They were the first: Tokarev and Degtyarev submachine guns
PPD-30 pistol with a top-mounted magazine. Museum of Artillery and Signal Troops, St. Petersburg. Photo purchased by AST publishing house
"In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
First John 1:1.
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
First John 1:1.
People and weapon. Someone always comes first. Or he says an important word first. But very often the first step is not very correct, and the first word does not sound very clear. This is exactly what happened, for example, with history submachine guns.
The first examples of these weapons, which appeared during the First World War, both in Italy and in Austria-Hungary, were ... “not very intelligible.” The MP-18 sounded louder, more powerfully and significantly in Germany. It was patented in December 1917 by designer Hugo Schmeisser, produced at Theodor Bergman's enterprise, and was noticed by the military all over the world, but never played a special role in the war itself.
Moreover, soon after the end of the First World War, work began in various countries to create their own submachine guns. They also began in Soviet Russia, despite the difficult legacy of the Civil War and problems in industry. But there were cadres of talented gunsmiths, and there was some interest from the military.
But what was the first word we said in this direction? We will talk about this today.
Progress in the field of creating submachine guns began with the model of F.V. Tokarev, proposed by him in 1927. It was not accepted into service, however, as it turned out, it even had the chance to take part in the Great Patriotic War, although, of course, in an extremely limited manner.
It is interesting that in appearance this weapon turned out to be very elegant and beautiful. A kind of not too long and not too short carbine with a small magazine under the receiver, covered in front with a wooden cover with protrusions for the fingers.
The ammunition was also very interesting for it, for which, without further ado, Tokarev took a cartridge from a revolver, since pistol cartridges were not yet produced in the USSR. True, he had to additionally compress the barrel onto the cone in order to avoid delays due to the sticking of cartridges when fed into the chamber. A new delay arose - the cartridges began to get stuck in the chamber due to the cartridge case being torn apart after the shot; the military also had a number of other comments. So in the end it was never accepted into service.
Nevertheless, this development by Tokarev contained a number of features that were ahead of their time and once again emphasizing the extraordinary talent of this designer. Thus, the sector magazine had holes for visual consumption of ammunition. There was also a convenient magazine cover, which was absent on all our subsequent SMGs. But then... it was strictly forbidden to hold the weapon by the magazine, which, naturally, no one paid attention to in battles.
Among the conveniences is the fact that almost all the metal parts of this submachine gun were covered with wood, which increased the comfort of handling it, especially in winter. Moreover, the second magazine with cartridges could be stored in a special container inside the butt. Switching fire modes was also very simple: using two triggers: pressing the rear trigger turned on a single fire, pressing the front trigger turned on continuous fire.
The submachine gun had a trigger trigger and was fired from a closed bolt. The designer even installed a bolt stop on his brainchild, which left the bolt open after the cartridges in the magazine ran out. And again, this was very rare for such a weapon at that time, and even today which of our submachine guns can boast of this?
The submachine gun also had a very simple sight with the rear sight open at 50 m and two folding, diopter sights at 100 and 200 m. Which, again, was done very prudently, unlike other Soviet SMGs of the pre-war period, which were equipped with very complex and stupid sector sights. Everything is like in other countries. But during the Great Patriotic War, for some reason, they quickly abandoned them and began to install simple and convenient two-position flip rear sights on them.
True, parts for the Tokarev submachine gun had to be made on metal-cutting machines. But here, too, he envisioned a more technologically advanced option, which had a receiver made of a pipe that went into a perforated barrel casing. The number of parts in it, by the way, was small - 81. By the way, the PPSh had 87 parts.
It is believed that between 300 and 600 Tokarev submachine guns were produced, and there were quite a lot of re-compressed Nagant cartridges for them. And somewhere it all lay in warehouses until it surfaced on the Kalinin Front in January 1942. This is even how it happens in the history of weapons!
Of course, knowing that the Tokarev submachine gun did not work, in 1929 V. A. Degtyarev, who had literally just created his famous DP-27 light machine gun, proposed his development of this type of weapon. And he, too, did not come up with something new, but took his own semi-free bolt with lugs diverging to the sides from the DP machine gun.
As for the cartridge, by this time the decision of the Artillery Committee of July 7, 1928, which decided to use 7,63 mm Mauser cartridges for pistols and submachine guns, had already come into force. It was decided to produce them in our country, and all PPs would be created specifically for them. So the Degtyarev submachine gun was created precisely for this cartridge.
By the way, the military did not like it during testing, primarily because it was too complicated for production. And indeed: what is good for a light machine gun is clearly unnecessary for such a simple “machine” as a submachine gun!
After all, the retreat of the PPD-30 bolt back was slowed down due to the redistribution of recoil energy between its first and second parts. The front part of the bolt, which directly locked the breech section of the barrel, had two diverging lugs in the form of levers located on both sides.
In the extreme forward position, when the bolt rested against the breech, the bolt frame continued to move by inertia and under the influence of the recoil spring, and then the conical surface of the hammer, made integral with it, pushed both of these stops apart, and they fit into special cutouts on the sides receiver. This is how the locking was carried out.
When fired, the lugs, due to their beveled surfaces, began to converge and squeezed out the firing pin located between them. At the same time, the withdrawal of the bolt frame accelerated, and the withdrawal of the front part of the bolt, on the contrary, slowed down. And only after the firing pin was completely squeezed out, the bolt was unlocked, and then it moved back together with the bolt frame completely freely.
By the way, this whole design is very similar to the one that German designers later used in their HK MP5 submachine gun with roller brake of the bolt release, only Degtyarev used lever-shaped lugs instead of rollers.
As in the DP-27, the design was reliable, but required very careful processing of the rubbing surfaces, which was clearly not necessary in such a weapon as a mass-produced submachine gun.
Another characteristic detail of this weapon, never seen again, was a disk magazine with radial placement of cartridges, located flat on the receiver, again, similar to how the magazine was located on the DP-27. Today, such a placement looks unusual, but it has its advantages: when shooting from a trench, cover, or in a prone position, this way you can lower the line of sight and, accordingly, the likelihood of the shooter being hit by return fire.
This arrangement of the store, although not a disk, but a box-shaped one, was received by some foreign PPs, for example, the Australian “Owen” and F1. Moreover, the latter served for a very long time and was withdrawn from service only in the early 1990s of the last century. But the box stores blocked the view, which cannot be said about the flat Degtyarevsky one. But its capacity (44 rounds) was too small, while the rate of fire, on the contrary, was too high - 1 rounds/min.
The receiver is milled, similar to a DP box; the barrel with transverse cooling ribs was completely covered with a perforated casing. A handle was provided at the bottom for ease of holding. Flag-type fire switches were located above the trigger guard: fire switch (on the right) and a safety switch (on the left). The sight was frame, calibrated at a distance of up to 200 m.
In general, Degtyarev’s idea to unify the design of the PP with a light machine gun did not justify itself.
And in 1931, the designer began making a new submachine gun with a different type of semi-blowback. In it, the shutter release was slowed down due to increased friction between the bolt handle and the bevel in the front part of the cutout for it in the receiver. At the same time, the shutter itself, moving back, turned a small angle to the right - an original solution, to be sure. This PP had a more technologically advanced round-section receiver and a barrel almost completely covered with wooden linings (instead of a casing).
It was only in 1932 that a blowback-breech submachine gun appeared. Two years were spent fine-tuning it, after which it was adopted by the Red Army under the designation PPD-34.
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