Of all the submachine guns that I have played with or examine I find the F.N.A.-B model 1943 to be one of the very interesting ones. This submachine gun was design and made by Fabbrica Nazionale d’Armie in Brescia,Italy between the years 1943 and 44. The entire receiver was machined out of bar stock making it very costly to build.
Machined magazine housing. A good view of the magazine housing release.
The magazine folded forward.
A view of the inside of the lower receiver and the locking area at the front of the receiver.
It is interesting how the entire fire control group is attached to the upper portion of the receiver and the lower housing is just a shell.
Removing the recoil spring
Machined extractor.
Even the top cover is machined
Basic Beretta magazine
The rotating shoulder stock.
Barrel shroud.
The rear sight and machined front section of the upper receiver.
Now on to the Bolt. A basic Kiraly operating system.
Rear bolt assembly
Back of the forward bolt.
A great deal of time was spent machining this weapon out. It is a beautiful weapon.
A diagram of the weapon.
This is a very well designed SMG! I didn’t know about it but then there’s a lot of guns I never heard of! The Italians are almost as bad as the Germans when it comes to overengineering their firearms designs! This is just a statement of fact not really a criticism. Being that it was wartime design I’m curious as to why it wasn’t made mostly of sheet metal stampings. The main components of the both the upper and lower receivers could have been made from sheet metal considerably reducing the man hours, production costs and weight of the weapon.
It was made during RSI, german puppet state, in a phase of defeated Italy, so I suppose the intention was of making a local weapon in limited numbers, and not nationwide as that was not an option any more. Maybe the makers took great pride in their product and also did not posess any stamping machines…
Stamping is cheaper in the long run, but you need a great investment in the tools and technology, and if you already have a lot of basic shops with lathes and milling machines its better to assign them the production of parts like for example, Sten…
it looks more like an art piece than a wartime smg, crazy
a masterpiece of design but like the mp5: too complex for war production.
poor trained soldier can not totally disassemble clean and reassemble it.
the magazine have a missing feeding lip ?
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