Henry Rifle Forums

leverjc wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 23, 2023 7:14 pm

Nice shooting old gun. Is it a bolt or semi auto?

fortyshooter wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 23, 2023 7:36 pm

That thing shoots good groups! Do you know the year it was made?

Vaquero wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 24, 2023 12:13 am

fortyshooter wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 23, 2023 7:36 pm

That thing shoots good groups! Do you know the year it was made?

No I haven't a clue, this one has 1976 stamped on the top side of the barrel, but
I've always thought it might be an import mark. No clue though, a little history on them.


A little background
The story of this .22 rifle really starts in World War Two Czechoslovakia. The Czechs produced weapons for the German war effort, among those weapons were .22 training rifles. After the war the Czechs continued to sell those .22 rifles as the Brno model 1. The Brno model 1 became the inspiration or genesis for many .22 training rifles used in the Warsaw Pact countries.

The Czechs ultimately perfected the excellent and still commercially available 452 and now 455 series of .22 rifles well received here in many flavors. The Poles produced the now forgotten but still excellent WZ78. The Yugoslavians created a great rifle that is also still commercially available. Sold under many names in the US including CZ 99 and Remington Model 5 that rifle has been positively reviewed here. The M69, produced from 1969 to 1989, is a Romanian variation in this lineage of .22 rifles.

In 1968 The Soviet Union sent tanks into Czechoslovakia to put down a reform movement called the Prague Spring. The Romanian government sought to generate popular enthusiasm by opposing the Soviet crackdown and encouraging the population to join the paramilitary Patriotic Guards to protect the country. Hundreds of thousands, men and women, joined and every community and factory had its own Patriotic Guards unit. The Romanian military had to have some means of teaching all these people how to shoot and the M69 is what they came up with.

The design goals of the rifle were to produce something that retained the positive qualities of the Brno 1 and like rifles, while also being quicker to produce, and cheaper to produce. They needed a lot of rifles to train people who likely had never held a gun before. Keep in mind Romania in the 70s and 80s had huge foreign debt so wages were very low and the government had no money.

RP