Submachine guns made their entrance into military thinking during World War One. The French military saw this and decided to adopt one in the years after the war, although they saw it in a bit of a different light than other countries. For France, the SMG was to be a weapon for junior officers, really more of a personal defense weapon than a combat arm. For this reason, they emphasized light and handy designs, and this is exactly what MAS produced.
The first iteration of the weapon came about in 1924, but it would take more than ten years of slow trials and modification before it was actually adopted into service. In fact, the final decision was actually to adopt the SMG design by Charles Petter and the SACM company, as MAS was expected to be working at full capacity building MAS36 rifles. However, when SACM proved unable to produce guns in a timely manner and war was clearly imminent, the MAS was retroactively designated MAS38 and ordered into emergency production.
What we are looking at today is one of the MAS SE (Section d’Etude; Study Department) 1935 trials guns. It included a manual safety lever that was rejected after testing but is otherwise essentially identical to the final version. Mass production of the MAS SE 1935 began in November 1939, with the first actual deliveries in April 1940. Concurrently, the MAS38 production line was set up, with its first gun completed on June 6, 1940. In total 1,958 MAS SMGs (or the two models combined) were produced before the armistice on June 23, but logistic chaos made it essentially impossible to get any into the fighting. A small number are documented in use near the St Etienne factory, and these were probably taken directly from the production line.
Two groups of MAS SE 1935 guns exist; the initial trials guns (approximately 100 in number) and the later mass production run. The first batch have two-digit serial numbers, and include early features. The production guns are nearly identical to the MAS38 and are serialized in the F series. The MAS38 remained in production during the war for use by the Vichy government, and was used in Indochina after World War Two as well as remaining a police service weapon well after the war.
Many thanks to the French National Forensic Police Department for allowing me access to film this prototype example for you!
Once more, we see that French SMG design concepts neatly straddle the line between the “conventional” SMG and the true “machine pistol”. Even the 7.65 x 20 cartridge puts the arm more in the latter category.
Seen as a PDW, or more exactly a substitute for a pistol, the MAS 35/38 family makes very good sense, with light weight and a reasonably hard-hitting cartridge (about the power of the U.S.standard .38 Special “police” load of the time).
clear ether
eon
“Submachine guns made their entrance into military thinking during World War One. The French military saw this and decided to adopt one in the years after the war, although they saw it in a bit of a different light than other countries. For France, the SMG was to be a weapon for junior officers, really more of a personal defense weapon than a combat arm.(…)”
They did also ordered MP.18-like sub-machine gun in form of STA M 1922 / MAS M1924 https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/france-submachine-guns/sta-1922-mas-m1924-eng/ with desire to use it as light squad automatic gun, but after receiving 1000 examples, they dropped that idea.
I wonder if the off angle recoil spring to recoil impulse contributed meaningfully to muzzle climb?
Pasting over of the less cute points in history of the MAS 38 does it a bit of disservice, IMHO. A considerable number of the MAS 38 were taken over by the Germans, who used these as PDW for the SS-SD and Gestapo personnel in occupied countries, including Poland. Several of these key personnel were eliminated by the Polish underground and their French SMGs were a coveted trophy from these hits. There are at least three pictured in the photos from various parts of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising, and there’s quite a handful of these preserved in various Polish museums.
One of these is on display in Tirana, Albania as a weapon that killed Mussolini. The Communist guerilla who shot him got disappointed with the Italian Communist “sellout” and presented that particular weapon to a “true” Stalinist ruler of Albania, Enver Hoxa. But it still is a cute sun-of-beach and I WANT it.
Hi Leszek,
The communists did not get Mussolini. if they had chanced upon him alive, he’d have been worth far more to them still twitching. just imagine the show trial.
in truth, we don’t really know who got the fat gobshite.
Mussolini and his small entourage’s dead bodies were found in the gateway of the drive to a private house, in a village up the west side of Lake Como.
It’s all a bit like the Monty Python, dead Bishop sketch.
Perhaps it’s the cat that keeps leaving dead fascist dictators beside the bins?
The commies only got hold of the bodies the next morning and took them to Milan to display them, hung up on the canopy of a petrol filling station – which was still there last time I looked (the canopy, not fat tw@ Mussolini).
The local story up the side of Lake Como, is that Mussolini had a meeting arranged with one of his old pal Churchill’s men. That he had been offered retirement in exile in England…
things that we do know, the commi story doesn’t make sense, and commies are congenitally incapable of telling the truth when a lie might make them look better.
if the commies had killed Mussolini- why were the bodies dumped in the quiet gateway? even dead, he had huge propaganda value for them – as shown by what the commies did when they finally got their hands on the bodies.
Churchill did admire Mussolini, and continued to praise him long after his death.
Two people can keep a secret- so long as one of them is dead.
“(…)pictured in the photos from various parts of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising(…)”
There is also known interesting specimen https://augfc.tumblr.com/post/674371287348576256/a-well-travelled-mas-38-prototype-recently-i-got with marking suggesting that
This gun was probably sent to Poland for trials in the late 1930s, and was issued on an emergency basis to a Polish airman or soldier who was stationed in Dęblin in 1939.
…quite an exotic ammunition around the Vistula river; any chance of re-supply in occupied Poland, beyond what has been taken with the gun?
FWIW, one of these was on display at V Corps NCO Academy back during the mid-1980s. Wasn’t in terrific shape, having been pulled out of a river in Germany sometime during the 1950s (supposedly…), but it was an interesting piece.
I always liked the looks of this weapon, and when I got to handle the one that they had there while we were tasked with cleaning up the display, it seemed like it was a fairly light and well-balanced weapon. No idea how it would have fired, but I suspect it would have been a pretty good shooter–Just had that feel to it.
One point that Ian missed was that this weapon and the Finnish Jatimatic are the only two inclined-bolt weapons I’m aware of that reached any sort of production. I suspect that the MAS-38 would have done rather better in 9mm, but who knows?
Definitely a typical idiosyncratic French design, though.
“(…)this weapon and the Finnish Jatimatic are the only two inclined-bolt weapons I’m aware of that reached any sort of production(…)”
Whilst strictly speaking bolt is not inclined inside Kriss Super V it also does make use of mass moving not perpendicular to bore axis, see 4th image from top at
https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/u-s-a-submachine-guns/kriss-super-v-eng/
“(…)MAS-38 would have done rather better in 9mm(…)”
There was sub-machine gun related to MAS-38 but using 9×19 mm cartridge made, namely Type CEV-MAS Mle 1925 see 6th row in France section at https://www.firearms.96.lt/pages/Get_Em_Puppy's%20World%20SMGs.html as I was unable to unveil any document from its’ trail I am unable to say how well it worked.
Ss: “(…)not perpendicular(…)”
Should be: “(…)not parallel(…)”
Is: “(,..)trail(…)”
Should be: “(…)trial(…)”
Handle but do not fire? This piece? That is probably like getting just one (1) slow dance with Raquel Welch back in her day. Then leave and go home.
Yeah… It was quite a case of coitus arma ignifera interruptus to coin a dog-Latin phrase.
I honestly can’t think of a weapon I ever viewed in a museum display that I wanted to handle and fire more than that little MAS-38. I deliberately wrangled myself onto that cleaning detail when it was offered.
The whole display was… Interesting. I don’t remember what river they pulled it out of, but it was in Germany near Kransberg. Also don’t know the circumstances of how it was lost; supposedly, the site wasn’t associated with anything significant. If I remember right, some random fisherman pulled it out of the water, or found it on the bank…?
As an aside, there was a Wehrmacht training site along the Rhine that they used pre-WWII for bridging training, and which saw use during the retreat deeper into Germany during the latter bits of the war. The US Army and the Brits also used that same site, and the fun part was how much crap they pulled up every time they went to use it for the years after the war. Every time they went to either dredge or prepare the banks, they had to have people standing by to deal with all the “stuff” that showed up, and that only sort of ceased being a problem in the 1970s. I’d made friends with a GI who’d become a DA civilian and who did training area coordination/maintenance, and he had this file of historical photos and other documents that was truly awe-inspiring in terms of the stuff that they’d pulled out of that crossing site. I can’t remember if any major battles were associated with it, because I think that the Germans mostly used it as an admin crossing because we’d blown up all the other bridges along the Rhine.
Probably still tons of stuff concealed in the rivers of Germany, to this day. Also, anywhere else they could stash stuff; I did my SCUBA training in a filled-in quarry where we found tanks around the bottom edge of the pit. Whose existence wasn’t known to the people running the dive club, and which required the “authorities” to come in and make sure everything was safely de-militarized. I’ve always wondered why nobody went looking for those tanks, as valuable as they are now for restoration. I’ve never heard of anyone pulling them up, so who knows?
After so much prototypes of pistol & SMG in 9×19, they finally chose chambering in 7,62 Longue….
I will keep calling said cartridge 7,65x20mm nonetheless keep in mind that this was standard pistol cartridge of France at that time AND using your standard pistol cartridge inside sub-machine gun was common in Interbellum Europe e.g. Czechoslovak https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/czech-republic-submachine-guns/cz-vz-38-eng/ using 9×17 mm cartridge, Swedish 9 mm kpist m/37 using 9×20 mm cartridge.
9x19mm could have been adopted for handguns too
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/before-the-high-power-was-the-fn-grand-rendement/
The whole thing strikes me as the right weapon for the wrong troops that was derailed by trying to make it “perfect”.
Instead of arming shock troops, it was possibly intended to be used to “inspire” the reluctant troops who wouldn’t march into no man’s land.
WWI had examples of both. We still get the “Perfect is the Enemy of Good Enough”.
Were one to examine the actual history of it all, the sad thing you observe is that the entire story is yet another iteration of “practitioners know; management doesn’t”.
The French had a guy whose personally published pamphlets on how to overcome the challenge of trench warfare. He was more-or-less ignored, and only a select few French units, mostly either their light infantry or alpine formations paid attention to his work. Captain André Laffargue was a prophet without honor in his own land; captured copies of his work served to inspire the Germans who created the Stosstruppen formations.
Interwar years, the French Army didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory trying to understand what had happened in WWI. They roundly ignored the tactical innovations, and instead just doubled-down on what they thought had worked. Aside from replacing the Chauchat with a better weapon, they mostly just tried to “do better” without actually wrapping their heads around the implications of what the Germans had done.
Which goes a long way towards explaining why they thought the submachinegun was a weapon for support and security troops, as well as why they chose the smaller caliber. The Germans, who’d had experience of the Bergmann in 9mm, chose to go with the heavier caliber and handed their SMGs out to the guys on the pointy bit of the spear.
History tells us which worked better.
Interesting parallel case was earlier. A French officer in the Crimean War already came up with tactics to lessen casualties from rifled musket fire that made such havoc in the Civil War a few years later. I’ll need to dig up the name. He scooped Emery Upton’s later ideas. There is some evidence Frederick Thompson Ward’s ‘Ever Victorious Army’ of anti- Tai Ping Chinese made use of this. Ward was in the Crimea with the French before being cashiered for insubordination.
@Martin,
Thank you for that set of details. Although, it is Frederick Townsend Ward, not Thompson.
Until I dug a little deeper in, I did not realize he’d spent so much time in the Crimean War. I’d always figured he got most of his experience with William Walker, but now that there’s more material available, it looks like he had more sources than just Walker and Mexico. The biographies of him that I’d seen before all just sort of breezed over his time in Crimea.
I’d be very interested to get the name of that French officer you reference, along with any pointers to the details. He sounds like someone who’d have been involved in the various light infantry enthusiast groups like the Chasseurs à Pied and the Bataillons de Chasseurs Alpins.
Ward was an interesting character. You wonder what would have happened if he’d stuck around to be a part of the Civil War, which side he’d have taken, and how well he’d have integrated into the military structure.
I suspect he’d have made Custer look like a conformist…
Fascinating history throughout the period. You can see the way they were struggling to get past the “line up and shoot at each other” sort of tactics, but never got very far before the conformist types shut them down. Always in the name of control; there was a palpable phobia about devolving authority and actual power down the ranks, and you can make it out in the way they refused repeating arms and every other innovation on offer.
I really wish someone would do a comprehensive history of that aspect. The various light infantry movements around the world were all groping for a solution to something that they could apparently either feel coming or at least make out the shape of as it immanentized around them. You can only wonder at what a WWI battlefield would have looked like, if they’d started out from fully-realized modern tactics appropriate to their weapons. Would it have been worse, better, or just different?
No matter how you look at it, WWI was a truly pivotal moment in military history. A few years earlier, and things like the German failure to stockpile enough nitrates would have ended it early, and a few years later, things like trucks, improved aircraft, and radios would have made the charnel house that was WWI entirely something else. Unknown how, but… Different, for sure.
Same with the tactics, but perhaps not quite as visually apparent. Imagine a French Army, built and trained along rational modern lines, one that never suffered the incredible losses ours did, because they had better tactics and operated along rational lines like the ones laid out by Laffargue…
We’d be living in a different world, that’s for sure.
Autocorrect nailed me again. ‘Townsend’ of course.
I have a novel I intend to post online, ‘Land of Peace, War of Heaven’ where Ward figures heavily. It isn’t proofread yet. The French officer’s name is there. I’ll dig it up.
I would appreciate that, Martin.
As well as a pointer to your novel, when you release it. Sounds interesting… Is it alternative history, or just plain historical?
@Kirk The French officer’s name was Ardant du Picq. Killed in the Franco- Prussian War. There is a book by him available online from Project Gutenberg. I also found a footnote in what I had written. Despite a few scattered allegations here and there online, there is no evidence that Du Picq and Ward ever met. At least none I found. Ward’s Crimean service seems to have been a quick cup of cognac.
Ah, yes… Ardant du Picq, another one of the 19th Century war commentators whose premature death and publication of whose unfinished work permanently warped a lot of things. du Picq is, unfortunately, more remembered for what his various “interpreters” took away from his work, because they were the idjits who turned French military “thought” down the “elan uber alles” path which led to the destruction of French manpower in WWI.
I’ve read his work, and I think that if he’d have lived to see what they did with it? He’d have trashed the lot of them as fools.
Like Clausewitz, whose work was published posthumously and without him having been able to edit it, there are tons of different ways to take what he wrote, and all too many took the wrong lessons. As I remember it, du Picq was disturbed and contemptuous of things he observed like the infamous “Charge of the Light Brigade”, and yet… His works were taken to support that sort of madness in WWI. After he’d gotten killed in the Franco-Prussian War.
Whole thing is kind of sad; he really and truly wanted to do the best he could, and they used his work to effect the useless deaths of millions of his beloved French soldiers.