PPSh-41

Description

The Russian/Soviet PPSh-41 with it’s wooden stock, boxlike barrel shroud and drum magazine is one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable weapons of World War 2.

Designed after the 1939 ‘Winter War’ against Finland, where although heavily outnumbering the Finnish forces, the Soviets suffered incredibly high losses. This was partly put down to the Finn’s use of the highly effective Suomi KP/-31 SMG, which the soviets ultimately based the PPSh-41 on, particularly the 71 round drum magazine, which offered an incredible volume of effective fire at close rage.

The invading German forces were also taken by the tactical advantage of such a weapon, which easily outclassed their MP-40’s in laying down high volumes of fire. In fact so impressed were they, that large numbers of captured PPSh-41’s were converted to fire German ammunition. Although most troops preferred to use them with Soviet ammunition, which could be easily replaced on the battlefield. Of note is that this high capacity drum magazine sometimes suffered from feed issues, so a 35 round box type magazine was soon introduced to improve reliably and reduce the weapons weight by almost 1kg, although the drum was preferred by many troops and still saw service until the end of the war.

Many Soviet allies made this weapon under license including China, which lead to their later use in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Having been produced in such high numbers during WW2 (thought to be more than 6 million), post war, amongst the chaos of the repatriations and clean-ups, weapons such as these readily found themselves in the hands of the criminal underworld and paramilitaries. Their presence in these organizations would last for decades and even today the odd example still appears in an obscure civil war or police seizure.