The Great Patriotic War became an ordeal for the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers died in bloody battles, millions of people who found themselves in the occupation were killed or driven to Germany to work as slaves. However, the Union withstood, withstood and broke the back of the most anti-human regime that only existed in the history of mankind. But the sword of Victory was forged not only on the battlefields. Day and night, the best minds of the USSR, peering into their blueprints with tired eyes from sleepless nights, created weapons for the Red Army - a weapon that could not only withstand enemy weapons on equal terms, but also surpass it.
Many types of weapons were developed even before the war, but the army did not have time to learn how to handle something, did not manage to get something or received less, for example, there were not enough shells for heavy KV tanks, against which most German anti-tank guns were powerless, as a result of which the crews were forced to either retreat or abandon or destroy equipment.
At the same time, many types of weapons were tested and put into operation during the war. One of the striking examples of this is the Sudaev submachine gun or PPS.
It was developed by the arms designer Alexei Ivanovich Sudaev in 1941-1942. The design took place in incredibly difficult conditions: weapons were born in the besieged besieged Leningrad. But for testing, prototypes were sent straight to the battlefield. At the end of 1942, the PPS was officially put into service, and its production was launched at the Sestroretsk Arms Plant. Sudaev personally arranged the process.
By this time, the Red Army was armed with the Shpagin submachine gun (PPSh), which became the most massive weapon of the Great Patriotic War. It was loved by soldiers for its reliability and accuracy, but it also had a number of disadvantages: heavy weight, large dimensions and a drum magazine, which was very unreliable and often jammed. Sudaev's weapon had a sector and two-row magazine, and the bolt device made it possible to capture and send cartridges to the breech without rebuilding in one row, which greatly simplified the process of loading cartridges.
One of the main advantages of the PPS was the frame butt, which could fold upward, lying on the receiver. At the same time, the PPSh stock was not folding, but solid, made of wood and made a single whole with the stock. The latter greatly complicated the use of a submachine gun by crew members of combat vehicles and scouts, for whom the compactness and maneuverability of the weapon was extremely important.
The equipped PPSh weighed 5.3 kg, and the empty one - 3.6 kg - the same as the equipped PPSh. But the production of one “Shpagin” took 14 kilograms of metal, and one “Sudaev” - 7 kg. In the PPS, there were significantly more stamped rather than milled parts, which greatly facilitated and reduced the cost of production. It is worth explaining here that metal milling implies some kind of qualification from the worker who grinds the part. Plus, it takes more time, and material loss in the form of chips can account for most of the volume of the part being processed. Stamping in this regard is much more practical: put a sheet of steel under the press, and in a few seconds he formed the part - ready, feed the next sheet of steel. And the workpiece from under the press, if necessary, only needs to be lightly processed with a file.
The most important parts in the submachine gun, which required milling, were the barrel and the bolt, the rest of the parts were produced just by the stamping method. Moreover, they were so simple to manufacture that many semi-handicraft artels in besieged Leningrad made these weapons and their components themselves, which were then sent to the Sestroretsk plant.
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This weapon quickly gained popularity among front-line soldiers - compact, lightweight, with excellent combat characteristics. It was relied mainly on scouts and armored vehicle crews, but ordinary soldiers also got it. The overhead rear sight was designed to fire at 100-200 meters, but retained the destructive power of the cartridges at a distance of 800 meters.
Moreover, the Germans, who used the MP-40 and Stg-44 (submachine gun and machine gun), by the end of the war, due to a shortage of raw materials, began to produce a copy of the PPS called the Maschinenpistole 719®. However, as we know, this did not help them either.
Many veterans who have had a chance to fight with a wide variety of weapons call Sudaev's submachine gun the best WWII weapon in this class. Watching the footage of the chronicle, one can observe how the soldiers armed with him march through the liberated cities of Europe. He also got into the famous footage of hoisting the Red Banner over the Reichstag.
After the war, military strategists came to the final conclusion that the concept of using a submachine gun on the battlefield had outlived itself. The era of the Kalashnikov assault rifle has begun in the Red Army. PPP was discontinued, and the remaining stocks were transferred to countries allied to the USSR, such as Poland, Ukraine and Laos. There, this weapon served faithfully for more than a dozen years. Moreover, there are cases when PPS was used in modern military conflicts, incl. in the Donbass. Nevertheless, in the view of the majority, the weapon of Victory was an assault rifle with a large wooden butt and a disk magazine - PPSh, because more than 6 million units were produced, only 2 million were produced.
However, who knows how history will turn. It may well be that this weapon, which is easy to make, still lies with greased cannon fat in army warehouses and is waiting for a black day when it will be useful again.