The PPSh assault rifle, which is a symbol of the Soviet warrior during the Second World War, is familiar to almost everyone in numerous films about the war. Created in the fall of 1940 by designer Shpagin, this simple, reliable and trouble-free submachine gun with a peculiar round disk magazine and a slanted slice of the trellised casing for all the war years became the main small arms of the Red Army and the Belarusian partisan formations.
In the pre-war years in the USSR, the only weapon of the infantry was the store rifle. The mass production of automatic weapons was complicated by the fact that the design features of the then-PPD-40 then provided for large volumes of machining of various parts. All its parts were of rather complicated configuration with extremely tightly set tolerances for deviation of dimensions. The production of such an automatic machine in the Kremlin was considered an unacceptable luxury for a warring country - since 1939, the Soviet Union, in fact, was such. In general, an automatic weapon was required , which could be produced in millions of copies in the shops of any machine-building plant.
Then the People’s Commissariat of Arms instructed weapons designers to create such a simple and reliable machine that it could be mass-produced in any enterprise as soon as possible. At the end of 1940, Shpagin presented his design of a submachine gun. Field tests and technological evaluations showed that the PPSh machine possesses high combat qualities, reliability and simplicity.
On December 21 of the same year, the PPSh were adopted, and he immediately began to enter the army. So the PPSh machine, the device of which is somewhat similar to the PPD-40, became the main small arms of the Victory. Its automation is based on the principle of a movable shutter, and the trigger mechanism is adapted to conduct both automatic fire and single shots. The shooting mode is switched using the flag translator, which also performs the function of a fuse.
To increase durability and performance, the PPSh machine is equipped with a special shock absorber, and high accuracy and accuracy of the fire is achieved through the use of an original barrel-compensating brake, which is also the front surface of the casing. This design solution prevents the outgoing powder gases from tossing the barrel up.
PPSh is an assault rifle that made a significant contribution to the victory over the enemy and reached in Berlin in the hands of a Soviet soldier. For all the difficult war years, this submachine gun became a reliable and faithful companion not only for infantrymen, but also for tankmen, scouts, artillerymen, sappers, signalmen, paratroopers. The high manufacturability and simplicity of the design of PPSh made it possible to establish its mass production in difficult evacuation conditions when the machines began to work directly in the open.
The PPSh assault rifle has excellent service and operational characteristics that allow it to remain a universal and reliable weapon in any conditions. During the war years, more than six million copies of this submachine gun were produced. For comparison, fascist Germany during the same period managed to produce only 934.5 thousand of similar weapons. The PPSh assault rifle has become one of the most popular weapons, having yielded only the Mosin rifle in this respect .