Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another 
video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Kessler
Auction House in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland,
taking a look at a number of the guns that they have
including this Franchi Model 57 submachine gun.
Now the Italian Franchi company isn't really well known
for its submachine guns, and in fact this is the very first
really commercial production submachine gun that they ever made.
Their first prototypes were in 1956, by 1957 they had
this pretty much finalised production submachine gun.
It's a very simple gun, ... it's a stamped receiver shell 
with a number of riveted components added inside it.
Feeds from Beretta magazines, 20, 30 and 40 round.
And it's, all in all, a perfectly 
decent, good submachine gun.
The problem is it was never really able to 
achieve substantial military or commercial success
because it was always competing against a couple of other 
guns that were just a little bit better or just a little bit cheaper.
It was, of course, introduced in 1957. And Franchi 
was attempting to get Italian military contracts for it.
But they did manage to sell some to 
the Italian Navy in approximately 1962,
but they did not manage to sell any to 
the Army and that was the big contract.
Unfortunately for Franchi the Beretta 
Model 12, or PM12, won that competition.
And the Beretta is one of the guns that Franchi would 
be competing with for its entire production lifespan.
One of the other major ones being the HK MP5.
The problem for Franchi was they were just 
never quite able to match the quality or the cost
of the major competitors that were out there.
Now you may notice that this looks 
very similar to the Walther MPK and MPL.
If there is copying that was at hand there, it was on the part 
of Walther, because this came out before the Walther did.
This is definitely one of those guns that 
has that sci-fi, action hero sort of look to it
thanks to the sheet metal construction and the 
vent holes and all the just little detailed features.
However, as I said, it is really a perfectly 
adequate and fully functional submachine gun.
You do have the folding stock here, 
it is basically just a bent tube stock.
And it doesn't have a locking 
mechanism when it's open, just lift it up.
Well, I shouldn't say no locking mechanism,
it has this spring-loaded detent, so to open it all you 
do is just pull hard enough to pop it out of that detent,
fold it around, and it will snap into the exact 
same detent when it's locked in the open position.
There are marking on both sides, we 
have the manufacturer here on the right
which is Luigi Franchi, Bresca. Bresca of 
course being the main gun making area in Italy.
And then on the other side we have the gun's markings itself, 
it is a submachine gun, a machine pistol, calibre 9, Model 57.
There is no manual safety on the gun. There is a selector 
button right here, which is for semi-auto and full-auto.
And there is a grip safety. Nice and easy to engage, 
that's not a bad grip safety as those things go.
But that is the limit of your mechanical safeties. 
Trigger of course. And the magazine release is a bit unusual.
Unlike a normal button or lever, this is a 
very strong spring that you actually lift up.
Like so.
And that allows you to take the magazine out.
These guns do use standard Beretta 38 family magazines. 
So principally available in 20 and 40 round varieties,
I'm pretty sure there were also 
30 round ones that were made.
The charging handle is up 
here on the left side of the gun.
Spring-loaded, non-reciprocating.
And of course it is an open bolt firing 
gun, so once you have it locked open,
pull the trigger, bolt closes, gun fires.
Now the interesting bits of this come in 
disassembly, so let's start by taking the barrel out.
So the barrel nut is held in place by a little ratchet mechanism. 
There are teeth here on the back surface of the nut,
and a little spring-loaded retaining catch there.
That is just held in place by a combination of 
gravity and the spring from the charging handle.
So if I have this pointed downwards it does nothing.
However if I have it pointed upwards 
and I pull the charging handle back
that retracts and then I can unscrew the 
barrel nut. This is actually the entire barrel.
You can see this pin here is what's locking 
the nut that I am holding onto to the barrel itself.
Once it's unthreaded the whole 
barrel just comes right out.
You can then take the charging handle, 
pull it back to there, and pull it out.
At the back of the gun we have this rear cap with 
the stock. We are going to push this tab backwards,
and then lift the rear cap off.
It is quite stiff on this example. 
This is a really new, unused gun.
There we go, once you've got it started, then ...
that removes the stock.
You'll notice the bolt is still held in place. And that 
is because we have to remove the recoil spring.
We have this end of it here,
and the other end of it right there.
What I need to do is reach in the back, 
push the recoil spring guide forward,
and then rotate it 90 degrees,
and then it comes out the back of the gun.
That's the recoil spring. 
And now the bolt comes out.
And there is the whole thing field stripped. It's a very simple 
gun to take apart and a very simple gun to manufacture.
The bolt is of what we call a telescoping 
nature, which simply means that
while the ... barrel face is back here, 
there is a lot of bolt mass extending forward.
This allows you to make more 
efficient use of space in the gun.
So you can see how far forward 
the ... front of the bolt comes.
Instead of this material all having 
to sit behind the back of the bolt,
it can instead sit up here where we have to have material 
[space] in the gun anyway in order to make space  for the barrel.
The bolt face has a simple fixed firing 
pin, nothing really special about this.
Back here is our sear engagement surface, 
that's what the trigger mechanism works on.
And in the back a hole for the recoil spring.
Note that the guide rod goes all the 
way clear through the bolt, like so,
because the guide rod is going to actually 
lock in place on the front of the receiver.
The spring itself comes all the way 
up here to the very end of the bolt,
at that point the hole through the bolt 
narrows and the spring is held captive.
So the guide rod stays in place and the bolt 
just reciprocates back and forth along it.
And of course the receiver, the major component here, 
this is made in two halves and then welded together.
So there is a seam along the 
whole circumference of the gun.
... Everywhere you see rivets on the outside 
there are things attached on the inside.
These three rivets are attaching the barrel trunnion.
Note that there is the large hole in the bottom 
where the barrel comes though and locks in place.
And then there is the small hole above and to the left, 
and that small hole is for the charging handle
(which I have re-installed), so it comes right back there, 
just pushes on the bolt and physically pushes it back.
The rivets up at the front here are to 
hold in place the front barrel trunnion
which again you need two points of 
contact on the barrel to hold it stable.
And then we have the recoil spring 
guide assembly riveted in place there.
The sights on this are very simple fixed 
notch and post, they look rather like that.
Zeroed for 50 metres, pretty typical 
engagement distance for a submachine gun.
And lastly in the back we have the fire control group.
You can see the sear dropping right 
there. This is in the semi-auto mode.
Note that it is engaging the right side 
for semi-auto and there is a disconnector.
So when I pull the trigger all the way through 
the sear is going to drop, and then lift back up.
If I flip this switch over to full-auto, 
now I am going to engage the [left] side,
the sear will drop and it will stay down as 
long as I hold the trigger, hence full-auto.
One of the classic questions for submachine 
guns is what sort of safety mechanism is present
to ensure that you don't 
accidentally pull the bolt back
far enough to strip a cartridge, but not far enough 
to engage the firing sear and thus fire unintentionally.
And the answer is on this there is a lock on 
the bolt that is connected to the grip safety.
So, if you don't have the grip safety engaged and 
you charge the bolt back it will come to right there,
which is just ... not quite far enough 
to strip a cartridge out of the magazine,
the bolt is locked there in position.
You can no longer engage the grip 
safety and the bolt will not go forward
until you charge the bolt all the way back. 
Then you can engage the grip safety and fire.
So what happens is if you accidentally pull the charging 
handle, instead of coming back to here and then firing,
it will come back to here and lock in 
place, and then you can fix the gun.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Franchi Model 57 managed to stay 
in production and available for sale all the way up until the 1980s.
Apparently these were primarily relatively small 
export contracts to various African countries
This was never adopted on a wide 
scale by any European military force.
So, some of them were made in semi-auto. In fact in 1962 
they introduced a semi-auto only police carbine model.
And a few of them actually came into the United States 
with 16 inch barrels and as semi-auto only guns.
However, in the US it wasn't long ...
Well, since then, the ATF has ruled 
that open bolt semi-auto firearms are
classified as machine guns, because 
they are easily convertible, and thus
... that limited ... importation of 
the semi-auto version into the US.
Apparently some of those were actually registered as machine 
guns in the US and are available on the commercial market.
But this was never available in 
any substantial numbers in the US.
Kind of like it wasn't really made in any 
substantial numbers much of anywhere else. So.
Definitely an interesting gun though, a rare one, and one that 
it was very cool to finally get a chance to take a close look at.
So, if you are in the market for interesting 
collectible firearms or machine guns,
the Kessler Auction House is one of the biggest 
ones in Europe and they always have some cool stuff
like this Franchi, so definitely take a 
look at them if you are in that market.
Thanks for watching.
