Steyr Mp40

[Valkay]

Hello bajtársak and fellow forumdellers,

The Mp40 does not need an introduction, every gamer can recognise it thanks to the countless games it was featured in.
Distinctive, stylish, practical, intimidating, its the Wehrmacht incarnated into a gun.
It’s still in use in at least one contemporary armed conflict.

However, the Mp40 has more than just one face.
We are all familiar with the classic Mp40, slow firing (550 rpm), extremely reliable and easily controllable submachine gun made to the highest standards.
There is another face to the Mp40, a mass-produced, low quality control, desperation birthed gun with chaotically high fire rate. This is the Steyr Mp40 produced from 1943 onward.

The Austrian Steyr factory was actually famous for producing the Mp34 before the war, the highest quality submachine gun in the world at the time.
However the harsh reality of war pushed Steyr to simplify the Mp40 again and again to keep up with the ever increasing needs of the war. By 1942 Steyr was producing the most Mp40 SMGs in the entire Reich.
In the autumn of 1943, the firing pin was replaced with a solid one and the recoil spring production was skipped by using worn-out Mg42 springs cut in half. This gave Steyr Mp40 guns a very high fire rate, estimated to be as high as 1100 rounds per minute!
I don’t have exact production numbers but since Steyr was the biggest Mp40 producer, the number of these submachine guns was high as well, with tens of thousands produced before production of Mp40 at Steyr ended in 1944 in favour of the StG44
Given that it’s still the legendary Mp40, but it’s very unique with its fire rate and was mass produced, I could even see this as a great tech tree gun for Axis.

Mp40 with BNZ-44 markings, this gun was produced in 1944, by Steyr.

sources

This image that has been circulating on the forum for a while now, originally posted by @dregomz

I found another source on the matter:

Guns of the Reich: firearms of the German forces, 1939-1945 by George Markham

A not comprehensive list of Mp40 serial number database:
https://mp40.nl/NEW%20MP40%20Website%20Images/Data%20&%20Information/Serial%20Database/Serial%20number%20database.pdf

Pictures are from:
C & R MP40

Would you like to see the Steyr Mp40 in game?

• Yes
• No

If yes, at what BR?

• BR3
• BR4

At what role?

• Tech Tree/Research Tree
• Battle Pass
• Premium/Event

[GeneralBrus]

Even tho I would love to see more MP40 being used, a 1000 RPM version would be kinda immersion breaking - not that this version is unrealistic, its rather that the slow RPM one should be the top meta pick considering it being iconic.

[Valkay]

@GeneralBrus

immersion breaking

@Valkay

We are all familiar with the classic Mp40, slow firing (550 rpm), extremely reliable and easily controllable submachine gun made to the highest standards.

see? its so iconic you cant even consider that not all Mp40 were like that.

[Chris_Vector]

#WeWillNotForgetDregomz

fly high

[GeneralBrus]

Still have headaches arguing with him

[c4qph2]

@Valkay

At what role?

Why isn’t there an “in event” option? I want to see this weapon given out in events at about the same amount as the MP-41(R).

Moreover, like the MP-41(R), it would be a good counter to the PPSh-box. But if this weapon were made a BP or premium gun, then practically no one would get this counter in sufficient quantities.

[Valkay]

@c4qph2

Why isn’t there an “in event” option?

There is actually, the premium/event category.
I have one very simple reason for not including event category alone.
When you say event, people are suddenly 10x more likely to be okay with adding the gun/vehicle but that’s not how it should be, only vote yes if you actually think it would add something meaningful to the game.

[ilithyiamadi-psn]

Awesome, love mp40! But make.it BR2, why 3 or 4 considerinv ERMA EMP with suppressor has similar high fire rate and thats in a BR2.

[CaptainBeel]

Thank you for your post.

I never knew this before.

I am also pleased that the majority of respondents support the idea and it being added to the tech tree.

I would like to see it added, my only concern is that with the MP38, MP40 and Steyr MP40 we would have a similar situation to the BAR.

Here people (myself included) voted BR III for Steyr MP40 but yeah I do have concerns about weapons being added which made the preceding two redundant. This is something the devs would need to work out.

(in the case of the BAR the easy and logical fix is to move the M1918BAR to BR II where it belongs and keep the A1 and A2 at BR III but they refuse to do that for whatever reason)

[MSX98]

Silenced Steyr MP40 squad when

[_DELAVR]

I did make an illustration comparing the MP 40 and MG 42 at the same scale.

Pay special attention to the diameter of the MG 42 recoil spring; it’s not even the length that’s important. There’s no way it would fit into the MP 40’s telescopic bolt.

For this reason, the receiver and bolt assembly must be radically redesigned, eliminating the telescopic bolt. The illustration below clearly demonstrates this; the return spring is not located in the bolt and is clearly visible.

@Valkay

For this reason, it’s obvious that the submachine gun in the first image is a standard MP 40. It has a standard telescopic bolt, which would not accommodate the MG 42’s spring.

@Valkay

Here is some information on the production of the MP 40 by Steyr. As you can see, production continued until the end of the war.

I’m also interested in what other six versions of the MP 40 submachine gun the author of the first source counted.

Also, if Steyr mass-produced MP 40 submachine guns until the end of the war, where are they? It really seems odd to me that only some very strange illustration has survived.

In fact, this is starting to look more like a joke, as if someone decided to simply combine two of the most popular German small arms. One source claims this weapon has a rate of fire that’s literally the same as the MG 42 .

I also can’t recall seeing any information about it in new books or articles; on the contrary, information on it has been increasingly removed. All sources on this submachine gun are often quite old and contain many errors.

And honestly, I find it hard to imagine how ruining the excellent machine gun springs from the MG 42 and changing the production lines (as I already said, a major redesign was required) would reduce production costs, but I may be wrong here.

In any case, I would be very skeptical of this weapon. I don’t deny that similar experiments may have taken place, but it’s clearly not mass production.

[Артас]

i dunno but if such variant existed i bet even a simple google search wouldn’t retun enlisted forums

[Valkay]

@_DELAVR

Here is some information on the production of the MP 40 by Steyr. As you can see, production continued until the end of the war.

this conflicts with my sources.
There are no known original Mp40 from 1945. No BNZ45 marked Mp40 exist.
Even if “Mp40 production” did continue past 1944, those guns produced were most likely Mp3008 SMGs.

With the adoption of the MG42 into the
German inventory, Steyr also began production of this
weapon, which was dreaded by American G.I.s. Before the
Third Reich entered the dustbin of history, it also became a
manufacturer of the MP44 Assault Rifle.

2006-B94-A-Forgotten-Giant-A-Brief-Look-at-Milita.pdf

I cant copy over the whole sheet but basically BNZ43 and BNZ44 marked (Steyr produced) MP40 which about correspond to the time frame, were produced in much lower numbers than before, at only 23 000 submachine guns estimated by the author though he is very strict with his numbers.
Steyr was most likely already transitioning to StG44 production since this shift from tens of thousands of Mp40s every month to only a few thousand in 1944 is very drastic.

Its perfectly possible that it wasnt actually cost cutting, but Steyr ran out of Mp40 springs and had no means to produce more so the remaining stock was completed with substitutes produced by MG42 production line.

https://mp40.nl/the-models/mp40

@_DELAVR

In fact, this is starting to look more like a joke, as if someone decided to simply combine two of the most popular German small arms. One source claims this weapon has a rate of fire that’s literally the same as the MG 42 .

Thats harsh for a book as prestigious Guns of the Reich: firearms of the German forces, 1939-1945
and its not even the only source here.

Anyway, late war Mp40 had bad survival rate and low reliability so they are quite rare nowadays which makes proving anything difficult and leave room for imagination which is never acceptable for any proper historian, but here we are.

[Valkay]

@Артас

i dunno but if such variant existed i bet even a simple google search wouldn’t retun enlisted forums

Because there is NO TERM to describe this unusual late war Steyr variant of the Mp40.
I invented the “Steyr Mp40” myself to make it easy to understand what gun Im talking about here, but the term Steyr Mp40 is very obviously incorrect since Steyr produced many more Mp40 than this batch but this is the most simple and catching name for it.
Kinda like why everyone calls the baby from the Mandalorian “baby Yoda” even though it only shares species with the legendary fictional jedi master.

I do invite you to do your own research though, but a simple google search will yield no results!

[Артас]

Are there any other sources besides this journal?

[Chris_Vector]

even if this didn’t have mass production, surely someone modified one at some point

[_DELAVR]

This data is from the book “The Schmeisser Myth: German Submachine Guns Through Two World Wars”.

[Valkay]

Interesting read, but this is still just speculation and the theory is quickly proven wrong by an obvious lack of physical evidence.
There are no known Mp40 submachine guns from 1945, let alone from Steyr. In fact there aren’t even any markings past 1944 for the Mp40.

I’m not saying that it couldn’t have seen some limited production in small workshops, but definitely not by Steyr. If the Mp40 were produced in any meaningful number in 1945, it would showed up on the data

Serial%20number%20database.pdf

This data was collected by thousands of auction houses, collectors and fans sending in codes from numerous Mp40s. From museally preserved to ground dug guns.
With Steyr´s sheer production capability, if they were to produce the Mp40 in 45, we would have found hundreds of them.