Short Guns, Fast Fire: Submachine Guns from the Beretta M1918 to the PP-2000

The Beretta M1918 began as a Villar-Perosa aircraft submachine gun cut in half and fitted with an overhead magazine. It entered Italian service in 1918 as a self-loading carbine, chambered for the 9mm Glisenti cartridge, and shows how the class grew from improvised beginnings.

Designed by Aimo Lahti and in Finnish service from 1931, the Suomi KP/-31 proved one of the most successful submachine guns of the Second World War. Its performance in the Winter War helped convince Soviet commanders, who had doubted the weapon class, of its battlefield value.

Introduced in 1938 and designed by Tullio Marengoni, the Beretta Model 38 first equipped Italian police units in Africa before elite army formations took it up. It is described as the most successful Italian small arm of the war, and it stayed in production until 1975.

Kijiro Nambu designed the Type 100 in 1939, and it entered service in 1942. It was the only submachine gun Japan produced in significant numbers, roughly 8,500 to 10,000 units, issued to both the army and the navy in the 8x22mm Nambu cartridge.

Alexei Sudayev designed the PPS-43 as a cheap weapon for reconnaissance units, vehicle crews and support troops. It cut machining time by more than half compared with the PPSh-41 and used half as much steel, and about two million were built in the Soviet Union between 1942 and 1946.

The French MAT-49 was first produced in 1949 and became the standard submachine gun of the French armed forces. It fought in the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, and more than forty nations and armed groups used it before the FAMAS rifle displaced it in 1979.

Domenico Salza revisited the earlier Armaguerra Cremona OG44 to design the Beretta M12, in production from 1959. Its telescoping bolt allows a long barrel in a compact frame. Police forces adopted it first, and wider military adoption followed in 1978 when it replaced the Model 38.

The Czechoslovak Skorpion vz. 61 is a machine pistol adopted in 1961 and designed by Miroslav Rybar. Its folding metal stock curves up like a scorpion tail, giving the weapon its name. About 200,000 have been made, originally in .32 ACP and later in larger calibers.

Developed from 1964 and adopted in 1966, the Heckler and Koch MP5 fires from a closed bolt using roller-delayed blowback. It has been made in more than a hundred variants and used by more than forty nations, and became widely known after the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London.

Richard Casull designed the American-180 in the 1960s. It fires .22 Long Rifle rimfire ammunition from a large pan magazine, about ten thousand were built, and it served mainly with American law enforcement and a handful of military units, an unusual small-caliber branch of the family.

The Heckler and Koch UMP entered production in 2000 as a cheaper, lighter alternative to the MP5. It is built largely of polymer and was offered in 9mm, .40 Smith and Wesson and .45 ACP, yet the older MP5 ultimately outsold it.

The MP7 answered a NATO requirement set in 1989 for a compact weapon able to defeat body armor, which pistol-caliber submachine guns could not do. It entered production in 2001 and fires a dedicated 4.6x30mm armor-piercing cartridge at about 950 rounds per minute.

Developed between 1993 and 1997 at the KBP Instrument Design Bureau, the Russian PP-2000 is a compact close-quarters weapon for riot police and special forces, with production beginning in 2006. It fires 9x19mm Parabellum including armor-piercing loads.