World War II Database

Country of Origin	Russia
Type	Submachine Gun
Caliber	7.620 mm
Capacity	71 rounds
Length	843.000 mm
Barrel Length	269.000 mm
Weight	3.630 kg
Rate of Fire	900 rounds/min
Range	200.000 m
Muzzle Velocity	488 m/s

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseNote on history of Soviet submachine gun development by Alan Chanter:

In 1922, Aimo J. Lahti of Finland produced his first submachine gun (SMG), and this was subsequently followed by several other similar guns, including in 1931 with the Suomi model which sold widely around the world and was probably still in widespread use during the Winter war of 1939/40. Lahti made a drum magazine for his guns which took 71 rounds of 7.65mm Parabellum ammunition, and when Vasily A. Degtyarev was commissioned by the Soviet Army to produce a similar SMG in 1934, he took Lahti's magazine with hardly a single alteration. He also took a great deal from Hugo Schmeisser's MP28 and this developed into the PPD-34. After the winter war debacle the Red Army demanded a simpler version for mass-production and Georgi S. Shpagin remodeled it to the well-known PPSh-41 (Pistolet Pulomet Scpagin, Model 41).

Georgy Shpagin was a veteran of the Soviet revolutionary war. A weapons repairer turned weapons designer, he drew up the PPSh-41 design with low manufacturing cost, quick production time, and minimum field maintenance in mind. Shpagin's new weapon was first put on trial in Oct 1940, during which it beat weapons designed by proven engineers such as Vasily Degtyaryov, the designer of PPD submachine guns. PPSh-41 could be differentiated from other Soviet submachine guns of the era by the tips of their barrel jackets, which were angle-cut. PPSh-41 was officially adopted for use on 21 Dec 1940 by the Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars, and the manufacturing began in Nov 1941. From the outset, PPSh-41 weapons were being produced at a very efficient rate, averaging only 5.6 hours per weapon. By Apr 1942, 155,000 of them had been built, and new weapons were being built at the rate of 3,000 per day.

On the front lines, soldiers of the vast Soviet conscript army regarded "Pah Pah Sha" submachine guns very highly. These weapons were hinged at the magazine housing, making cleaning, critical especially for the environment on the Eastern Front of the European War, very easy. As noted earlier, the construction of PPSh-41 submachine guns was simple, thus damaged PPSh-41 barrels could be replaced by cutting down that of Mosin-Nagant rifles. When compared to Mosin-Nagant rifles, PPSh-41 (and other Soviet submachine guns) had very poor accuracy, but at close range PPSh-41 guns' ability to fire many rounds in the direction of the target, even if scattered, was a clear advantage. PPSh-41 weapons could use either the smaller 35-round box magazines or the larger 71-round drums. While the drums' higher capacity seemed to be favorable on paper, the drums were more difficult to load, very heavy (its unloaded weight was 3.63 kilograms; each box magazine weighed 0.68 kilograms and each drum weighed 1.84 kilograms), and less reliable in battle conditions (the latter was improved in Nov 1943 by increasing the thickness of the metal skin of the drums from 0.3 millimeters to 1 millimeter; this further increased the already heavy weight, however). During the war, over 5,000,000 examples were built. Unlike the Germans which assigned their counterpart MP 40 submachine guns only to specialized platoons, the Soviets equipped entire companies with PPSh-41 submachine guns starting in Jul 1941 to increase infantry firepower. As of Jul 1941, each infantry regiment had a PPSh-41 company with a 7-man headquarters and three 31-man platoons. Perhaps a great tribute to the PPSh-41 weapon was that some German units employed captured PPSh-41 weapons; these captured examples were designated MP 717(r) as-is and MP 41(r) if converted to use 9-millimeter German ammunition.

After WW2, even though all Soviet submachine guns were supplanted by the AK-47 assault rifles, many remained in service for decades to come. In North Korea they were known as Type 59, in Communist China as Type 50, and in Vietnam K-50M (which were converted Communist Chinese Type 50).

Sources:
Chris McNab, Soviet Submachine Guns of World War II
Firearms of the Second World War
The Red Army at War
War Monthly (periodical)
Wikipedia ww2dbase

Last Major Revision: Dec 2007

PPSh-41 Submachine Gun Interactive Map

Photographs

See all 55 photographs of PPSh-41 Submachine Gun

PPSh-41 Timeline

20 Dec 1940

The Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union officially adopted the PPSh-41 submachine gun.

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