MANUFACTURER – Österreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft (Ӧsterreiche Waffenfabrik), Steyr, Austria
STATUS – Obsolete
SERVICE – Military forces of Austria
In an attempt to supply additional firepower to the Austro-Hungarian troops facing the Italian with their Villar Perosa weapons, a request was made to develop a machine-pistol version of the Steyr M.12. Fifty pistols were adapted by the end of 1915 and were issued to Major Fuchs of the Standschützenbataillon Innsbruck II in February 1916. The original M.12 conversion retained their internal eight-round magazines and emptied far to quickly to be of practical use, in spite of the remarkable low cyclic rate of 800 rounds per minute. A further development of an integral sixteen-round magazine made the design far more useful, especially when used with the attachable stock. An additional 5,000 units of the new M.12/P16 weapon was ordered. In the Austrian military, the weapon was primarily used by the assault platoons of troops assigned to mountain warfare.
The conversion of the M.12 pistol added a selector switch to the right side of the weapon where it attached to the trigger mechanism. The final design was easily switched from semiautomatic to full automatic with a pressure of the thumb on the selector switch. Loading the M.12/P16 still utilized the charger system, only two clips were now needed to fully load the magazine. The capability of full automatic fire resulted in the Steyr M.12/P16 being the first military-issue machine pistol to see front line service. By the end of World War I, an inventory was run that showed 9,873 Steyr M.12/P16 machine pistols still in service. It has been reported that some of these weapons were later converted to use the 9x19mm round for use by German SS units in Austria during World War II.
