Possible Late WWII German Prototype

[PercyShelley]

Does anyone know what the firearm in this picture:

http://forum.axishistory.com/files/pix517960688_156.jpg

is?

I've seen it tagged as an "MP-45" before. It looks like some sort of late WWII experimental design in 7.92x33mm, though it clearly is not a close relative of the STG-44 as it appears to have a rotating bolt. Since it lacks a ramp rear sight and has the charging handle on the starboard side of the receiver, I'm not even convinced it's German.

 

[SDC]

Natzvaladze's "Red Army Trophies of WW2) shows several very similar late-war prototypes by Mauser, but none with that style of folding MP-40 stock. A change in the method of locking, to try to speed up production, wouldn't really surprise me, since the Germans were also experimenting with other possibilities, including the Barnitzke gas-delayed blowback, similar to the P7 pistol.

 

[Mp7]

does look like a late-war prototype related to the Stgw 45.
In fact it looks like it has the sight removed, barrel shortened
and mp40 stock added.

with all the bombing goin on it´s hard to say
who tried to build what at that stage.

(they would have been far better off had they started copying
Ppsh´s. )

 

[Jim K]

Except for the folding stock, that looks like a Mauser Gerät 06H, a Mauser experimental rifle, sometimes called the StG 45, but I don't think it was ever adopted. "Gerät" (equipment) was the term often applied to experimental or test weapons, by Mauser and others.

The 06H was part of a series of selective fire carbines in 7.9 Kurz that Mauser was working on when the war ended. They were roller locked, a system that later was used in the CETME and the G3. The folding stock was probably just another idea; whether that stock would have been strong enough for a gun firing the 7.9 Kurz, I don't know. (The US had a problem with folding stocks on the less powerful M1/M2 Carbine.)

I doubt the sights have been removed - they were never there. For experimental weapons, sights are the least of anyone's worries - getting the darn thing to work is what is important!

Jim

 

[Ian]

It's definitely not an StG45 - aside from the obvious different furniture, the trigger and magazine are wrong. The StG trigger was on a pivot, and there's no reason to change it to a straight-back pull like that photo for a one-off experiment. The magazine is too large for 7.92x33, and doesn't match the pattern of an StG magazine. Again, no reason to make an all new magazine for a one-off. Here's a photo of a real StG45 - compare the relative size of the magazine well and trigger guard:



I wonder about the stock - it doesn't look like it could clear the magazine. Not sure why that would be put together that way. If you can't fold or unfold the stock with the gun loaded, why bother with a folding stock?

My guess would be either the photo is a fake, or it's an experiment from another country. There were a whole lot of prototypes built in the late 40s based on intermediate cartridges. The Swiss toyed with a 7.5x33mm round, for example. My first thought is maybe Yugoslav? They copied the MP40 stock for the model 56 subgun...perhaps this is an experiment of theirs?

Can you post the link to the thread discussing the gun? Is there any other definite information about it?

 

[PercyShelley]

I haven't seen any fora discussing the weapon in question; the photo just floats around the internet and sometimes gets posted when the STG-45 is being discussed because of residual google association with those sorts of search terms.


Here's a slightly more different picture of it though:

http://www.moddb.com/members/mch2207cz/images/prototype-weapons-of-ww27


It's definitely not a modified STG-44 or STG-45; both of those designs have the return spring located in the stock like an AR-15, so you couldn't just slap a folding stock on it. The receiver is a completely different shape, the magazine catch is completely different and the magazine is actually different from an STG-44 or STG-45. The stock is similar in concept, but different in detail to an MP-40s if you look at the way the shoulder piece and struts attach.

Clearly, this wasn't just cobbled together from spare parts.

It could be a fake, but it would be an incredibly involved fake to construct!

 

[SDC]

Since we have nowhere near the full story on these things, I doubt you'll ever be able to find out the truth for these; by the end of the war, Steyr, Mauser, Grossfuss, Spreewerk, Gustloff, and Haenel were all still working on their own versions of the Stg45, and since most of that work was being done in eastern Germany, the Russians scooped the vast majority of the info and work on these (just like the US was doing through "Operation Paperclip"; where the US ended up with most of the info on the V2, the Russians ended up with most of the info on their late-war small arms). This may not necessarily have even been a LATER prototype, but one of the prototypes leading up to the Mkb42; Walther's prototypes for that program used a gas-operated rotating-bolt design, but they dropped out of that area of design after the Mkb42H was adopted.

 

[Jim K]

Unless the paper is fake also, the gun is not a dummy or a mockup, since a dummy would not have had to be on a Form 4 or given an IRS number (probably amnesty registered), and someone seems to have paid a transfer tax on it.

Jim