The film "The Ballad of a Soldier" begins with a scene full of tragedy. A Soviet soldier-signalman is being pursued by a German tank, the young soldier has nowhere to hide, he is running, and the steel colossus is about to overtake him and crush him. The soldier sees Degtyarev's anti-tank rifle thrown by someone. And he uses an unexpectedly turned up chance for salvation. He shoots at an enemy car and knocks it out. Another tank is advancing on him, but the signalman is not lost and burns him too.
"It couldn't be! - other "experts in military history" will say today. “You can’t pierce tank armor with a gun!” - "Can!" - those who are more familiar with this subject will answer. The inaccuracy in the film narrative may have been admitted, but it concerns not the combat capabilities of this class of weapons, but the chronology.
A little about tactics
Anti-tank guns were created in the thirties of the XX century in many countries. They seemed to be a completely logical and reasonable solution to the issue of confronting the armored vehicles of that time. Artillery was supposed to become the main means of combating it, and anti-tank rifles - auxiliary, but more mobile. The tactics of conducting the offensive involved delivering strikes with tank wedges involving dozens, even hundreds of vehicles, but the success of the attack was determined by whether it was possible to create the necessary concentration of troops unnoticed by the enemy. Overcoming well-fortified defense lines equipped with armor-piercing artillery, with a strip of minefields and engineering structures (gouges, hedgehogs, etc.) was an adventurous business and was fraught with the loss of a large amount of equipment. But if the enemy suddenly hits a poorly protected sector of the front, then there will be no time for jokes. We will have to urgently "patch holes" in the defense, transfer guns and infantry, which still needs to dig in. It is difficult to quickly deliver the required number of guns with ammunition to a dangerous area. This is where the anti-tank rifle comes in handy. PTRD is a relatively compact and inexpensive weapon (much cheaper than guns). You can produce a lot of them, and then equip all units with them. Just in case. The soldiers armed with them, perhaps, will not burn out all the enemy tanks, but they will be able to delay the offensive. Time will be won, the command will have time to pull up the main forces. So thought many military leaders in the late thirties.
Why did our fighters lack PTR
There are several reasons why the development and production of anti-tank rifles in the USSR in the pre-war years was practically curtailed, but the main one was the exclusively offensive military doctrine of the Red Army. Someanalysts point to the supposedly poor awareness of the Soviet leadership, which overestimated the degree of armor protection of German tanks, and therefore made the wrong conclusion about the low effectiveness of anti-tank missiles as a class of weapons. There are even references to the head of Glavartupra G. I. Kulik, who expressed such an opinion. Subsequently, it turned out that even the 14.5-mm Rukavishnikov PTR-39 anti-tank rifle, adopted in 1939 by the Red Army and abolished a year later, could well penetrate the armor of all types of equipment that the Wehrmacht possessed in 1941.
What did the Germans come with
The border of the USSR Hitler's army crossed with tanks in the amount of over three thousand. It is difficult to appreciate this armada at its true worth, if you do not use the method of comparison. The Red Army had much fewer modern tanks (T-34 and KV), only a few hundred. So, maybe the Germans had equipment of about the same quality as ours, with a quantitative superiority? It's not.
The T-I tank was not just light, it can be called a wedge. Without a gun, with a crew of two, it weighed a little more than a car. Degtyarev's anti-tank rifle, put into service in the fall of 1941, pierced it right through. The German T-II was slightly better, with bulletproof armor and a short-barreled 37mm cannon. There was also a T-III, which would have withstood the impact of the PTR cartridge, but only if it hit the frontal part, but in other other areas …
The Panzerwaffe also had Czech, Polish, Belgian, French and other captured vehicles (they are included in the total), worn out,obsolete and poorly supplied with spare parts. I don’t even want to think about what Degtyarev’s anti-tank rifle could do with any of them.
Tigers and Panthers came to the Germans later, in 1943.
Resumption of production
One should pay tribute to the Stalinist leadership, it was able to correct mistakes. The decision to resume work on the PTR was made the day after the start of the war. This fact refutes the version of the Stavka's poor awareness of the armored potential of the Wehrmacht, it is simply impossible to obtain such information in a day. As a matter of urgency (less than a month it took to manufacture prototype units), a competition was held for two samples, almost ready to be launched into mass production. Simonov's anti-tank rifle showed good results, but in the technological aspect it was inferior to the second tested PTR. It was more complicated in the device, and also heavier, which also influenced the decision of the commission. On the last day of August, Degtyarev's anti-tank rifle was officially adopted by the Red Army and put into production at an arms factory in the city of Kovrov, and two months later - in Izhevsk. Over 270,000 pieces were made in three years.
First results
At the end of October 1941, the situation at the front was catastrophic. The vanguard units of the Wehrmacht approached Moscow, two strategic echelons of the Red Army were practically defeated in giant "cauldrons", vast expanses of the European part of the USSR were underfifth occupiers. In these circumstances, the Soviet soldiers did not lose heart. Lacking artillery in sufficient quantities, the troops showed massive heroism and fought the tanks using grenades and Molotov cocktails. Directly from the assembly line, new weapons came to the front. On November 16, soldiers of the 1075th Infantry Regiment of the 316th Division destroyed three enemy tanks using ATGMs. Photos of the heroes and the fascist equipment they burned were published by Soviet newspapers. A continuation soon followed, with four more tanks smoking near Lugovaya, which had previously conquered Warsaw and Paris.
Foreign PTR
Newsreel of the war years repeatedly captured our fighters with anti-tank guns. The episodes of battles with their use in feature films were also reflected (for example, in S. Bondarchuk's masterpiece "They Fought for the Motherland"). French, American, English or German soldiers with ATGM documentaries recorded much less for history. Does this mean that the anti-tank guns of World War II were mostly Soviet? To some extent, yes. In such quantities, these weapons were produced only in the USSR. But work on it was carried out in Britain (Beuys system), and in Germany (PzB-38, PzB-41), and in Poland (UR), and in Finland (L-35), and in the Czech Republic (MSS-41). And even in neutral Switzerland (S18-1000). Another thing is that the engineers of all these, no doubt, technologically "advanced" countries have not been able to surpass Russian weapons in their simplicity, the elegance of technical solutions, and also in quality. Yes and coolnot every soldier is capable of firing a gun at an advancing tank from a trench. Our can.
How to pierce armor?
PTRD has approximately the same performance characteristics as the Simonov anti-tank rifle, but it is lighter than it (17.3 versus 20.9 kg), shorter (2000 and 2108 mm, respectively) and structurally simpler, and therefore, it takes less time to clean and it is easier to train shooters. These circumstances explain the preference given by the State Commission, despite the fact that the PTRS could fire at a higher rate of fire due to the built-in five-round magazine. The main quality of this weapon was still the ability to penetrate armor protection from various distances. To do this, it was necessary to send a special heavy bullet with a steel core (and, as an option, with an additional incendiary charge activated after passing through an obstacle) at a sufficiently high speed.
Piercing
The distance at which Degtyarev's anti-tank rifle becomes dangerous for enemy armored vehicles is half a kilometer. From it it is quite possible to hit other targets, such as pillboxes, bunkers, as well as aircraft. The caliber of the cartridge is 14.5 mm (brand B-32 is a conventional armor-piercing incendiary or BS-41 with a ceramic superhard tip). The length of the ammunition corresponds to the airgun projectile, 114 mm. The distance to hit a target with armor 30 cm thick is 40 mm, and from a hundred meters this bullet pierces 6 cm.
Accuracy
The accuracy of hits determines the success of shooting at the most vulnerable parts of enemy equipment. Protection was constantly being improved, therefore, instructions were issued and promptly updated for the fighters, recommending how to most effectively use an anti-tank gun. The modern idea of the fight against armored vehicles in the same way takes into account the possibility of hitting the weakest points. When firing on tests from a hundred-meter distance, 75% of the cartridges hit the 22-cm neighborhood of the target center.
Design
No matter how simple technical solutions are, they should not be primitive. WWII weapons were often produced in difficult conditions due to forced evacuation and the deployment of workshops in unprepared areas (it happened that for some time they had to work in the open). This fate was avoided by the Kovrov and Izhevsk plants, which until 1944 produced ATGMs. Anti-tank rifle Degtyarev, despite the simplicity of the device, has absorbed all the achievements of Russian gunsmiths.
The barrel is rifled, eight-way. The sight is the most common, with a front sight and a two-position bar (up to 400 m and 1 km). The PTRD is loaded like a conventional rifle, but the strong recoil led to the presence of a barrel brake and a spring shock absorber. For convenience, a handle is provided (one of the carrying fighters can hold it) and a bipod. Everything else: the sear, the percussion mechanism, the receiver, the stock and other attributes of the gun, are thought out with the ergonomics that has always been famous forRussian weapons.
Maintenance
In the field, most often, incomplete disassembly was carried out, involving the removal and disassembly of the shutter, as the most polluted unit. If this was not enough, then it was necessary to remove the bipod, butt, then disassemble the trigger mechanism and separate the slide delay. At low temperatures, frost-resistant grease is used, in other cases, ordinary gun oil No. 21. The kit includes a ramrod (collapsible), an oiler, a screwdriver, two bandoliers, two moisture-resistant canvas covers (one on each side of the gun) and a service form in which there are cases of training and combat use, as well as misfires and failures.
Korea
In 1943, the German industry began to produce medium and heavy tanks with powerful bulletproof armor. Soviet troops continued to use the PTRD against light, less protected vehicles, as well as to suppress gun emplacements. At the end of the war, the need for anti-tank rifles disappeared. Powerful artillery and other effective weapons were used to deal with the remaining German tanks in 1945. WWII is over. It seemed that the time of the PTRD was irretrievably gone. But five years later, the Korean War began, and the "old gun" began to shoot again, however, at the former allies - the Americans. It was in service with the army of the DPRK and the PLA, who fought on the peninsula until 1953. American tanks of the post-war generation most often withstood hits, but anything happened. PTRD was also used as a means of air defense.
Post-war history
The presence of a large number of high-quality weapons with unique qualities prompted us to look for some useful use for them. Tens of thousands of units were stored in grease. What can an anti-tank gun be used for? Modern protective armor of tanks can even withstand a hit by a cumulative projectile, not to mention a bullet (even if it has a core and a special tip). In the 60s, they decided that with the PTRD it was possible to hunt seals and whales. The idea is good, but this thing is painfully heavy. Also, from such a gun you can conduct sniper fire at a distance of up to a kilometer, a high initial speed allows you to shoot very accurately with an optical sight. The armor of an infantry fighting vehicle or an armored personnel carrier PTRD easily penetrates, which means that even today the weapon has not completely lost its relevance. So it lies in warehouses, waiting in the wings…
