To me it looks like the rear trigger might have gotten stuck at some point, and instead of disassembling to free it up, they used a punch to beat it into moving.
@@werwar27 yep, the timing is tricky but it's so worth it. Seeing a firearm magically sprout as many barrels as there are rounds in the magazine so it can discharge them all at once is pretty sweet. However, since it usually requires a bit of necromancy (the whole blood sacrifice & invoking the soul of a dead gun designer routine) to accomplish, it could be argued that it's a religious practice and therefore protected under the 1A.
I got a chance to shoot two of these back in the early 70's that were brought home by a US officer as war trophies. It was amazing. they had the 40 round mags. The finish as as nice as any "Baretta shotgun. i was able to hold an entire mag dump into a B27 x ring , I think it is my favorite of all the MGs that I have fired,. We shot both factory and reloads that day and both functioned flawlessly in the total of 8 boxes that we fired that day,. thanks for posting
The production during the German occupation is one of the funniest stories in my opinion, it's unknown how many were produced because they were stolen by anyone: workers at the factory, partisans during the shipping, fascist regime itself, etc... And the German were really pissed off about it, they were the last one to get the final guns. Also the production was very slow due to the different models and the workers kept their normal shifts ignoring the pressure of the Germans, on top off that they also had to fight the fascist officer that kept asking for custom guns(like gold plated, engraved, etc...)
Captured Beretta SMGs were used by the SAS in 1942: some were used by the French/British/Greek team that destroyed 21 German planes at Heraklion Airfield (Creta) on June 13th 1942.
TheVillar Perosa that Sean Connery uses to shoot the tail off their own bi-plane in The Last Crusade is actually a mock up made from two upside down m38’s! “I’m sorry son, they got us.”
My grandad who fought with the RHA said that the Berretas were top prizes in North Africa and much sought after. Anyone who got one either held onto it or traded it for a lot of kit.
@@zoiders probably something to do with thinking they were ‘the best’. The sort of person who thinks they ‘would have made a really good SAS trooper’ because they’ve watched the Omaha beach scene on Saving Private Ryan five times now and basically that makes them a hardened war veteran!
@@zoiders I shall look out for that book. I like the stories of the ‘Other guys’. Ones you never hear about. And I agree with your point, too. I just read a book on the Royal Navy patrol service. They were amazing! Grubby fishermen in trawlers painted grey with WW1 guns bolted onto them. Keeping the coastal convoys of coal going. Corelli Barnett doesn’t even mention them in ‘Engage the Enemy More Closely”.
This is the gun that started it for me!! Playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault's DLC Breakthrough as a kid, this was my favorite weapon, and ever since then, any and all weapons have grabbed my interests firmly! Thanks Ian!!
British Troops in North Africa sought these out as they were well admired, (the only Italian Firearm they felt that way about) back in the seventies there warnings to not use Italian 9mm surplus in alloy frame pistols due to it being extra hot.
Ackshually, they had some captured Italian ammo to run them when "found". Aside from battlefield captures, non-negible amounts were secured by the Allies from surrendered troops after El Alamein, from the shit left behind in Tunisia and then Sicily, from the troops that managed to surrender to them after the Italian capitulation, etc.
At a time I owned one - in perfect condition- I was given by a french colonel who had fought in the Monte Cassiono area. I got the accompanying semi_vest with 6 magazines (+1) for (40 cartridges.), worn across the chest. The buttplate was so well adjusted that by chance I discovered years later that there was a small trap door. When I lifted it up, I discovered the cleaning kit perfectly packed! in the butt. A beauty !!. I was also a box of original italian cartridges, a special 9x19 more powerful than the regular 9 parabellum, and I was advised to never use them in a handgun.
I realy wonder why it wasn´t mentioned, that it as one of the very few SMGs in WW2, was double stacked, double feed, and thus did not have all the feed problems most others had.
Ian is really lucky. A fairly rare all consecutive serial gun that can easily be damaged by taking it apart as intended and they let him go about gutting it for us to see.
Cause he have the license to dissassemble lol, i remember that one time he accidentally fixed a broken gun while dissassembling it. I forget what video tho but he really lived up to his name, the Gun Jesus 😂
There's a big difference between Bubba and Ian taking a gun apart. I would bet any that he does not understand, he researches first. And, by now, he has a feel for how they all come apart. Largely, there is a theme to most guns disassembly, though he has certainly found some really weird ones to be sure.
I watch a few TH-cam firearm channels but Ian is the best presenter I’ve seen. He explains the technical side really well and his enthusiasm while there is not over the top like some. When he is on the range he keeps cool and points out just what you need to know about whatever he is firing and of course he gives us the mag dump, unless it is sensible not to as with the recent silenced Sten. Cheers Ian long may your videos continue 👍
My other favorite gun YT channels are Paul Harrell and Hickock45. Paul for his detailed chronograph tests and Hickock for his history and shooting demos.
I would presume one of the factors leading to the M38A continuing in production alongside its simplified descendants was that Beretta simply couldn't afford to take all the lines offline in order to retool them.
Exactly. The production inefficiencies are still more efficient in the near term than retooling. Now, when the war is over (or mostly.won) and you don't need tens of thousands of SMGs "yesterday", you can shut down and retool.
Probably more the fact that Beretta outsourced the building of many parts to family workshops in Val Trompia (they still did for their shotguns for several decades after the war). Once the workshop had tooled to produce a part, it was simply not economical to retool, and, since the workshops were labour-intensive family business, the economy in building a part that was intended to simplify mass production was negligible so, along with the mass produced parts built directly by beretta, there was still a continue influx of original M38A parts.
This submachine gun was so far ahead of its time. Very well thought out, well made, and beautifully finished. For the time it was made its difficult to find fault with it. It surpasses many other guns that were designed well past WWII
My father was given one of those in 1986 when he had to go trough the conscription mandatory year. As a conscript he was assigned to guard duties. Fancy modern stuff like the AR70 or powerful stuff like the BM59 was reserved to professionals combat personnel.
I BM59 nell’86 erano già largamente diffusi tra i reparti di leva non “operativi”, perciò la dotazione di ogni militare dipendeva dall’armeria della caserma e dal suo inventario, non dalle priorità. Quel discorso vale per gli AR. Nell’86 i MAB erano ancora dotazione ufficiale delle FFAAA e delle FFOO, ecco perché tuo padre li ha usati.
@@enricofesta1161 davvero? Il BM59 è difficile da sparare, sia per il calibro grosso che per il calcio poco ergonomico ed non adatto a gestire il rinculo elevato. Oltretutto ho letto che era dato alle truppe che combattevano fino al 1995. È stato usato sia in Libano che in Somalia. Quindi pensavo fosse dato solo ai soldati di professione con molta pratica di tiro sulle spalle.
"Do you really need a bayonet on an SMG? Mmmmm...not really." Yes I do how else am I supposed to take a trench do you know how much more efficient I could be with a bayonet affixed on my SMG.
I eagerly await the day you go to that one guy in Switzerland who has the only surviving Armaguerra OG-43 and hopefully an OG-44 or two. The OG-43 for its incredible novelty and the OG-44 for just how good it looks as like, a starwars gun, either in full stock or folding configuration.
Out of battery discharges on a fixed firing pin SMG might be rare, but the guy next to me had one when we did national service a long time ago here in Sweden, with Kpist 45's. It might have had something to do with the empty round collector attached to the ejector port, that had a tendency to kick empty rounds back into the receiver. Without that peace-time environmental thingy attached, the gun was rock solid. But anyway, he had an out of battery discharge, which blew the mag well halfway off. I think the receiver was slightly bulged as well, the gun was a total write-off. He still had all fingers attached, but you don't really have any fingers close to that part of the gun, so no surprise there. Still, nice to see that Beretta thought of that, and took care of it, with a not-fixed firing pin!
Hard to believe in this day and age but things like that happened in CA also back then. My grandfather, who today would be diagnosed with severe PTSD had a lot of war trophies which were full auto..which would get taken by the cops for a few weeks and later returned when he'd go outside and fire off a few hundred rounds on full auto..in LA. He gave me several which were kept at his house so eventually they eventually permanently disappeared. I was about 5 when he gave them to me.
*The Beretta firearms are probably my most favorite firearm till this day... I believe I love Beretta's so much because I was born in 1994 & grew up watching awesome movies like "Lethal Weapon" & "Die Hard" that had Beretta's as their main hand guns for the bad & good guys alike... Plus at the time period I was growing up in, which was the late 1990s & early 2000s, most Law Enforcement Agencies & Departments were still using the famous Beretta 9mm Handguns before adopting the, at the time, brand new Glock 9mm... So always seeing the Beretta Handguns in awesome & timeless movies & TV Shows, along with real life Law Enforcement using the Beretta's, really gave me a love for the weapon. I've only heard great things about the classic Beretta Pistols, even the older Beretta's that were used in WWII, which were basically a small verison of the famous Beretta 93... When I was younger, even though I saw different Beretta SMGs, had no idea Beretta even produced & manufactured SMGs or any other firearm besides Pistols.* *Till this day in 2023, even with all the new modern pistols that have been invented & produced, the Beretta 93 still keeps up and even out classes some modern pistols... Over the years of being a HUGE firearm enthusiast, I have never heard any bad things about the Beretta Pistols & very rarely did you hear any bad things or criticisms about Beretta's SMGs... I need to look up & see if Beretta is still making any Sub-Machine Guns in todays times because I have not seen or heard of any new Beretta's being developed or invented... Especially since most Countries & Their Armies are using "Carbines" now instead of SMGs for their soldiers in the rear guard & the Armoured Vehicles Units because Carbines can shoot a intermediate rifle round like the 5.56x45 in the M4 Carbines, which is better than 9mm or .45 in most cases... Plus the size of the carbines give armoured vehicle units & rear echelon troops a lot more room for their supplies & other necessities... Nowadays we are seeing more SMGs that fire intermediate rounds like the 5.7mm ammunition that can be used in the P90 SMG & 5.7 Pistols, even though some call the P90 a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon)... With the ammunition like the 5.7mm being used in SMGs we are starting to see a resurgence of SMG manufacturing that are 5.7mm or another similar calibers.*
The Beretta Model 38/49 was also the standard SMG for West Germany's _Bundesgrenzschutz_ (Federal Border Guard) or BGS in the 1950s. Due to the poor state of post-war Germany's small arms industry, there were very few factories left that could resume production of the MP40. Rather than going through the expenses of rebuilding the domestic manufacturing infrastructure for the MP40, the West German government decided that it would be more convenient to purchase the Beretta Model 38/49 from Italy for the BGS.
I like the close ups to the weapon. It is close to how you look a new gun for the first time, the shape and bright of all the components, patina and details.
I noticed you pronunciation if you ever see in italian two letters right next to each other pronounce as prodit-to for product as the double letter in italian follows stops at the first syllable and begins in the second syllable. Just so you know I really enjoy your informed and non politicized explanation of weapons from history. Thank you Ian!
Hello I an, Our father Captain A-R-West MC of the 4th Indian Division of the 8th Army in North Africa was issued with a Beretta Modello 1938. He mentioned it in his recently published war memoirs and thought it was one of the best sub machine guns too. Regards, G and L. A-R-West FHBSA
10:43 the smaller screws are not supposed to be notched. They are supposed to be fully round and the larger one gets notched. That was a method of keeping the larger screws tight. Someone working on this gun must not have been aware of that.
Something that could be VERY valuable to shooters and collectors, is knowing which firearms can handle which ammo. For example, there were 9mm ammo manufactured at significantly higher pressures, for use in submachine guns, which will ruin some pistols that can chamber that round. Especially some military surplus 9mm is hotter that +P+ ammo, because it was intended ONLY for use in SMG's.
It’s been a point of debate for decades and always will be as is the case with every category of weapon whether a bow and arrow or a nuke. Makes it all more fun 😊
*My love for Beretta's firearms will never end. Beretta makes some of the best firearms in the world, especially their Pistols like the famous Beretta 93... I'm curious to know how many Beretta's were sold AFTER the movies "Lethal Weapon" & "Die Hard" came out because they showed the Beretta 93 in a awesome way that made people love the gun, especially if you were born in the 90s like me and grew up on those movies & seeing real life Law Enforcement using Beretta's before they transferred over to the Glock 9mm... Plus if you love firearms & video games, like I myself do, then Max Payne is another big reason why people fell in love with the Beretta 93's. Even in nowadays the Beretta still out performs other 9mm pistols, actually all pistols.*
Back in the 60’s, my dad and all his friends were WW ll vets which just seemed normal growing up. Some had M1 Garands, M1 carbines, Mausers, Arisakas, Lugers and one of his buddy’s had a Beretta M38 so when we went over to his house ... we wanted to see a real machine gun!
Got to shoot one of these at Big Sandy. Absolutely love it. Probably the smoothest SMG I have ever held. Gotta get one once I figure out how to afford it.
Assuming you don't include the Swedish m/45, it is the best shooting SMG of WW2. The magazine design is still in use in the Beretta 12S, another get SMG.
Boy this M38A looks pristine, aside of minor wear where the bolt smacks the stock and other similar places. I wonder how much this piece will bring at auction
When I was a kid I had a friend who, like myself, spent a great deal of time reading books about historical guns that normally had large pictures of the guns alongside the descriptions and stories. He would refer to the elongated holes that we'd sometimes see on barrel shrouds as "speed holes" because it "made the gun look like it's going really fast". I don't know why I found it so funny at the time, but here I am 30 years later and I still call them speed holes on the rare occasion that I see them while smirking a little bit to myself.
For a Forgotten Weapons gag reel, you could go back to the bolt disassembly and when you manipulate the lug to unlock the pin, you instead get a lightsabre blade.
Always heard older Italian gentlemen hating on the Mab-38 and the risk of slam fire (almost surely talking about the later simplified models and not the fancy ww2 mab38a , having served in the military in the 50s and 60s). Did they go with a fixed firing pin with the later models or is it just some Fuddlore?
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Ian said the later models are way less smooth and operate much more like a run of the mill open bolt blowback 9mm smg. My own grandad was trained back in 50s on the 7,62Nato beretta garands (not bm59s), m1 carbines and mab38s and despised the mabs for lack of accuracy and safety. He really really dug the m1 carbines for the light weight and short lenght and respected the garand’s range and accuracy. Back in ww2 having a guy with an smg and full auto fire was much more of a force multiplier because almost everyone else was running bolt actions
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine And yes, All the guys I talked to used their weapons in training only. I know a few guys who served in Somalia and Kossovo but I doubt they were still running mab38s (at least I hope so. My dad had his basic training on garands and mg42s in the 80s)
>moccetto automatico No, it's "moschetto", like in "moskettoh". Like you said it would mean "little snot" (which, tbh, would fit for the efficiency of the generals in the Italian army at the time for the most part, tbh, few amazing men aside who are worthy of being remembered).
Just a quick tip on how to correctly say "moschetto" in Italian. Italian alphabet doesn't have the 'K' letter in it, we use a 'CH' combination instead. So, every time you spot a CH sequence inside an Italian word, just say 'K'. This means that "moschetto" = "mosketto".
Gotta love it when Ian makes positive statements like this. It's like you can feel a disturbance in the force as a million self-proclaimed experts goes: "what the... now hold on... you can't just... whatabout... Arrgh!" Because no-one really likes to question Ian's authority on the matter and he knows it.
Italians seemingly had immense fear of belt-feds but loved small caliber repeaters. I mean, who else would invent the Villar Perosa and the Fiat-Revelli during the course of the same war....
Unfortunately for the Italian soldiers on the ground mab38s were reserved almost exclusively for officers and were a rare enough sight in the field. Officers had to purchase the 9x19 m38 ammo with their own pockets and it was a very scarce commodity. Much easier to get supplied (or steal) from the Germanic ally
@@Jack72607 they supposedly were to be issued to Folgore paratroopers en masse, but they were deployed to Africa before they could be issued with them. They had to rely on the usual combination of the Novantuno and Breda 30. Also the thing about officers having to pay for ammo and materials... That is the sad truth about Italian war logistics in both world wars
@@Tom-zc9gs Apparently for some reason the Italian military also did not like the idea of using changeable box magazines like for example the ZB-26 or the BAR had as they had that fixed hinged magazine on the Breda M30.
@@hendriktonisson2915 yes, they did prefer not to issue individual box magazines, this was also reflected in the many semi auto rifle prototypes produced during and before the war which all had internal magazines. Funny since after the war Beretta took the Garand and made an improvised M14 from it in the form of the BM59, with a fire selector, box magazine and .308 chambering... done cheaper and faster than US issued M14s. Also, the only italian MGs which were belt-fed were all airforce versions, the Breda-SAFAT. Breda 38 MGs in tanks had top mounted box magazines like the ZB. Basically anyone but the infantry had to have decent MGs.
I've read that the difference between the Beretta M38 & the M38A is the removal of the bayonet mount & stock rest for the Carcano M91/38 folding bayonet.
This military weapon is actually the first machine rifle. (Machine gun rifle). It is a full rifle stock with short rifle barrel, using a large capacity 30 or 40 round stick. As a select fire semi automatic rifle, it can fire 30 to 40 times without reloading, however it becomes a machine rifle.
The correct pronounce of moschetto is "mosketto", and the funny fact is that moschetto means for musket, that was a muzzle-loaded long gun of 1700 and not at all a submachine gun, "libro and moschetto fascista perfetto" (=book and musket perfect fascist) was a slogan of the fascist regime because in Italy several long guns were called "moschetto" and not "fucile" (=rifle) or mitra (=submachine gun)
@@ernstschmidt4725 It was actually the same in English until the later 19th century, but because we had qualified rifled infantry long guns as 'rifle muskets', the musket part started to fall away. But the term 'musketry' was used into the 20th century.
@@ernstschmidt4725 That's incorrect, at least nowadays. The common term for a gun or firearm is simply "Arma" (weapon) or, in order to distinguish it from a melee weapon "arma da fuoco" (firearm). Probably yeah, moschetto was vernacular for long-ish carbines but, at least in my ancestors regional dialects, guns were pretty much "schioppi" (bangies? It's untranslatable), "focili" (archaicism of "fucile", rifle) and nowadays there are colloquial terms for criminals as for "ferro" (iron) or pezzo (piece) as an equivalent to "gat" in American. So no, moschetto is an oddity even for our language. The only other weapon of the era that was called moschetto was the 91 Truppe Speciali and 91 Cavalry Carbine that were called "moschetti", so maybe since they were short, they apted the name to the M38 as well
@@lucacali8423 Does it? I know it came to mean 'carbine' later on, but muzzleloader era sources use the word for the full-length musket. It came, like all variants of the word, from the word for a male sparrowhawk.
@@neutronalchemist3241 A 20 round tank machine gun? No thx :D I know the Japanese had something similiar but at least they had a good optic with it for precision fire :3
The best without a doubt. Trap door magazine protection, 4 slot comp,barrel shroud, side non reciprocal charging handle, double trigger one semi and one marked full auto and the 40 rd magazine work great and are not much larger than others. Some say shotgun are best urban assault weapons but no its the SMG. Today small rifles rule weapons selection but it's still an awesome weapon Today. What a great weapon! Fast semi auto fire will rule the day and entry structures full auto and hand grenades. Very fast reloading for the time. Everything you need!
The reason why the old version and the simplified version were produced side by side could be that they wanted maximum output and hence not retool the factory and have the production stop for a while. So they thought better to produce some comlicated guns in smaller numbers than none at all.
I imagine different factories produced different variants, and since italian industry was very stunted, it would probably be more long term efficient to just keep the skews going than to change over production in the middle of the war. They attempted that with their carcano ammunition and immediately rolled that back..
"Do you really need a bayonet on an SMG? Mmmmm...not really."
*Imperial Japanese Army glares angrily*
Not crazy if you think smgs will be used in cqc anyway tbh.
The imperial empire (Star Wars)had bayonets for there blaster rifles
Well, the Japanese Army barely had any Type 100 so… No problem is there’s no SMG in the first place
Italian issued dedicated daggers as companion pieces for paratroopers etc...
@Scott Reynolds who says you can't
"Front trigger semi auto. Rear trigger fully auto."
Rear trigger clearly looks more used.
To me it looks like the rear trigger might have gotten stuck at some point, and instead of disassembling to free it up, they used a punch to beat it into moving.
@@andyruse4670 Given the timeframe, that might have been what actually happened.
if you pull both you get the legendary full semi auto fire
@@werwar27 also known as "big boom in your hands"
@@werwar27 yep, the timing is tricky but it's so worth it. Seeing a firearm magically sprout as many barrels as there are rounds in the magazine so it can discharge them all at once is pretty sweet. However, since it usually requires a bit of necromancy (the whole blood sacrifice & invoking the soul of a dead gun designer routine) to accomplish, it could be argued that it's a religious practice and therefore protected under the 1A.
ATF: How long did you have this machine gun?
Guy: 20 years.
ATF: That's impossible, you would have been nine years old!
Guy: Yeah, sounds about right.
Ian:"Do you really need a bayonet on a sub machine gun?"
Empire Of Japan:"Yes and light Machine guns too!!"
It's a shame they didn't put a bayonet on their katanas.
@@mrkeogh Nah, they needed to put bipod on those.
Chesty Puller wanted to put bayonets on flamethrowers, things can always get weirder.
@@travishabursky4362 I'm sure the Japanese Army would have agreed that would have been a great idea.
@E Van
would you put bayonet lugs on a minigun
Thanks for reminding me that the Italians fielded 3 different pressure loadings of 9mm during WWII to make logistics as fun as possible
I got a chance to shoot two of these back in the early 70's that were brought home by a US officer as war trophies. It was amazing. they had the 40 round mags. The finish as as nice as any "Baretta shotgun. i was able to hold an entire mag dump into a B27 x ring , I think it is my favorite of all the MGs that I have fired,. We shot both factory and reloads that day and both functioned flawlessly in the total of 8 boxes that we fired that day,. thanks for posting
The production during the German occupation is one of the funniest stories in my opinion, it's unknown how many were produced because they were stolen by anyone: workers at the factory, partisans during the shipping, fascist regime itself, etc... And the German were really pissed off about it, they were the last one to get the final guns. Also the production was very slow due to the different models and the workers kept their normal shifts ignoring the pressure of the Germans, on top off that they also had to fight the fascist officer that kept asking for custom guns(like gold plated, engraved, etc...)
Its like a cookie jar only a crate full of guns
I would Like to read about this myself, can you suggest me any reference?
This could be turned into a good comedy
Also military deposits were full of them due the fact that before 1943 were issued only ti officials.
Italy as its finest
Captured Beretta SMGs were used by the SAS in 1942: some were used by the French/British/Greek team that destroyed 21 German planes at Heraklion Airfield (Creta) on June 13th 1942.
Beretta has been selling weapons since the motherfucking battle of Lepanto.
Their pistol was also one of the best, if not the best, pistol of WW2
Ian did a good job not letting “left hand eject privilege” sway his production.
TheVillar Perosa that Sean Connery uses to shoot the tail off their own bi-plane in The Last Crusade is actually a mock up made from two upside down m38’s! “I’m sorry son, they got us.”
My grandad who fought with the RHA said that the Berretas were top prizes in North Africa and much sought after. Anyone who got one either held onto it or traded it for a lot of kit.
@@zoiders well, obviously!! he was in the SAS as well!:)
Good point though. Why do people make crap up?!
@@zoiders probably something to do with thinking they were ‘the best’. The sort of person who thinks they ‘would have made a really good SAS trooper’ because they’ve watched the Omaha beach scene on Saving Private Ryan five times now and basically that makes them a hardened war veteran!
@@zoiders I shall look out for that book. I like the stories of the ‘Other guys’. Ones you never hear about. And I agree with your point, too. I just read a book on the Royal Navy patrol service. They were amazing! Grubby fishermen in trawlers painted grey with WW1 guns bolted onto them. Keeping the coastal convoys of coal going. Corelli Barnett doesn’t even mention them in ‘Engage the Enemy More Closely”.
This is the gun that started it for me!! Playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault's DLC Breakthrough as a kid, this was my favorite weapon, and ever since then, any and all weapons have grabbed my interests firmly! Thanks Ian!!
That was a nice gun. Too bad that game never gave you any ammo.
So we are here for the same reason... loved to user her at the assault in Gela. Loved the sound and the design
British Troops in North Africa sought these out as they were well admired, (the only Italian Firearm they felt that way about) back in the seventies there warnings to not use Italian 9mm surplus in alloy frame pistols due to it being extra hot.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Actually they were pretty disappointed when they discovered it was .380 ACP and not 9mmP.
Ackshually, they had some captured Italian ammo to run them when "found".
Aside from battlefield captures, non-negible amounts were secured by the Allies from surrendered troops after El Alamein, from the shit left behind in Tunisia and then Sicily, from the troops that managed to surrender to them after the Italian capitulation, etc.
Nah the Beretta pistols were sought after and they did appreciate the Breda M37.
The Elbonians are sweating hard at that barrel shroud, but they know they can’t afford anything that nice.
Do you mean those types that kinda c grip with their elbow sticking out when you say Elbonian?
Tis unfortunate that their chief export is dirt
They would beat a steel sheet with hammer until it looks like that if they wanted it 😂
At a time I owned one - in perfect condition- I was given by a french colonel who had fought in the Monte Cassiono area. I got the accompanying semi_vest with 6 magazines (+1) for (40 cartridges.), worn across the chest. The buttplate was so well adjusted that by chance I discovered years later that there was a small trap door. When I lifted it up, I discovered the cleaning kit perfectly packed! in the butt. A beauty !!. I was also a box of original italian cartridges, a special 9x19 more powerful than the regular 9 parabellum, and I was advised to never use them in a handgun.
I realy wonder why it wasn´t mentioned, that it as one of the very few SMGs in WW2, was double stacked, double feed, and thus did not have all the feed problems most others had.
Ian is really lucky. A fairly rare all consecutive serial gun that can easily be damaged by taking it apart as intended and they let him go about gutting it for us to see.
Cause he have the license to dissassemble lol, i remember that one time he accidentally fixed a broken gun while dissassembling it. I forget what video tho but he really lived up to his name, the Gun Jesus 😂
How so? Is it fragile?
There's a big difference between Bubba and Ian taking a gun apart. I would bet any that he does not understand, he researches first. And, by now, he has a feel for how they all come apart. Largely, there is a theme to most guns disassembly, though he has certainly found some really weird ones to be sure.
Disassembling a gun doesn't damage it lmao, believe it or not, guns are designed to be disassembled.
@Ballistic Jason it's the reassembly which can go wrong...this little spring can't really be needed...lol
As a machinist I love watching Ian disassemble these and explain how these guns were produced and manufactured. 😊😀
I watch a few TH-cam firearm channels but Ian is the best presenter I’ve seen.
He explains the technical side really well and his enthusiasm while there is not over the top like some.
When he is on the range he keeps cool and points out just what you need to know about whatever he is firing and of course he gives us the mag dump, unless it is sensible not to as with the recent silenced Sten.
Cheers Ian long may your videos continue
👍
Quite simply Ian is a legend in his own lifetime
My other favorite gun YT channels are Paul Harrell and Hickock45. Paul for his detailed chronograph tests and Hickock for his history and shooting demos.
That gift eclipsed every single other gift ever given.
A boxful of ammo at Christmas would have been handy.
@@hugebartlett1884 you don't give a new toy without the batteries
I bet the kid went "gee whiz"
I would presume one of the factors leading to the M38A continuing in production alongside its simplified descendants was that Beretta simply couldn't afford to take all the lines offline in order to retool them.
Exactly. The production inefficiencies are still more efficient in the near term than retooling. Now, when the war is over (or mostly.won) and you don't need tens of thousands of SMGs "yesterday", you can shut down and retool.
Probably more the fact that Beretta outsourced the building of many parts to family workshops in Val Trompia (they still did for their shotguns for several decades after the war). Once the workshop had tooled to produce a part, it was simply not economical to retool, and, since the workshops were labour-intensive family business, the economy in building a part that was intended to simplify mass production was negligible so, along with the mass produced parts built directly by beretta, there was still a continue influx of original M38A parts.
If by afford you mean lost production, then I totally agree. They needed all the SMG's they could get.
Favorite War Prize of the Americans who fought in the Africa/Italian campaigns
I remember reading that the Beretta M1935 was pretty popular as well - I imagine it being a lot easier to stuff into a backpack and bring home.
Where there any left to trophy by the time they got there???
@@AshleyPomeroy34, .380/.32❤
This submachine gun was so far ahead of its time. Very well thought out, well made, and beautifully finished. For the time it was made its difficult to find fault with it. It surpasses many other guns that were designed well past WWII
"Moschetto" means "musket" and is pronounced something like "Moss-k-tow"
With a double t though, something that English native speakers always struggle to pronounce
Moss kee tow
As I'm Italian I would pronounce it Mos-sKetto!
I think they can try to pronounce moss keth o.
My father was given one of those in 1986 when he had to go trough the conscription mandatory year. As a conscript he was assigned to guard duties. Fancy modern stuff like the AR70 or powerful stuff like the BM59 was reserved to professionals combat personnel.
I BM59 nell’86 erano già largamente diffusi tra i reparti di leva non “operativi”, perciò la dotazione di ogni militare dipendeva dall’armeria della caserma e dal suo inventario, non dalle priorità. Quel discorso vale per gli AR. Nell’86 i MAB erano ancora dotazione ufficiale delle FFAAA e delle FFOO, ecco perché tuo padre li ha usati.
@@enricofesta1161 davvero? Il BM59 è difficile da sparare, sia per il calibro grosso che per il calcio poco ergonomico ed non adatto a gestire il rinculo elevato. Oltretutto ho letto che era dato alle truppe che combattevano fino al 1995. È stato usato sia in Libano che in Somalia. Quindi pensavo fosse dato solo ai soldati di professione con molta pratica di tiro sulle spalle.
"Do you really need a bayonet on an SMG? Mmmmm...not really."
Yes I do how else am I supposed to take a trench do you know how much more efficient I could be with a bayonet affixed on my SMG.
Yeah, if anything needs a bayonette in ww2, its probably only the smg.
The Germans favored this gem over the MP40 and got their hands on lots of MABs during the last year of WWII.
RSI❤
I eagerly await the day you go to that one guy in Switzerland who has the only surviving Armaguerra OG-43 and hopefully an OG-44 or two. The OG-43 for its incredible novelty and the OG-44 for just how good it looks as like, a starwars gun, either in full stock or folding configuration.
Out of battery discharges on a fixed firing pin SMG might be rare, but the guy next to me had one when we did national service a long time ago here in Sweden, with Kpist 45's. It might have had something to do with the empty round collector attached to the ejector port, that had a tendency to kick empty rounds back into the receiver. Without that peace-time environmental thingy attached, the gun was rock solid. But anyway, he had an out of battery discharge, which blew the mag well halfway off. I think the receiver was slightly bulged as well, the gun was a total write-off. He still had all fingers attached, but you don't really have any fingers close to that part of the gun, so no surprise there. Still, nice to see that Beretta thought of that, and took care of it, with a not-fixed firing pin!
every little detail of that gun says it would be a pleasure to shoot. I can't wait to see the range video tomorrow.
You can see it now! The video of him shooting the gun's been up for ages!
it's been out for years
Man, i want one so bad, but i have a feeling it is one of those "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it" type of guns.
"what could be cooler or more American?"
I will bet you money that GI was from Texas. 😂
Or West VA, or most of the south for that matter.
Hard to believe in this day and age but things like that happened in CA also back then.
My grandfather, who today would be diagnosed with severe PTSD had a lot of war trophies which were full auto..which would get taken by the cops for a few weeks and later returned when he'd go outside and fire off a few hundred rounds on full auto..in LA. He gave me several which were kept at his house so eventually they eventually permanently disappeared. I was about 5 when he gave them to me.
An another masterpiece made by Beretta.
You could hear the smile when Ian said "And it ejects from the left!"
This was still in service in mid 1970s when my father was enlisted for his required military service period, it was his standard weapon. :D
I tend to think of the usual submachine gun, like a sten, as being slightly more mechanically complex than a flintlock. But that one bucks the trend.
Interwar SMG's could actually be rather complex, even the ones not made by the swiss.
*The Beretta firearms are probably my most favorite firearm till this day... I believe I love Beretta's so much because I was born in 1994 & grew up watching awesome movies like "Lethal Weapon" & "Die Hard" that had Beretta's as their main hand guns for the bad & good guys alike... Plus at the time period I was growing up in, which was the late 1990s & early 2000s, most Law Enforcement Agencies & Departments were still using the famous Beretta 9mm Handguns before adopting the, at the time, brand new Glock 9mm... So always seeing the Beretta Handguns in awesome & timeless movies & TV Shows, along with real life Law Enforcement using the Beretta's, really gave me a love for the weapon. I've only heard great things about the classic Beretta Pistols, even the older Beretta's that were used in WWII, which were basically a small verison of the famous Beretta 93... When I was younger, even though I saw different Beretta SMGs, had no idea Beretta even produced & manufactured SMGs or any other firearm besides Pistols.*
*Till this day in 2023, even with all the new modern pistols that have been invented & produced, the Beretta 93 still keeps up and even out classes some modern pistols... Over the years of being a HUGE firearm enthusiast, I have never heard any bad things about the Beretta Pistols & very rarely did you hear any bad things or criticisms about Beretta's SMGs... I need to look up & see if Beretta is still making any Sub-Machine Guns in todays times because I have not seen or heard of any new Beretta's being developed or invented... Especially since most Countries & Their Armies are using "Carbines" now instead of SMGs for their soldiers in the rear guard & the Armoured Vehicles Units because Carbines can shoot a intermediate rifle round like the 5.56x45 in the M4 Carbines, which is better than 9mm or .45 in most cases... Plus the size of the carbines give armoured vehicle units & rear echelon troops a lot more room for their supplies & other necessities... Nowadays we are seeing more SMGs that fire intermediate rounds like the 5.7mm ammunition that can be used in the P90 SMG & 5.7 Pistols, even though some call the P90 a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon)... With the ammunition like the 5.7mm being used in SMGs we are starting to see a resurgence of SMG manufacturing that are 5.7mm or another similar calibers.*
The Beretta Model 38/49 was also the standard SMG for West Germany's _Bundesgrenzschutz_ (Federal Border Guard) or BGS in the 1950s. Due to the poor state of post-war Germany's small arms industry, there were very few factories left that could resume production of the MP40. Rather than going through the expenses of rebuilding the domestic manufacturing infrastructure for the MP40, the West German government decided that it would be more convenient to purchase the Beretta Model 38/49 from Italy for the BGS.
Some Madsen MP 50 were used by the new german army in 1954
DUX smg West Germany, Oviedo
Willy Daugs ex owner Tikkakoski 🇫🇮 . Home Kp -31, Sudajev 9mm kp-44.
Late 1944 Soviet took all German property 😢
I like the close ups to the weapon. It is close to how you look a new gun for the first time, the shape and bright of all the components, patina and details.
My great cousins carried this at Stalingrad, they all never made it home. Their bodies are in a mass grave still at Rostov
@7:25
Gun Jesus: "Do you really need a bayonet on a submachine gun?"
IJA: "YES!"
I noticed you pronunciation if you ever see in italian two letters right next to each other pronounce as prodit-to for product as the double letter in italian follows stops at the first syllable and begins in the second syllable. Just so you know I really enjoy your informed and non politicized explanation of weapons from history. Thank you Ian!
Hello I an,
Our father Captain A-R-West MC of the 4th Indian Division of the 8th Army in North Africa was issued with a Beretta Modello 1938.
He mentioned it in his recently published war memoirs and thought it was one of the best sub machine guns too.
Regards,
G and L. A-R-West FHBSA
10:43 the smaller screws are not supposed to be notched. They are supposed to be fully round and the larger one gets notched. That was a method of keeping the larger screws tight. Someone working on this gun must not have been aware of that.
Really need to get my hands on one of these again. Such a fun shooting SMG and really is the best subgun of WWII IMO.
Something that could be VERY valuable to shooters and collectors, is knowing which firearms can handle which ammo. For example, there were 9mm ammo manufactured at significantly higher pressures, for use in submachine guns, which will ruin some pistols that can chamber that round. Especially some military surplus 9mm is hotter that +P+ ammo, because it was intended ONLY for use in SMG's.
This question has been my obsession for a while now, "what was the best smg of ww2?"
It’s been a point of debate for decades and always will be as is the case with every category of weapon whether a bow and arrow or a nuke.
Makes it all more fun 😊
PPS is. Period
I’ve been waiting for this. YOU CAN’T JUST SHOOT A GUN AND NOT TALK ABOUT IT IAN.
Even if you’ve never heard or seen this SMG before, you take one look at it and you can tell it just shoots real smooth
I'm absurdly envious of the 9 year old that got a machine gun as a gift
Glad you talked about this smg, i think it's pretty neat
9yr old getting a sub machine gun for his birthday best gift ever
*My love for Beretta's firearms will never end. Beretta makes some of the best firearms in the world, especially their Pistols like the famous Beretta 93... I'm curious to know how many Beretta's were sold AFTER the movies "Lethal Weapon" & "Die Hard" came out because they showed the Beretta 93 in a awesome way that made people love the gun, especially if you were born in the 90s like me and grew up on those movies & seeing real life Law Enforcement using Beretta's before they transferred over to the Glock 9mm... Plus if you love firearms & video games, like I myself do, then Max Payne is another big reason why people fell in love with the Beretta 93's. Even in nowadays the Beretta still out performs other 9mm pistols, actually all pistols.*
One of the most fantastic subguns out there. Such a joy to shoot
Back in the 60’s, my dad and all his friends were WW ll vets which just seemed normal growing up. Some had M1 Garands, M1 carbines, Mausers, Arisakas, Lugers and one of his buddy’s had a Beretta M38 so when we went over to his house ... we wanted to see a real machine gun!
Got to shoot one of these at Big Sandy. Absolutely love it. Probably the smoothest SMG I have ever held. Gotta get one once I figure out how to afford it.
Fascinating, the bolt is a hardcore 3D puzzle to disassemble. Very unlike a normal open bolt SMG design.
18:30 brings a tear to my eye 🥲
Assuming you don't include the Swedish m/45, it is the best shooting SMG of WW2. The magazine design is still in use in the Beretta 12S, another get SMG.
WHAT THE... 3 WEEK AGO!?!?!?!
@@menamen7178 Patreon supporters get early access.
@@c1ph3rpunk thanks I didn't know that.
Cool video. Cool story attached to it. And I lovethe detail of the rear trigger being serrated for use in the dark.
Gotta love how the old-school way of select fire is having 2 triggers. Its a great firearm, too bad there wasnt a lot of them produced
way more than 200.000 isn't so few
@@fabiovarra3698 200k is a lot, but they may have been thinking in the millions.
Boy this M38A looks pristine, aside of minor wear where the bolt smacks the stock and other similar places. I wonder how much this piece will bring at auction
Considering the lineage of the piece alongside it's condition, I'm guessing she's gonna go for a five to six figure tag.
The seller ought to be able to buy a whole gallon and a half of gas with the proceeds.
@@salty_armorer4027 I think a gallon and a half is a bit generous. Try half a gallon
When I was a kid I had a friend who, like myself, spent a great deal of time reading books about historical guns that normally had large pictures of the guns alongside the descriptions and stories. He would refer to the elongated holes that we'd sometimes see on barrel shrouds as "speed holes" because it "made the gun look like it's going really fast". I don't know why I found it so funny at the time, but here I am 30 years later and I still call them speed holes on the rare occasion that I see them while smirking a little bit to myself.
For a Forgotten Weapons gag reel, you could go back to the bolt disassembly and when you manipulate the lug to unlock the pin, you instead get a lightsabre blade.
Always heard older Italian gentlemen hating on the Mab-38 and the risk of slam fire (almost surely talking about the later simplified models and not the fancy ww2 mab38a , having served in the military in the 50s and 60s). Did they go with a fixed firing pin with the later models or is it just some Fuddlore?
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Ian said the later models are way less smooth and operate much more like a run of the mill open bolt blowback 9mm smg. My own grandad was trained back in 50s on the 7,62Nato beretta garands (not bm59s), m1 carbines and mab38s and despised the mabs for lack of accuracy and safety. He really really dug the m1 carbines for the light weight and short lenght and respected the garand’s range and accuracy. Back in ww2 having a guy with an smg and full auto fire was much more of a force multiplier because almost everyone else was running bolt actions
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine And yes, All the guys I talked to used their weapons in training only. I know a few guys who served in Somalia and Kossovo but I doubt they were still running mab38s (at least I hope so. My dad had his basic training on garands and mg42s in the 80s)
I know of at least one of these peacefully sleeping in an attic somewhere in Northern Italy, nicely greased and wrapped in burlap.
For an estimate of $26,000 - $35,000 it better had be
2 WEEK AGO HOW?!?!?!?
Yeah how?
@@menamen7178 Patreon supporter
@@menamen7178 Big chungus energy
@@vittoriosandoni7064 I was browsing the auction pages
>moccetto automatico
No, it's "moschetto", like in "moskettoh". Like you said it would mean "little snot" (which, tbh, would fit for the efficiency of the generals in the Italian army at the time for the most part, tbh, few amazing men aside who are worthy of being remembered).
An absolute work of art this SMG is so beautiful‼️😍😍😍
Just a quick tip on how to correctly say "moschetto" in Italian.
Italian alphabet doesn't have the 'K' letter in it, we use a 'CH' combination instead.
So, every time you spot a CH sequence inside an Italian word, just say 'K'.
This means that "moschetto" = "mosketto".
Gotta love it when Ian makes positive statements like this.
It's like you can feel a disturbance in the force as a million self-proclaimed experts goes: "what the... now hold on... you can't just... whatabout... Arrgh!"
Because no-one really likes to question Ian's authority on the matter and he knows it.
Italians may have had the worst machine guns in WW2 but they also had the best submachine guns.
Italians seemingly had immense fear of belt-feds but loved small caliber repeaters.
I mean, who else would invent the Villar Perosa and the Fiat-Revelli during the course of the same war....
Unfortunately for the Italian soldiers on the ground mab38s were reserved almost exclusively for officers and were a rare enough sight in the field. Officers had to purchase the 9x19 m38 ammo with their own pockets and it was a very scarce commodity. Much easier to get supplied (or steal) from the Germanic ally
@@Jack72607 they supposedly were to be issued to Folgore paratroopers en masse, but they were deployed to Africa before they could be issued with them. They had to rely on the usual combination of the Novantuno and Breda 30. Also the thing about officers having to pay for ammo and materials... That is the sad truth about Italian war logistics in both world wars
@@Tom-zc9gs Apparently for some reason the Italian military also did not like the idea of using changeable box magazines like for example the ZB-26 or the BAR had as they had that fixed hinged magazine on the Breda M30.
@@hendriktonisson2915 yes, they did prefer not to issue individual box magazines, this was also reflected in the many semi auto rifle prototypes produced during and before the war which all had internal magazines. Funny since after the war Beretta took the Garand and made an improvised M14 from it in the form of the BM59, with a fire selector, box magazine and .308 chambering... done cheaper and faster than US issued M14s.
Also, the only italian MGs which were belt-fed were all airforce versions, the Breda-SAFAT. Breda 38 MGs in tanks had top mounted box magazines like the ZB. Basically anyone but the infantry had to have decent MGs.
I've read that the difference between the Beretta M38 & the M38A is the removal of the bayonet mount & stock rest for the Carcano M91/38 folding bayonet.
This military weapon is actually the first machine rifle.
(Machine gun rifle).
It is a full rifle stock with short rifle barrel, using a large capacity 30 or 40 round stick.
As a select fire semi automatic rifle, it can fire 30 to 40 times without reloading, however it becomes a machine rifle.
Legendary thing. I saw it for the first time playing through Mafia II at the very start. Goddamn it left an impression on me.
Well....it is Beretta.
What a lucky kid to receive that as a gift
Got to shoot one recently at the Big Sandy machine gun shoot. It was pretty nice.
Thank you , Ian .
I liked that sights lined up shot.
The correct pronounce of moschetto is "mosketto", and the funny fact is that moschetto means for musket, that was a muzzle-loaded long gun of 1700 and not at all a submachine gun, "libro and moschetto fascista perfetto" (=book and musket perfect fascist) was a slogan of the fascist regime because in Italy several long guns were called "moschetto" and not "fucile" (=rifle) or mitra (=submachine gun)
moschetto even if it really means musket, it gets used to mean any long gun in italian. it's like the spanish fusil or y'know.. gun in english
@@ernstschmidt4725 It was actually the same in English until the later 19th century, but because we had qualified rifled infantry long guns as 'rifle muskets', the musket part started to fall away. But the term 'musketry' was used into the 20th century.
@@ernstschmidt4725 That's incorrect, at least nowadays. The common term for a gun or firearm is simply "Arma" (weapon) or, in order to distinguish it from a melee weapon "arma da fuoco" (firearm). Probably yeah, moschetto was vernacular for long-ish carbines but, at least in my ancestors regional dialects, guns were pretty much "schioppi" (bangies? It's untranslatable), "focili" (archaicism of "fucile", rifle) and nowadays there are colloquial terms for criminals as for "ferro" (iron) or pezzo (piece) as an equivalent to "gat" in American. So no, moschetto is an oddity even for our language. The only other weapon of the era that was called moschetto was the 91 Truppe Speciali and 91 Cavalry Carbine that were called "moschetti", so maybe since they were short, they apted the name to the M38 as well
Also, moschetto implies a diminutive hence maybe the attribution to sub-machine guns (as in english the prefix "sub" is used)
@@lucacali8423 Does it? I know it came to mean 'carbine' later on, but muzzleloader era sources use the word for the full-length musket. It came, like all variants of the word, from the word for a male sparrowhawk.
18:25 And I considered myself a cool uncle for giving my nephew a slingshot...
Seeing him removing that dry varnished stock with those nasty splits in it made me cheeks tighten!
Italy: Makes the worst machine guns
Also Italy: Makes the best sub machine guns
Should have got Beretta to make the machine guns as well.
The Allies deemed the Breda 37, Breda 38 and Breda 20/65 machineguns to be "excellent".
@@neutronalchemist3241 A 20 round tank machine gun? No thx :D
I know the Japanese had something similiar but at least they had a good optic with it for precision fire :3
@@kimjanek646 The Brits used the Bren.
@@neutronalchemist3241 As a light MG for infantry use. They used belt-fed MGs for their tanks.
The best without a doubt. Trap door magazine protection, 4 slot comp,barrel shroud, side non reciprocal charging handle, double trigger one semi and one marked full auto and the 40 rd magazine work great and are not much larger than others. Some say shotgun are best urban assault weapons but no its the SMG. Today small rifles rule weapons selection but it's still an awesome weapon Today. What a great weapon! Fast semi auto fire will rule the day and entry structures full auto and hand grenades. Very fast reloading for the time. Everything you need!
There were also 10rd box mags for the Beretta M38.
That is 100% without a doubt the absolute coolest uncle ever!
This is a real treat, big fan of this gun
Thank you Ian for all your awesome videos.....
Hearing a Young boy recieved this piece as a gift from his Father is so heartwarming.
take a drink any time he says "actually".
Who doesn't remember Ian's surprised smiling reaction after trying the Beretta M38 in that other video ?
The reason why the old version and the simplified version were produced side by side could be that they wanted maximum output and hence not retool the factory and have the production stop for a while. So they thought better to produce some comlicated guns in smaller numbers than none at all.
Ian: M38A the best SMG of WW2
PPS-43: am I a joke to you?
Wins the award for "bolt assembly that looks most like a lightsaber hilt."
i like the dual trigger idea.
I imagine different factories produced different variants, and since italian industry was very stunted, it would probably be more long term efficient to just keep the skews going than to change over production in the middle of the war. They attempted that with their carcano ammunition and immediately rolled that back..
There was only one assembly line/plant, at the Beretta factory.
@@M.M.83-U But Beretta outsourced the manufacturing of many parts.
It reminds me a bit of the Kiraly 43M, after it had a diet to slim down a bit
Thank you for this nice video, I wish we could have seen more of the firing group though :)
I was waiting so much for this finally!