Sturmgewehrs and all the fun they are.
Arright. Sturmgewehrs. Or assault rifles, as we in Freedomland^^TM like to call them. Neat little rifles firing smallish cartridges, usually with select fire so you can choose how much lead you want to throw at any given time. Pretty neat concept, right? Yes. Yes it is. And it was in development for 40 frickin' years. So take that Gaben.
'kay, so from basically the birth of firearms up to probably 1920 or so militaries around the world were obsessed with getting as much range out of their weapons as possible. I mean look at this G98 rear sight. That thing goes out to 2 kilometers. Even though the cartridge it uses will only do about half that, a kilometer is a really long way. Unfortunately, having such a powerful cartridge meant that A) it kicked like a beeyatch, and B) all that ammo was pretty heavy, so troops couldn't carry all that much. That would change. Later.
So in the middle of WWI, the Russian Fedorov Avtomat was designed, and it's considered by some to be the first true assault rifle. It's chambered in 6.5x50mm Arisaka which was a lot smaller than other contemporary cartridges. Oh, and it was select-fire, which was cool. Despite its coolness though, it did have a few drawbacks. First off, as far as I can tell it didn't really field-strip. It's either all or nothing when you're disassembling it, which is kinda nasty when it's this hard. Also, as you can see in the video there's a lot of machining that needs to go into producing one of those. Finally, Russia had their revolution in 1917, and the resulting economic fuckery probably killed the Fedorov Avtomat after only like 3,200 had been made.
Fast forward to the early to mid-1920s. Some military higher-ups started to notice that in WWI, a lot of the fighting had been done at pretty close ranges of less than like 400 meters or so. This led to a little bit of interest in an intermediate cartridge which would still be effective out to about the aforementioned range but also be light enough to carry a lot of 'em. Oh and they wouldn't kick too much, which was a nice bonus. Around the same time America was testing the .276 Pedersen cartridge, the pissed-off nation of Germany had kinda put out a requisition for a new service rifle that would be chambered in a smaller cartridge, which either they weren't specific on or I just can't remember what they wanted. Not sure which.
As it happens, they didn't end up adopting a new cartridge; instead they just stuck with their preexisting 7.92x57mm cartridge likely for the same reason the .276 Pedersen project got cancelled: logistics would be a nightmare, and retooling all the factories and converting all the preexisting guns would be another nightmare. So the Germans basically just shortened their Gewehr 98 and called it a day. Except they didn't.
Fast forward again, this time to 1939ish. The Germans were looking into an intermediate cartridge again, this time for realsies. After a year or two of fuckery, they came up with the 7.92x33 Kurz(short), pictured here with some 7.92x57mm. As you can see, the Kurz round is pretty ~~adorable~~ tiny. Anyhoo, the Wehrmacht (I think) submitted a request for a rifle chambered in the new Kurz cartridge to two arms-manufacturing companies, Haenel and Walther. Walther's rifle looked like this and was kinda shite. Haenel's rifle looked like this and was much less shite, so it was adopted as the Maschinenkarabiner 42(H), better known as the MkB 42(H). It was first sent to the Eastern front in late 1942 to early 1943, and might have seen service in the Battle of Stalingrad. The troops that received the MkB for the most part loved the thing, and why wouldn't they? It was a friggin' assault rifle!
Now mechanically the MkB 42(H) was just a little weird, at least compared to the StG-44 it would evolve into. Basically, it's a tilting bolt operated by a long-stroke gas piston, so pretty simple. ‘cept for one little thing, which can be seen in this picture. Firstest, there’s that little tubular hunk of metal above the barrel that extends for a lot longer than it needs to. As I understand it, it’s called an expansion chamber and what it does is allow the gas that operates the piston to… expand. I think. Also there’s a thing what I forgot, and it’s that the rifle fires from an open bolt, so the bolt is held back and then slams forward when firing. Basically it’s better for cooling and worse for accuracy, and in the later iterations of the design they changed it to a closed bolt, which actually required a pretty decent amount of changes ‘cause open bolt mechanisms that aren’t blowback typically use the bolt carrier itself to strike the firing pin, so a hammer had to be added. Or a striker. Not clear on that.
Over the course of the next couple years, the MkB 42(H) was refined, first into the MP43 (The MP stood for maschinenpistole. Dunno why they changed it). The next year it became the MP44. Little later that year the rifle was demonstrated to Hitler, who absolutely fucking loved it. He loved it so much in fact, that he A) requested it be adopted it as standard for the Wehrmacht, and B) renamed it to the Sturmgewehr 44, or StG 44. The StG, though it had a few faults stemming from shitty construction, was well-loved by troops it was issued to. For the most part it was kinda used as a secondary support weapon - as a platoon’s machine gunner(s) reloaded or changed barrels, the lucky bastard with the StG would lay down some accurate covering fire. Overall, it was a pretty damn good weapon; just came too late in the war to help the Germans.
Also, the AK47 is NOT a copy of the StG-44. Totally different bolt lockup.
That’s all for this couple days, guys. See ya next time! Oh, and here’s a picture of yours truly with an StG-44 just after seeing a reenactment. Man, that sheet metal handguard gets really hot. Good thing the magwell’s as prominent as it is.