Dear friends, welcome to the channel the Eastern Front!
Today, we will talk about the weapons of victory.
Nobody will make a movie about this weapon, people don't talk about it in documentaries
and newsreels.
But nevertheless, there were heroes who organized weapons workshops in difficult military conditions.
A video about a device for sending trains downhill has recently been released on my
channel.
And today we will continue to talk about the partisans and their inventions.
To create weapons during the war, they used literally everything that was at hand and
that could be obtained in battles.
Metal from downed German planes, gasoline barrels, water pipes and much more were used.
They have successfully launched the production of small arms, grenade launchers, and hand
grenades in forests and swamps.
At the same time, some copies were superior in their characteristics to factory weapons.
Thus, they made their invaluable contribution to the victory over the enemy and brought
the end of the war closer.
One of the illustrative stories of the organization of an armory workshop is its creation in a
partisan detachment in the Mogilev region.
The organizer of the forest "weapons factory" was the commander of the detachment Pyotr
Scheslavsky.
In his diary, he wrote that the beginning of this activity was laid on December 25,
1942 by repairing aircraft machine guns for the needs of the partisans.
At first, only two fighters worked in the workshop under the guidance of a locksmith.
The idea of self-production of weapons came to his mind when, while at the brigade headquarters,
on March 29, 1943, he passed by one of the dugouts and saw the cargo sent from the "Mainland"
lowered by parachutes.
Among the cargo was a quantity of ammunition, including cartridges for PPSH.
So the idea was born to establish its own production of automatic weapons.
Two days later, work began in the workshop on the PPSH No. 1 submachine gun, which was
ready a week later.
On April 5, the brigade headquarters successfully tested the homemade PPSH, first with single
shots, and then with a burst.
After that, the serial production of submachine guns began.
The workshop soon moved to a new location and settled on an island among the swamps.
Given the constant anti-partisan raids by German punishers, work on the products was
suspended four times for various periods.
By July 1943, the first batch of nine serial PPSH was completed.
Soon, work began in the workshop on the modernization of the PPSH with increased rigidity of the
upper cover of the casing, which led to a reduction in the number of delays during firing
and increased the accuracy of aimed fire.
Pyotr Ivanovich wrote about his invention in a letter to the author of the submachine
gun, G.S.
Shpagin, and sent a sketch of the tail attachment of the upper part of the casing to the Bureau
of Inventions of the USSR.
In total, in 1943, the "armory plant" produced 70 new PPSH, and by mid-1944 this figure exceeded
100 automatic weapons.
The staff of gunsmiths has grown to 23 people.
A talented organizer, partisan and engineer Pyotr Ivanovich Scheslavsky died on May 16,
1944 during the storming of an enemy garrison.
Another story is no less interesting, when Belarusian partisans converted a German MP38-40
machine gun into a Soviet cartridge.
This weapon was developed jointly by Temyakov and Menkin.
The proprietary design of the submachine gun "according to the type of the German MP38-40"
for the Soviet cartridge received the original name "TM-44" (Temyakov-Menkin model 1944).
As in other armory workshops, in the detachment production of submachine guns began with copying
the regular Soviet PPSh and PPD.
In May 1943, Menkin brought his first PPSH to the commander of the detachment, "which
looked clumsy, but shot flawlessly."
In July, Temyakov also started producing weapons, this time according to the PPD type.
In total, by this time, four weapons workshops were operating in detachments.
Over time, when the workshops in the brigade were united, both masters began to work together.
Temyakov became the head of the workshop, who came up with the idea of producing submachine
guns of his own design.
The mass production of submachine guns can be said to have been adjusted from improvised
means: 1.the barrel of the weapon was made from an
unusable Mosin rifle; 2.the cooling casing was made from a bicycle
frame; 3.the bolt casing is made of water pipes taken
in battle during the defeat of the German garrison.
4.shutter — from the mill shaft; the trigger box together with the handle is
made of gasoline barrels; 6.the cheeks of the machine gun — from a
German downed plane; 7.the handle is made of cattle horns;
By May 1944, the brigade had manufactured 107 new submachine guns, including the PPSH-62
type, the PPD—28 type, and the German (PPT-44) — 17.
In June, two copies of the original weapons went to Moscow — they were intended for
Marshal Voroshilov and the chief of the Central Staff of the partisan movement, Lieutenant
General Ponomarenko.
Submachine guns were praised by the "main Soviet partisan" and his wishes to perpetuate
this feat for future generations in the Museum of the Patriotic War.
One of the most striking pages of the manufacture of homemade partisans weapons in Belorussia
was left by engineer Tengiz Evgenievich Shavgulidze.
On May 15, 1943, he invented and offered to the headquarters of the leadership of the
partisan detachments of the Minsk region several variants of the partisan grenade of the PGSH.
An experimental batch of the first five grenades showed trouble-free operation.
Further tests of grenades with defensive covers gave a shrapnel damage radius of up to 120
m, and the lethal effect of the PGSH was maintained up to 25 m.
The weight of the grenades ranged from 200 g to 1.5 kg, depending on the model.
The partisans noted that "grenades of the PGSH brand have several times the explosion
force compared to factory grenades of the same weight, which gives the effectiveness
of defeating the enemy and produces a demoralizing effect when used in combat."
So, in June 1943, 60 PGSH-1 grenades were successfully used in the battle.
It is not surprising that Shavgulidze was transferred to the headquarters of the leadership
to the position of a subversive instructor and sent to the partisan weapons workshops
of the Minsk detachments with business trips to establish serial production of hand grenades.
From May to September 1943, five more partisan brigades launched the production of homemade
grenades (daily volume — from 8 to 20 units).
In 1943 alone, the workshops produced more than 7000 grenades of various models.
In September 1943, after the successful introduction of grenades of his design into mass production,
Shavgulidze took up the development of a partisan rifle grenade launcher PRGSH.
In October, after minor improvements, the PRGSH was ready.
It was a melee weapon for destroying enemy manpower and suppressing its firing points,
no less powerful than a 50 mm mortar mine.
The range of shooting from a rifle or carbine reached 300-400 m, throwing a grenade was
carried out using a conventional rifle blank cartridge.
The PRGSH mortar was made from a 45 mm shell casing and had a smooth barrel, which facilitated
loading and reduced recoil when firing.
PRGSH-1 grenades of their own design were used as projectile ammunition.
Such a grenade weighing 400 g had a fragmentation radius of up to 100 m with a lethal force
of 20-25 m . For the first time, PRGSH grenade launchers were used in an ambush by a group
of partisans against a company of Germans moving along the Luban-Urechye highway.
Three bursts were fired from six grenade launchers, as a result of which the entire company, leaving
the dead and wounded, fled.
During the defeat of the rear of the 102nd German division in the village of Belichi,
a group of 8 grenade launchers made five or six bursts at the garrison of more than 500
people and forced the enemy to hastily leave the place of deployment, leaving 38 dead.
In total, by the beginning of 1944, 120 PRGSH units and more than 3,000 PRGSH-1 grenades
were produced.
The total share of homemade submachine guns was only 2% of the total number of partisans
in service (only 400 units out of 20,000).
The share of homemade grenades turned out to be slightly higher — about 5%, which
exceeded the figure of captured ammunition.
In total, about 10,000 grenades were produced.
Despite such modest figures, the contribution made by the partisan workshops to strengthening
the combat capability of the people's avengers showed their willingness to continue resistance
even in isolation from the "Mainland".
Dear friends, that's all for today.
It was Tim and the Eastern Front channel.
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