Victory weapons - PPSh automatic
In films about the Great Patriotic War, our Red Army soldiers, as a rule, are armed with PPSH machine guns, and German soldiers with all the time are angular MPs. To some extent, this corresponded to reality, given that this type of automatic weapons, designed for firing pistol cartridges, both single shots and bursts, was one of the most massive. But it did not appear at the end of World War II, but 25 years before it began.
The First World War was a test for many European states and a real test of their weapons. In 1914, all the armies experienced a shortage of lightweight mechanical weapons, even reworked heavy machine guns in hand, which the infantrymen were individually equipped with. The Italian army, whose soldiers had to fight in the mountains, felt an exceptionally lack of such weapons.
The most 1 machine pistol presented in 1915 was the Italian design engineer Abel Revelli. He has saved in his design many of the properties of the usual "machine worker" - twin 9-mm trunks, with the breech's emphasis on the butt pad with two handles, in which the starting device was built in, enabling firing from the entire barrel in turn or from both. For the operation of automation, Abel Revelli used the recoil of the bolt, the rollback of which was slowed down by the friction of specially provided bolt protrusions in the grooves of the receiver (Revelli groove).
The production of a new type of armament was quite rapidly established at the factories of the company "Vilar-Perosa" and "Fiat", and at the end of 1916, they equipped most of the infantrymen and crews of combat airships. However, it soon became clear that the submachine gun design designer Abel Revelli is complex, massive, he has inordinate ammunition consumption, and the accuracy of firing was extremely unsatisfactory. As a result, the Italians were forced to stop the release of double-barreled automatic monsters.
Germany, of course, did not develop much faster than its opponents in time, but it was ahead of them in qualitative terms. The MP-1917 pistol patented by designer Hugo Schmeisser in December 18 was a rather elaborate design that was later copied in many European countries. The main automation device was similar to the Italian, but without interrupting the rollback of the shutter by friction, which allowed simplifying the mechanism of the weapon. Outwardly, the MP-18 resembled a shortened carbine, with a barrel covered with a metal casing. The barrel box was placed in a familiar wooden box with a traditional forend and example. The drum shop, borrowed from a Parabellum pistol of model 1917, fitted the cartridge's 32. The trigger mechanism provided shooting only in a mechanical mode, therefore MP-18 turned out to be extremely non-thrifty. Until the end of the fighting, the Bergman factory produced 17 thousands of submachine guns, most of which, it’s true, didn’t manage to get into the army.
In our country, the first submachine gun, or as it was also called, the “lightweight carbine,” was made in 1927 directly under the cartridge of the then-wide nagan pistol known gunsmith Fedor Vasilyevich Tokarev. However, tests have shown the uselessness of such low-power ammunition.
In 1929, a similar weapon was made by Vasily Alexandrovich Degtyarev. In fact, it was a slightly reduced sample of his own DP machine gun - the ammunition was placed in a new 44 disc magazine with a cartridge that was mounted on the receiver, the breech was locked with a sliding working fighting larvae. Designer model Basil Degtyarev rejected, pointing out in the comments to the decision on a lot of weight and excessively high rate of firing. BEFORE 1932, the designer completed work on another, completely different submachine gun, which, after 3, was adopted to arm the commanding staff of the Red Army.
In 1940, our army had at its disposal submachine guns of the Degtyarev system (RPM). How effective was this weapon, showed the Soviet-Finnish war. Later, Boris Gavrilovich Shpitalny and Georgy Semenovich Shpagin took up the development of new models. As a result of field tests of experimental examples, it turned out that “Boris Shpitalnogo’s submachine gun needs to be improved”, and Georgiy Shpagin’s submachine gun was recommended as the main weapon for arming the Red Army instead of RPM.
Taking as a basis PPD, George Shpagin designed the weapon, the device was as primitive as possible according to technical indicators, which was succeeded in the final version. In a pilot version, after a few months there were 87 parts, despite the fact that there were 95 in the FPD.
The submachine gun created by Georgy Shpagin worked according to the thesis of a free gate, in front of which there was an annular piston that covered the rear part of the barrel. In the primer cartridge, which was fed into the store, hit the shots attached to the gate. The trigger mechanism is designed for firing single shots and bursts, but without a salvo restriction. To increase accuracy, George Shpagin cut off the front end of the barrel casing - when firing, the powder gases, hitting it, partly extinguished the recoil force, which threw back the weapon back and up. In December, the PCA 1940 adopted the Red Army.
TTX PPSh-41
Length: 843 mm.
Magazine capacity: 35 cartridges in a sector magazine or 71 cartridge in a drum magazine.
Caliber: 7,62x25 mm TT.
Weight: kg xnumx with drum; 5,45 kg with horn; 4,3 kg without a store.
Effective range: approximately 200 meters bursts, to 300 m single shots.
Firing Rate: 900 shots per minute.
Advantages:
High reliability, shoots regardless of conditions, even in severe frost. The hammer in a very hard frost safely breaks the cap, and the wooden butt does not allow the hands to “freeze”.
The firing range is about two times greater than that of the main competitor MP 38 / 40.
High rate of fire created a high density of fire.
Disadvantages:
Somewhat bulky and heavy. With a drum-type shop it is very uncomfortable to carry behind your back.
Long loading store drum type, as a rule, shops were charged before the fight. "Afraid" of fine dust particles is much more than a rifle; covered with a thick layer of fine dust, began to misfire.
The ability to make a random shot when dropped from a height on a hard surface.
A high rate of fire with a shortage of ammunition turned into a deficiency.
A bottle-shaped cartridge was often re-crooked at the time of submission from the store to the chamber.
But even with these seemingly significant shortcomings in accuracy, range and reliability of the PCA, many times it surpassed all types of American submachine guns of American, German, Austrian, Italian and English production available at that time.
During the war the weapon was repeatedly improved. The first PCA was equipped with a special sector sight designed for aimed shooting up to 500 meters, but as practice has shown, the effective use of weapons was only at a distance of up to 200 meters. With this in mind, the sector sight was completely replaced with an easy-to-make, as well as zeroing-in L-shaped one turning around entirely for firing at 100 meters and over 100 meters. The experience of the fighting confirmed that such a sight does not reduce the basic qualities of the weapon. In addition to making changes to the scope, a number of minor changes were made.
PPSH was the most common automatic weapon of the Red Army infantry during the years of the Great Patriotic War. They were armed with tank crews, gunners, paratroopers, scouts, sappers, and signalmen. It was widely used by partisans in the territory occupied by the Nazis.
PCA was widely used not only in the Red Army, but also in the German one. Most often they were armed with SS troops. The army of the Wehrmacht consisted of a massive 7,62-millimeter PCA, as well as a remake chambered for millimeters "Parabellum" 9х19. Moreover, the alteration in the opposite direction was also allowed, it was only necessary to change the magazine adapter and the barrel.
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