Our first serial submachine gun. Submachine gun PPD Photo

PART TWO DEVICE OF A SINGLE-CHARGED ANTI-TANK GUN ARR. 1941 DEGTYAREV SYSTEMS - PTRD Chapter I DEVICE OF ANTI-TANK SINGLE-CHARGED GUN Barrel34. The barrel serves to direct the flight of the bullet; inside it has a channel with eight grooves that wind on the left

Tokarev pistol today Before moving on to the main topic of this article, let us recall that the TT pistol was created in a country destroyed by coups and the Civil War, largely due to the talent and enthusiasm of Fedor Vasilyevich Tokarev himself and his design

PB silent pistol In 1967, a pistol equipped with an integrated and removable silencer - PB (“silent pistol”, index 6P9) created by A.A.

Submachine gun Degtyarev - 80 years. Part 2 Above: fighters of the ski battalion in camouflage suits and with submachine guns PPD-34/38 (with a drum magazine) and PPSh. This experience

The Poet and the Pistol I belong to the generation that grew up on the poems of Yunna Moritz. I don't remember if I had a book as a child. Perhaps not, but it was not necessary. Each of us had a record on which the poetess (“poetka”, as Yunna Petrovna prefers to put it in

January 2, 1880 was born Soviet designer small arms Vasily Alekseevich Degtyarev. We have prepared a review dedicated to its worldwide famous models weapons.

DP light machine gun

Submachine gun Degtyarev

DK machine gun

Degtyarev anti-tank rifle

Degtyarev light machine gun

DS-39

DT

Submachine gun PPD-40 (USSR)

Submachine gun PPD-40 Photo (c) Jakes

On February 15, 1940, Degtyarev presented a modernized version of his submachine gun, designed with the participation of the designers of the Kovrov plant P.E. Ivanova, S.N. Kalygina, E.K. Aleksandrovich, N.N. Lopukhovsky and V.A. Vvedensky. The new weapon had a split stock in two parts, located before and after the store. These parts were equipped with metal guide stops intended for attaching the magazine, which allowed the use of a drum magazine without a protruding neck. The capacity of such a store was reduced to 71 rounds. However, the reliability of feeding cartridges has increased significantly. The use of sector box magazines, also called "horns", in the new submachine gun in the 1934 model submachine gun became impossible. They returned to the box-shaped "horns" only during the Second World War, thanks to the combat experience of operating the PPSh-41 troops, which showed the excess capacity of the drum magazine and its too large mass. A new version of the Degtyarev submachine gun was approved by the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars in production on February 21, 1940 and adopted as the "Degtyarev system submachine gun of the 1940 model" - PPD-40. Production of PPD-40 began in March of the same year.

In total, 81118 PPD-40 submachine guns were produced for the entire 1940 year. As a result, the 1940 model is the most massive in terms of the number of copies produced. In addition, the armed forces received a fairly significant amount of PPD. The PPD-40 submachine gun was used at the very beginning of the war, but this type of weapon was still greatly lacking in the troops, and compared to the enemy, the Red Army was significantly inferior to the Wehrmacht in terms of the number of submachine guns available. Already at the end of 1941, the PPD-40 was replaced by a much more technologically advanced and cheaper to manufacture, more reliable Shpagin PPSh-41 submachine gun, designed in 1940. The huge advantage of the PPSh-41 was that this weapon was originally developed with mass production in mind at any industrial enterprise with low-power press equipment. This circumstance proved to be extremely important during the war years.

But at first, while the production of PPSh-41 had not yet acquired the proper scale, in the initial period of the war, the production of PPD-40 was temporarily restored at the Sestroretsk Tool Plant named after S.P. Voskov in Leningrad. Since December 1941, PPD-40 began to be manufactured at the plant. A.A. Kulakov. At the Kovrov plant, about 5,000 PPD-40 submachine guns were assembled from the available parts. In total, for 1941-1942. in Leningrad, 42870 PPD-40s were produced, which entered service with the troops of the Leningrad and Karelian fronts. Many PPD-40s of Leningrad production, instead of a sector sight, were equipped with a simplified folding, as well as a simplified configuration fuse. Later, using the same production capacity production of a much more technologically advanced Sudaev submachine gun was carried out. PPD-40 fire was recognized as effective up to 300 m when firing single shots, up to 200 - when firing in short bursts and up to 100 - in a continuous burst. The lethal force of the bullet was maintained at distances up to 800 m. The main type of fire was fire in short bursts. At distances of less than 100 m, continuous fire was allowed at a critical moment, however, in order to avoid overheating, no more than 4 stores in a row.

Specifications

Caliber: 7.62×25

Weapon length: 788 mm

Barrel length: 267 mm

Weight without cartridges: 3.6 kg.

Rate of fire: 800 rds / min

Magazine capacity: 71 rounds

Submachine guns

• Austria

The Degtyarev submachine gun became the first representative of this type of weapon adopted by the Red Army. And, in general, it cannot be said that the first automatic “pancake” came out lumpy, although at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War he had to give way to more modern models.

The question of the gradual transition of the Red Army to automatic weapons was raised in 1925, when the last flashes of the Civil War died out and one could calmly think in which direction the army should be reformed.

He was the first

The Artillery Committee responsible for armament was more interested in self-loading automatic rifles - since back in 1913 the first such model was created by Vladimir Fedorov. Fedorov's student, the Tula gunsmith Vasily Degtyarev, eventually set off on an independent voyage, focusing specifically on submachine guns, or, as they were more commonly called, machine guns.

True, at first, work in this direction did not go well with Degtyarev - perhaps because Artkom initially formulated the terms of reference incorrectly, prescribing that machine guns be designed for Naganov cartridges. In any case, according to the test results of 1930, both Tokarev's "light carbine" and the Degtyarev machine gun, designed on the basis of his successful light machine gun, were rejected.

Things went well when they decided to switch to the cartridge of the popular Mauser pistol, the bottle shape of which increased the reliability of feeding from the magazine. In addition, the transition to this caliber gave significant savings, since it was possible to use rejected three-line barrels.

For the next tests of 1932-1933, Degtyarev proposed a new modification with a free shutter designed by Tokarev, Korovin, Prilutsky and Karelin.

However, this model also had to be finalized before it was accepted into service in 1935 as a 7.62-millimeter submachine gun of the 1934 model of the Degtyarev system (PPD). They decided to produce it at the Kovrov plant No. 2 in the Vladimir region.

However, the pace of production was not impressive: in 1934, only 44 copies were produced, and by 1940, a little more than 5 thousand. Since a fair number of machine guns were sent to the Spanish Republicans, it can be said that the presence of the PPD was not very much noticed in the Red Army. Machine guns were generally treated as "police" weapons, preferring to arm the Red Army with self-loading and automatic rifles.

The brainchild of Degtyarev was issued to "certain categories of soldiers of the Red Army, the border guards of the NKVD, machine-gun and gun crews." In essence, one could talk about tests carried out on an army scale, during which the technological parameters of the weapon were tested, and the tactics of its use were tested.

Degtyar vs Sveta

Designing the PPD, Degtyarev focused on the German samples MP18, MP28 and Rheinmetall MP19.

The action of automation was based on the use of the recoil energy of the free shutter.

The barrel had four rifling going from left to top to right. In front of the receiver, a perforated barrel casing was attached to the thread, protecting the shooter's hands from burns.

The shutter consisted of a handle, a drummer with an axis, a striker and an ejector with a spring, combined with a fuse handle. Return mechanism- from a return spring and a butt plate with a guide rod. The trigger mechanism was housed in a separate box, secured with a pin, and was designed to fire in bursts and single shots.

The fuse was located on the cocking handle, and its design turned out to be so successful that it later switched to the Shpagin submachine gun (PPSh).

The weight of the weapon without a magazine was 3.36 kg, length - 788 mm, rate of fire - about 1000 rounds per minute.

The sights were designed at distances from 50 to 500 m. With a lethal range of 800 m, firing at the enemy even from a distance of half a kilometer did not make sense. However, it was quite realistic to hit an enemy at a distance of 300 m with a single shot, which was superior to other machine guns of that time.

In 1938-1939, the PPD was modernized, increasing the reliability of the magazine fastening and christening the resulting product as the "submachine gun of the 1934-1938 model of the Degtyarev system", or the "second sample". True, the biography of this second sample was short.

The main argument against PPD was its high cost. In 1939 prices, one copy cost 900 rubles, while another well-known brainchild of Degtyarev - a light machine gun - cost only 150 rubles more.

However, as such, the PPD was not removed from service. It was just removed from production program, and the copies available in the troops (except for the border and escort units) were confiscated and sent to warehouses, where, however, they were instructed to “keep in order”, providing “an appropriate amount of ammunition”.

Almost simultaneously, the Tokarev self-loading rifle - SVT, also known as affectionate name"Sveta".

"Blockade", which reached Berlin

However, at the end of the year, the fate of the PPD took a new sharp turn, which was explained by the sad experience gained during winter war with Finland.

The Suomi assault rifles used by the Finns made a huge impression on the Red Army, although the scale of their use was not so large (only a few percent of the total number of Finnish small arms).

Requests flew from the combat units to the headquarters: to send more submachine guns in order to equip "at least one squad per company."

The warehouses were again devastated, something was confiscated from the border guards, and most importantly, from January 1940, an urgently improved PPD was put into service, transferring the enterprises producing it to a three-shift mode of operation. The busiest was the Sestro-Retsk Tool Plant closest to the front, which accounted for most of products. New model, which retained the index 34/38, was radically different from the first two samples even in its appearance.

The receiver began to be made from a tubular billet instead of a milled one.

The number of holes on the barrel casing was reduced from 55 short to 15 long. A separate drummer on the axis replaced the striker fixed in the bolt cup.

The ejector with a leaf spring, stock, trigger guard, fuse were simplified, which, accordingly, reduced the cost.

In addition to the sector store designed for 25 rounds, a drum magazine for 73 rounds was introduced, which looked like a Suomi magazine, but differed from it in the design of the mount. The design, however, was not very reliable, but a large capacity became an important factor in the conditions of fleeting close combat.

Barely new sample went into the series, as Degtyarev introduced another modification with a more reliable magazine mount, although with a drum capacity of four rounds less.

It was this variant that was re-approved as a regular weapon as a "submachine gun of the 1940 model of the Degtyarev system." It is known that by the end of the year the factories produced more than 80 thousand copies, which made this weapon really massive.

Great Patriotic War brought down the statistics, because by the end of 1941 the command decided to switch to a more reliable and technologically advanced Shpagin submachine gun. However, the transition took some time. For example, at the Kovrov plant, even switching to PPSh, about five thousand pieces of PPD were manually assembled from the remaining parts.

At the Sestroretsky plant evacuated to Leningrad, they did not break the technology at all, so the circulation of the “blockade issue” amounted to an impressive figure: 42,870 copies. They differed from their counterparts released in “peaceful” conditions by a simplified folding (instead of a sector) sight and a fuse shape.

In general, the PPD turned out to be a good weapon. It is significant that captured machine guns were used in parts of the Wehrmacht and their allies, and more than five thousand copies were supplied by the USSR to Tito's partisans in 1944, and even at the end of the war they were in service with the Yugoslav People's Army.

Yes, and in the Red Army, many walked with this machine gun to Berlin.

PPD, contrary to the legends, is not at all copied from the Finnish "Suomi"

In 2010, there are two significant anniversaries at once: 75 years ago, the submachine gun of the system of V. A. Degtyarev was adopted and 70 years ago, the submachine gun of the system of G. S. Shpagin. The fate of the PPD and PPSh reflected the dramatic nature of this type of domestic on the eve of the Great Patriotic War and its exceptional role in the course of the confrontation on the Soviet-German front.

Submachine guns began to enter infantry units during the First World War. The use of a pistol cartridge made it possible to create a new type of automatic small arms, quite compact in size and relatively small in mass, from which it was possible to conduct dense fire in close combat. True, outside the "near" ranges, the performance indicators of submachine guns turned out to be quite modest. This largely determined the attitude towards the new weapon in a number of armies, including the Red Army, as a kind of auxiliary means.

NOT ONLY FOR GANGSTERS AND COPS

However, the widespread opinion about the "neglect" of the Soviet military leadership for submachine guns, to put it mildly, is greatly exaggerated. As early as October 27, 1925, the Commission on Armaments of the Red Army noted: "... it is necessary to re-equip the junior and middle command personnel with an automatic submachine gun, leaving the Nagant in service with the senior and senior command personnel." On December 28, 1926, the Artillery Committee of the Artillery Directorate of the Red Army approved the technical specifications for the manufacture of submachine guns.

Quite a bit of time passed, and already in 1927, F.V. Tokarev, who at that time worked in the design bureau of the First Tula Arms Plants, presented his own model of a submachine gun - the so-called light carbine. However, it was made under the then most accessible 7.62-mm revolver cartridge "revolver", which was poorly suited for automatic weapons. Meanwhile, work was already underway in the Soviet Union on a self-loading pistol, and on July 7, 1928, the Artillery Committee proposed using a 7.63-mm Mauser cartridge for pistols and submachine guns.

The Report of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR of December 1929 stated: “The adopted system of infantry weapons of the Red Army provides for the introduction in the near future of a semi-automatic self-loading rifle ... a self-loading pistol ... a submachine gun as a powerful automatic melee weapon (there are samples, a store on 20-25 rounds, range - 400-500 meters). The main weapon was to be a rifle chambered for a powerful rifle cartridge, the auxiliary weapon was a submachine gun chambered for a pistol cartridge. In 1930, a 7.62 mm pistol cartridge (7.62x25) was adopted - a domestic version of the 7.63 mm Mauser cartridge. Under it, the development of submachine guns began.

Already in June-July 1930, by order of the Deputy People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs I.P. Uborevich, a commission headed by division commander V.F. Grushetsky was testing self-loading pistols and experienced submachine guns. These were samples developed by F.V. Tokarev under the revolver cartridge "Nagant", V.A. Degtyarev (he then headed the design bureau of the Kovrov Plant No. 2, later the State Union Plant No. 2 named after K. O. Kirkizh) and S A. Korovin - under a pistol cartridge. At the same time, foreign pistols and submachine guns undergo a similar practical test.

In general, the test results of the first domestic submachine guns were unsatisfactory. Among the reasons for the failures was the discrepancy between the power of the pistol cartridge, the high rate of fire and the too limited weight of the samples, which did not allow achieving acceptable accuracy of fire.

At the same time, submachine guns were still treated ambiguously. For example, at the plenum of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Artillery Directorate on December 14, 1930, it was emphasized: “Submachine guns are currently used mainly in the police and internal security forces. For combat purposes, the Germans and Americans do not recognize them as perfect enough. This opinion was confirmed due to the fact that in Weimar Germany police units were supplied with MP.18 and MP.28 submachine guns. And the American Thompson submachine gun, which, although it was created as an army weapon, “became famous” mainly during gangster raids and showdowns, as well as operations of law enforcement officers. Even the following point of view was expressed: they say, in the armament system of the Red Army, "the submachine gun appeared not from the requirements, but due to the fact that such a sample was made and they tried to apply it to this system." But these conclusions did not interrupt the work of Soviet designers.

In 1932-1933, 14 samples of 7.62-mm submachine guns, presented, among others, by F. V. Tokarev, V. A. Degtyarev, S. A. Korovin, S. A. Prilutsky, I. N Kolesnikov. The “brainchildren” of Degtyarev and Tokarev were recognized as the most successful. In January 1934, the Artillery Directorate noted the Degtyarev submachine gun as the best in terms of combat and operational qualities. He did not have a high rate of fire, but stood out for greater accuracy and manufacturability. Characteristic is the use of a significant number of cylindrical parts (trunk, receiver, barrel cover, bolt, butt plate), manufactured on universal lathes.

On June 9, 1935, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, the “7.62-mm Degtyarev submachine gun mod. 1934 (PPD-34)." First of all, they intended to supply the command staff of the Red Army.

UPGRADE REQUIRED

PPD-34 belonged to the samples of the classic "carbine" layout, given by the German MP.18 / I, with a wooden stock and a cylindrical perforated barrel casing. The automation of the submachine gun operated at the expense of the recoil energy of the free shutter. The PPD trigger mechanism, made by a separate assembly, allowed automatic and single fire, the flag translator was located in front of the trigger guard. The shot was fired from the rear sear, that is, with the shutter open. A non-automatic fuse in the form of a latch was located on the bolt handle and blocked it in the forward or rear position. A detachable box-shaped magazine of a sector shape was attached from below. The sector sight was notched at a distance of 50 to 500 m. The distance of aimed fire, which was so high for submachine guns, would be abandoned only during the Great Patriotic War.

In 1934, Kovrov Plant No. 2 produced 44 PPDs, in 1935 - only 23, in 1936 - 911, in 1937 - 1291, in 1938 - 1115, in 1939 - 1700. If for 1937 and 1938 produced 3,085,000 magazine rifles (excluding sniper rifles), then PPD - 4106. This allows us to judge the place that was assigned to the submachine gun in the Red Army weapon system.

Along the way, the refinement of the PPD continued, and already in 1939 the Artillery Committee of the Artillery Directorate approved the changes prepared by plant No. 2 in the drawings of the submachine gun. The weapon received the designation "submachine gun model 1934/38". In the PPD of this sample, they strengthened the magazine mount by installing an additional neck for its fastening, worked out the interchangeability of magazines, and strengthened the landing of the sight. At the same time, the Artillery Committee indicated that “it is necessary to introduce it into service with certain categories of soldiers of the Red Army, the NKVD border guard, machine-gun and gun crews, some specialists, airborne troops, car drivers, etc.”

There were reasons for that. During the war of 1932-1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay, for the first time, submachine guns of various systems were used quite widely, and not without success. They were also used in civil war in Spain (1936-1939). Soon, the soldiers of the Red Army had an unpleasant acquaintance with the Finnish "Suomi" m / 1931. This happened during the three-month "unfamous" campaign of 1939-1940.

However, it was in 1939 that the fate of the PPD was in question. At the initiative of the People's Commissariat of Defense, the issue of ending the production of submachine guns was discussed. And nine months before the start of the Soviet-Finnish war, they were withdrawn from the units of the Red Army and transferred to storage and to the border troops of the NKVD. Often they try to explain this by the "tyranny" of the head of the Artillery Directorate, First Deputy People's Commissar of Defense G. I. Kulik. But at the same time, one cannot but pay attention to the report on the production of automatic small arms at the enterprises of the People's Commissariat for Armaments for 1939. This document stated that the manufacture of PPDs should "stop until the noted shortcomings are eliminated and the design is simplified." And it was proposed: "... the development of a new type of automatic weapon for a pistol cartridge should be continued for a possible replacement of the outdated PPD design."

In the same 1939, the most authoritative specialist V. G. Fedorov (monograph "The Evolution of Small Arms") pointed to the "huge future" of the submachine gun as "a powerful, relatively light and at the same time simple weapon in its design", however, " subject to some improvements. Fedorov also wrote about "the rapprochement of two types, namely the assault rifle and the submachine gun" based on the creation of a cartridge "with a reduced aiming range for rifles and an increased aiming range for submachine guns." However, by the beginning of World War II, such a cartridge had not yet appeared. It is not surprising that submachine guns began to be called submachine guns during the Finnish campaign in the Red Army - such a name would last until the end of the 40s.

The successful use by the enemy in the battles of "Suomi" forced to urgently return to the units of the Red army PPD. Demands came from the front to equip with submachine guns modeled on the Finns "at least one squad per company." The available PPDs were urgently transferred to units in Karelia, and at the end of December 1939 - a month after the start of the war - at the direction of the Main Military Council, mass production of Degtyarev submachine guns began.

On January 6, 1940, by a decision of the Defense Committee, the improved PPD was adopted by the Red Army.

THIRD MODIFICATION

Kovrov Plant No. 2 received a special government assignment - to set up the production of PPD. To help in its implementation, a team of specialists was sent there under the leadership of Deputy People's Commissar for Armaments I. A. Barsukov. The production of submachine gun parts was distributed to almost all workshops, but already in January 1940, a workshop designed for the production of submachine guns was launched at the plant. The workshops of the tool department were engaged only in the manufacture of technological equipment and tools necessary for the production of PPD.

To reduce the time for the production of one submachine gun, a number of changes were made to its design:

The number of windows in the casing decreased from 55 to 15; the bottom of the casing was made separately and pressed into the pipe;

The bolt box was made of a pipe, the sight block was made separately;

A separate drummer with an axis was eliminated in the shutter, the striker was fixedly fixed in the shutter with a pin;

Installed a simplified leaf spring ejector.

Moreover, PPD, like Suomi, was equipped with a drum magazine. However, Degtyarev suggested a simpler way out - increasing the capacity of the box magazine to 30 rounds and simplifying its change. Although this option, which required significantly lower costs, was supported by the leadership of the People's Commissariat for Armaments, it was decided to complete the PPD with drum magazines (“discs”).

I. A. Komaritsky, E. V. Chernko, V. I. Shelkov and V. A. Degtyarev constructed a drum magazine in almost a week. It was supplemented with a neck that was inserted into the PPD guide clip. As a result, it was possible to do without alterations to the submachine gun. In addition, thanks to this, the magazine capacity was 73 rounds - two more than that of the Finnish prototype. This is how the third modification of the PPD appeared, which retained the designation “submachine gun mod. 1934/38". The submachine gun also received a front sight fuse.

On January 22, 1940, all workshops and departments engaged in the production of PPD were transferred to three-shift work. A sharp increase in the production of a submachine gun could not pass without problems. According to B. L. Vannikov, “ready-made machine guns repeatedly returned from shooting to correction. There were days when more people worked on fixing than on assembly.” But gradually production entered a normal rhythm, and the troops began to receive more PPD. True, the submachine gun, designed for the technological equipment of factories in the early 30s, was a little expensive. Its cost can be judged by the following figures - one PPD with a set of spare parts, like the Simonov automatic rifle, cost the state budget 900 rubles (in 1939 prices), and a DP light machine gun with spare parts - 1150 rubles (although here we must take into account the already established production rifles and machine guns).

At this time, the first divisions of submachine gunners were formed, including skiing - an experience that was very useful during the Great Patriotic War. Reconnaissance and assault groups, skier detachments tried to provide more abundant automatic weapons, among which the submachine gun showed greater reliability. P. Shilov, who was a reconnaissance officer of the 17th separate ski battalion in the Soviet-Finnish war, recalled one battle: “Our SVT did not shoot ... After the first shots, the scouts no longer fired, but the machine guns of the platoon commander and the platoon commander were in order, and they fired at the Finns to the last bullet.

On February 15, 1940, V. A. Degtyarev presented a modernized PPD model, developed with the participation of designers S. N. Kalygin, P. E. Ivanov, N. N. Lopukhovsky, E. K. Aleksandrovich, V. A. Vvedensky (later the names these people will be encountered more than once in a number of Kovrov systems), which was distinguished by the following changes:

Up to 71 cartridges, the magazine capacity has decreased due to the replacement of its neck with a receiver, the feeder has become more reliable;

On the bolt box, the front and rear stops of the magazine are placed, the stock is made split, with a separate forearm - an extension in front of the magazine;

The shutter is equipped with a fixed striker.

On February 21, the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved these changes, and in early March they were put into production. This is how the “7.62-mm submachine gun of the Degtyarev system arr. 1940 (PPD-40)". He could have either an open front sight or a front sight with a fuse.

However, tests of a submachine gun with a fixed bolt head showed a large percentage of delays, and therefore the Artillery Directorate of Small Arms insisted on returning to the previous drummer scheme. That is why, from April 1, 1940, a variant with the same separate drummer went into production. In total, 81,118 PPDs were produced in 1940, so the fourth serial modification of the Degtyarev submachine gun, the PPD-40, turned out to be the most massive.

The massive appearance of submachine guns in the troops at the end of the Soviet-Finnish war and the adoption in 1940 of the PPD-40 with a magazine for 71 rounds contributed to the birth of the legend that Degtyarev copied his development from A. Lahti's Suomi system. Meanwhile, it is enough to simply carry out an incomplete disassembly of these two samples, belonging to the same generation of submachine guns, to see that the relationship between PPD and Suomi is very distant. But the first drum shop really received from the second, albeit with alterations.

The trophy "Suomi" was later used by the Red Army, and sometimes even played a role ... PPD in Soviet films during the war - for example, in the films "Actress" in 1943 or "Invasion" in 1945.

PERFORMANCE AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PPD OBR. 1934

Cartridge 7.62x25 TT
Mass of weapons with cartridges 3.66 kg
Weapon length 778 mm
Barrel length 278 mm

Rate of fire 750-900 rds / min
Combat rate of fire, single / author. 30/100 rds/min
Sighting range 500 m
Magazine capacity 25 rounds

"MADE IN LENINGRAD"

In 1940, the attitude towards the submachine gun changed. It was still considered an auxiliary weapon, but the degree of saturation of the troops with it increased. Characteristic, for example, is the indication in the speech of the Inspector General of the Infantry, Lieutenant General A.K. Smirnov at a meeting of the top leadership of the Red Army in December 1940, that "when dividing our (rifle) squad into two units" they would include " and automatic rifles, and submachine guns. At the same meeting, the head of the Combat Training Directorate of the Red Army, Lieutenant-General V.N. Kurdyumov, calculated for an offensive battle (assuming the Soviet rifle corps attacked the defense of the German infantry division): “Our advancing corps will have 72 platoons in the first attacking echelon, 2880 bayonets, 288 light machine guns, 576 PPDs... On average, there will be 2888 attackers against 78 defenders per 1 km of the front, machine guns and submachine guns - 100 against 26..."

At the last pre-war May Day parade in 1941, a unit of fighters armed with PPD-40s marched across Red Square. However, the PPD has already been replaced by the G.S. Shpagin submachine gun ...

In the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, the production of PPD was restored in Leningrad. In Kovrov, in the experimental workshop of the department of the chief designer, about 5000 PPDs were assembled from the remaining backlog of parts. And in the city on the Neva, on the basis of the equipment exported there, the Sestroretsk Tool Plant named after S.P. Voskov, the production of PPD-40 was re-deployed, leading it almost manually. In December 1941, when Leningrad was already surrounded, the plant named after A. A. Kulakov joined this work. In total, in 1941-1942 in northern capital manufactured 42,870 PPD-40s, which were used in the troops of the Leningrad and Karelian fronts. One of these PPD-40 is stored in the Artillery Museum. On the butt of the submachine gun there is a sign: “Made in Leningrad during the enemy blockade. 1942". Many PPDs of Leningrad production had a simplified folding sight instead of a sector sight.

By the way, the factories named after Voskov and Kulakov served as a good basis for organizing the mass production of another submachine gun - PPS.

PERFORMANCE AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PPD OBR. 1940

Cartridge 7.62x25 TT
Mass of weapons with cartridges 5.4 kg
Weapon length 778 mm
Barrel length 278 mm
Muzzle velocity 500 m/s
Rate of fire 900-1100 rds / min
Combat rate of fire, single / author. 30/100-120 rds/min
Sighting range 500 m
Magazine capacity 71 rounds