OVP

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Beretta OVP

The Beretta OVP was a light submachine gun developed in Italy.

Development

The Italians were the first army ever to adopt a submachine gun, or more correctly, a light automatic gun firing a pistol cartridge. This was the Villar Perosa that ceased to be a service weapon in 1918. The mechanism of the VP was a sound design and shortly after the end of the war the manufacturers of the VP were asked to produce a more practical weapon that became known as the OVP.

History

The OVP was little more than the barrel and action of the VP attached to a wooden buttstock and provided with a trigger and some small refinements. Although formally classed as a delayed blowback, the delay is minimal and certainly had little practical effect as seen by the high rate of fire. The mechanism is the usual one of bolt and return spring, but the bolt is controlled by a track in the receiver body that causes the bolt to rotate 45 degrees as it closes. The striker carries a lug bearing on the receiver track that also bears on a cam face on the bolt, so that the firing pin, driven by the return spring, cannot go forward to fire the cartridge until the bolt has rotated. When the gun is fired, recoil of the cartridge case moves the bolt back, causing it to rotate to the unlocked position, during which movement the pin is withdrawn by the action of the bolt's cam surface. Once unlocked the bolt is free to recoil and complete the firing cycle.