So despite my scepticism on the W.O. M.G. 03 mark, WO *does* stand for War Office - Soley were slapping WO nomenclature on their would-be trials weapons, which is something I've not seen before. So it's "War Office Master General of Ordnance [Dept] 3".
My first thought was that M.G.O.3 was pertaining to some subdivision of the War Office, but then I brushed this idea off as too wild. Turns out, It was really that. Thanks for keeping us updated, Jonathan!
As you were describing this weapon I was thinking was it some attempt at a War Office requirement for a P.D.W. like weapon for lorry drivers/tank crews in the 1930's.
1:20 The use of magazine in the pistol grip at this early date is truly remarkable! The date puts this gun whole five years ahead of the first Soviet and Italian designs of this type, and a decade before the first truly successful one, the Czechoslovak SA vz. 48. 1:49 How can one resist such an invitation?! My wild guess would be that W.O. means simply the War Office, while M.G.O.3 might refer to some requirement pertaining to machineguns and ordnance (or maybe, 'machineguns, other' in the reverse nomenclature of the day) issued by it. 5:33 A dreadful opening for mud ingress, incidentally. Makes me think that it would be one of the first things noted during the trials. 11:29 Isn't the true prototype of this design a type of bayonet used on the Mod. 91C Carcano cavalry carbine? The usefulness of it on a gun as short as these two is highly debatable, though, with people like Matt Easton demonstrating its limitations as opposed to the gun & knife/dagger weapon set.
With regards to the mag in the pistol grip, the Japanese were probably first; the experimental Nambu Model 1 used a grip-feed system as early as 1933. Possibly predating even that, there is an experimental SMG made for Austrian trials which uses this configuration, though the exact date and manufacturer are unknown (personally I reckon it's a Mauser design). You're right that the folding bayonet was originally designed for the Carcano cavalry carbine. The Beretta guns just lifted from the Carcano, because the first Beretta automatic carbines were actually produced using recycled components.
@@jameslawrence2446 Now that you mentioned it, I seem to recall reading about this Nambu design. The Austrian trials you mention are those of 1930, am I getting it right? As for the use of Carcano bayonets, I think more important than just using up spare parts (and to be honest, this is the first time I'm reading that Beretta actually did this) is the fact that the Mod. 91C carbines were employed by the intended users of the Beretta submachineguns during WW1, so it stands to reason to use the same system here for reasons of familiarity.
@@F1ghteR41 RE: the bayonets, the Italian 'moschetti automatici' were originally intended to have detachable Mod. 91 bayonets but were changed to have the cavalry style bayonet because they were assembled at the MIDA factory in Brescia, using many of the same components as the Carcano carbines made there.
@@F1ghteR41 It was actually originally designed for military use, however it failed to attract a substantial military contract. The primary users of the Mod. 1918/30 were paramilitary forces such as the Milizia Nazionale (Blackshirts) and Milizia Forestale (Forestry Police). Needless to say, the situation around the Beretta automatic carbines is very complicated and most sources are full of myths and misconceptions about them. I can't really explain it in full here but I could direct you to some better sources if you are interested.
Maybe you could have a competition for the public to name some of those anonymous oddballs in your collection. I’m sure the results would be both entertaining and informative, what could possibly go wrong?
With that curious buttstock, I can't help but wonder if this was conceptualized as either an officer's or a grenadier's firearm. That way they could fire while manipulating an explosive or giving 1 handed directions
w.o.-m.g.0.3. being as its a prototype it may well stand for "war office- machine gun" and the 03 is maybe 3rd iteration of the model 2? hope you get some info from the archives, would be nice to know if i was correct.
@@jonathanferguson1211 oh wow i was way off then? thanks for the reply. really enjoy watching your stuff. im panning a trip to the armouries in the summer, and very much looking forward to it. hope to see some of the suff you,ve showcased on youtube.
@@kevbutler133 Thank you! But you were closer than I was - I had thought of but discounted "War Office" because I couldn't see why they'd mark that on there - turns out they did mark WO lingo on their prototypes which is pretty unusual.
@@kevbutler133 Oh, and please don't be too disappointed but most of what I've covered is not on display. There are some great unusual guns in the First World War display though.
Mention of a "Beretta arm obtained on loan from the Soley Armament Company" appears in correspondence from the Chief Inspector of Small Arms in January 1933. He described it as "quite promising", but that it was "not for sale". (Soley actually did make some guns directly on commission of the CISA so maybe this was built for him.) The design work on this gun was almost certainly done by a Belgian gunsmith, Edgard Grimard, who was partnered with the Soley Company in the 1930s. He also designed a modified Lewis gun which they produced. The ventilated upper handguard on this weapon is heavily reminiscent of another Italian submachine gun which was available around the same period, the Armaguerra Mod. 1935. I suspect Grimard was pretty well familiarized with Italian subguns.
Also, I should add, I don't think this gun was designed with the intent of creating a more compact version of the Beretta 1918/30. It's only about 60mm shorter; no effort has been made to shorten the receiver or barrel (in fact I think the barrel is actually longer on the Soley gun). I reckon this was more likely an experiment in ergonomic handling, or otherwise something completely frivolous.
A New York Times article of 1936 stated that Captain J. Ball of the Soley Arms Co. Ltd admitted paying US dealers to take a loss on war surplus weapons. Another record that I found on a well known search platform said that the company was accused of manufacturing the Berretta without a licence.
Nearly - it turns out (we are almost sure) Soley were slapping WO nomenclature on their would-be trials weapons. So it's "War Office Master General of Ordnance [Dept] 3".
And now I am starting my betting pool that this will get included in Sniper Elite 6 or DLC to SE5 at least. Wacky prototype, check. Weirdly plausible, check. "Exotic" looking, check. Yup, the guys at Rebellion must be wiping the floor from saliva right now.
You are spot on, well, as far as we can tell :) "War Office Master General of Ordnance [Dept] 3". Why the hell a civvie designer is bothering to slap that on their guns, who knows. I've never seen anyone else do that.
The same occurred to me but I've never seen a mark or abbreviation like that anywhere and this is not a machine gun by any stretch. Until the Sterling era an SMG was a 'Machine Carbine' in Britain.
Are you sure there shouldn't be some kind of cover (maybe bakelite that's cracked and been lost?) over the magazine to form a proper grip? In the closeup there's some kind of notch on the reinforcing plates on the side of the magazine housing that seems to serve no purpose, and there does appear to be quite a lot of open space around where the magazine goes through the trigger plate. There's not even a top lip forming a magazine well which seems really rather odd, and would surely lead to a lot of dirt ingress, even on a prototype.
Isn't 9mm Glisenti loaded to the velocity of 9mm Parabellum literally just 9mm Parabellum? My understanding is that 9mm Glisenti is just a reduced power 9mm Parabellum.
@@bengtjakobsson5177 It isn't that unusual. We even have the same today going the other way with commercially available +P+ loads that I wouldn't want to use with many early 9mm pistols. Also consider the time, in 1910 9mm Luger was still a pretty niche thing that (as far as I am aware) only the German Army and Navy had adopted. And it didn't become very big commercially until post-WWI. So it was unlikely there would be a real risk that 9mm Parabellum gets anywhere in the Italian supply chain. And they had the pistol they wanted it just wasn't resilient enough with full powered 9mm Parabellum, so why not just download it?
@@bengtjakobsson5177 I'd think the opposite is true. The original loading of 9x19 isn't powerful enough, many people argue these days. Which is why.38 Super was developed (9x18 semi-rimmed case) in the '70s. There's no point to that one though, because 9 Largo was already equivalent (9x22.7mm, 1910s) but that doesn't $ell anything new and 'innovative' so they made .38 Super anyway.
@@spacewater7 .38 Super was developed in the 1920s as a high velocity alternative to .45 and .38 ACP by packing more powder into a .38 ACP case. In the 1970s +P variants were brought isn't substantially better than +P and +P+ 9x19.
War Office machine gun no 3 (3rd one made, possibly 2 missing or failed in testing) As for the arms on stock, What it could be for is mounted use, pulled in to shoulder while the other hand is holding the side of a vehicle, horse reins, handle on a motorbike, any number of uses.
Thanks very much, Jonathan and team. This looks exactly like the sort of weird design I might have expected to find in an odd corner at the Pattern Room, had I ever managed to visit there. The upper and lower attachments to the butt might have been inspired by some of the hooked buttplates on Schuetzen style target rifles, to help keep the butt in a consistent place for more accurate shooting. As others have speculated, placing the main shooting grip at more or less the centre of gravity may have been to make it easier to fire one-handed, except that its weight of 3.85kg isn't going to help much with that. But never mind, this will also make it ideal for dual wielding in video games.
@@jonathanferguson1211 and MG doesn't fit any British nomenclature or if it is machine gun, any known WO requirement of the time (if 1938 is the date of production). And that length of barrel... It's a SMG if the spec is to be 'every feature is not to conform to what advantages an SMG has'.
@@domhogan7842 What about if it referred to the War Office Department of the Master General of the Ordinance - just wondering if the 0 is actually an O as it's the same symbol as the one in WO, so it's WO MGO 3 not WO MG 03. So "War Office, (department of) Master General (of the) Ordinance". That could link it to an intended use within artillery, engineering, or transport, all of whom make sense as potential recipients of an odd, one handed, compact carbine (or possibly ultimately an SMG).
And, I was wrong, it IS War Office! Well, almost certainly. For some reason it appears Soley were marking their prospective trials weapons "War Office Master General of Ordnance [Dept] 3".
This is me speculating mid video, but the stock kind of made me think could it be that it was intended to be a Paratrooper weapon or weapon to be used by people from an elevated position of some sort? as mentioned in the video it seems to be made to in some way keep the other hand free, which could mean maybe it was also cause the person using it would be holding onto something else while using it.
I was wondering if the intention was for someone like a motorcycle courier or sidecar passenger where the other hand would be needed to hang on or operate the vehicle. In fact, it's oddly symmetrical for a British weapon with that centralised cocking handle and the ejection port on the very top (both of which come from the parent Beretta) which makes me wonder if it was intended from the outset to be ambidextrous and enable offhand use with a single hand. I'm even wondering having watched the full video if it actually started life as its current configuration or whether it was originally an actual Beretta 18/30 or at least a near 1:1 copy. The extended metal plate on the lower side of the stock joining the metal "buttstock" looks awfully like it might be covering up a cut out in the wood where the trigger would originally have been located, and looking at the new trigger guard, it really does look like an afterthought that's been shaped to fit the existing space, it's incredibly short for a combat weapon.
I thought it might be for stability when firing in the prone position, with the magazine in a pretty reasonable location for that purpose. Hence the ambitious sight range. It would be interesting to see if you can get your eye behind the sights any easier in that position.
I seem to recall that Soley modified the Lewis LMG with a Bren mag &removed the barrel shroud during the Phoney war when the British Army felt it was outgunned by the Germans with their MG34s &MP 38s&40s. The Soley-Lewis was meant to be an automatic rifle. Maybe this is related?
hi, Jonathan !!! this bullpup is an improved of beretta mod. 18 called "siringone", the magazine of beretta 18 is the same than this bullpup, the beretta 18 was a semiauto carbine improved from smg "Villar Perosa" ... bye bye 👍👋
It looks like a truck ran over an antique Schmidt Rubin, the driver felt bad about it, and tried to repair it with some stuff he found in a dustbin....there you go...good as new 🤣
Well, sort out all the issues, (polish the design, put a decent stock on it, fix the magazine catch and fit etc etc), and it'll be better than the sten, if a bit more costly. Oh, and lose the bayonet.
I cover this in my book. It simply means a young bulldog. It fell out of usage in the 20th century but was still widely used and known in the 1930s-40s when it was coined in the US.
i think americans tried this concept out in like the 50s or 60s, i believe the gun is called the hs10 and it was a shotgun intended for police to shoot from a moving car with one hand
@@blarpnarp yep, the HS10 was meant to be usable with one hand for things like opening doors or operating other equipment like flashlights or tear gas.
Cheers Jonathan for mentioning the Viper in this video, agree the stock has that one handed sort of idea. I did my research project about the development of viper at the armouries as an intern back in 2011. Glad to know understanding the story has been useful for other projects all these years later.
I remember spending an inordinate amount of time, pre you tube/internet, designing a useful smg for British army for WW2. Had something fairly similar to this designed. The advantage of magazine in the grip for intuitive loading appealed. Eventually I came up with a design like the beretta 1918, but using lee Enfield stocks. I thought the Tokarev round would give better range. Also accompanying this was WW2 tech body armour. Essentially a doron chest and back piece similar to modern rifle plates but only effective against shrapnel and pistol ammo.
I wonder if W O M G 3 was a design contract / specification (like F.5/34 was the design specification the RAF issued for what became the Hurricane and Spitfire). The National Archives mark War Office documents with a WO prefix, so it could be War Office Machine Gun [specification number] 3? That may explain why there aren't many and it isn't stamped with an official 'name'.
The "War Office" guesses are intuitive, but I think it's likely this was originally made for the little-known postwar counterespionage agency W.O.O.C.(P).
War Office - Machine Gun RFP 03 The pseudo hand position on the rear stock looks like it was intended to be used just like a rifle when bayonet training/fighting.
The Beretta is a real beauty, which makes the Soley being such an ugly duckling so funny. It’s a shame that the SMG was such an afterthought for the UK in the immediate pre-war period.
so Soley (almost) bullpups a 9mm pistol cartridge weapon so they could make the barrel longer??? For what? 9mm can't really make use of the extra barrel...
Interesting that they decided to make a compact version of the Beretta only for it to have the same overall length. Did they simply want one with a longer barrel without making a longer gun? Would've been interesting to see a version that would've just been an Uzified Beretta.
I’ll say it again. Lousy lighting and the need for close ups is necessary. The dark cloth with shadows obscure details with the overhead shots. Which are too far away anyway. It’s so annoying because all the firearms presented are fascinating.
A million rounds of 9mm were captured off the Italians in the Middle East. This was likely an attempt to produce something to use it with minimal development. The Sten must have been a better one.
This is the third video that has annoyed/disappointed me with the camera work. Zoom ins are a few seconds late and the away shots are too distant. Tight shots are best. Fill the lens with Ferguson, we don't need a panoramic view after the briefest bit on introduction. Be sure the camera is focused on the guns in zoom shots, all too often the clearest bit is Mr Ferguson's face. It's a handsome face, of course, but the point of interest is the weapon feature he is holding up for inspection at that moment.
I absolutely love viewing these videos that present to me, new and unusual, rare prototype experimental small arms, well done and please keep up the good work.👍
Might I suggest Standard, Bullpup and 'pistol type' (I know there are lugers and some other pistols with weird 'standard' layouts - but...) as a breakdown to clearly distinguish things like this and the UZIs which are so clearly more 'machine pistol' in their grip than standard SMG or Bullpup types?
Some definitions of "bull pup" would include the Spencer and Evans rifles from the American Civil War and the period following it. (Magazine runs back to the butt-plate).
W.O.-M.G. clearly stands for: War Ordnance - Ministry of Guns 03 stands for Oak Tree used for furniture among several other kinds of limber marked differently.
