"We Came From Around the Corner" and "Nobody Wanted to Die": the devices for shooting from shelters go back as far as the 19th century. The problem, as you will see, is not new. With the advent of firearms, Russians, Germans, Americans and Israelis tried to solve it in their own way. The devices turned out to be not so hot, but amusing and interesting.
Let's start with ours, with the Russians. In the book by Yu. F. Katorin, NL Volkovsky and VV Tarnavsky "Unique and Paradoxical Military Equipment", it is reported that back in 1868, the artillery general Maievsky proposed to make the barrel of the cannon curved.
But the crooked barrel - you must admit that this funny solution to the problem is one of the first to come to mind - was needed not for firing from around the corner, but to improve the quality of firing with disk shells.
Then there was the First World War. The air filled with lead was clearly not conducive to sticking out of the trenches. But, of course, it was necessary to fight, because the Russian military commanders thought about protecting their soldiers.
The "tender" was won by Finnish gun-makers, who proposed a device that makes it possible to send bullets at enemies without showing up from the trenches.
They were shooting then from a Mosin rifle. For her, the Finns have come up with a cunning device. First, they, roughly speaking, made a stand for the rifle and lengthened the trigger. And so that the warrior could see where he was sending the bullets, the device was equipped with a periscope, albeit without Zoom. But for reloading, the entire structure had to be returned to the trench, which was considered not very convenient.
By and large, it was the above-described principle that was used today by the Israelis, the development of which will be discussed below. However, this was nevertheless preceded by curved trunks. They even came up with the word "crooked".
This is how the German Kummerlauf looked and was used (photo somethingawful.com and lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de).
Discovery Channel writes on this topic that the idea to bend the barrels of rifles for shooting from around a corner during the Second World War came to the minds of Soviet soldiers during the battles of Stalingrad. It is difficult to say whether this is so, although some have seen a PPSh with a curved barrel in a military magazine.
In general, it is not entirely clear when the crooked weapon appeared in the USSR - either in 1943, or after the war. It is known that the barrels were bent at the Goryunov and Kalashnikov machine guns. NF Makarov and KG Kurenkov were engaged in these experiments. Curved machine guns were intended for tankers, so that they could shoot through the "dead" zone, which was vast for those in the tank.
Yes, a Kalashnikov with a barrel bent down (!) By 90 degrees makes you doubt the reality of what was happening. However, the tankers did not like such a "turn", and they stopped bending barrels in the Soviet Union.
This is understandable - the trunk was bent in one direction and did not unbent at all. To shoot with such aiming, not only practice is needed, but also a special talent.
But the Germans, although the barrels were not bent, in 1943, the device for firing from shelters was officially adopted. These devices were produced from one and a half to 8 thousand pieces. Krummerlauf ("Bent barrel") - that was the name of this thing.
In fact, it was a nozzle with a periscope and a curved barrel extension. Simply put, using the Krummerlauf was like shooting through a kitchen faucet. You crawl under the sink, insert the barrel into the pipe, and the bullet flies in a curve at the target that you discovered ahead of time using the same periscope.
The "I" version was intended mainly for the infantry assault carbine, and the "P" version was intended for tankers. But in fact, there were more versions, and they allowed shooting at different angles - from 30 to 90 degrees. The one for the Sturmgewehr-44 carbine changed the trajectory of the bullet by 30 degrees.
For urban combat, the Krummerlauf could have been useful, but on a "normal" battlefield, the extra metal and glass were ridiculous. The soldiers joked that the Bent Stem was good for dealing with dwarfs or giant intelligent caterpillars. The fact is that the "curved" bullets often missed the target, and the weapon simply jammed. Therefore, the device was rarely used.
7, 62-mm curved machine gun of the Kalashnikov system (photo from arms.ru).
Meanwhile, the Americans did not get bored either - they made a device similar to the "Krummerlauf" for their tankers. Those fired from submachine guns into the curved groove, the lead rolled up, and those who found themselves in the "dead" space became dead, but without the quotes.
At the end of the Great Patriotic War in the United States, they did not forget about the tricks of shooting from around the corners. But basically the gadgets were advertised complete with the outfit of the "soldiers of the future" and boiled down to a video camera on the warrior's barrel or helmet. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find striking examples.
As you noticed, we are returning to modern realities. So, trusting the Yakut edition of Nashe Vremya, we learn that in the 1990s the Russian designer Alexander Golodyaev developed a sight equipped with a light-guide cord.
The sight lens is mounted on the weapon, and the eyepiece is directly in front of the shooter's eye. Now you can conduct aimed fire only by sticking your hand out of cover.
The designers of the NPO Spetstekhnika i Svyaz have developed the Privod device, which combined the attachment to weapons from the First and Second World Wars with a fiber optic sight. As it often happens, nothing is heard about the fate of domestic inventions today.
In the meantime, a clear world leader has emerged in the creation of "from-the-corner-arrows". These are Israeli designers who managed to develop a system in three years, which is now being tested by special forces of 15 countries of the world. Russia is among them. Florida-based Corner Shot Holdings LLC is made famous throughout the world by inventor Amos Golan, a Special Forces veteran by the way.
The thing is beautiful, like many deadly things (photo by Corner Shot).
During the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, several Israeli soldiers were wounded when they stormed a house through the front door. This incident prompted Golan to think about creating an "angle gun" for carrying out special operations in urban environments.
The Corner Shot system does not have a curved barrel, therefore it "breaks" into two main parts. On the front, which a fighter can turn with a lever 63 degrees to the left or to the right, there is a pistol (Beretta, Glock, Colt or any other) and a removable video camera with a lens for image scaling.
Optionally, an infrared sight, a silencer, a flame arrester, a launcher for rubber bullets, tear gas, and the like are added here. Allegedly, Corner Shot can be modified so much that an M-16 rifle is inserted into the system. And the 9mm pistol, thanks to the camera, accurately shoots 100 meters.
So to speak, on the back there is a monitor that transmits the high-quality color image received by the camera. Naturally, the sight is shown, as well as the distance to the target.
Apparently, the Israeli system will soon appear in the arsenal of the Russian special forces (photo by Corner Shot).
There is also a power supply unit and a trigger mechanism. Only now, in order to reload the weapon, it must be removed from the line of fire. The fact that the Corner Shot configuration can be very different is evidenced by the range of prices for it - from three to five thousand dollars.
With the emergence of the Israeli system, judging by the resonance that this event had, it is possible to put an end to the development of a “cornerstone” weapon. The only thing that remains to be eliminated in terms of improvements is people shooting on opposite sides of the Corner Shot scope.
However, amid such rampant international terrorism, safe firing devices will not go out of style anytime soon.
