PPSh41 Sub Machine Gun

Designed by the Soviets in 1940 and adopted for issue in 1941, the PPSh41 met the Red Army's need for an easily mass-produced, rugged weapon. It became very popular with German soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front and was converted by German armorers to fire 9-mm Parabellum rounds.

The weapon had a fire-rate selector lever positioned just in front of the trigger, allowing the rate of fire to be changed rapidly without the weapon moving off the the point of aim.

The two-piece bolt handle allows the bolt to be locked in either the forward or the rear position.

The original weapon had two different magazines; a 71-round drum or a 35-round box. Most of the weapons used in Vietnam used the box magazine but this may have been a result of the Chinese connection since the PRC Type 50 differed only slightly from the PPSh41, mainly in that it only fitted the 35-round box magazine.

The most interesting variant of the weapon was the K50M, which was the Vietnamese modification of the PRC Type 50. The Vietnamese removed the wooden butt stock and replaced it with a wooden pistol grip and a French-style sliding wire butt stock similar to that on the MAT49. At the front end of the weapon they shortened the perforated barrel jacket, left off the muzzle brake, and attached the foresight to the barrel, giving the gun a shape strongly reminiscent of the MAT49. The K50M was about 500-g (1.1-lbs) lighter than the PPSh41 at 3.4-kg (7.5-lbs) as opposed to 3.9-kg (8.6-lbs).

The weapons were all blowback operated and had an effective range of about 150-m (164-yards).

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