Swedish K

L

lefteye

New member
Just watched an episode on SPMN about the Swedish K. It really struck home - had a beautiful Swedish K in Saigon in 1969-70 (U.S. Army MI).
Never fired it (nor did I fire my Colt Detective Special .38, Colt 1911 .45 ACP, Winchester 1897 12 Ga., or early model M-16 in Vietnam.) VERY LUCKY. But, I am curious about experiences with the Swedish K. So . . . ?
 
When I was on the shooting demonstration team for the Special Ops school at Hurlburt Field, we had a LOT of different SMGs to choose from. The PPSh-41 was cool, the MP-5SD and Navy models were alright, the Beretta Model 12S had some cool features, the MAC-10 had a screaming rate of fire, the Skorpion was VERY compact, of course the old Thompsons are classics and there were more we had to choose from as well. But my favorite was the old Swedish K. Sure, it looked crude when it's laying next to an MP-5 and nopt being suppressed it was WAY louder than our silenced Stens and Sterlings but that thing was my favorite out of them all. Simple, rugged, never had a stoppage and when you did a magazine dump, it just stayed right there on the target without any effort on my part. Every now and then we would have DVs out to fire some of our weapons and in most every case, the Swedish K was the last one they wanted to fire but after the first time seeing how its performance was FAR more attractive than it's looks, they didn't want to fire anything else! Great guns from a classic SMG era!
 
Alan Rockoff (portrayed by some guy named Malchovich? in the 'Killing Fields) was a member of the South east asian pictorial center prior to freelancing in Cambodia, kept a Swedish K in his locker at the 221st signal company in Long Binh, but can't remember if he ever carried it in the field. As I remember it was green.
 
Swedish Ks were the heat. I liked them a lot better than the Uzi as it ballanced better in my hands. The MP 5 is pretty nice too, but I think I still like the K better.

Smith and Wesson made a SMG that looked a lot like a Swedish K. I handled one once in the early 70s, but I never got to shoot it so I have no idea how it performed.
 
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Yup, the M-76. Originally the Swedish K found it's way into a few covert ops in Vietnam and when the Swedes found out about that, they quit selling them to the US. Although strangely, they did liscense the design to the Egyptians as the Port Said.:confused: Anyways, after that, S&W worked with the design and came up with the M-76 that was very similar in design and performance. They did have a seperate safety/selector lever that was an improvement over the L-notch in the cocking handle track of the Swedish K and also had the ability for semi-auto fire versus the Swedish K's full auto only feature. Personally, I've always wanted one since seeing Charles Hesston wield one in "The Omega Man".:D
 
Alan Rockoff (portrayed by some guy named Malchovich? in the 'Killing Fields) was a member of the South east asian pictorial center prior to freelancing in Cambodia, kept a Swedish K in his locker at the 221st signal company in Long Binh, but can't remember if he ever carried it in the field. As I remember it was green.
Click to expand...

If my memory is correct (BIG IF) I was at Long Binh for less than a day after landing at Bien Hoa. The K we had was blued and looked like new. I did not carry it; instead I ALWAYS carried Colt Detective Special and (in a vehicle, an early M-16 and a short barrel Win. 1897), and (depending on the situation) a 1911 and some frags. Spent too much time in the RSSZ.
 
USMCGrunt - there's probably an obvious answer but why would the Swedes be upset about the US using their weapons in Vietnam? They knew they were selling us weapons..
 
Great piece..The Irish army had them up until the early 90s..We called them the Gustav 9mm .Solid piece of simple workmanship,we even had a technique of being able to fire one round per trigger pull,[which I could never master ].
 
I disagree with USMCgrunt,

The Swedisk_K and the M76 were not on-in-the-same....
I have used both, and the M3A1...
The metal in the M76 was not good, after fireing it the threads of the barrel and receiver tended to malform making it near impossible to unscrew
the barrel out of the receiver.

The M3A1 I picked up at USMC Camp Carrol, it was greatly handicaped
by its slow rate of fire, maybe it meeded new recoil springs.

If I had a choice of the three SMGs, I would pick the Swedish-K
in a heart-beat. In Viet~Nam 9mmPara was hard to come by. So I
picked The old M3A1(Greasegun- .45cal. acp)

USMCgrunt...were you in Nam? I worked along the DMZ as a Target
Acquisition Spec for Field Artillery. Worked from the coast to just short of
Khe Sanh. Was there from 02APR,1969 tp 20OCT,1970

S&W screwed up the M-76 about like congress screwed up the war,
...with those soft metal threads

Semper Fi
Song Ben Hai Ma ( River Ben Hai Ghost/Spirit )
 
re Walter

Sweden had a very soft spot for struggling third world countries, especially communist ones as we were socialdemocrats, Palme and others weren't afraid to voice anti-colonial, -apartheid, -imperial opinions.

It was both the government and the 60/70-s movement that had a very romantiziced view of those countries.

Our primeminister demonstrated together with the NV ambassador.

As a small independent country we have always been on our high horse, criticizing US and USSR alike almost, you probably get more critizism because we lets face it the russkies are what they are/were. Our culture is totally americanized at this point.

We still have laws/regulations about not selling guns to countries at war or dictatorships but companies have always found creative ways around it.

I believe you still have some swedish weaponsystems in your arsenal even now. and alotta stuff with radar, communication and submarine stuff

-
 
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