Rifle vz. 52 (Army Museum, Stockholm).
I was much more interested in the rifles with which the soldiers of this guard were armed. First of all, the black stock and butt, because we have such a weapon as training, and besides, in my opinion, the automatic rifles they saw in their hands were somehow excessively "plump". This interested me, and in the end, what kind of rifles they had in their hands and why they seemed to me "plump" in appearance, I still found out.
Here they are - the presidential guards of the Czech army. Handsome men!
It turned out that the guards guarding the Czech president were armed with automatic rifles vz. 52 (vz is an abbreviation for "vzor" - "model", and the number "52" indicates the year of its release). Moreover, this rifle turned out to be interesting enough to tell VO readers about it.
But this guy is a little "untidy". As if not getting enough sleep …
So, as we all know well from the previous articles of this cycle, it was Czechoslovakia that produced Mauser, if not more than Germany itself, then at least a lot. And they were delivered to a variety of countries, which suggests that the Czechs, firstly, produced weapons of quality no worse than German ones, and secondly, they skillfully approached marketing issues.
“You can't live without women / In the world, no!.. / The sun of May is in them, / In them love flourishes! It's hard to keep my word / And I will fall in love again / In you every time / For an hour! Apparently, this is about her too!
But after the war for Czechoslovakia came, if not "black times", then in some way a certain "timelessness". The fact is that, being drawn into the bloc of socialist countries headed by the USSR, it could no longer fully pursue the policy in the field of military production that it would have liked, now it had to look back at its powerful “elder brother”. Now it was no longer possible to produce the once popular Mauser and use old, time-tested brands, but the comrades in the bloc did not interfere with the development of their own national weapons, as well as their production, and of course the Czechs immediately took advantage of this, besides, they had very design cadres. good ones since pre-war times.
Above: vz. 52 under the Czech cartridge, below - vz. 52/57 under the Soviet patron. The differences, as you can see, are small.
And so it happened that one of the first post-war developments was the Czechoslovak 7, 62-mm self-loading rifle vz. 52, in the design of which, without further ado, its creators used many solutions tested by German designers in automatic rifles at the end of the war, but with their own modifications and improvements.
Diagram of the device vz. 52/57.
As for the Germans, they began working on weapons for intermediate-type ammunition back in 1938. Then, during the war, the development of a new acceptable type of weapon for the infantry was reduced to a competition between three well-known firms: Mauser, Walter and Haenel. And just the MKb.42 (W) assault rifle, designed by Walter, had a gas-operated automatic mechanism, in which an annular gas piston was put on the barrel. Powder gases exited the barrel through two holes into the cavity formed by the barrel and the casing put on it, and pressed on the piston in the form of a disk with a hole in the middle. The barrel was locked by tilting the bolt in the vertical plane. The cocking handle of the bolt was placed on the left by the designers of "Walter". True, their machine gun could not stand the competition with the "Haenel" and "Mauser", although its design turned out to be quite efficient.
Rifle vz. 52 with cutouts to showcase its design. The return spring of the gas tube and piston is directly under the sight. Pencil cases with rifle care accessories are visible in the butt
Well, the Czechoslovak designers picked up their idea and began to develop it. Although the first thing for her they developed a shortened rifle cartridge (which also received the designation vz. 52), taking into account the combat use of the German cartridge "Kurz". As noted above, the Germans began the development of weapons for shortened cartridges even before the start of the war, and already in its course they finally came to the conclusion about the redundancy of the power of standard rifle cartridges. To shoot at a distance of up to a thousand meters or more now had to be less and less, the distance over 300 meters, or even less than 100 meters became optimal. So life itself “helped” the appearance of new cartridges.
The entire gas engine of the rifle is covered with such a metal casing with longitudinal corrugation, which gives it its characteristic "puffiness".
The design of the rifle vz. 52 turned out to be very unusual in the end. To begin with, a lot of parts were put on its barrel to ensure the operation of its automation. Usually in its description it is reported that there was a piston on the barrel, which moved back and forth due to the powder gases discharged from the barrel. But to say this, or rather to write, is to say nothing. Because in this case the main thing remains unclear - how this piston transmitted movement to the shutter. In fact, there was not one piston on the barrel, but as many as six parts. First of all, a fixing nut was screwed onto it, which was a stop for the piston and limiting its forward stroke. Behind it was a clutch that was inserted into the piston, the piston itself and a long tube that rested against a round nozzle, on which a short return spring of large diameter was put on. This nozzle had a U-shape in plan, and it was with these two protrusions that slid along the barrel to the left and right, and it acted on the bolt, forcing it to move back. Accordingly, the bolt, moving back, compressed the return spring, then went forward, picked up the next cartridge from the store, fed it into the barrel and locked it by skewing in the vertical plane of interaction with the curly cutouts of the receiver.
The sight and the marking located under it.
The trigger mechanism was almost entirely borrowed from the Garanda M1 rifle. Blade bayonet with double-sided sharpening, integral, and folding. On the right, a recess is made under it on the stock. Power is provided from a 10-round box magazine, which was equipped with a clip, but if desired, it could be unlocked. The weight of the rifle turned out to be rather big: 4, 281 kg (without cartridges), although its length was not large - without a bayonet, 100, 3 cm, and with an open bayonet - 120, 4 cm. The speed of a bullet is at the level of rifles of that time - 744 m / s.
That is, the rifle turned out to be quite heavy, but its weight dampened the recoil well. Another thing is that vz. 52 was a sophisticated weapon for its time in terms of technology and was quite expensive to manufacture.
Bayonet stowed.
It was adopted only by the army of Czechoslovakia, and even then only until new, more advanced models of small arms appeared. But vz. 52 were actively supplied abroad. The fact is that since at this time Czechoslovakia found itself in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Soviet military leadership demanded from its allies, if not the unification of weapons, then at least the unification of ammunition. Therefore, the Czechs were forced to abandon their own cartridge and switch to the Soviet one, and remake the vz. 52. This modification for the Soviet cartridge was designated vz 52/57. And now, as soon as a "national liberation movement" began somewhere in the world, Czechoslovakia, as a completely independent state, sent its weapons there, and the USSR, in the second place, helped with ammunition.
Rifle in Nicaragua.
Rifle in Cuba.
Thus, a large number of these rifles were exported to various countries of the world, for example, to Cuba and Egypt, many of them came to the soldiers of numerous national liberation armies. Well, some of them, like our SKS carbines, are still used for ceremonial purposes.
But personally, I liked this guard who was standing nearby. Only no one filmed it. But in vain! A very colorful and well-armed figure!
