Fedorov assault rifle. The first attempt at unification ...
Red Army soldiers with Fedorov assault rifles on a Finnish pillbox. Famous photo from the Winter War 1939-1940.
He fired once, and fired two, and a bullet whistled into the bushes ...
You shoot like a soldier, - Kamal said,
- I'll see how you ride!
"Ballad of West and East", R. Kipling
You shoot like a soldier, - Kamal said,
- I'll see how you ride!
"Ballad of West and East", R. Kipling
stories about weapons. A tradition of the XNUMXth century: first, different types of troops and different calibers of weapons. By the middle of the century, they realized that it was not profitable. Nevertheless, each type of troops had their own weapons: infantry, hussar, cuirassier, dragoon, Cossack rifles ... True, the caliber is the same, but the weapons are different. In the middle of the century, the calibers were reduced, cartridges appeared, the nomenclature decreased. Rifle infantry, dragoon, Cossack. It is clear that there are more similarities than differences, but, nevertheless, the weapons were different! The Russo-Japanese War added a submachine gun to the arsenal of the Russian army - the Danish Madsen machine gun. But in terms of design, it was very different from our rifle, not to mention the Maxim machine gun. There was no talk of any unification. And in the army, the point of view about the "strength of a rifle" dominated. Newspapers wrote that the Russo-Japanese War showed that "our gun is much stronger than the Japanese».
Fedorov assault rifle 1916. Right view. The original design draws attention to itself - the presence of a front handle so that the shooters would instinctively not grab the magazine and thereby loosen it. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
And only a few experts paid attention to the fact that the 6,5 mm cartridge of the Japanese Arisaka rifle was lighter than our 7,62 mm, required less scarce non-ferrous metal, but the wounds inflicted by his bullet were almost identical to the wounds from the bullets " trilinear". And it also turned out that the targets on the battlefield began to appear so quickly that the soldiers did not have time to reload the rifle, aim and fire. Which in practice meant that it was necessary to automate all these processes, that is, to create a self-loading rifle!
Fedorov assault rifle 1916. View from the left. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
And since many people understood this, work on its creation was carried out everywhere. Abroad, the notorious H. Maxim, as well as P. Mauser and F. Mannlicher excelled in this direction. But in Russia there were gunsmiths who worked on these weapons, and quite a lot: Roschepey, Tokarev, Staganovich, Shchukin, Vasmund and others. But ... with state support for their work, things were not going well. And above all, because the Emperor Nicholas II himself was an opponent of such weapons, since he believed that we did not have enough cartridges for an automatic rifle. Money was found for a new dress uniform of the 1912 model, that is, in fact, “for rags”, but for new rifles and cartridges for them, that is, “for pieces of iron” - no!
View of the Fedorov assault rifle from above
View from above. shutter closed
View from above. The shutter is open. The magazine feeder plate is clearly visible
Bottom view. The safety lever is visible under the trigger guard. There was also a fire translator behind the trigger, which was very convenient in terms of ergonomics
Nevertheless, V. G. Fedorov also took up an automatic rifle - he taught at that time at the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and presented his first model just following the results of the Russo-Japanese War already in 1906. They tested it at the training ground of the Officers' Rifle School in Oranienbaum a year later, and it turned out that a good automatic rifle could not be created on the basis of the "three-ruler". As a result, a mechanic V. A. Degtyarev was appointed to help him, and work on an automatic rifle was continued. And it was so successful that in 1911, for his rifle of the 1912 model, he received a gold medal and the Mikhailovsky Prize, which was issued once every five years. Like Captain Mosin at one time ... That is, it is obvious that its development was worthwhile!
The machine, as far as possible with a meager number of issued copies, was actively used during the years of the civil war, in particular, during the battles in Finland
And then he realized that the best way out for the designer is to create a cartridge-weapon tandem, or his own weapon under his own cartridge. And he created ... a 6,5-mm caliber cartridge, in many ways similar to the cartridge of the Japanese Arisaka rifle. Similar, but not identical!
The automation of the rifle and the Fedorov submachine gun worked due to the recoil of the barrel during its short course. This is what his mechanism looked like when removed from the stock. The lever above the trigger on the slide box is the slide delay. Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
The barrel and bolt were connected to each other by two plates ("larvae") with projections. Both plates - both left and right - moved inside such a U-shaped profile, which was in a wooden box and was easily removed during disassembly. Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
And then the First World War began, followed by the highest ban on all innovations for which there was simply no money, and Fedorov himself was sent abroad to buy rifles for the Russian army, since, as always, she did not have enough of her own rifles for the war. But - "there was no happiness, but misfortune helped." The army urgently needed "machine guns", but since it was not possible to quickly establish the production of foreign models, they decided on a palliative - to use Fedorov's automatic rifle as such a weapon, equipping it with a large-capacity magazine.
This plate is right under the reload handle. An L-shaped rod is visible under the barrel, on which the return spring of the barrel was put on. Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
And already in 1916, as a colonel, he remade his automatic rifles of 7,62 and 6,5 mm caliber in such a way that automatic fire could be fired from them. A 6,5-mm rifle with an attached magazine with a capacity of 25 rounds just became the coveted "submachine gun", moreover, of domestic design. The caliber cartridge of the 6,5 mm Arisaka rifle instead of the standard 7,62 × 54 mm R rifle cartridge was chosen for it because of its smaller size and power, despite the fact that its bullet speed was comparable to the data of the Russian cartridge - 860 m / s against 820-870 m/s. The sleeve without a “strongly protruding hat” (that is, with a small welt and groove) was also more convenient, which was easier to use in a store with a two-row arrangement of cartridges.
And here is how this mechanism worked: when the barrel, coupled to the bolt, moved back when fired, the larvae symmetrically located on its breech fell on the frame protrusions and changed their position, leaving the bolt protrusions. In this case, the bolt and barrel were disengaged. The barrel then returned back, and the shutter by inertia (and thanks to the push of the accelerator) went back and compressed its own return spring, which then pushed it forward. As a result, the rifle was reloaded, and the whole cycle was repeated. It is clear that the polishing of the larvae had to be of very high quality. Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
By the way, the bullet of the 6,5 × 50 mm Arisaka cartridge just weighed 9 grams, and he himself had a weight of 21,25 grams and a charge of gunpowder of 2,15 grams. By the way, the weight of the cartridge of a three-line rifle was 22,7-25,1 g, the weight of the bullet was 9,6-11,8 g, and the weight of the powder charge was 3,1 g. That is, it did not differ so much from our cartridge .
View of one of the locking plates-larvae from the inside. With a round ledge, it connected to the breech of the barrel, and with a rounded one it hooked on the ledge on the bolt! Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
His rifles and “machine guns” (as his 25-cartridge shortened rifle samples were called) also got to the front, moreover, to the Romanian in the amount of only eight samples and with magazines for 15 rounds, although there were much more rifles themselves - 45 pieces. In general, the new weapon showed itself. But then a revolution began, then a civil war, and with the production of a new machine gun, things essentially stalled until 1920. But from the 20th to the 24th year, they were already able to produce 3200 pieces.
Machine after disassembly. It is clearly seen that the barrel had a very modern longitudinal fins for better cooling. Photo http://www.forgottenweapons.com
It should be noted that the machine had a fairly simple design, especially in comparison with the same Madsen machine gun. The locking elements in the Fedorov assault rifle were a pair of mirror plates-larvae (“cheeks”), symmetrically located opposite each other on the barrel and swinging in a vertical plane. The cylindrical protrusion of the larva entered the corresponding groove on the trunk and served as the axis of its rotation. With a ledge in the back, she came in when locking the lugs of the bolt. And the lower ledge of the larva served to interact with the ledge of the receiver during unlocking, by pressing which it turned.
Soldiers of the Red Army with Fedorov assault rifles. 20s
Paul Mauser's rifle, released back in 1899, had a similar device, although Fedorov's plates were made and arranged differently. It is worth adding that in the design of Paul Mauser's self-loading rifle there was no lever - an accelerator, which was reflected in its reliability. In general, Fedorov, of course, had the opportunity to get acquainted with this design, but he approached it clearly creatively, so that the result was much better than that of Mauser in 1899.
But then the most interesting began. Already in 1922, separate companies armed with Fedorov assault rifles began to form in the Red Army. And it was a phenomenal breakthrough in the field of military affairs.
6,5-mm machine gun V. G. Fedorov and V. A. Degtyarev. Prototype. 1921
In 1923, the machine was modernized by installing a new sight, trigger and magazine. That is, two samples of the Fedorov assault rifle: M1916 and M1923.
6,5-mm light machine gun V. G. Fedorov and G. S. Shpagin with a cooling cover for the Lewis machine gun. Prototype. 1922
At the Kovrov plant, a special design bureau for automatic small arms was created, where Fedorov, with his assistant Degtyarev and a number of other designers, began to unify his machine gun as a single infantry weapon, tanks и aviation. First time in stories, and it was in our country that the benefits of such unification were realized, and concrete steps were taken in this direction. A number of samples of light, heavy, tank and aircraft machine guns were developed, as well as twin and even built structures powered by disks. In total, 11 (!) Designs were presented, both under 6,5 mm and under 7,62 mm. Moreover, the samples chambered for the last cartridge became the direct predecessors of the DP-27 machine gun and the ABC-36 rifle. But all these developments remained so experienced, since the Fedorov assault rifle was unexpectedly withdrawn from service with the Red Army in 1928. Why? No one knows for sure, and there is no explanation for this.
6,5-mm light machine gun V. G. Fedorov and V. A. Degtyarev. Prototype. 1922
Light machine gun V. G. Fedorov and V. A. Degtyarev with water cooling. There was also a sample
It is said that there were too many "maxims", and it would be very expensive to change trunks for them; that the armor penetration of the 6,5 mm cartridge compared to the standard 7,62 × 54 mm R cartridge was low, that the Fedorov assault rifle was difficult to manufacture. But what prevented you from keeping two cartridges in the army? "Machine-gun" heavy and automatic-machine-gun "light". After all, I had to go for it in a situation with the adoption of submachine guns, and nothing - everything worked out. The unification of production would be more important, and the training of troops would be simplified. But ... for some reason, the leadership of the Red Army did not take into account all these arguments of reason, and for some reason Fedorov himself did not insist.
6,5-mm coaxial light machine gun V. G. Fedorov and G. S. Shpagin. Shops were inserted from above. Prototype. 1922
True, when the Red Army had problems on the Mannerheim line, his machine guns were confiscated from the warehouses and armed with them by the assault groups of the Red Army. And no one complained about the complexity or capriciousness of this weapon. But be that as it may, “the train has already left”, and for the second time the idea of unifying army small arms in the USSR came on the basis of the experience of World War II and the Kalashnikov assault rifle that appeared after it!
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