M65 Gas Mask copies and clones

I wanted to do a video regarding these M65 copy or clone masks and all of them a little bit different so I thought it'd be quite interesting. I don't have every variant of M65 clone here so what I'll do is I'll first point out which mask is which so everybody knows because sometimes people say oh it wasn't clear which mask's which. So this is the West German M65 mask here, this is the Israeli M15 mask here, this is the Czech CM4 mask here and on the far right we have the Bulgarian PG1 and I double checked and it is the Bulgarian one you can tell by the voice diaphragm, not the Romanian licensed copy of the M65. So as far as I'm aware the M65 on the left is the first of these type of masks that was built so everything else is a copy of it. Now the M65 is very high quality, it's got a very good interior which you can hopefully see all right on the camera there with sort of a proper chin section, inner mask, prevent fogging, good plastic sort of eyepieces and overall very well made mask. So what I thought was quite interesting is how these masks all seem to vary a bit. So obviously that came first then the most famous copy sort of variant of it is the Israeli M15 which we have here, 14mm filter port here, voice diaphragm here. The exhale valve is actually on the bottom of this mask and what's different about this one is that you've got a drinking sort of section here. I've seen some M15s that seem to have something else here as well but my one doesn't. Now I am obviously assuming that, I'm and with the Czech CM4 to its right we also have the exhale valve in roughly the same place on the bottom with the voice diaphragm there. So in many ways that's close to the Israeli M15. So that's sort of interesting how despite what I assume to be a copy of the M65 the CM4 seems to bear more resemblances to the M15, at least you know ignoring the fact that it doesn't have a it's closer to it but I mean obviously because it's been backwards engineered from photos. In terms of inner masks the Israeli M15 has a very good inner mask as you can see it's got a drinking tube in there. I'm sorry this won't be very obvious on the camera because the straps are in the way. It also has a bit of a nose cushion in there, a sort of forehead cushion that's designed to keep your face at the right distance apart. Again it has sort of a chin drainage hole and it's got a good inner mask so the Israeli M15 internally is very similar to the M65 making it very comfortable and obviously very effective. Now with the Bulgarian PG1 on the right what you'll notice is that the actual filter intake ends up being a bit lower of an angle on the mask compared to the others so that's a bit better for use of the hose actually. But the voice diaphragm is really weird on this so you have the voice diaphragm here but you have the exhale valve if you can see underneath just there which means you exhale but then the voice diaphragm is spaced slightly in front which is a really weird design. You've got an inner mask on this one but it is not anywhere near as good quality as the other masks. There's no drinking tube either obviously it'd function fine as a gas mask. The nose cup seems to cut off a bit more of the vision you'd get out the lenses of this mask as well. But other than that yeah it's a fine copy clone. Apparently this is quite rare but I bought this years ago off the eBay from Bulgarian seller who also sold other Bulgarian gas masks. So there we go. Another interesting thing is obviously these two are NATO standard 40mm filters these two are standard packed 40mm filters as you can see NATO one on the top left there, packed one on the top right there. However what is interesting with the Bulgarian, sorry not Bulgarian, with the Czech CM4 is that it actually takes NATO filters quite well which I'll show you. Basically most Warsaw pack masks will struggle to take a NATO 40mm filter because the threads on the filter are a bit wider than the packed threads. However, if I can actually get it to work now, there we go. A NATO filter, that's a C2 filter, screws on really easily which is very nice because it means you can easily put the filter on you know hasn't got asbestos or anything nasty on quite easily. Whereas vice versa with this one if I try to put this filter on here you'd notice that although it's going in the threads are tight and you're almost cross threading it to get it in. So that's an interesting thing because normally it's always the other way around. Whereas I could put this filter on these two masks very easily but you can't normally put them on the Warsaw pack masks. So that's quite odd, it's almost like when they cloned either the M65 or the M15 they actually looked at the filter thread sort of diameter width and sort of took that into account rather than just making a straight up sort of Warsaw pack 40mm bit on it. But there we go, I thought that was quite interesting. There's also a Romanian licensed copy of the M65 which I don't have but as far as I'm aware that's all very similar. So all of these have a voice diaphragm in the same place but the exhale valves change around a bit and the inner masks are a bit different. Quite a lot of them except the Israeli M15, I don't know if it ever had one attached to it, have these sort of either cloth or rubber sort of neck carry things on there so you can have it round on neck when you take the mask off. But all of them have the five point head harness and the Czech one has fabric straps rather than having you know a sort of rubber strap like all the others. This has a combination of fabric and rubber but the Czech one's got nicer straps. In terms of rubber all of them feel pretty similar except the Czech CM4 which is made from the same sort of rubber as the OM10 and the M10M that the Czechs made a clone of the M17 with. So it's actually a nicer rubber, it's a softer rubber that bends better to the face. In terms of the inside of this one this hasn't got as good a chin thing here, however the inner mask has all the same valves on it there and it you know is a comfort mask and doesn't really fog up. So there you go, there's all the M65 clones and copies I'm aware of except the Romanian one. There's probably more out there but sort of these are the ones I have and I've obviously got an original intact Draeger M65 on the left. In terms of modern usage I'd still go with the Draeger M65 or the Israeli M15 simply because they're the best ones put together and you know the best quality. And if you wanted to get one you can get M15s that are still being made today because as far as I'm aware the Israeli army still uses the M15 because it's a very good mask and there's no need to replace it. One thing to note with these masks is it's better to wear them with a hose and a filter in a haversack because having a 40mm filter directly under your chin means you can't look down properly with the mask on and it can make shouldering a rifle quite difficult. But other than that all pretty similar.