The Sola is a
submachine gun that was built by Societe Luxembourgeoise SA in
Luxembourg
Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
between 1954 and 1957. It uses the
9×19mm Parabellum round
Round or rounds may refer to:
Mathematics and science
* The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere
* Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the number ...
and is capable of using
MP 40
The MP 40 (''Maschinenpistole 40'') is a submachine gun chambered for the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge. It was developed in Nazi Germany and used extensively by the Axis powers during World War II.
Designed in 1938 by Heinrich Vollmer with in ...
-type magazines, which were popular around Europe at the time. This weapon saw service in Africa and several are still in use today.
Overview
The SOLA Super submachine gun is a blowback-operated, open-bolt, selective-fire weapon.
The factory barrel comes with a built-in compensator.
The fire selector is located on the left-hand side of the grip, and has three settings: Safe, semi-auto, and fully automatic.
The ejection port comes with a dust cover that, when closed, locks the bolt in position.
The weapon is fed from a 32-round (standard) staggered magazine.
The rear iron sights are flip-up, while the front is fixed in the "blade" pattern; The sights are marked for 50 (handgun range) and 150 meters.
The gun comes standard with a retractable shoulder stock.
The gun is cheap and "short-lived", breaking after only a relatively short period of use.
Variants
2 variants of this submachine gun were built
Sola Light
This submachine gun was one of the few products of the Luxembourg-based SOLA S.A., a company that briefly produced submachine guns for commercial export. Along with their "Super" model, SOLA produced a "Light" submachine gun which was intended to be compact, cheap, and lightweight. In terms of design it was essentially a Sten-pattern submachine gun with an extremely basic construction comprising very few parts. It operated on a straight-blowback action housed in a stamped steel tubular receiver, fitted with a pistol grip and a retracting wire stock. The magazine feed took 32-round MP 40 mags.
The SOLA "Light" model reportedly cost less than $20 (in 1957 money) and could be produced in large quantities at short notice. However the only sales achieved were illicit deals with an arms trafficker, who supplied a large quantity of SOLA "Super" and "Light" submachine guns to FLN rebels in Algeria (detailed in the SOLA Super page). In connection with this illegal activity, the SOLA plant was raided by police in 1957 and 1,500 unsold SOLA "Light" submachine guns were confiscated, most being destroyed. SOLA briefly moved to plastics manufacturing before closing down in the early 1960s.
[http://firearms.96.lt/pages/SOLALight.html]
Users
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See also
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MP 40
The MP 40 (''Maschinenpistole 40'') is a submachine gun chambered for the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge. It was developed in Nazi Germany and used extensively by the Axis powers during World War II.
Designed in 1938 by Heinrich Vollmer with in ...
*
M3 submachine gun
The M3 is an American .45-caliber submachine gun adopted by the U.S. Army on 12 December 1942, as the United States Submachine Gun, Cal. .45, M3.Iannamico, Frank, ''The U.S. M3-3A1 Submachine Gun'', Moose Lake Publishing, , (1999), pp. 14, 22†...
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FBP
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MAT-49
The MAT-49 is a submachine gun which was developed by French arms factory Manufacture Nationale d'Armes de Tulle (MAT) for use by the French Army and was first produced in 1949.
Development
In 1949, after evaluating several prototypes (including ...
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Vigneron submachine gun
The Vigneron is a submachine gun manufactured in Belgium during the 1950s. It used the 9×19mm NATO cartridge and was used by the Belgian Army until the 1980s.
The Vigneron is a selective-fire weapon for short-range street and brush fighting. It ...
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List of submachine guns
This is a list of submachine guns.
It includes Submachine guns (SMG), Machine pistols (MP), Personal defense weapon systems (PDW), and "compact submachine gun-like weapons" not easily categorized. Weapons may fit in more than one category.
S ...
References
9mm Parabellum submachine guns
Weapons of Luxembourg
Personal weapons
Telescoping bolt submachine guns
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