After World War Two the Swiss needed a new self-loading military rifle to replace their K-31 bolt actions. Two major design tracks followed; one being a roller-delayed system based on the G3 at SIG and the other being a derivative of the German FG-42 at Waffenfabrik Bern. Bern, under the direction of Adolph Furrer, had been experimenting with intermediate cartridges since the 1920s, and they used this as a basis to develop an improved FG-42 using an intermediate cartridge (7.5x38mm). The program began in 1951 and went through about a half dozen major iterations until it ultimately lost to the SIG program (which produced the Stgw-57).
Today we are looking at one of the later steps in the Bern program, the WF-54. By this point the intermediate cartridge had been discarded in favor of using the standard Swiss GP11 (7.5x55mm). The overall design was a bit simplified as well. The Bern program would continue for two more years after this rifle before ultimately losing out to the SIG 510 for Swiss military adoption.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this rifle! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/national-firearms-centre/
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
This is the ultimate expression of the rather nutty idea of having your semi-auto functioning based on having the bolt lock up in a design that’s really meant to be fired on full-auto only… I can only shudder to think what the impact on accuracy must have been, with all that weight bouncing forward with every single shot.
You have to love the Swiss attention to detail and craftsmanship, however. Common sense? Maybe not so much.
Still, calling anything that came out of this program a “Sturmgewehr” is a bit of humor. Full-power rifles, biased towards the LMG category…? They really should have come up with another term, like whatever the semantic opposite of “Sturm” would be in German… “Schützengewehr”, maybe?
I’d hate to be “storming the castle” with the StG57 sort of affair for more than maybe a cool morning, heading downhill… With an ammo-bearer along to carry the magazines.
I’d hate to try charging UPHILL at someone who’s using the WF-54 or, say, the SG 510-4. Said someone would probably chuckle at the fact that he’s got the perfect position for potting me in the face.
I think that was rather the point… The Swiss didn’t intend to be shucking and jiving in close combat amongst the Alpine glaciers; they meant to be delivering lots of long-range fires and withdrawing successively through the valleys.
I’ve always like the StG57, but… Man, they should have come up with different name for it. Imagine being someone ordering out of a catalog, going just by nomenclature: “Oh, ja, Hermann… We will get the Sturmgewehr 57 for the assault troops!”, then they actually get the things, and they’re this great honking full-size LMG-looking affair. I could easily see “Lawsuit” for false advertising.
Not that anyone ever ordered weapons like that, but… Still. Absolutely NOT a Sturmgewehr as understood by everyone else in the world..
“(…)Absolutely NOT a Sturmgewehr as understood by everyone else in the world..”
I must warn you that Bundesheer used Sturmgewehr 58 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgewehr_58 which shares some features with Stgw.57 namely:
– uses full-power cartridge
– does have bipod by default
– can be used for grenade launching
You’ll note that the actual Germans didn’t go for that, terming both the FAL and the CETME that they adopted as mere “Gewehrs”.
The term “Sturmgewehr” implies a certain portability and handiness to me that simply can’t be applied to the full-size abortions the US insistence on 7.62X51 resulted in. If, say, Sweden had adopted the CETME in something like a slightly cutdown 6.5 Swedish, wellllll… That’d be an actual Sturmgewehr. The FAL, G3, and the StG57 simply were no such thing.
It’s all subjective; you may call things by whatever terminology you like to invent. I’m still going to argue against it, simply because I’m a pedantic dick.
I do wish that someone in NATO headquarters had taken the time to standardize all this crap, and reduce the confusion. They may have tried, and the arguments are still going on behind the scenes; there are reasons that the NATO staff officers I’ve known refer to things surrounding the adoption of the various NATO STANAG not as “STANdardization AGreements”, but as “standardization arguments”.
“(…)actual Germans(…)”
At that times Germans(Bonn) were careful to avoid linkage with III Reich
https://genius.com/The-chad-mitchell-trio-i-was-not-a-nazi-polka-lyrics
thus they might elect to avoid Sturmgewehr as it was not strictly technical term only, but also one of tools of Nazi propaganda.
“(…)FAL(…)as(…)Gewehrs(…)”
There is typo, should be Gewehre. If every Sturmgewehr is Gewehr then calling FAL Gewehr does not preclude it from being Sturmgewehr, c.f. aeroplane and aircraft. Observe that U.S.Army adopted AR-15 as M16 rifle, that is assigning it to same category as Garand rifle.
“(…)“Sturmgewehr” implies a certain portability and handiness(…)”
Do as you wish, but to my understanding 5 first letter simply inform about purpose, not any specific technical requirements.
“Each of my men would fire four shots, then go home.”
Appertaining to a comment further down; I’ve read that the Swedes trialed FAL in both 7.62 and 6.5, can’t say whether the same is true for G3. FN at least was certainly amiable to production runs in oddball calibers (eg. that 7mm run for Venezuela).
“(…)is true for G3.(…)”
According to http://www.gotavapen.se/gota/ak/ak4_5/ak5_history.htm 3 finalists were
GRAM 63
FN FAL as AK fm/1962
Heckler & Koch G3
These three weapons existed in both the old Swedish military round 6,5×55 mm and the NATO 7,62×51 mm. Sweden decided to accept the NATO standard.
You can find old Swiss army training films online these days. In one memorable exercise the “home team” are wearing the M18/40 steel helmet with Alpenflage “four fruit pajamas” camouflage/”tarnfarbe” uniforms and packing the redoubtable grenade launcher that is also an automatic rifle, the Sturmgewehr 57. The “away team” are sporting the M1971 steel helmet and the regular woolen gray uniform sans camo, and packing Hispano-Suiza MP43/44 9mm SMGs, aka the kp/31 “Suomi.”
Someday a comparative coffee table book should come out–maybe Mr. M’Collum’s input on Headstamp publishing? It’d be the subterranean Switzerland of “festungen” and “ouvrages” that would make Maginot green with envy… civilian shelters, hollowed-out mountains, long range artillery and mortars capable of firing counterbattery fire at any quadrant of the ruggedly mountainous confederation of Helvetian cantons…. Part II would be the vast network of ferro-concrete, prefabricated Albanian bunkers, some 750,000 in all, that litter the countryside of that nation. Switzerland would “fire four shots and go home” if invaded by Italy or France or Germany or the traditional foe, Austria. Enver Hoxha’s hermit kingdom would distribute SKS carbines and get the poison gas out should Tito’s Yugoslavia, or Nato Greece or traditional occupier Italy make a major grab… Part I: How the world’s banker created a doppelgänger under ground. Part II: How the poorest nation in the Balkans deterred aggression by its neighbors.
I wonder does the V on the gas adjustment stand for “ verklemmt“?
That would make sense if it’s the “off”’postion.
As Ian said, in the V position the gas port is closed for grenade launching. My guess therefore is “verschlossen” for closed.
By the way, the M for full auto cosmes from the verb “mitraillieren”, menaning shooting fully automatic. Multi-language Swiss military is known for adopting a number of French military expressions also in Swiss German. This is one example. Another would be “Entpannungspanzer” for recovery vehicle, which originates from the French “depannage”. ,
Swiss military nomenclature has always made me wonder what sort of nightmare polyglot language could result from leaving Switzerland isolated for a few hundred years…
The resultant language would likely be something for the ages.
Vis, “soixante-dix”,”quatre-vingts”, quatre-vingt-dix”: French for seventy, eighty and ninety. En Francais Suisse: Septant, Octont, Nonante. I submit, dear Sir/Madame that the Swiss Language has evolved quite well and contend that Swiss children are no worse at their multiplication tables than those of the French for lack of maths required in common speech. “Four score and seven years” is famous but I would wager a pretty penny that you would have to look that up to make 87.
Pax vobix et sine die.
you beat me to it 🙂
Swiss French is very much a living and evolving language,
An emergent order, which is the product of human minds and human interaction, but not the product of a plan or of only one mind.
Very unlike French French, which Louis Quatorze and his first minister Colbert assigned to the Société Francaise, to be a centrally planned, pretend language, with centrally planned and decided upon names for new things
note that the English language manages very nicely, despite not having its own word that’s acceptable in polite company, for an indoors shit house.
I may have had the first word, but I believe that I have been more than equaled in eloquence by yours. We share a very small slice of a Venn diagram my mate, but it does me comfort to know that there are kindred spirits in the either.
The Swiss seem to function pretty well. A secure and functional society. Do you Americans remember what that was?
It seems that after looking into an intermediate cartridge, the Swiss decided to equip every man with a combined BAR/grenade launcher. It may have been the right choice for them.
Following on from @Kirk’s observations about using what is essentially a LMG action that fires when it goes into battery, for a rifle that is closed bolt only…
The wisdom of a reciprocating bolt handle becomes even more questionable
if the gas cylinder has become so badly fouled that the rifle fails to fire,
anyone stupid enough to whack the bolt handle will likely have it firing and giving the idiot a richly deserved bruised or sprained right hand.
Reciprocating bits of a weapon that is meant to be hand-carried have to be really well-considered; I’m not a fan of even the AK47 family with its protruding bolt carrier bits. The Galil and its derivatives aren’t as bad as the basic AK, but… Man. You’ve really got to experience getting one of those operating handles from an original-design AK in the back when you’re doing night operations as OPFOR for the SF guys, and you take a tumble down a hillside with said AK. I still don’t know how that damn thing wound up the way it did, but I do remember distinctly the way that freakin’ bolt handle felt going into my back. I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for the AK about then, and decided that Eugene Stoner just might have known what the hell he was doing…