Beretta MAB 38

Italian Alpini troops in North Africa are documented as preferring the MAB 38 over captured British Stens and American Thompsons, citing its rifle-grade accuracy and the instant, intuitive fire-mode selection offered by the dual-trigger system - a feature that is vanishingly rare in submachine gun design. German paratroopers and Waffen-SS units who received them via occupied Italian factories were so impressed that the Wehrmacht formally adopted the weapon as the MP 738(i), one of only a handful of foreign SMGs given a standard German military designation. Designer Tullio Marengoni, Beretta's chief engineer, held the technical patent for the closed-bolt SMG mechanism, and he chose the closed-bolt approach specifically so a submachine gun could be fired like a rifle - an idea most WWII designers dismissed as over-engineered until the MAB 38 proved it on the battlefield.

The MAB 38 was produced in multiple evolving variants: the original Modello 1938A featured a finely machined receiver, a folding bayonet, and a cooling-finned barrel; the 38/42 simplified production using a smoother barrel and stamped components for wartime economy; the 38/44 further streamlined the bolt and recoil system. Post-war variants (38/49, Modello 4, Modello 5, and eventually the Beretta M12) continued the lineage into the late 20th century. Total production of the MAB 38 family exceeded 500,000 units. The weapon's closed-bolt, hammer-fired design and 315mm barrel gave it a flat trajectory and first-round hit probability more commonly associated with carbines than SMGs of the era.