Let's say a word about the poor shovel
37 mm shovel mortar, what do we know about it weapons during the Great Patriotic War?
On the Internet, all articles about this weapon are only critical, everything comes down to “soldier’s wisdom”: “Shovel gun: digs like a mortar, shoots like a shovel.” Or in slang: “why was she needed at all?”
Let's try to put forward a version of why such weapons appeared.
The most complete article by Vadim Antonov with a detailed description of this weapon and its performance characteristics is entitled “Bad Shovel, Useless Mortar,” July 27, 2016 (warspot.ru).
Here's a quote from his article:
«Military story knows of many cases when the development of new types of weapons went down a dead-end path. This happened at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when, in search of strengthening infantry weapons, the Red Army was armed with Army The 37-mm mortar VM-37 was adopted, which also served as a shovel for the infantryman. Alas, embodied in metal, it performed both of its functions poorly…"
The purpose of this article is to show that our military experts are mistaken in their completely negative assessment of the idea of this weapon. Yes, the implementation was unsuccessful, but the essence was correct - to arm each soldier with a means of fragmentation suppression of opponents in cover at a distance of up to 200–250 m. The subsequent appearance of under-barrel grenade launchers confirms this.
Limitations: all reasoning is strictly limited to the time period from the early 1930s to 1945 inclusive and is based on post-knowledge based on widely available literature.
Introduction
Let's start with the regulatory documents:
Combat Manual of the Infantry, part II, 1928, Voenny Vestnik publishing house, articles 74 and 76.
Short: before the attack, troops accumulate at a distance of approximately 200 m from enemy positions under the cover of artillery and/or flanking (oblique, in the terminology of those years) machine gun fire. The starting position for the attack is at a distance of up to 1 m from the enemy, when the companies of the battalion are deployed into battle formations. Attack - non-stop movement to enemy positions and their capture.
BUP, part 2, Moscow - 1942, Military Publishing House of the People's Commissariat of Defense. Articles 19, 20, 36, 37, 38, 39, 442 and 445.
Short: the starting line for the offensive is no further than 800 m from the enemy, in open areas at a greater distance. At the starting line, digging in is mandatory. The accumulation threshold before the attack is not specified in the document - it is determined by the regiment commander. With the “calculation so as not to suffer losses from the fire of our artillery and mortars.” The advance to the attack line takes place under the cover of artillery and mortar fire. At the attack line, the infantry must dig in until the order to attack is received. The order to attack is given by the regiment commander through the battalion commander.
Information: According to the current Charter, for a combined arms commander, the line of safe removal (RBL) from is a constant value. ▪ 400 m – for infantry, ▪ 300 m – for armored personnel carriers (BMP), ▪ 200 m – for tanks.
RBU - the minimum permissible removal of an infantry chain outside field shelters from the explosions of their shells and mines on the line of enemy trenches.
Some background data (which everyone knows) for subsequent reasoning
The classic infantry offensive from the mid-1910s to the mid-1940s on enemy positions was divided into several stages (we will omit reconnaissance, mine clearance, etc. - these are unnecessary details now):
1. Engineering equipment of the starting position for the offensive (in other words, entrenchment) - not always.
2. Beginning of shelling of the enemy line of defense.
3. Advancement to the attack line - up to 200–250 m to the enemy trench line.
4. The shelling moves to the enemy’s second line of defense and flanks. At the same time (almost) an infantry attack on enemy positions begins.
5. An ordinary soldier will cover a distance of 200 m over rough terrain (it’s hard to call a terrain pocked with shell craters and littered with the remains of broken engineering barriers a flat field) in a minute or a minute and a half: avoiding obstacles plus moving from cover to cover (most often craters) takes a lot of time and strength. Those who ran openly, without shelter, shouting “Hurray! For the Tsar and the Fatherland! For the Motherland! For Stalin!" (underline as appropriate), often did not survive under heavy enemy counter fire.
6. Strong counter rifle and machine gun fire from the defenders hidden in trenches (engineering structures).
The troops faced this problem back during the First World War - the advancing chains were mowed down by enemy machine guns, whose crews were holed up in underground shelters during the shelling. And within 10–20 seconds after the shelling stopped, they took up their positions to repel the attack. The situation was called a “positional impasse” - machine guns stopped any advance.
The Germans found a solution to this problem by creating assault groups that destroyed engineering barriers, knocked out enemy machine gunners and small units covering them in the path of the advancing troops, but could not ensure a full-fledged offensive - due to their small numbers and insufficient firepower (there are other reasons, but their coverage is beyond the scope of the article).
Another solution to the positional impasse is tanks. The experience of using tanks in the early to mid-30s was insignificant; the reliability of the tanks raised reasonable doubts. The generals believed that the infantry should be able to attack independently and break through enemy defenses with the support of artillery.
After the First World War, all tested solutions came down to money.
Tanks are expensive, their potential has not yet been assessed.
Stormtroopers. If money was not counted during war, then in peacetime no country in the world could afford to waste money on training numerous elite units. Each attack aircraft was a versatile saboteur: a marksman, a blaster, with excellent physical fitness, knew how to run quickly and crawl in the dark, and was good with edged weapons.
And most importantly, he had to be a professional soldier, not a conscript - only the initial training took 6 months, 12-14 hours of intensive training. If the army agreed to pay decent money to the officers, then the soldiers’ salary, comparable in size to the officer’s, seemed to the generals a whim - “he fulfills his military duty, what money does he need.”
Plus, the state was afraid of having a mass of well-trained but uncontrolled killers in civilian life: strong and determined guys often found quick ways to solve their material and life problems.
The armies were looking for cheaper methods of solving the problem, allowing any conscript, after short-term training, to be thrown into battle with a sufficient probability of success.
Already from the beginning of the First World War, the warring sides began to widely use rifle grenades, which had proven themselves well during the Russo-Japanese War. Of course, their design was improved taking into account the capabilities of industry - if in the Russian-Japanese grenades only had a remote tube-moderator, since they were homemade, then already in 1915 the Russian Army received rifle grenades with an industrial impact fuse. Rifle grenades are still used by infantrymen in a number of countries.
Their main disadvantage was and remains the impossibility of regular firing from a weapon without first removing or shooting the grenade. Thus, although the soldier has a relatively universal weapon, he is greatly limited in the ability to use it.
During the First World War, light light machine guns also appeared, which made it possible to quickly transport them across the battlefield and create a high density of fire in the desired area of attack/defense. Based on the experience gained, light machine guns became an integral part of infantry weapons.
Military experts, analyzing the situation of the “machine gun deadlock” both during the First World War and after its end, were still unable to give an unambiguous answer to the question: how to cover the advancing infantry from enemy fire at a distance of less than 200 m to the enemy trenches?
Three main options were considered:
1. Arm each squad with light machine guns and rifle grenade launchers, so that the infantry would throw grenades and crush enemy positions with machine gun fire as they moved. But it was recognized that high training of troops was needed - even with high ammunition consumption, it was extremely difficult for infantry to suppress oncoming enemy fire - when shooting on the move, it was impossible to guarantee acceptable accuracy of hits.
2. Move heavy machine guns as far forward as possible, which with oblique (flanking) fire were supposed to prevent the defenders from conducting oncoming aimed rifle and machine gun fire. **
**Hence the appearance of periscope sights on heavy machine guns, when only the body of the machine gun protruded from behind the cover, and the machine gunner himself was hidden from the enemy. Since this device for installation on machine guns was expensive, it was not widely used during the Great Patriotic War. You can't beat the accountant, he counts the money. Therefore, the losses among the machine gunners were significant.
3. Arm companies with small-caliber mortars of 30–50 mm: the mine has a limited radius of destruction by fragments (5–15 m), cheap mechanical sighting devices nevertheless provided significantly more accurate fire than rifle grenade launchers, plus a high rate of fire - up to 30 minutes in a minute. The essence of such mortars is that they can work targeted, against specific targets, directly from behind infantry lines, and not across areas, like divisional and corps artillery, which created a barrage of fire on enemy positions.
As experts know, 50-mm mortars did not live up to the hopes placed on them in the Red Army, primarily due to organizational reasons:
- the mortars were placed under the command of platoon commanders: each platoon received one mortar, which replaced all three rifle grenade launchers of the platoon;
– the mortar crew walked in the general chain of the platoon and were knocked out first, because they were a noticeable target due to their weapons;
– the mortar crew in the chain carried a limited supply of mines, and literally in the first minutes of the battle they found themselves without ammunition. Arranging the delivery of ammunition in combat conditions was a difficult task;
– the fire of single small-caliber mortars hit a very limited area of enemy positions due to the “weak” mine, that is, it was of little use to the attackers.
Subsequently, this error was corrected - they created platoons of 50-mm mortars (4 mortars each), recommended firing only with the entire platoon, and categorically prohibited single fire due to low efficiency. Nevertheless, infantry commanders insisted on removing 50-mm mortars from service and replacing them with 82-mm, as more powerful: combat experience showed that caliber matters.
The idea of putting into service 37-mm mortars, which every infantry squad will have (every soldier can afford this, even modern armies) was the thesis of supporters of the mortar solution to the “last 200 meters” problem: the soldier himself will choose who is more dangerous and in whom shoot first.
Experienced painters who had fought in the war were against arming the infantryman with an additional weapon in addition to the rifle. They rightly believed that in the heat of battle one of the units would be lost, since in battle everything that interferes with rapid movement - “superfluous” - is mercilessly thrown away. And after a battle, it is not always possible to pick up entrusted weapons and military equipment - situations vary.
And the responsibility for the loss of weapons is very severe, not only for the soldier, but also for the platoon commander. A shovel is a standard property; it is conveniently attached to the waist belt and its loss is always noticeable, and given its light weight, few people simply throw it away.
This is how the symbiosis of shovel and mortar was born: a compromise between theorists and practitioners. The theorists insisted, the practitioners did not refuse - they understood everything needed, but there was no understanding of how to do it.
Hence the sad fate of the 37 mm shovel mortar.
The first execution mistake was that they insisted on a large weight of the 37-mm mortar mine - 0,5 kg, based on the principle: we replace the accuracy of the mine with the power of its explosion, hence the inability to shoot from hand (aim), the recoil is too high. That is, it is fundamentally impossible to switch from a rifle grenade launcher to another type of weapon - a grenade launcher consisting of a 37 mm barrel and a rifle stock.
The second mistake was that they used an impact fuse. Hence (as a precaution) the need for a special case-cup for each mine, the need to carry it only in a special bandoleer and other inconveniences when carrying, especially when crawling from cover to cover.
The mistake made was corrected when developing the VOG-1 fragmentation grenade for the VG-44(45) rifle grenade launcher: they limited the shot range to 250 m (they reduced the charge of gunpowder in the blank (explosive) cartridge), reduced the weight (I couldn’t find the exact weight, it is known that the weight explosive 50 g, aluminum body, total weight estimated 300–350 grams). This made it possible to shoot from a rifle grenade launcher, aiming while standing, with the emphasis on the shoulder, without necessarily resting the weapon on the ground.
If we had opted for a remote moderator tube as a fuse, these mines would have been absolutely safe. They could be carried in a duffel bag, which an experienced soldier would never leave unattended, and, as needed, reloaded from it, a portable bandoleer for mines. Yes, a remote retarder tube is not the best solution for mines and grenades, but they are still used by troops in our time.
Let's go into the realm of speculation: Yes, you can’t give an additional weapon to a soldier with a rifle; you would have to add a grenade launcher to the squad’s staff. In rifle units, this weapon hardly took root as a standard weapon, the engagement distance was too limited, painters with Civil War experience wanted to cover a distance of 800 m with any small weapon. An example is the remarkable epic of the adoption of submachine guns by the Red Army, a lot has been written about this from the Internet, I will not repeat it.
But, besides battles in the open field, there were many battles in populated areas. And here the ability to accurately throw a grenade/mine at a distance of 100–150 m into a window or gateway is worth a lot.
If a mine, or rather a grenade, would be made with ready-made fragments, weighing up to 250 grams, the direct shot distance would be limited to 200–250 m (the target window opening is 1x0,7 m), they would be fired from rifled weapons for accuracy, I think , the forerunner of the American M-79 grenade launcher would have appeared in the USSR at the beginning - middle of the Great Patriotic War.
Information