Thread: Best SMG?

Originally Posted by Triple C

Anyone know anything about the Swedish K? I am very interested in that weapon's history and characteristics.

It's history and characteristics have already been outlined, but I can add some ”user comment” on the Carl Gustav M/45 smg, aka ”Swedisk K”. I was issued with one when I did my national service with the Swedish Army’s 15th Infantry Regiment (since disbanded) in Borås in southern Sweden in1976-77.

At that time, the standard rifleman’s weapon was the H&K G3 assualt rifle (Sw Army designation Ak4). I trained as a company quartermaster, and like most second-line personell I was issued the M/45B for personal defence.
We were in the same basic training company as the future rifle company commanders and we sort of envied them their macho shooters – but we sure as hell didn’t envy having to clean them after firing! The M/45 was ridiculously easy to strip and clean. The standard field stripping procedure broke it down to about seven or eight large and easily-cleaned parts.
The quick-and-dirty (and highly unofficial...) cleaning method when in the barracks was simply to strip it, leave the parts under the scalding hot water of the washroom showers for a few minutes, allow it to dry and then grease and assemble the thing. The water seemed to dissolve the grease and wash away the powder residue, heating the metal in the process, which evaporated the water very quickly, minimising the risk of corrosion. Hardly a professional way of treating a personal firearm, but then again, as peacetime armies go, we hold something of an endurance record (no wars since 1814...). I guess some slackness might be expected, if not condoned... :-)

Owing to our second-line duties, us would-be quartermasters didn’t get all that much range time and live firing opportunities after the first few months of basic training, but I remember beginning by practising firing single shots (not all that easy with a fully automatic-only weapon) and short bursts on the 50 and 100 m ranges. If memory serves, a maximum range of 200m was quoted, though we were warned not to expect any accuracy to speak of at that range. At shorter ranges, however, it did seemed to be quite accurate.
I don’t remember the M/45 having much of a recoil, at least not compared to the H&K G3 (or the AK-47 and M16, both of which we fired as part of our training), and it had almost no tendency to rise when firing long burts. It did, however, shake and rattle quite a bit. The firing mechanism featured a sizeable chunk of spring-loaded, fast-moving metal, I guess the gun moved through pure inertia. The firing noise had a distinctive metallic clatter to it.
We used it with a clip-on brass collector at all times, and were also issued with a nifty magazine loader that filled a 30-round mag in a few seconds, though it was also quite easy and quick to hand-load the mags. I seem to remember us being issued with bayonets, but I have no recolletion of us ever mounting one on the M/45, or, indeed, the weapon itself having any provision for one.
90% of the time, we used the weapon with the blank-firing barrel and bullet collector ”funnel”, the latter filling the air with red dust from the plastic blank bullets when fired in any confined space.

I obviously never fired the M/45 in anger, but I did drag it around in rain, sleet, snow and mud on manouvres. And though my duties didn’t require me to open fire that often, it faithfully went bang repeatedly when I required it to, and I never heard of anyone else having stoppages either. I would have to say that I tend to believe it merits its reputation for complete reliability under combat conditions.

To us Swedish Army conscripts, at that time, the Carl Gustav M/45, seemed aging, unglamourous, a bit toylike and quite primitive in construction. To find that its usage in Vietnam earned it a reputation as a legendary ”black ops special” and that the ”Swedish K” was quite a status symbol to US Army personell during that conflict is... well, surprising, almost bordering on the amusing. :-)

But I guess familiarity breeds contempt. I have no doubts about it being an efficient weapon.

Just my two cents. Or quite a bit more, actually. :-) I'm loooong out the army, and haven't fired a gun since. But my interest in military history abides. Hope someone found this post interesting.