Strange Guns: ZB-47

ZB-47 with buttstock extended and position of magazine laid out (Image source)

The submachine gun had been perfected by the end of the 2nd World War as a cheap, nearly disposable weapon for arming large numbers of men. However, despite this, post-war gun designers would find ways to push the concept into new roles. The submachine gun would be re-imagined as a close quarters battle weapon, and an echelon weapon, or PDW, for troops whose primary tasks was combat support like tank crews, communications and logistics staff. One of the main obstacles to their suitability in this role, many designers recognized, was their long stick magazines, and so after the war designs were drafted to come up with possible solutions.

The Hill Submachine Gun, and its indirect successor, the FN P90, are examples of this, but another came from the country of Czechoslovakia after the war. The Brno factory employed at the time the famous firearm engineer Václav Holek, who designed the ZB-26 and its more famous offspring the Bren light machine gun, and the BESA mounted machine gun. Old Holek in 1947 designed a magazine system for a blowback operated 9mm submachine gun with a compact appearance that avoided the protruding magazine of other submachine guns.

To accomplish loading from a magazine that was really turned backwards and then swept back until it was almost horizontal, Holek designed a system which mated a very ordinary-looking stick type magazine to a gear-like rotating feeding unit. This loading unit, actuated by bar attached to a standard blowback-type bolt group, would rotate one position during every cycle, which stripped a cartridge from the magazine and presented it into a position suitable for feeding. The bolt, about halfway through its travel at this point, would simply pick the round up and feed it as normal. The action of this is illustrated in the images below, taken from the gun’s manual:

(Image source) (Image source)

This system added some extra complexity to a kind of weapon that ideally would be as simple as possible, and that extended even to its use. While a normal submachine gun would be cocked and ready to fire with a simple retraction of the bolt group, the ZB-47 needed to have its feed tray loaded, as well. A lever was provided on the right side that actuated the feeding wheel, loading the tray.

How to handle the weapon (Image source)

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Sources: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/11/09/weird-magazines-vol-iv-the-zb-47/

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