ARMOURY: SNOW WOLF MP18

from Airsoft Action - May 2022

by Airsoft Action

TECH: GATE STATUS

TRENCH BROOM!

WHILST IN NO WAY A NEW AEG TO HIT THE MARKET, THE MP18 IS A CLASSIC HISTORICAL MODEL WHICH SET THE TONE FOR ALL SMGS THAT FOLLOWED IT, AND SNOW WOLF HAVE REPLICATED IT AS A THING OF BEAUTY IN AIRSOFT FORM! LONG WISHING TO GET HIS HANDS ON ONE, BILL FINALLY GOT AN MP18 ON THE RANGE RECENTLY AND WAS MOST DEFINITELY ENTHRALLED!

Ibelieve that in one shape or another we will all have some form of SMG in our airsoft collection, be it a classic MP40 or Thompson, or something more up to date like the Uzi or MAC! A number of my airsoft friends are currently going through another MP7-phase, and of course you can’t really call yourself an airsofter unless you own, or have owned, an MP5! However, reeling things back, WWII was surely the “War of the SMG”, and whilst the Germans were again at the forefront with the excellent MP38/MP40, the Allied forces soon followed with the likes of the Thompson, the STEN, the Austen, Owen Gun and Patchett, the PPSh-41, and of course the M3A1 “Grease Gun”.

WWII saw most armies still largely armed with those bolt-action rifles, and the .303 SMLE did sterling service against the venerable 7.92×57mm Kar98k, but the with the “Blitzkrieg” came a new, fast-moving type of land warfare fought from the backs of vehicles that required more easily carried, fast-firing sub-machine guns with effective riflemen and LMG gunners in support; far from the days of the “Sturmtruppen” being over when the trench warfare of WWI ceased to be the norm, the soldiers of a new war were confronted with fighting in towns and cities, and the “weapons mix” was chosen accordingly.

But the tale of the SMG starts for me way before

WWII! I would argue that the very first of what we would refer to as the “modern military SMG” was the MP 18 manufactured by Theodor Bergmann Abteilung Waffenbau that was brought into service in 1918 by the German Army during World War I as the primary weapon of those “Sturmtruppen”, the specialised German WWI trench assault groups. Up until then infantry combat was traditionally “ranged” and the bolt-action rifle and fast-firing HMG were the undoubted kings of the battlefield, but the bloody and gruesome, often hand to hand combat seen within the close-confines of trench systems called for something smaller, and with a higher rate of fire… the term “trench broom” which referred to shotguns, automatic pistol-based-carbines, and eventually the Bergmann MP18 was coined for a reason!

In December, 1917, at the height of World War I, that talented German gunsmith, Hugo Schmeisser, patented “a light machine gun chambered for 9x18 mm”, something that we might now refer to as a submachine gun. Created with Schmeisser’s great attention to even the smallest detail the resultant weapon resembled to some degree a “normal” light machine gun. Equipped with a heavy wooden stock, a rifle butt and a sizeable vented barrel shroud, it was still big, heavy, but thirty-two rounds were fed from a from drum designed for the Luger pistol rather than the belt-feed of a regular machine gun of the time, hence the phrase “sub” being added; this said, the German descipton for this type of weapon was (and is still) ‘machine pistol’. Again, this was actually nothing new as a lightweight (relative term!) magazine-fed machine gun had already been created, and the true paternal heritage of the SMG can be traced back to the Pistola Mitragliatrice “Villar Perosa” M1915, a rather ungainly twin-barrelled model that was originally designed to be used by the observer of an aircraft but that was later issued to ground troops!

However, by 1918, the Schmeisser-designed “SMG” began to be mass-produced in the factories of Theodor Bergmann(who incidentally designed the Bergmann MG15 nA machine gun that was in service until WWII), and soon entered service with the “Sturmtruppen” of the Kaiser’s Army, and it is said that some 30,00 had been made by the end of 1918; it somewhat turns the belief that this was a “rare” weapon on its head, although when the armies facing one another across the battlefields of WWI numbered millions, “rare” is of course another relative term!

After WWI weapons of this type though were removed from German service under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, but what started as the MP18 served as a prototype for the design, development, and tactical deployment doctrine of the “SMG” not only in Germany, but also in England (the Lanchester) and Japan (the Type 100/Shiki Kikantanju). However, as the treaty allowed the Weimar Republic to keep a small quantity of submachine guns for police use, a few hundred MP 18.1s were modified to accept Schmeisser’s original 20-round magazine design; having found a loophole in the conditions of the peace treaty, German designers began to improve the MP18 as a “police weapon” with some modifications, and in 1928 the MP28 was adopted by the German police! This model was widely used during the Spanish Civil War and really set the tone for the “modern SMG”, but by the beginning of WWII, the MP18/28 was outdated and remained in service only with the police forces.

Although further modified the “further improved” Bergmann MP34/35 inherited most of the flaws of the MP-28; it was bulky, heavy and quite unbalanced, and still made use of the side-feeding magazine that made it difficult to manipulate and aim. For some time the MP-34/35 remained in service in the SS, Luftwaffe, police and vehicle crews, but it would not be long before a new and thoroughly modern SMG appeared in the form of the MP38/40, and the rest, as they say, is history ... but that’s not the entire story!

At the start of WWII the RAF made the decision that they needed a fieldable and reliable (not the

STEN MkI then, which was also under development at the time!) SMG of their own for airfield defence. Since Britain was only really just beginning to get itself onto a war footing, and the ignomy of Dunkirk had occurred not long ago, there was not time or resources to design and produce a new weapon… so the designers decided to simply copy a tried and true design, the MP-28! Online research tells me that this SMG was named after George Herbert Lanchester of the Stirling Armaments Company, but was quite different from the STEN concept; the STEN was esigned to be an easily mass-produced and economical weapon utilizing stamped sheet metal parts, whilst the Lanchester was more “old skool”, being scrupulously well made with a carefully machined action and breech block, and indeed one feature of the Lanchester that stands out from the “blueprint” MP-28 is its brass magazine housing that is an absolute thing of beauty when it comes to weapons design! It also featured a bayonet mount and shortened stocks from Lee Enfield bolt action rifles!

The Lanchester used either 32 or 50 round detachable magazines and was chambered for 9mm Luger! They were produced in two models, the Mk.1 and the Mk.1*. The Mk1* was a simplified version of the Mk1, with simpler sights and lacking a selector switch (thus it was fully automatic only). Roughly 96,000 were produced, most of which were issued to the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy. A number were also issued to the Royal Air Force as well…. Nice to know they actually got some of the weapons that they ordered in the first place, isn’t it!

REPLICATING A CLASSIC!

Jeez, I do like writing about firearms history, just as I did recently with the Lee Enfield, especially when it’s a “foundation model” that set the tone for so much that followed! We talk a lot at the moment about how the lessons of history should never be forgotten, and the MP18 serves as an abject lesson in how a piece if technology changed fire and manouever doctrine fundamentally! Gone were the days when “a well-trained infantryman could fire 15 rounds a minute” as with the MP18 the cyclic rate was 500 rpm! And those rounds could be laid down accurately to the effective range of the weapon, and the MP 18 proved to be a first- weapon. Its concept was well-proven in trench fighting, and that fundamental concept directly influenced later designs and showed the superiority SMG over the regular infantry rifle in urban, mobile, and guerrilla warfare.

And so to the Snow Wolf replica! Rumour has it that Chinese manufacturer Snow Wolf came into being as its own company after some changes a few years back at STAR airsoft; whether this is true or not, I can’t confirm, but what I can tell you is that they make some really interesting historical replicas like the PPSh and the M1938 sub-machine gun, along with a not-bad-out-of-the-box version of the “Aliens” M41A. I’ve tried all of these models and they function well, so given that they obviously like to work on older styles the fact that they’ve created “The Daddy of SMGs” comes as no surprise to me, and oh boy, have they done it well!

The Snow Wolf MP18 is a beautiful and thoroughly faithful replica the venerable “Maschinenpistole 18/I”. Weighing in at a hefty 3929g with a spotless metal body that includes that distinctive signature vented barrel shroud, somewhat rudimentary “iron” sights, sling swivels, a steel 130BB midcap magazine, and one of the very nicest real wood stocks I’ve come across as standard in airsoft terms this is not just an AEG to own, but a piece of history in 6mm form to cherish! Everything on the outside appears to be scrupulously

replicated, and the only things to me that feel even slightly fragile are the sliding fire selector and safety catch, but only time and use will tell on that front.

I’ve not been inside the MP18 myself but after speaking to a number of tech friends who have I understand that the gearbox and trigger box unit (yes, they are separate and I’m told they operate via a simple metal rod linkage!) are pretty much bespoke as I’ve discovered with other Snow Wolf models, but should be V2/V3 compatible. Other than an internal design which has been created specifically for this AEG there’s nothing really more to shout about, other than that components are all pretty standard and workmanlike; I’d love to see what Jimmy would make of this though, as I’m sure that he could perform marvels with the basic inline motor and rotary hop!

DOWNRANGE

Given that internally everything is pretty “AEG standard”, and that’s not a bad thing to be honest as there’s less to go wrong, once everything is set up correctly the MP18 is actually a lot of fun to shoot; the 130bb magazine feeds very nicely, and once you’ve got the rotary hop set I was sending BBs out to the end of the 30m range with a nice, flat trajectory, which I hadn’t expected from a short 215mm inner barrel! The accuracy overall is very good indeed, with nice tight groupings achieved out to 25m prone on the open sights, as new. I chrono’d the MP18 using .20g RZR BBs and came out with an average velocity of 0.84Joule/301fps which is perfectly respectable and pretty much site friendly from the get go. The MP18 is absolutely perfect as a CQB tool given its length of 825mm and the fact that unlike some SMGs it does have safe and semi settings as well as full auto; I can totally see why it would have been so devastating in trench-fights compared to a long, bolt-action rifle!

So, is the MP18 an ideal skirmish-ready replica? I’d have to say that with that overall weight of 3920g it’s a bit of a beastie to lug around all day, especially if you’re of smaller stature, and there’s also that long, side-feeding magazine to factor in if you’re in any kind of enclosed space. But I’ll backtrack to it having serviceable internals as standard, good, easy-to-change-out battery storage (it’ll swallow a medium capacity 7.4v LiPo!) in the butt, solid range and accuracy, and superlative externals that will undoubtedly turn heads, so overall it’s a winner as far as I’m concerned, and as it has both semi and a safety setting this would make a great CQB AEG with some real character and panache! For those who are actively involved in “WWI/II” type gaming then the MP18 is a must have.

I believe that Snow Wolf have again made a really bold statement to the marketplace and to players with their MP18, that they do things differently, and long may they continue to create the “unusual and esoteric”! Although we may not know much about them as a company I don’t actually care, as each and every one of their creations that I’ve tried to date has both enthralled and entertained me, and in this case caused me to further my own firearms knowledge. I love the MP18 for what it is, and what it has meant in the history of military firearms and tactics development, and therefore although I have no immediate NEED for one, the WANT for one of these gorgeous looking AEGs is actually very strong indeed!

Many thanks to Tim at www.iwholesales.co.uk for finally finding me an MP18, and please do pay a visit to their website to check out all the other goodies that they offer from Snow Wolf and a veritable cornucopia of brands! AA