The desire to save money on training soldiers usually always goes sideways, especially when soldiers have to take part in real hostilities, and not having received a specialty for a year to go headlong into civilian life. Nevertheless, sometimes there were quite rational decisions that really allowed to save a lot of money on training, without prejudice to the final level of the fighter's training. The most striking example of this is the use of small-caliber pistols similar in design to full-fledged, in service, samples. Replacing full-fledged ammunition with small-caliber.22 cartridges led to a significant decrease in the cost of shooting, and although such pistols did not allow full training in handling normal weapons, they helped to get initial shooting skills, which could only be fixed with the pistol and cartridge that were in service. This training method was used not so much in the army environment as for training law enforcement officers, since for them a pistol or revolver has always been and will be the main weapon. In the army, short-barreled samples never had the status of the main means of fighting the enemy and were rather an auxiliary weapon, and now they have begun to lose their relevance altogether, gaining the status of a last-chance weapon.
The topic of the relevance of short-barreled weapons in the modern army is certainly interesting, but this time we will not talk about that, but how the idea of replacing a full-fledged ammunition with a small-caliber cartridge for training soldiers was developed (perverted). Let's consider this question using an example of a rather interesting, but, in my opinion, useless Blum machine gun. I want to make a reservation right away that I have nothing against the designer himself and his own ideas. In this case, the gunsmith simply had to carry out the not entirely clever task assigned to him, with which he coped quite successfully, it seems to me.
The fact that a machine gun is a very effective weapon was understood for a very long time, the only drawback of a machine gun was considered to be a large overexpenditure of ammunition, which made it difficult to promote this class of weapon. But in the end, common sense won out and the machine gun became for some time the main weapon of any army. The weapon due to which the victory was achieved. Nevertheless, the toad did not stop strangling individuals and apparently strangled strongly. In addition to the fairly large consumption of ammunition in battle, it was also required to somehow train the machine-gun crew, and it was clearly not possible to do this in words or directing the weapon with the words "tra-ta-ta". It was then that the idea of using a small-caliber cartridge for training machine-gun crews came up. Anyone who at least once tried to determine empirically the maximum range of use of a small-bore rifle understands how crazy this idea was. It is one thing to use the.22LR cartridge for training pistol or revolver shooting, and quite another thing to use this ammunition for training machine gun crews.
Despite common sense, the designer was tasked with creating such a weapon. In principle, there was nothing difficult in the task at hand, and at the moment anyone could cope with it, but then it was only the end of the twenties of the last century and the designer had to apply quite a lot of efforts to ensure that the weapon corresponded at least to the rate of fire of full-fledged machine guns, in particular machine gun DP, recently adopted. On the other hand, these efforts consisted only in correct calculations, since the dimensions of the weapon made it possible to use a very long bolt stroke, which made it possible to vary the rate of fire within a fairly wide range.
Given the fact that the.22LR ammunition is very, very weak, it is not difficult to guess that the designer used an automatic breechblock scheme. In order not to bother with the trigger mechanism, it was decided to sacrifice the accuracy of the first shot, so the shot takes place from the so-called open bolt. In other words, the designer made a simple submachine gun chambered for the small-bore.22LR cartridge in the form of a full-size light machine gun. The barrel length of the weapon was 645 millimeters, with a total length of 946 millimeters. The weapon had a weight of 3.3 kilograms, to which was added the weight of a disk magazine with a capacity of 39 rounds of 1.1 kilograms. The rate of fire was 600 rounds per minute, the trigger mechanism allowed only automatic fire. The weapon had a folding bipod and sights similar to those on the DT machine gun, but designed for the characteristics of the.22LR ammunition. A total of 3698 units of this weapon were produced, and they were quite actively used to train machine-gun crews.
Well, in the end, let's try to figure out what exactly such a sample of weapons can teach and how much of it is useful. Given that the design of the weapon is completely different from the design of a full-fledged machine gun, such a sample cannot provide normal training in maintenance and elimination of delays in firing, and this is no less important than the ability to accurately hit the enemy. Due to completely different characteristics of the ammunition, with such a machine gun, a person will not know the real capabilities of his weapon, he will not be fully able to use sights even at medium ranges of weapon use, not to mention long-range ones. Of course, you can quickly learn this in the process, when you press and learn to breathe under water, no doubt, but here comes the time during which someone can die from his comrades, and perhaps the machine gunner himself, without understanding how to shoot at greater distances than those at which he was taught to shoot. Separately, a very interesting point is noted, saying that thanks to the Blum machine gun, it is possible not only to reduce the cost of ammunition, but also to reduce the area of the landfills. An ingenious thought. Perhaps the only thing this machine gun can teach is to take breaks in shooting, and even then, for those who do not know how to do this and for whom the only signal that it is enough to shoot is a kick to a certain place, this model of weapon is not suitable, since I am strong I doubt that something negative can happen with the machine gun even if all 39 rounds are landed in a long burst. I am already silent about the fact that there is virtually no recoil when shooting, and so on.
Thus, it is not at all difficult to conclude that there is more harm than good from such weapons. If we take into account the fact that such a machine gun will be used purely for obtaining the initial skills of shooting from such a weapon, then as a result a person will have to retrain when a full-fledged sample falls into his hands. Such a machine gun would be useful somewhere in school, for shooting in pre-conscription training lessons or something like that, if it still exists, but in the army, it seems to me, such a weapon has no place.
