Type Semi-automatic pistol Used by See Users | Place of origin Austria Designed 1968 | |
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Designer Hannes Kepplinger and Hermann Schweighofer Manufacturer LES, Inc., Steyr Mannlicher | ||
The Steyr GB, is a double-action 9×19mm Parabellum caliber, large-framed semi-automatic pistol employing a gas-delayed blowback action. As such the GB abbrevation stand for GasBremse (gas brake). It was designed in 1968, intended as a replacement for older handguns in Austrian military service.
Contents
The weapon went into general civilian production in 1982, and in 1988 production ceased.
In the late 1970s an American company, LES Incorporated of Morton Grove, Illinois marketed the Rogak P-18, a close derivative of the Austrian original, but without great commercial success.
Both weapons are now regarded as collector's items, the original (Steyr) model commanding higher prices in the American market.
Development
The original design introduced numerous novel features never before combined in a handgun: double-action mechanism (without safety); a gas-bleed delayed-blowback system; fixed barrel (that theoretically yields greater accuracy); polygonal rifling; and a reduced number of working parts.
To this list the Rogak variant added newly-fashionable stainless steel construction.
Despite an impressive list of innovative features—or because of it—the Steyr design did not prosper in the USA any better than in its country of origin.
Reception
Steyr's expectations of an Austrian military contract were upset with the victory of the Glock 17, which won military trials despite the novelty of its extensive employment of large high-strength polymer components, while the 1983 US military pistol competition, in which the Steyr GB competed, was won by the Beretta M92F. Consequently, Steyr decided to re-focus on the police and civilian market.
While much appreciated by users trained and familiar with the weapon, and well received by customers who understood the mechanism what was intended to be a robust, accurate, reliable functional weapon when used with standard military (full metal jacket) ammunition, the anticipated civilian sales remained low while major official (police) sales never materialized: between the American military's selection of the Beretta 92F, coupled with European military and police forces' selection of the competing SIG-Sauer (P226 full-size and P228 compact high-capacity pistols—the latter adopted by the US Army as the M11) led to a cessation of manufacture of the Steyr GB in 1988 after a total production of between 15,000 and 20,000 pistols—most of them commercial models.
Of the military models, 937 examples were exported to the United States.
Operating mechanism
The Steyr GB is a semi-automatic, blowback-operated firearm. It features a unique gas-delayed blowback locking system based on the Barnitzke system, first used in the Volkssturmgewehr 1-5, and subsequently in the Swiss Pistole 47 W+F (Waffenfabrik Bern) prototype pistol. The Barnitzke system uses gas pressure from the ignited cartridge and feeds it through a small port in the barrel in front of the chamber to retard the rearward motion of the slide.
This is accomplished by using the outside of the barrel as a fixed piston formed by the outside of the barrel, inside a moving cylinder formed by the inside of the slide, gas pressure in the space between them opposing the rearward motion of the slide until the gas pressure has declined (at which point the bullet has left the muzzle) thereby allowing the slide to continue its rearward motion.
Thereafter the Steyr GB follows the conventional semiautomatic cycle: opening the breech; ejecting the empty cartridge case; stripping a new round from the magazine; loading a new cartridge; returning to battery (unless the magazine is empty).