Hello bajtársak and fellow forumdwellers,
The FNAB-43 was designed during Second World War as Italy was looking for a cheaper alternative to the Beretta 38 and Beretta 38/42 submachine guns, however the FNAB was still an expensive and time consuming submachine gun to make so it did not improve Italy’s war situation but it did pioneer technology with its closed bolt and delayed blowback action, making it an unusual and under appreciated submachine gun of the era.
The FNAB-43 had two slightly different variants, the Type I and the Type II, with only about 7000 submachine guns made of both variants, it is a very rare weapon to come across nowadays.
Understanding the difference between the Type I and II
Due to the scarcity of FNAB submachine guns, no comprehensive comparative evaluation was done on the Type I and Type II so we don’t know the exact differences, though there are theories, for now I will only focus on the relevant part.
The easiest way to tell the difference between a Type I and a Type II is by inspecting the trigger guard, the Type I has a nice well machined and rounded trigger guard while the Type II has a cheaper parallelogram shaped trigger guard.
Type I
Type II
In game: we have a Type II FNAB submachine gun.
Visually, the Type II is clearly a simplified design, with less complex shapes for faster production and most likely there are internal changes as well.
There are two authoritative sources on the fire rate, the older citing 400 rpm and new citing 800 rpm, most other sources quote these two or estimate a similar fire rate.
The older source: The Encyclopedia of Infantry Weapons of World War II by Ian Hogg
A well researched book that shaped WW2 weapons literally for years.
The section on the FNAB-43 is brief and there is no differentiation between the Type I and the Type II at all, however the pictured gun is a Type I, likely the gun he did his research with.
The more recent source: L.A.I. Publications focused solely on the FNAB-43.
Arnaud Lamothe, French specialist in small arms inspected and tested the FNAB-43 Type II.
Finding that the gun fires with a fire rate slightly higher than 800 rpm.
The gun is both original and inspection showed that it is in good condition thus we can rule out that the difference came from modifications or the spring loosening.
full article here
The modern 9mm used in the testing is actually less powerful than WW2 era 9mm M38 used by the Italian army at that time so the fire rate could have been very slightly even higher.
Conclusion
We can safely conclude that the FNAB-43 Type II we have in game has an incorrect fire rate and must be corrected to its historically accurate 800 rpm.
Though the FNAB-43 Type I could be added as a separate gun with 400 rpm fire rate.
- Yes
- No
- Yes to BR3
- Yes to BR4
- No, I would like to powercreep BR2 even more.
Thank you for your time and attention!
Finnish / 
Axis-standard 9mm (SMG-focused)