Count von Helldorf’s mysterious silencer carbine

The weapon presented here remains to this day surrounded by an aura of mysteries and legends never verified. For a long time, only drawings were published and its existence seemed to be a myth. The veil of doubt was lifted in 2010, when Gabriel Thérin, a French author, managed to locate a copy of this weapon, kept in the reserves of the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning and to obtain quality photos.

Presentation

It is a manual repeating carbine, 9mm Parabellum caliber, with a built-in silencer and a claw-mounted scope. Unfortunately, it was not possible to disassemble or X-ray this silencer to discover its internal structure. Given its shape and volume, however, it is likely that it is a silencer with off-center partitions, derived from the famous Maxim silencer. This huge “exhaust pipe” offered the gases produced by the shot a huge volume of expansion, which was to ensure excellent sound damping, especially when subsonic ammunition was used.