rareantiqueandbeautifulfirearms:This is one strange gun! The 9mm belt-fed Italian Sosso manufactured
rareantiqueandbeautifulfirearms:This is one strange gun! The 9mm belt-fed Italian Sosso manufactured by Fabbrica Nazionale d’Armi di Brescia during WWII. The most obvious bizarre feature is the use of a box-contained 20 round “belt” or link magazine. As the 1936 magazine patent puts it, the curved metal frame houses an “endless belt stretched between two drums…” The magazine and the belt are curved so as to accommodate a comfortable grip angle as this arrangement clearly doesn’t allow for the usual advancing diagonally stacked bullet placement.The specific functioning of the pistol action is something that I haven’t quite been able to figure out. The only internal diagram I have to go off of is from the patent for Sosso’s sear system, which is vague at best regarding what exact type of action the illustrated example pistol uses (something about the barrel acting upon the breech via a swinging arm or lever, though it doesn’t seem to be lever delayed). A very strange detail explained in the patent is that the barrel mounted main action spring also acts as the hammer spring through a series of connected levers. There is no actual guaranty that these particular features are to be found on the production Sosso pistol, although it seems likely to me. Interestingly, this patent is cited by US patent 4539889A for Gaston Glock’s 1982 “Automatic pistol with counteracting spring control mechanism”.Regarding the history of the Sosso, a member of the Axis History Forum has this to say: “[The first 1934 model] was rather expensive and so Sosso made a new version. Mechanism remained same, gun and slide were designed rounder and frame of the gun was made of Zama called metal mixture. This proved to be too flimsy. Small numbers of the nro 2 model were manufactured during 1938-40. Third [all steel] model was developed and it went into production in 1941 at FNA factory in Italy after Guilio Sosso had offered it to Walther factory in germany. Weight 1150 g, it had same 20 round magazine… There were two models in production - military model which had a metal-frame holster which could be used as stock and a lanyard ring. The model meant to civil markets lacked these. [sic]” Of course, I haven’t been able to verify any of these details. -- source link