Pistolet maszynowy wz. 39 Mors (''Mors'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for ''death'',

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

for ''

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large pinniped, flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in ...

'') was a Polish

submachine gun A submachine gun (SMG) is a magazine-fed, automatic carbine designed to fire handgun cartridges. The term "submachine gun" was coined by John T. Thompson, the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun, to describe its design concept as an autom ...

Piotr Wilniewczyc Piotr Wilniewczyc (1887–1960) was a Polish engineer and arms designer. Among his most successful designs were the Vis-35 pistol, commonly known as the Radom for the arsenal in which it was produced, and the Mors submachine gun. Biography ...

and Jan Skrzypiński between 1936 and 1938. It was to have become the standard submachine gun of the

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...

some time in the 1940s. However, its production was halted by the 1939

Invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Design and History

The design was generally modelled after the German

ERMA EMP-35 The German submachine gun EMP (''Erma Maschinenpistole'') also known as MPE (Maschinenpistole Erma) was produced by the Erma factory, and was based on designs acquired from Heinrich Vollmer. The gun was produced from 1931 to 1938 in roughly 10,00 ...

. Common features of the two weapons included a wooden butt and forward pistol grip; the most noticeable difference was the magazine extending downwards in the Mors rather than to the left side of the ERMA. The SMG was to be issued to some of the infantry units, as well as to tank crews and boarding parties of the Polish Navy and

armoured train An armoured train is a railway train protected with armour. Armoured trains usually include railway wagons armed with artillery, machine guns and autocannons. Some also had slits used to fire small arms from the inside of the train, a facilit ...

s. Later the idea of equipping tank crews was abandoned due to its size. After extensive tests, the construction proved to be reliable and durable. The first trial series of 36 was ordered in March 1939 and additional purchases were planned. However, until September 1939 the Fabryka Karabinów in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

produced only 39, 3 of these being the prototypes. After the start of hostilities, all were issued to the 3rd Rifle Battalion, which used them during the battle for Warsaw, and to the staff company of the 39th Infantry Division. Only 4 incomplete SMGs have survived: one in the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw (no.38, acquired from the Soviet Union in 1983), two in Russia (no.19 in Petersburg and no.39 in Moscow) and one in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

museum, since 2013 loaned to Land Forces Museum in

Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...

.Wilk, Remigiusz: ''Drugi Mors w Polsce!'', "Broń i Amunicja" Nr. 03/2013, p.41

Bibliography

* Konstankiewicz A., Broń strzelecka Wojska Polskiego 1918–39, Warsaw 1986 * Głębowicz W., Indywidualna bron strzelecka II wojny światowej, Warsaw 2010

External links

Prezentacja pistoletu maszynowego Mors, from series of documentaries ''Z Arsenału Muzeum Wojska Polskiego''
World War II submachine guns World War II infantry weapons of Poland Submachine guns of Poland Science and technology in Poland 9mm Parabellum submachine guns {{submachinegun-stub