Sturmpistole

The Austro-Hungarians first encountered the Italian 'pistola mitragliatrice' - the Villar Perosa submachine gun - at the Battle of Asiago in May 1916. Although only a few hundred Villar Perosas were in frontline service initially, the number swelled up to about over 2,000 guns by the end of the year and it became increasingly common for Austro-Hungarian troops to come under attack from Italian troops wielding this new and unusual weapon. They came to appreciate the Villar Perosa for its small size, light weight, and rapid fire which made it very handy for alpine warfare, particularly in small unit skirmishes such as patrol ambushes, where it could be devastating if applied effectively. The Villar Perosa became a prized trophy for Austrian troops, with one officer, Lieutenant Felix Hecht von Eleda, commenting that he "liked the Italian machine pistol very much" after witnessing a demonstration of the weapon. Emperor Charles I was also photographed with a Villar Perosa during a visit to the Italian Front. The Austrians had already run tests of a similar weapon, the Maschinengewehr Hellriegel, designed by a member of the Standschützen-Battalionen (possibly Dr. Richard von Hellriegel), volunteer reservists serving in Tyrol. But for whatever reason, either because the weapon had not produced the desired results during trial or because there was simply no demand for a submachine gun-type weapon at the time, this proposal was not adopted, nor revisited when the demand did appear.

A captured Italian "handmaschinengewehr" in June 1916. This is the early model Villar Perosa
with rotating magazine catches, from which the Sturmpistole was would be derived.
(Austrian National Library)

It did not take long before the Austro-Hungarians to decide that they needed a true equivalent weapon to the Villar Perosa. This decision became official in November 1916, and by February of 1917, several prototype designs that met this requirement had been developed. These included submissions by Österreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft (ŒWG) of Steyr, Fegyver- és Gépgyár (FÉG) of Budapest, and Škodovy závody (Škoda) of Plzeň. The designs by ŒWG and FÉG centered around the idea of tethering two pre-existing machine pistols together onto a central mount to mimic the Villar Perosa on a conceptual level, but they bore no similarity to the Italian weapon on a technical basis. Škoda eschewed this philosophy and instead decided that it would be simpler to directly reverse-engineer the Villar Perosa and manufacture a straight copy, which would be almost interchangeable with the original. In March that year, Škoda delivered their first batch of experimental guns - which they called the 'Sturmpistole' ('Assault Pistol') - to the K.u.K. Artillerie-Arsenal in Vienna, and trials were carried out over the coming months. A conclusion was reached in July 1917, in favour of the Škoda gun over ŒWG and FÉG's designs, and an order for 50 Sturmpistolen was placed by K.u.K. Kriegsministerium in anticipation of field trials at the planned Caporetto offensive later that year.

The Sturmpistole was, in most aspects, a direct copy of the Villar Perosa, consisting of twin tubular receivers joined together by a pair of spade grips fitted to their rear. It operated on a delayed-blowback action in which the two bolts were rotated by 45° inertial locks in the front part of the cocking slots. However the chambering was changed from the Italian 9x19mm Glisenti pistol cartridge to the Austrian service 9x23mm Steyr cartridge, the same type used in the M.12 pistol. The vertical magazines, which fed from the top of the receivers, contained 25 rounds each, and were straight rather than curved so as to accommodate for the Austrian cartridge. The magazine feeds were based on those of the early pattern Villar Perosa; that is, the magazine housings rotated clockwise to lock the mags in place and anti-clockwise to release them. It should be noted that in later versions of the Villar Perosa, this magazine release system was replaced by a simpler spring-loaded release catch, however the Austrians never adapted this idea. The Sturmpistole also did not replicate the Villar Perosa's mounting system, which consisted of a circular disc unit attached to the barrels which slotted into a socket on a large, twin-legged metal shield; rather, it was mounted by a hinge to a proprietary flat wooden frame with a pair of canvas straps which allowed it to be carried on the user's back. This type of wooden frame mount was also employed by the Austrians for the Schwarzlose M.7/12/16 Handmaschinengewehr and for ammunition boxes. A detachable shield was still a feature, but was slotted onto the gun via a pair of diagonal cuts on the sides of the front sight block.

The standard model Sturmpistole M.18, as illustrated in the official manual.

The first Sturmpistolen were finally delivered to the front in October, issued in batches of ten to Gebirgsschützenbataillonen (Mountain Battalions) in the Mrzli-Vodil sector just outside of Caporetto. Almost immediately, issues with these weapons were reported; the magazines were of poor quality and gave regular stoppages. One battalion, under the command of a Captain Prasch, reported that of the ten guns they received, nine malfunctioned and only one was fully operable. This was quite a damning report for the weapon, especially since the Caporetto offensive was to take place in only a matter of days. Additionally, the element of surprise was gone: the existence of this new weapon, along with all its faults, was immediately disclosed to the Italians by two Czech deserters who had abandoned Captain Prasch's battalion on the 19th or 20th of October.

Nonetheless, the Caporetto offensive - which was launched on the 24th of October - proved to be an unprecedented success for the Austro-Hungarians and resulted in a complete rout of the Italian 2nd Army. Photographs taken from the front on the second day of the offensive prove that the Sturmpistole was present at the battle, though with only 50 guns in service at this time and many of them plagued with functional issues, it is doubtful that their use made any appreciable impact during the fighting. In fact the results of the Sturmpistole's baptism by fire was likely of less interest to the K.u.K. Kriegsministerium than the capture of some 2,000 Villar Perosa submachine guns from the defeated Italians, along with plentiful supplies of their ammunition. This constituted about nine months worth of Italian produce and decreased the urgency by which the Austro-Hungarians needed to begin manufacture of the Sturmpistole.

Sturmpistolen

Austrian Gebirgsschützenbataillon (Mountain Battalion) troops armed with the Sturmpistole
during the Caporetto Offensive, 25th October 1917. Note the magazine pouches.
(Austrian National Library)

Nevertheless the Kriegsministerium did not give up on the Sturmpistole, and ordered a further 200 guns from Škoda at the end of the year. Meanwhile there was brief consideration for arranging tests between the Sturmpistole and a German competitor, the Maschinenpistole Schwarzlose, which had been licensed to ŒWG. These plans collapsed after the Schwarzlose company in Berlin failed to deliver even ten trial guns during the first three months of 1918. The Sturmpistole was faring better than that, but not by much; by March of 1918, with only 85 of these guns actually delivered, it became clear that Škoda was struggling to juggle the Sturmpistole project with the production of other, higher-priority war materials. Adoption of the weapon was made official at the end of Spring that year, under the designation Sturmpistole M.18, and manuals were printed which instructed troops in the use of this new gun. The Kriegsministerium placed an immediate order for 40,000 Sturmpistolen to be manufactured at Škoda and ŒWG, but despite this, there is very little evidence that mass-production ever truly commenced. The issue of Sturmpistolen to select machine gun companies in mid-1918 is recorded, but little is known of its use on the front after Caporetto; it seems probable that it was employed by the Sturmbataillonen used it during the unsuccessful Piave offensive, as by June 1918 the demand for submachine guns was such that the Sturmbataillonen raised specialist maschinenpistole platoons that were presumably issued with Sturmpistolen and captured Villar Perosas. Many of these Villar Perosas were modified with rudimentary wooden stocks to allow them to be fired from the hip or shoulder as assault weapons, though as far as is known this procedure was never carried out on the Sturmpistole, which remained mounted to a flat wooden tray. The fact that several examples of the Sturmpistole exist today in Italian museums, one of which appears to be battle-damaged, indicates that the Italians did encounter and capture this weapon in combat after 1917, most likely at the Piave or at Vittorio Veneto.

Variances in design

It should be noted that, for whatever reason, there exists two different variations of the Sturmpistole which exhibit detail changes. The presumed 'early' pattern model more closely adheres to the original design of the Villar Perosa, with very few changes except for the chambering and the mounting system; the safety switch is fitted directly over the rear sight peephole. On this version, the front sight bracket is rounded at the sides and will not take a shield attachment. The 'late' pattern model, which appears to have been the standard production variant made in the greatest numbers, deviated from the Villar Perosa in more aspects. The location of the safety switch was changed to the right side of the rear sight, instead of the back, and the rear sight itself was redesigned from an peephole aperture to an open notch, giving greater peripheral visibility. The front sighting unit was rectangular in shape with two diagonal cuts on either side, allowing for a protective shield to be slotted onto it. Finally, the cocking handles were changed in shape from spheres to knobs, and the retracting pawls had two screw joints instead of just one.

SturmpistoleComparison

The 'early' pattern Sturmpistole (left), compared to the 'late' pattern Sturmpistole (right). Note the difference in the shape of the front
sight bracket, the cocking handles, and the rear sight assembly.
(Heeresgeschichtliches Museum/Vittorio Vaglio via Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra)

There existed also a third variant of the Sturmpistole, which almost exactly mimics the original Italian weapon, complete with the circular "ball" joint carrying the front sight which was a mounting point for the shield. This variant was the model proposed to the Kriegsministerium in early 1917 to prove that a copy of the Villar Perosa could be made, complete with an imitation of the Italian carrying case for the gun with a set of spare barrels and 10 magazines. No surviving examples of this model are known to exist, as it was likely only made in very small numbers for trials.

The end of the Sturmpistole

Production of the Sturmpistole ended definitively upon the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the signing of the Armistice of Villa Giusti. The total number of Sturmpistolen produced from March 1917 - November 1918 is unknown, though cannot have been any substantial quantity. Manufacture of this weapon never came anywhere close to the rate at which the Italians were producing the Villar Perosa, and today only a small few examples of the Sturmpistole are known to survive in Austrian, Czech, and Italian museums (listed below).

Being only a limited service weapon, rather overshadowed by the original Italian weapon, the Sturmpistole bore no great legacy after the war. It did not remain in service with the post-war Austrian or Hungarian militaries, which were greatly reduced in size; some Sturmpistolen and Villar Perosas were retained by the independent Czechslovakian Army, but were generally only kept in storage and not issued. There was, however, at least one weapon developed after the war which appears to have been a derivative of the Sturmpistole - the 'Kulometná Pistole Netsch', designed by a former engineer of the Škoda plant, Josef Netsch, was a single-barreled automatic carbine with a buttstock which employed the same bolt design and locking mechanism as the Villar Perosa. There can be little doubt that, in designing this weapon, Netsch was influenced by Škoda's work on the Sturmpistole. Netsch's carbine was tested in several variations by the Czechoslovakian Army in 1919, but was not adopted for service.

Known surviving models:

Collection	Location	Notes	Condition
Heeresgeschichtliches Museum	Vienna, Austria	Early pattern model	Appears good
Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra	Rovereto, Italy	Late pattern model	Appears good
Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo	Rome, Italy	Late pattern model	Appears good
Museo della Bonifica	Venice, Italy	Late pattern model	Extremely poor

Resources used:

Merkheft für die Sturmpistole (Official Austro-Hungarian manual, 1918)
Josef Mötz & Joschi Schuy, Die Weiterentwicklung der Selbstladepistole I (Laxenburg: Mag. Josef Mötz, 2013)
Jan Skramoušský, 'Nové pěchotní zbraně', Historie a vojenství (June 2016)
Livio Pierallini, 'Sturmpistole Villar Perosa', Diana Armi (May 2004)
Otto Gallian, Monte Asolone 1918 (Graz: Leykam-Verlag, 1933)
Additional information provided by Vittorio Vaglio