PPSH-41

I’ve never had the pleasure of firing this gun, or even holding one in real life, but it sure is impressive. This is the PPSh-41, the top submachine gun of the Red Army during WWII. It fired a 7.62x25mm pistol round at 900 rounds per minute. Although a 35 round box magazine was available, and was more reliable, the ubiquitous 71 round drum magazine, copied from the Finnish Suomi submachine gun, was considerably more common and popular. Approximately 6 million of them were produced during WWII, and entire units of the Red Army were equipped with it. It was the ideal weapon for close-quarters street fighting in Stalingrad, though once the distances opened up, the more advanced German Stg-44 assault rifle became more advantageous – provided there were enough Germans left alive to fire them. With a capacity advantage of more than 2 to 1 against the the Germans’ MP40 (with its 32 round box magazine), the PPSh-41 gave the already more numerous Red Army soldiers a definite edge. For their part, the Germans adapted the PPSh-41 to 9mm, and even attempted a double-stack magazine setup for the MP40, which worked as poorly as you can imagine.

After WWII, the PPSh-41 was supplied to North Koreans, Chinese, and other communist countries. Pictures circulate of rebels in Hungary in 1956 using them, and early in the Vietnam War, before the AK-47 became the standard weapon of the VC and NVA, it was used by those forces.

Remarkably, long after the AK-47 has captured our attention – thanks to the PLO and countless other terrorist groups adopting it as their signature weapon – the PPSh-41 made a comeback, in the most unlikely context. US forces in Iraq, involved in street fighting, have adopted the PPSh-41 and have been using it there - even fitting high-tech laser aiming systems obviously not available to the Red Army in WWII. Only the Danish Madsen machine gun has more staying power over the years – from 1903 to at last being retired by the military police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, as late as 2008.