Well, what was the most interesting design of the first generation submachine gun? If we put them all in one row, then … the choice will not be difficult. On the aggregate of all indicators, this will turn out to be … yes, do not be surprised - not German, not Swiss (although it is also German in essence) and not a Czechoslovak model, but … Finnish submachine gun "Suomi" m / 31 designed by Aimo Lahti.
Suomi submachine gun with accessories and shops.
His full name was Aymo Johannes Lahti, and he started developing his own submachine gun since 1921, as soon as the German MP-18 fell into his hands. However, maybe it was also the MP-19, produced under the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty for the needs of the police of the Weimar Republic. And he certainly liked him, otherwise he would not have taken up it. But having liked it, this submachine gun made Lahti think about how to make the original sample even better and more perfect in all respects. Its first sample, embodied in metal, had a caliber of 7.65 mm and was called KP / -26 (konepistooli Suomi m / 26), and it went into production immediately that year. True, it was produced in not too large quantities. Well, the word Suomi meant the name of his country, that is, Finland.
The first pattern is often quite strange. So "Suomi" m / 26 also looked like a perfect "something" …
However, he did not stop improving this sample, which ultimately led to the appearance in 1931 of another model called Suomi-KP Model 1931. The release of this sample lasted quite a long time - until 1953, and about 80 thousand of them were made in total.
Surprisingly, the Suomi was viewed by the military more as an ersatz of a light machine gun than a weapon of assault units. It turned out that there were not enough such machine guns, but then the Suomi arrived in time and … the military demanded to put on it a replaceable long barrel, and also to give it a large-capacity magazine, as well as a bipod. So not only the Czechs saw in submachine guns a kind of version of a lightweight machine gun. And, by the way, this took place at the very time when the same designer, back in 1926, offered the army his light machine gun chambered for the Lahti-Soloranta L / S-26 rifle cartridge. Well, make it, saturate the troops, otherwise buy a machine gun from the Czechs, from the Germans, if the Czech seemed to them not very suitable because of the small capacity of the store. But no - they decided to compensate for the lack of a machine gun by the presence of submachine guns. So much so that some samples of "Suomi" were produced in the version for pillboxes, that is, with a pistol grip and without a stock at all!
About 500 examples of "Suomi" were intended to equip bunkers and pillboxes.
But the effectiveness of this submachine gun as a light machine gun was low due to the low lethality of pistol bullets. Therefore, the Finns had to revise their military doctrine directly during the hostilities of the outbreak of the Winter War and hastily increase the production of Lahti-Solorant L / S-26. Here, luckily for them, however, a captured DP-27 turned up, which turned out to be much better than its Finnish counterpart. But on the other hand, they increased the number of PPs from 1 piece to 2-3 per squad, which immediately affected the increase in the firepower of the Finnish infantry. Be that as it may, it should be noted that the "Suomi" as a first generation submachine gun went very far from the MP-18 and became a successful model, although it also had its own, and very specific disadvantages. On the other hand, some of them were rather attributed to him. For example, you can read in our literature that the lack of a forend under the barrel behind the magazine was a drawback, which is why when firing it was necessary to hold it by the magazine. But the PPSh had exactly the same design. But … for some reason this drawback is not seen in our sample. However, "Suomi" really required good training of personnel, since the vacuum shutter moderator, which was on it, was very sensitive to the slightest pollution, dust and even simple fogging. By the way, Aimo Lahti's submachine gun was liked not only in his homeland. The license for its production was bought by Denmark, where it was produced under the designation m / 41, Sweden (m / 37), Switzerland (and there they understood a lot about good products!). Here it went into production under the designation MP.43 / 44, and a total of 22,500 were produced. Bulgaria in 1940-1942 bought 5505 copies of "Suomi". Sweden bought 420 units and produced 35 thousand M / 37 units. Croatia and Estonia bought about 500 units, and Germany received 3,042 Finnish-made Suomi submachine guns, which were used by the Waffen-SS units in Karelia and Lapland. They also armed the 3rd Finnish battalion of the "Nordland" regiment, which belonged to the 5th SS Panzer Division "Viking". From Denmark, the Germans received a number of PP "Madsen-Suomi", which they gave the designation MP.746 (d). Somehow, an unspecified number of Suomi ended up in civil war-torn Spain. Captured Suomi fought in the Red Army both during the Winter War and during the Great Patriotic War.
How this rather original submachine gun was arranged, which set a kind of trend, in modern terms, to designers in many countries of the world. In general, "Suomi" was a typical first generation PP, which had their "pedigree" starting with the MP-18. So, the shutter resembled the German one from the MP-19, (the ancestor of the Austro-Swiss Steyr-Solothurn S1-100), but at the same time it had its own original design highlights. However, more on this later, but for now it is important to note that this sample was made to very high quality standards, very soundly, but … with the use of a large number of metal-cutting machines. The bolt carrier had to be milled from solid steel forging, converting whole kilograms of metal into shavings! The strength turned out to be high, but the weight (in the equipped state more than 7 kg) was not small, and there is nothing to say about the cost. By the way, this is one of the reasons why this PP was released in relatively small quantities.
The submachine gun had the simplest automation, which operated by recoil of the free bolt, and fired from the open bolt. That is, the drummer was fixed on the bolt motionless, and the barrel itself was not locked when fired! To slow down the rate of fire, such a design requires either a large mass of the bolt, or some kind of adaptation. And on "Suomi" such a "device", or rather a "highlight" of its design, was the vacuum shutter brake, arranged in a very original way. The receiver of a cylindrical shape and the bolt, also in the form of a cylinder, were so tightly fitted to each other that the breakthrough of air between them when the bolt moved inside the receiver was completely excluded. In the rear cover of the receiver there was a valve that allowed the air that was there to come out, but on the contrary did not let it through. When, after firing, the bolt went back, it squeezed air from the back of the receiver outward through this valve. In this case, excessive pressure arose, and it was it that slowed down the shutter at the same time. When, under the action of the return spring, the shutter began to move forward, the valve closed, and a vacuum appeared behind the shutter, which also slowed down its movement. Such a device made it possible to solve several important tasks at once: to achieve a slowdown in the movement of the shutter when moving in both directions at once, and hence a decrease in the rate of fire, and also to increase the smoothness of its movement, which had a most favorable effect on the accuracy of fire.
To prevent dust and dirt from getting inside through the slot for the bolt handle, and, of course, in order to increase the tightness of the receiver, the designer placed the L-shaped bolt handle separately from it, under the very butt plate of the receiver, and it was arranged so that when she remained motionless when shooting.
Suomi submachine gun. Appearance and view with cuts. The L-shaped reloading handle, located at the rear left, is clearly visible.
Another feature of the Suomi was the design of the barrel casing and the barrel itself, which were easily removed together, which made it possible to replace overheated barrels and maintain a high rate of fire. Although the sector sight was graduated to a distance of 500 m, the actual range when firing bursts did not exceed 200 m.
Shops for Suomi were of several types. One of them is a box-type for 20 rounds, then a disc for 40 rounds, designed by Lahti itself, and, finally, another drum magazine for 70 rounds, developed by engineer Koskinen in 1936 and weighed the same as the 40-round one. In Sweden, four-row box magazines with a capacity of 50 rounds were designed. In the 1950s, a 36-round box magazine from the Swedish Karl Gustov M / 45 submachine gun began to be used. Soldiers of the Finnish army, as, indeed, and soldiers of all other countries of the world, were strictly forbidden to hold a submachine gun when firing at the store, so as not to loosen its latches and the neck of the receiver. But this prohibition was almost always violated in a combat situation.
Drum magazine of the Suomi submachine gun.
Despite the fact that the production volumes of "Suomi" were generally small, the Finns demonstrated their skillful use in battles during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. Then these submachine guns made a strong impression on both the private and the command staff. Red Army. In fact, this is what forced our military to speed up the production and mass production of this new type of weapon for the army. Moreover, plans to deploy PP production in the USSR were adopted even before the Finnish War, but their implementation in practice was slow. And then - everyone saw, and many also experienced on their own experience what it means to have a submachine gun with a large supply of cartridges in a wooded area, and it is not surprising that all forces were immediately thrown into the "automation" of the Red Army soldiers. In addition to the fact that even Fedorov assault rifles were seized from the warehouses and returned to service, the production of submachine guns of the Degtyarev design was hastily increased, and at the same time they were also modernized.
A Finnish soldier in the forest in ambush with a Suomi submachine gun in his hands.
By the way, the peak of the use of drum magazines was just the "winter war". They were immediately adopted by the Red Army and the Great Patriotic War, our submachine gunners met with just such large-capacity stores. And … already in the course of it, a truly amazing thing became clear, however, it was obvious from the very beginning. The use of such stores is for the most part … not justified. They are more complicated and much more expensive to manufacture, and they are also less reliable than "carob" box-type ones. In addition, they make the weapon heavier and deprive it of maneuverability. It is not necessary to change the magazine for a long time, but the stock of cartridges is much more convenient to carry in pouches. And not without reason in the USSR, having taken the drum magazine from "Suomi" as a basis for the late modification of the PPD and PPSh-41, already in the second year of the war they returned to traditional box stores. True, in the movies (oh, this is a movie!), As well as in newsreels, the submachine guns in the hands of our soldiers are much more likely to have drum magazines.
