Pics of SS with SMGs : MP 28 and ?

Hi everyone, I came across those pics (Totenkopf SS fellows during Barbarossa).
The biker seems to have an MP 28, but what's the gun of the guy in the foxhole ? An MP 35 ?

ERMA EMP, very typical to see in use by SS and Polizei.

You're right, I see the distinctive mag catch. Though it is not visible, the guy is probably holding the weird vertical foregrip with his left hand.

Hi

ON the first picture I see an MP18...

Is it a MP.18 converted for box mag use or a MP.28?

Could be a Bergmann 1920

Its an M.P. 18/I converted for box magazine. It retained the original M.P. 18 rear sight.

Cool photos… I would love to own an mp18

Rheinmetall said:

ERMA EMP, very typical to see in use by SS and Polizei.

Click to expand...

EMP indeed, but it may not a German-made gun and is more likely to be a Spanish copy.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Subsecretaría de Armamento in Valencia ordered the production of copies of the German EMP and MP 28 submachine guns (known as the 'Naranjero' and 'Avispero' respectively). These were made to almost exact specifications of the original guns, save for a few small differences. The Spanish EMPs are typically identifiable by these features which are not usually present on the German-made guns by Erma-Werke (though some of these features were present on Vollmer's earlier model VMP):

• Adjustable rear tangent sight instead of a two-stage flip-up sight
• Solid, oval-shaped cocking handle instead of a spherical, hollowed-out handle
• No forward safety lock (the so-called "Blocksicherung") which was typically installed on all German service EMPs and MP 18s
• "T-A" on the fire selector switch for "Tiro-a-Tiro" and "Automática", instead of "E-D" for "Einzelfeuer" and "Dauerfeuer".

In 1939, the remnants of the defeated Republican People's Army fled north to the French border where they were interned and disarmed by the French border police. At the Clermont-Ferrand arms depot alone some 3,750 Spanish copies of the EMP submachine gun were collected from confiscated Republican stocks. When the Germans invaded France in 1940, 800 of these guns were distributed to French commandos to stand in for undelivered MAS 38, Petter 39, and Thompson submachine guns. The French called it the "PM Erma-Vollmer" but the manual they printed for the gun clearly shows a weapon with Spanish markings.

After the French surrendered, the Germans captured some of these guns and issued them under the designation "MP 740(f)" to compliment existing stocks of EMP submachine guns in military service. The rest remained in service with the Vichy French Army and the Gendarmes.

The Franco regime in Spain confiscated the machine tooling for the EMP that had been built in Valencia by the former Republican government and moved it all to Coruña Arsenal in 1941 where it was used to produce the Spanish service M41 and M41/44 submachine guns, which were similar EMP copies chambered in 9x23mm Largo and fitted with proprietary bolt locks that differ greatly from the German type. Many thousands of these guns were made and probably at least 1/3 of all EMP submachine guns on the collector's market today are Spanish guns that are sometimes passed off as German.