Military History: 5 Soviet “Super Weapons” That Were Disastorous

For nearly seven decades, the defense-industrial complex of the Soviet Union went toe-to-toe with the best firms that the West had to offer.

In some cases, it surprised the West with cheap, innovative, effective systems. In others, it could barely manage to put together aircraft that could remain in the air, and ships that could stay at sea.

No single weapon could have saved the Soviet Union, but several might have shifted the contours of its collapse. The relationship between technology and the “human” elements of war, including doctrine and organization, is complex. Decisions about isolated systems can have far reaching implications for how a nation defends itself.

Weapons are often cancelled for good reason. Events intercede in ways that focus a nation’s attention on its true interests and needs, rather than on the pursuit of glory and prestige. In the Soviet case, many of the “wonder weapons” remained safely in the realm of imagination, both for the enemies of the USSR, and the USSR itself.

‘Sovetsky Soyuz’ class battleship

During the interwar period, the Soviet Union explored a variety of options for revitalizing its decrepit fleet. Until the first decade of the 20th century, the czars had maintained a relatively modern, powerful navy.

After the Russo-Japanese War, however, Russian shipbuilding fell steadily behind the West, and the revolution disrupted both the industry and the navy itself.

By the late 1930s, the Soviet economy had recovered to the point that Stalin could seriously consider a program of naval construction. The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships spearheaded an ambitious acquisition plan, which also included battlecruisers and aircraft carriers.

Based loosely on the Italian Littorio class, the Sovetsky Soyuzs would displace approximately 60,000 tons, carry nine 16-inch guns, and make 28 knots.

This made them competitive in size with the most powerful battleships in the world, although inexperience and shoddy Soviet construction practice would likely have rendered them troublesome in battle.

The Soviet Union laid down four of the intended 16 battleships between 1938 and 1940, parceling out construction between Leningrad, Nikolayev (on the Black Sea) and Molotovsk (on the White Sea). One was cancelled in 1940 because of poor workmanship.

The other three were suspended on the arrival of war, although plans proceeded to complete one (in Leningrad) even after World War II ended. Wiser heads eventually prevailed, and the ships were broken up in place.

Construction of the ships required an enormous investment of Soviet state resources. Had construction begun earlier, the USSR would have wasted a fair chunk of national income on three ships that could not escape the Baltic and the Black Sea, respectively, and one that would have been limited to convoy escort in the Arctic.

Literally any use of materials and industrial capacity would have served the USSR better in war than these four ships.

 Read the Remainder at National Interest

Military Weapons From The Past: The Soviet 6P9 (PB) Pistol

Developed for Spetsnaz and the KGB Wet Teams, the PB was a Suppressed Pistol with some Serious Design Compromises

Developed for Spetsnaz units and the KGB in the mid-1960s, the Soviet PB — also known as the 6P9 — took the proven Makarov PM design and incorporated a two-stage, integral suppressor.

During World War II, the Soviet NKVD had used suppressed weapons, including M1895 Nagant revolvers fitted with clip-on “Bramit device” suppressors. As the Cold War escalated, the Soviets began the development of new silent firearms.

The Izhevsk Mechanical Plant introduced the PB, designed by A.A. Deryagin, in 1967. The PB is basically a heavily-adapted Makarov PM with a shortened slide and a repositioned return-spring. The design retains the Makarov’s exposed hammer, double-action trigger and slide-mounted decocker.

The Makarov PM’s standard return-spring was problematic once you added a suppressor to the basic design. The Chinese recognized the problem and positioned their Type 64’s return-spring above the breech.

In laying out the PB, by contrast, the Russians placed the return-spring in the pistol’s grip and attached it to a swinging lever located beneath the right-hand-side grip panel.

The weapon’s suppressor is semi-integral, with the rear section encompassing the ported barrel, which is wrapped in steel mesh that acts as a heat sink. The longer second section contains three steel baffles held in place by the suppressor’s frame.

For transport, the front section of the suppressor is detachable. This also allows the firing of the weapon with, or without, its suppressor attached.

The suppressor reduces the pistol’s report to approximately 127 decibels. The PB feeds from an eight-round magazine and chambers the standard Soviet nine-by-18-millimeter cartridge.

Fully assembled, the weapon is 12 inches long and weighs approximately one kilogram. Production of the PB was continuous until the mid-1980s. In the early 2000s, there was a surge in demand that compelled production to resume.

The PB remains in service with Russian special forces and intelligence units.

This story originally appeared at Historical Firearms.

Read the Original Article at War is Boring

World War Two History: Remembering Stalin as well as Hitler

When I’ve finished occupying the Soviet Union,” quipped a relaxed Adolf Hitler at dinner one night in 1941, “I’ll put that man Stalin back in charge. He’s the only person who knows how to deal with Russians.”

Stalin was the biggest murderer of modern history – and maybe in of all mankind’s past. His number of victims was only rivaled by Genghis Khan and, in our era, Mao Zedong.

Which bring me to the current observations of the 71^st anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz. Our media is full of stories about the persecution and mass killings of Europe’s Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

And rightly so. This major historic crime must be vividly remembered and never allowed to slip into oblivion. But neither should it be used and reused to justify or excuse today’s repression of 5 million Palestinians.

While the world remembers the Jewish Holocaust, it has almost totally forgotten the other Holocausts. Amid all the references to Nazi death camps, like Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka, there was not a mention of Magadan, Vorkuta Norilsk, or Perm, all infamous ‘islands’ of the Soviet system of industrial murder, known as “the Gulag.”

Or of the Ukrainian Holodomor.

From 1918 to the late 1950’s (Stalin died in 1953), an estimated 20 million or more Soviet citizens were worked to death, shot or starved in the 500 camps that made up the Gulag. The most infamous and lethal were in the Arctic Circle and eastern Siberia.

The greatest number of deaths occurred in the 1930’s when Stalin’s reign of terror was at its apogee. By the end of the 1930’s, the Gulag held close to 2 million inmates, about half political prisoners convicted on false charges.   Millions of other Soviet citizens were starved in local prisons, shot in execution grounds or forests, and worked to death buildings canals and rail lines or forced to mine with heir bare hands.

During 1932-33, Stalin sent chief henchman Lazar Kaganovitch to break resistance by Ukrainian independent small farmers to collectivization by starving them to death.  In only a few years, some 6-7 million Ukrainians perished in what they call the Holodomor. No one was ever punished for this historic crime.  Stalin told Churchill “Kaganovitch is my Himmler.”

The Soviet Baltic states saw particularly ferocious repression. So did Poland which was divvied up by both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Six million Poles died, half of them Jews. At least 2 million Muslims of the Soviet Union were murdered, either by shooting or, like the Chechen, packed into cattle cars and dumped on the ground in frigid Kazakhstan.

Stalin was given the sobriquet, “Destroyer of Nations.”

No one knows the exact figure of deaths in the Soviet Union. But it far exceeded in numbers and scope Hitler’s killings. Yet these epic Soviet crimes have all but vanished from our collective memories.  No should have a monopoly on suffering.

Almost equally disturbing, the US, Canada and Britain have never squarely faced the ugly fact  that their close wartime ally, Stalin, was a far worse mass murderer than enemy Adolf Hitler. Or that Stalin’s biggest crime occurred in the 1930’s while Hitler’s were not fully understood until after World War II. Stalin’s terrible crimes were well known to Washington, Ottawa and London well before they got into bed with “Uncle Joe” Stalin. We allied with a great devil to fight a lesser one. This fact is rarely understood because our sense of World War II history remains heavily clouded by the propaganda of he victors.

Ever since, Hitler has been relentlessly demonized while Stalin has faded from our understanding. Germans still recoil at the mention of Hitler while in Russia nostalgia grows for Stalin and his era. Much of the evidence of Stalin’s crimes has turned to dust; none of the perpetrators were ever punished.  After briefly seeing the light of day during the Gorbachev era, the Stalin-era files have been resealed.

Read the Original Article at Lew Rockwell

Military Weapons from the Past: The DP Machine Gun aka “Stalin’s Phonograph”

Since 1928, the battlefields of the world have seen an oddball Soviet-era weapon that proves the truth of the old saying, “Looks aren’t everything.” Its nickname was once “Stalin’s phonograph” — and the staccato tune it plays is the sound of automatic fire.

Used by the Russians to gun down both the Finns and the Nazis, hefted by Chinese communist and North Korean troops fighting United Nations forces, and carried by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese when attacking American soldiers, the Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova Pekhotny — better known as the DP light machine gun — has spilled a lot of blood.

 Even today, U.S. forces or foreign military observers occasionally encounter the DP in the hands of belligerents such as Somali militias and Taliban fighters. In fact, for a weapon considered obsolete since the 1960s, armed forces around the world still found reasons to keep the DP at hand.

Designed by one of the Soviet Union’s best — and often overlooked — firearms innovators, the DP has only a few working parts and famously tolerates battlefield grit and dirt. It is a light machine gun designed for a peasant’s use.

Even though the newly-created Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union made a separate peace with the Central Powers and ended its involvement in World War I early, the young Red Army still cast an interested eye on the fighting. Many Soviet generals were impressed with light machine guns used during World War I such as the Lewis Gun, a weapon originally purchased by the Tsarist regime for Russian use.

The Lewis was an interesting weapon for the time — it fired rifle cartridges, had a pistol grip, a bipod and distinctive pan-shaped magazine. A pan magazine differs from other drum magazines because the cartridges are stored perpendicular to the axis of the magazine’s rotation as it feeds ammunition into the weapon. The pan magazine mounts on top of the firearm where it lays flat, making the machine gun look like it has a old-fashioned phonograph turntable attached.

However, the Red Army wanted a lighter weapon than the Lewis. The Soviet government wanted a domestically produced machine gun that could be manufactured by an unskilled workforce.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring