BERGMANN
An example of the early Bergmann blowback pistols is this 6*5mm model. change barrel, a remarkable innovation
in
a
weapon
of that class at that time. Belt fed, it fired the standard 7 -92mm Mauser round at
about 500 rpm. Although a very sound design, never gained the acceptance it appears to have deserved, largely because the German Army were then thoroughly committed to the Maxim Gun. But in 1915, with a shortage of machine guns, they were happy to accept a modified version, the MG15nA (nA = neuer Art = new pattern). This removed the water jacket and replaced it with a perforated barrel it
was now air-cooled and pistol grip and light tripod were fitted, and the 200 round belt fed from a drum carried on the right side of the gun. This was issued to German and Austrian troops on the Italian front and appears to have been a well-liked and reliable weapon.
jacket so that the gun
considerably lighter.
A
Submachine guns The Bergmann submachine gun was designed by Schmeisser after Bergmann’s death, and
became the prototype
for almost
the subsimple blowall
machine guns which followed. A back weapon using differential locking, it com-
prised a tubular receiver with heavy bolt, perforated barrel jacket, and barrel which
9mm
was
Long 08 Luger The magazine was the ‘snail’ magazine which had been produced for the same pistol, actually the barrel of the
pistol.
and was entered into the left side of the gun at an angle. Some 30,000 of these were made. After the war the submachine gun was proscribed for military forces, though it was permitted to be retained by police forces in Germany. The design was then changed by removing the snail magazine and its sloping housing and replacing it with a right-angled magazine housing and a straight-forward box magazine feeding into the left side as before. The MP18/I, as the original design was known, could only be used on automatic fire, at a rate of about 400 rpm. The design was later taken over by the C. G. Haenel company, for whom Schmeisser had gone to work, and given a selector mechanism which allowed the firing
of single shots. This
became the Model
28/11
and was offered for commercial sale by Haenel with great success. Numbers of them appeared in the Spanish Civil War where they drew the attention of the military to the potential of the
submachine gun.
The Bergmann MP28/II was copied outright by the British in 1940 as the Lanchester submachine gun, used by the Royal Navy.
The Bergmann Model 15nA machine gun, with belt-feed box. Had it been available in quantity, it could have been a useful light infantiy weapon.
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