Swiss arms-maker Adolf Furrer specialized in manufacture of the German P-08 Luger with its famous toggle action. But when supplies ceased in 1918 as a result of the German loss, Furrer decided to manufacture his own variant and then, quite oddly, to apply the Mauser toggle action to both a LMG by 1926 and later to a WW2 potential SMG. The LMG was overly complex and yet stil produced for no apparent reason other than no competition (it amazingly survived until the 1950s)! But the Furrer MP41 SMG is universally acknowledged as the most overly complex SMG in history. It was as if Furrer was trying to make a mass-produced Swiss version of the Soviet PPSh-41... but with the inner workings of a Swiss clock! No kidding, he mated the toggle action (sideways, not upward) to a recoil barrel and put the magazine up top to the right! The complexity of design started in 1940 and took until 1944 to get developed and issued! By that time it was not needed at all! A total of 4800 were made in 5 years, under 1000/yr. In Germany, Erma made 250,000 MP-40s in 1943 alone and in Britain ONE factory made 20,000 Stens per month by comparison!!! Swiss soldiers feared the weapon which not only performed terribly, but there were also a lack of spare parts and no real way to maintain or repair that weapon unless shipped back to the factory! The MP41/44 just added a foregrip which was superficial given its poor performance and handling. In battle the SMG would have been next to useless b/c it could not take the wear and one had better not drop it. This weapon was so bad that SMG expert Timothy J. Mullin did NOT even bother to cover it in his extensive SMG book!!!