Experienced gun Gerasimenko VAG-73 (USSR)
What do we remember when it comes to sleeveless weapons? An interested person will immediately say about the German G11 submachine gun, it may be remembered that under the same cartridge the Germans developed a PDW submachine gun and a light machine gun with a magazine for 300 rounds. A very annoying (like your humble servant) friend will also lead a competitor to this system - a Mauser machine gun and remember that Diehl participated in the same competition. This is one diagram when the ammunition is a bullet pressed into a parallelepiped of explosive. The second option is the so-called jet bullets in systems like the American MBA Gyrojet pistol.But there is another option - this is when the bullet consists of a metal head and a hollow thin-walled rear, which has the shape of a cylinder (cup). The back of the cartridge serves as a liner, inside which is located a propellant powder charge and a charge of a flammable substance (a burning capsule). Cartridges of this type are used, for example, in the Benelli CB-M2 Italian submachine gun and in the experimental Kazakhstan submachine submachine gun of the Zhetyosov PPJ-005 design, about which I am going to make material later.
To summarize: when it comes to bezgolzovom weapons, remember many countries except the USSR. But this is unfair - and similar systems were developed in the USSR. And it is about one of them - the VAG-72 (73) pistol (chambered for the third, I of the above type) Kiev designer, engineer of the aircraft plant, Vladimir Alekseevich Gerasimenko (1910-1987), I want to tell a little.
Gerasimenko from 1942, engaged in the design of sports and combat pistols. At the beginning of the last century 70-s, he developed and manufactured 7,62-mm sleeveless pistol cartridges and two versions of automatic pistols for them: WAG-72 and WAG-73. The pistols differed in the capacity of the stores: on the VAG-72 there was a 24's charging, and on the VAG-73 48 there was a charging shop.
Gerasimenko's cartridge is a relatively thin-walled bullet made of steel with a rounded head and a hollow back (for gunpowder) and a thread for screwing the capsule. The gun has a rather impressive weight - 1,2kg and dimensions (235x135x28). USM allows firing as a self-cocked and pre-cocked. The gun does not have an external fuse, but is equipped with a two-way translator of fire modes, as it can fire not only with single shots, but also with bursts.To ensure accuracy in automatic firing, the gun is equipped with a pneumatic retarder, braking the bolt as it moves to the rearmost position. Interesting and shop for VAG-73. It really accommodates 48 cartridges and is essentially two stores with separate feed springs placed in one housing one after another. At first, the cartridges from the back shop are spent, and then the feeder of the larva, without meeting the cartridge in its way, runs idle, and the front part of the larva feeds the cartridge from the front shop at each cycle. Shops of this type are used, for example, in the modern Russian submachine gun OZ-53 and they have a great future.
Some put forward the opinion that, they say, this is an unviable construction, since steel bullets would very quickly have “eaten” the barrel. I can argue that these were prototypes intended for reconciliation of the trigger and serial models (if they were) would have received quite normal bullets. By her own story This weapon is indicative of the fact that in Soviet times a completely open development of weapons was carried out on the initiative. a man without an arms education.
Information