Simple is the best! ----Soviet Bobosha submachine gun

“It is very simple to design a weapon very complex, but it is extremely complicated to design it very simple.” Soviet arms designer Shapkin Famous quote. The Bobosha submachine gun (PPSh 41) he designed implements this concept.

The simple design of the Bobosha submachine gun is very different from the British Sten. The latter's design is more precisely crude, and it does not hesitate to sacrifice performance in order to reduce costs. Shapujin pursues simplicity with the aim of being reliable, durable and easy to produce in batches without any pressure to reduce costs. Therefore, on the Bobosha submachine gun, we see the traditional wooden stock and gun body, as well as the heat sink of the barrel, which are all luxury goods in the eyes of Western designers. Although the wooden stock and gun body are heavy, labor-intensive, and material-intensive, they move the gun's center of gravity backward, which helps ensure the balance of the gun and improves the accuracy of continuous shooting. The barrel heat sink enables the submachine gun to fire continuously for a long time. The end of the heat sink designed by Shapkin is one inch longer than the barrel and tilted slightly forward. This design greatly reduces the muzzle jump, making the Bobosha's accuracy 70% higher than that of its predecessor, the PPD submachine gun. Bobosha uses a large number of stamped components, welded or riveted. Disassembly and maintenance are very simple, even if you are too lazy to maintain it, it doesn’t matter. The barrel and the inside of the barrel are chrome-plated and rust-proof, which was unique at the time. These characteristics make Bobosha unparalleled in reliability and durability. No matter rain, snow, mud, or low temperature, it cannot prevent it from pouring bullets.

The Bobosha submachine gun is 84 centimeters in length and weighs 3.6 kilograms when empty. It uses 7.62 x 25mm Tokarev pistol ammunition, with 71 rounds of drum or 35 rounds of ammunition. The muzzle velocity is 460 meters per second, with a rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute. The Tokarev pistol bullet is actually a replica of the 7.63mm Mauser pistol bullet. The ballistic trajectory is low and similar to that of a rifle bullet, giving the Bobosha submachine gun an effective range of 200 meters and excellent accuracy, coupled with a rate of fire of 900 rounds and The 71-round ammunition capacity creates a formidable weapon.

Some people say that the most legendary submachine gun in the entire World War II was undoubtedly the German MP38/40. In the minds of ordinary people, the image of a German soldier probably has two characteristics - wearing a German-style steel helmet and holding an MP40 submachine gun. To be fair, the MP40 is just average in all indicators and has no obvious weaknesses. The exaggerated reputation of the MP40 submachine gun probably comes from the myth that the German army was invincible in the early days of World War II. On the most brutal battlefield of the Patriotic War, the most famous Soviet tactic of "tank cavalry" was five or six Soviet soldiers equipped with Bobosha submachine guns and grenades riding on a tank, and hundreds of infantry cavalry. The tanks would launch a high-speed impact against the German defense lines. These infantrymen are exposed to all kinds of firepower and usually suffer heavy casualties. Once the tanks break through the enemy lines, the surviving infantrymen will jump out of the vehicles and shoot around, killing a large number of nearby German soldiers. This fearless impact and wave The dense rain of bullets from the sand became the nightmare that the German soldiers feared most.

The war environment has its own laws of survival of the fittest. One of the revelations of World War II is that the elite line cannot compete with the mass line, and quantity will eventually defeat quality. The weapons that contribute the most to war are usually reliable in performance and large in quantity. No matter how superior the performance of a weapon is, if it cannot be equipped with a large number of troops, it will be nothing more than a weapon on paper. During the entire war, the Soviet Union produced 6 million Bobosha submachine guns. The number was so huge that the British Sten (4 million), the American Thompson (2 million), and the German MP40 (1.2 million) could not compare. Compare. What's more valuable is that the range, accuracy, reliability and intensive firepower of Bobosha are better than other submachine guns. In World War II, the Soviet army was the most commonly equipped army with submachine guns. Sometimes entire companies and entire battalions of infantry were equipped with Bobosha. Posa, which also showed excellent performance and reliability in the later Korean War.

The Soviet Bobosha submachine gun, which has gone through the most brutal test of the Patriotic War, is undoubtedly the most classic and legendary submachine gun in World War II.