring out, trust me 😁
I never had that many issues with these (apart from a broken gas piston) and I quite liked it. I found it handy to use as it pointed well and had a soft recoil, accurate, wonderfully engineered (not so important practically but it really was beautifully engineered), and easy to clean/maintain. Ours were mostly mounted and we had some of the spade grips as well which I believe were not exactly common in regular SAA service. It rates up there with the MG3 as one of my favorite to use GPMGs.
I love these guns that take "the best of features" and combine them. The AK, M60, Galil, etc. So cool.
8:55 "the fun part is the back end"
I keep trying that same line with my girlfriend.
I remember reading about the SS-77 GPMG in UK gun magazines back the late 90's early I think, and always found it fascinating. Great to see it getting the Forgotten Weapons treatment.
As a former magist (FN MAG gunner) I was always curious about this design, so nice to see it up close. It seems to address most of the MAG and PK problems. I can't see why it didn't get wider adoption.
One thing that immediately stands out is that the ammo sack would kick you in the balls and there seems to be no way to hook it to the handle with a paracord like with the Israeli MAGs.
I haven't seen a Negev 7 yet, but other than that it looks like the best GPMG design in the last 60 years. More impressive than I thought. Because of a short receiver and a hand grip you can use it in an assault as a shoulder fired gun. I'd redesign the buttstock and shorten the barrel, modify the muzzle device and the ammo sack (to match the Israeli pattern) and you'd get all you may want from a 7.62 machine gun. And 7.62 NATO machine guns really do have a purpose. Full size cartridges make a lot of difference.
Too bad it looks like they stopped making them.
A lot of elements surrounding the weapon makes sense when you put them in contest of the border war which took place, largely, in Angola. 🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦
That is quite possibly the best designed MG i have seen yet
Arguably the sexiest GPMG ever made....
I have a little bias for my country's arms industry😂❤ 🇿🇦
Agreed. Just like how the R4 is a very sexy rifle 🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦
@@kinglattice705 The R4 is absolutely gorgeous. The Galil pattern of rifles is the best AK type platform on the market.
@@blaisechalmers1464 agreed 100%
Necessity and Sanctions were the mother of invention here in SA.
These weapons will end up in their indented users hands again to fight against the enemy.
Before corruption completely destroyed our (South Africa's) government and weapon's developer, Denel (the old Armscor), we South Africans loved to play around with out of the box, weird and sometimes "sci-fi punk" ideas towards weaponry. You should see the Denel NTW-20, it looks like something from Halo! It was the rifle used in the movie District 9 to take out the mech. So yea, you guys in the States needs an anti kaiju or mech gun give us a call. (Heaven knows we need it)
He's got a half hour long video on the NTW-20, including firing.
th-cam.com/video/1FMeG60vLfQ/w-d-xo.html
Ian has a video on the NTW 20 including footage of him shooting it!
Yeah and CR-21 also does look pretty cool but PAW-20 is something alien
I watch all of Ian's videos( many multiple times), and That era of South African designs is so fascinating. That PAW Grenade laucher.The Neostad(?) double tube shotgun. That thing should be everywhere.
@@user-kl5wm2qn7i The PAW-20 is just Tony Neophytou (South Africa's craziest weapons engineer) flexing, and guess what, the weapon was officially adopted into service!
What a beautiful Frankenstein’s monster of a machine gun.
The world in the 1980s:
We are not going to sell South Africa arms anymore.
South Africa:
Oh, so we dont have to pay royalties on any of your designs we're making, right?
The rest of the world:
Umm. . .umm. . .umm. . .
4:28 The "colorful" name, I'm assuming, is based in the infantry vernacular. "nutsack".
Thank you for your fun videos Ian, these are always wonderful to watch! Hopefully you can get your hands on the 338 MG SIG is making, not a ton of in depth videos on it!
Who could imagine what nickname would come from filling an ammo sack with military ball ammo?
Its even skin color.
South africa from 1960 to late 80s created so many amazing things from Heart transplants to Nukes
Ian always bring the most interesting firearms & does the best job at expounding on them.
Love 4gotten weapons!!!
Of all domestic firearms design, South Africa is the most interesting
Finally... thank you! I've only seen pictures of South African and Colombian soldiers with the SS-77.
"...I'm sure it never had any other sort of more colorful name in the field..."
I'm glad he mentioned a previous video on the 5.56 version, because I was watching this and having bigtime deja-vu
Alot of south african soldiers still prefer the FN mags over the ss77 due to feeding problems
"Now, the fun part is the back end..." So they say.
Malaysian Coast Guard also use this SS77
12:44 I expected the MG to be lighter than 22 lbs/10 Kg considering how svelte it is. Then I saw the bolt and damn it's a complicated piece to machine compared to a PKM bolt. Cherry on the top is the FAL style sand cuts. With a reciever locking system that this thing uses the receiver has to be machined as well The spade grip mechanism is cool though.
The back end is the fun part, indeed!
I look after one on my boat, in SA Navy. Never had a failure. Love my girls
"The fun part is the backend" Forgotten Innuendos
Thank you Ian. It always makes me proud to see the ingenuity of our arms industry - considering the global sanctions at the time, our guys consistently pulled rabbits out of hats.
That thing is beautiful.
... and freaking huge.
Ian i am a white south African . i like your work.
I agree. It's too bad that such a good piece of engineering wasn't available to more people.
Thanks for sharing this with us Ian!
They could have exported anything they liked had they, you know, ended apartheid.
It really is a great machine gun design. I wish it was able to get exported. We would be able to see more of them in the wild.
Appreciate your community service duderino
I was a operational corporal infantry and we had a brand new SS7 in a box in our hostel in Oudtshoorn. Never shot a single shot . What we were told at the time , why not. The springs would melt under heavy fire runs. So my training was done with the Fn mag. Still remember the sequence of fire you had to maintain not to melt the barrel. You could see the rounds through the barrel and it still fired. Amazing weapon. A bitch to carry with it's tripod. 😂
Ever since your videos with Vektor weapons, I was eagerly waiting for this review. Seeing how it functions is simple yet clever.
What a very interesting weapon. I like the amalgamation of some the aspects of these various different gun designs all folded into this one.
It’s very instructive.
Thanks for the video. Thank
Thank you for this awesome video
What a Beast ! ! !
THE DISTRICT 9 MMG RECEIVES ITS DESERVED LOVE AT LAST
As soon as I saw that push-out pin for the feed assembly, I said, "Oh, No!" That should be a captive pin.
Thank you SO much for showing South Africa's achievements in the military. I'd love to see more of them if you would be so kind?
All cool stuff! I love seeing guns that were made by picking the best features of other ones
"I'm sure it never had any more colorful name in the field."
Thanks Ian!
Thank you for giving us another insightful video Gun Jesus🙏
So you know, I think Ian prefers people not call him that. Presumably a bunch of reasons. Not least this is engineering not theology.
Ok,thank you
Thank you for this excelent video. Im and old SA defeceforce veteran and i was n masjeengunner with the FN 7, 62 back in 1972. I was in 6 SAI Bravo comp.
Thank you for making this video, we tested this in my time in the defence force, my job was LMG1, main operator of this weapon, what a beast when it worked, duel recoil spring was an issue on mine. Cut dow trees with ease. I found it much more user friendly than the FNMag, especially on the weight side and stability on full rapid fire bursts. Thanks again for vid👏🏻👍🏻🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦
This is the best firearms channel on TH-cam
Very interesting. Thank you.
What an interesting design, and a very practical approach, especially after the gas piston problem was addressed and the second production run cut back on extraneous bits that did not have significant functional impact.
Thanks for covering this interesting fire arm.
They really had to make an ammo "sack" 😆
Very well thought out piece.
Pear sack is already a slang term for scrotum in SA
Balsak
@@stevedotrsa knaters
Loved the comeback arc
We build our own stuff from ideas from other countries that work.....and we improved on much of those......we even created weapons, that even America has borrowed from....
i like their approach, that is very professional
Thank you for a very informative and interesting video. I recognize 3 guns used in the SA Defense force during 1980 -1986 during my military training. This gun was never used during that time. The LMG used / BREN/ at that time was too heavy for the gorilla warfare on the Angola border.
I was in infantry, late 70s early 80s. We only had brens and heavybarrel R1s. Bren was reliable. A beautiful weapon quite suitable for bush warfare. The only issue was the small magazines
Bren was replaced because it was a nightmare in the Ovamboland / Angola sand. No suitable for that terrain.@@rogersmith7555
I’d take one of these if I had to go into District Nine. Pretty good movie btw.
My favorite line in any forgotten weapons machine gun video “just a simple pull trigger, drop sear”
Quite ingenious
Intriguing piece of weapon there!
this is such a cool gun. so many clever elements and a actually quite like the locking system. man i hate the NFA, so many cool machineguns are virtually unobtanium and i hate it.
Thanks man! I appreciate your work on our interesting weapons.
👍🇿🇦🍻🇿🇦👍
That's such a smart design. The situation really seem to promote amazing ingenuity.
So a "feedbag" is a cool concept.
Finally i feel so complete the SS77 Ultimax and stoner 63 are the peak of neato belt guns
AMAZING IAN!
As always with our designs, necessity is the mother of all invention.
Make a video on Vektor Magnum Mauser action if you come a cross one some time
"They really thought of everything" is a bit of an understatement.
I have never seen such thoughtful design. They really took field stripping and cleaning into consideration.
South Africans are like the dwarves of modern times, overcoming any situation with ingenuity. Of course the world interfered and basically caused the greatest minds of the country to all flee, leaving only a husk run by primitives who dont have a brain cell between the lot of them.
Ayy, was early enough to see the slightly mangled subtitles
I was one of the very first 1993, reaction force paratroopers members in the SADF, and we were tasked to test the SS77. We used this on the 'Jakkals' Para jeep.
Thanks.
A quite well-designed mechanism.
The only real problem that I can imagine is the non-captive retaining pins.
They would be prone to being lost during field-servicing at night in tactical conditions in the bush.
_"The fun part is the back end"_
You heard it here first guys! Our man is a _back end_ guy 😃
It can't be considered to have a Galil style bipod unless it has a Galil style bottle opener.
It might have. South Africans love beer
I caried both the FN LMG(MAG) and the SS77 in the field. FN was an awesome weapon. Never had problems with the SS77 either. It was definitely lighter and easier to carry and run with, and it did make airborne ops easier on the MAG gunner. We did have a couple of Mini-SS guns, but I'm more of a 7.62 guy, especially in bush warfare conditions.
& look at South Africa now😏