Original Item: Only One Available. This is an exceptionally rare Hungarian WWII 50mm 39M Mortar which has been demilitarized to BATF specifications making it inoperable, totally inert, and fully legal to own throughout the USA without any type of license. The demilitarization process includes a bore width hole in the tube and solid steel pin welded across the bore. Not available for export.
Fewer than 2000 of these mortars were ever produced and this example bears serial number 58! It is nicely marked FEMARU-FEGYVER ES GEPGYAR .R.T. which means Fegyver- és Gépgyártó Részvénytársaság ("Arms and Machine Manufacturing Company"), known as FÉG.
The mortar features original paint. The bore size is 50mm with tube length of 19.5 inches, legs measure 22 inches and the base plate diameter is 7 inches. It can fold correctly but the elevation adjustment is frozen, but does not appear to be broken in anyway.
This is an ultra rare fantastic piece of AXIS ordnance history.
The Hungarian Army made its first military incursions of World War Two when it independently invaded neighboring Slovakia in October 1939. The country was pro-German but it did not commit itself to joining the Axis Pact until November 1940. The Hungarian Army had a peacetime strength of just 80,000 troops and like Bulgaria and Romania its weaponry was outdated and it was largely reliant on horses to move artillery. With German support the country very quickly expanded its strength and, in June 1941, put troops in the line alongside German and Romanian forces during Operation Barbarossa. Within a month of the campaign starting, a unit called the Hungarian Rapid Force (also known as the Hungarian Rapid Corps), comprising about 40,000 men, and composed of troops from VIII Corps and 1 Mountain Brigade, advanced deep into the Donets Basin alongside the German Seventeenth Army, where it took part in the Battle of Uman which garnered thousands of Red Army prisoners. The Second Hungarian Army was composed of nine light infantry divisions, each of which had two infantry regiments with their structure supported by obsolete tanks such as Panzer Mk I which only had machine guns. The Second Army was deployed to Stalingrad, where it was given the task of holding a front line some ninety miles long. When the Red Army offensive of January 1943 was launched it very quickly penetrated the positions held by the Hungarian troops, who fell back leaving some 148,000 killed, wounded and captured, losing much weaponry in the process, including more than 400 mortars of 81mm calibre.
As Germany’s ally, the Hungarian Army continued to fight and at the beginning of February 1945 still had 214,000 men deployed. Some elements had surrendered in late 1944 but other units staunchly held out by the side of Germany until the end of the war in May 1945. The fighting would eventually cost 300,000 casualties and many taken prisoner. The weapons used by the infantry units included mortars such as the 50mm calibre 39M produced by FÈG and a Hungarian-built version of the GrW36, known as the 36M. Hungarian factories such as Dimàveg, EMAG and Bàmert produced 81mm calibre mortars such as the 36/39M and 100mm calibre 41M. The 36/39M was a Brandt design weighing 187lbs in action and capable of firing a HE bomb weighing 9lbs out to ranges between 55 and 4,700 yards. Also produced by the factory of Diòsgyor, these weapons were in service at the rate of four per battalion. Factories also produced the 120mm calibre 43M, a Hungarian version of the German GrW42, and Dimàveg also produced the 90mm calibre 17M, a version of the Czechoslovakian Lehky Minomet vz/17 produced by Skoda. Hungarian troops also used captured Red Army weapons such as the 42M 82mm calibre mortar.
