The LF57 was the first production submachine gun made by the Italian Franchi company. It was introduced (as you might expect) in 1957, and was adopted by the Italian Navy a few years later, in 1962. That was the only major contract it won, though, as there was significant competition in the SMG market at the time – including the also-Italian Beretta PM12, which won the Italian Army contract.
The LF57 is a simple and effective design, made largely with steel stampings. The barrel is held in place with a barrel nut like the Uzi or Madsen M50, and operation is accomplished with a simple blowback mechanism. The majority of the bolt mass is located above the barrel – this looks like a gas piston, but is not. The weight of the bolt keeps the rate of fire to a manageable 460 rounds/minute of standard 9x19mm cartridges. Most internet sources list the LF57 as using 20- and 40-round magazines, but the original Franchi brochure (see below to download) we have indicates a 30-round magazines was provided with the gun.
The LF57 did not have a manual safety, but was built with a large grip safety in the front of the pistol grip. A push-button selector at the top of the grip allowed the shooter to choose semi or fully automatic fire. In recognition of the close-range use of submachine guns, Franchi zeroed the fixed iron sights at a range of just 50 yards.
You can download a copy of an original Franchi sales brochure on the LF57 from the Franchi LF-57 page in the Vault, or right here:
You also don’t see much written about Franchi’s .30 Carbine LF58 and 7.62mm NATO LF59.
Yep, we haven’t had much success digging up Franchi documents. Definitely something we are looking for, though.
Looks a lot like the Walther MP. I wonder if one firm copied the other. http://world.guns.ru/smg/de/walther-mpl-e.html
Wow,
Thanks soo much to you Ian,
I dont know what to say,I was looking to find this manual long time ago and finaly you showed it to us all…
It would be interesting to see how LF57 trigger mechanism works…
Franchi marketed the 9mm “Model 1962” police carbine in semi only. It had a 16 inch barrel with an integral brake/flash hider. Fired from the open bolt like the LF57
All I can tell you is that on a visit to an Italian Navy frigate in the 1980s, I saw a locked rack of Beretta 38/42s or /49s in the wardroom.
I’m not surprised – older equipment often stays around long after its replacement has been adopted. There were M3A1 grease guns in some US Army tanks until Desert Storm (and the Beretta M38 series was a very good gun).
Confirm the M3A1 in Desert Storm. I handled one. The Army courier toting it said it was pretty standard for couriers at the time.
Is anybody knows how trigger mechanism looks like and how it operating??
Any diagrams or schematics exist on such model??
Val,
There’s a photo of the 1962 open bolt semi auto’s trigger innards here: http://openboltguns.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/franchi-model-1962-lf62.html
Athough it’s only active sparodically now, it’s a really interesting blog to browse through
The other major contract won by the LF57 was an order for 10,000 units for the Portuguese army.
The weapon was also quite popular among mercenaries in the African wars of the ’60s and ’70s.
Saw one of these on consignment sale today at a local GS. I thought it might be a remanuf .22 version of a Walther sub, but no. Heavy as an Uzi, could be yours for 17k.
Found a page with a basic description of the operation and construction of the LF58 and 59 with a few pictures of the internals. The description is in Italian if anyone feels like writing out a good translation. From what I could make out they’ve got some pretty neat features!
http://www.exordinanza.net/reprint/Franchi_LF58-59.htm
I didn’t look hard enough. There are scans of the original articles in English included.