Full Auto Friday: Reising SMG Edition (VIDEOS)

By Chris Eger

Most don’t know that bargain boomstick maker Harrington & Richardson made a submachine gun that saw service from Guadalcanal to Normandy– but it happened.
A design from gun inventor Eugene G. Reising — who cut his teeth working with John Browning on several firearms — his early 1940s SMG concept looked like a traditional carbine of its day. Featuring a one-piece wood stock to accommodate a short-barreled delayed blowback weapon, his closed-bolt burp gun attained a cyclic rate of over 500 rounds per minute.

Chambered in .45ACP, the stubby select-fire Reising took used low-capacity (for a sub gun) 12 or 20-round box magazines which limited its practicality. The cocking handle, rather strangely, was recessed under the fore end and required the user to tilt or even flip the gun to chamber a round.
The select-fire version of the gun was produced in two variants, the M50 and M55, by Harrington & Richardson in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The overall length of the M50 version of the gun was 37-inches with an 11-inch finned and compensated barrel. Weight was kept down to 6.8 pounds, unloaded.
The Reising M50, bottom, compared favorably in size to the later .30-caliber M1/M2 Carbine, top. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The M55 variant, which used wooden stock

Source: Guns.com