PPSh-41

1. Lead

The PPSh-41 — the Pistolet-Pulemyot Shpagina, or Shpagin submachine gun — was the Soviet Union’s most famous infantry weapon of the Second World War and one of the most widely produced submachine guns in history. Designed by Georgy Shpagin in 1940–41, it was a simple, rugged automatic weapon chambered for the 7.62×25mm Tokarev pistol cartridge, fed from a distinctive 71-round drum magazine or a 35-round box magazine, and capable of firing about 900 rounds per minute.

About 6 million PPSh-41s were produced during the war, and they armed whole battalions of Red Army infantry, tank riders, scouts and partisans. In the close fighting of Stalingrad, in the streets of Berlin and in the forests of the Eastern Front, the PPSh-41’s volume of fire gave Soviet soldiers a decisive advantage over German troops armed with the bolt-action Kar98k.

The PPSh-41 was not a sophisticated weapon. It was deliberately crude: most of its parts were stamped from sheet metal, it had few machined components, and it could be made quickly by factories that had never built firearms before, including plants evacuated east of the Urals ahead of the German advance. Its genius lay in its simplicity and its firepower.

A soldier with a PPSh-41 could put more bullets into the air in a few seconds than a German rifleman could fire in a minute, and at the ranges where most infantry fighting took place — less than 200 metres — that volume of fire mattered more than long-range accuracy.

German soldiers prized captured PPSh-41s so highly that they often carried them in preference to their own weapons, and the German army even issued captured examples officially under the designation MP 717(r). This article explains how the PPSh-41 was developed, how it worked, what its variants were, how it performed in combat, and why it became a symbol of the Red Army’s victory.

2. Key Facts

Type	Submachine gun
Country of origin	Soviet Union
Designer	Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin / Georgy Shpagin
Years in service	1941–1950s (Soviet service); in use elsewhere into the 1960s–1970s
Cartridge	7.62×25mm Tokarev / 7,62×25mm Tokarev
Action	Open-bolt blowback, selective fire (semi- and fully automatic)
Magazine	71-round drum magazine; 35-round box magazine
Weight	About 3.63 kg (8.0 lb) empty; about 5.45 kg (12.0 lb) with loaded 71-round drum
Overall length	843 mm (33.2 in) / 843 mm
Barrel length	269 mm (10.6 in) / 269 mm
Muzzle velocity	About 488 m/s (1,600 ft/s)
Rate of fire	About 900 rounds per minute (cyclic)
Effective range	About 200 m
Production	About 6 million (1941–1945)
Users	Soviet Union, Germany (captured), China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Yugoslavia and others

3. Background

3.1. The Red Army Learns from Finland

The PPSh-41 was born from a defeat. In the Winter War against Finland in 1939–40, the Red Army discovered that its infantry was badly equipped for close fighting. Finnish troops, armed with the Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun — a well-made weapon with a 71-round drum magazine — used their firepower to devastating effect in the forests and at close range, while Soviet infantry, armed with the bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifle, could not match them.

The Soviet high command drew the obvious conclusion: the Red Army needed a submachine gun of its own, in large numbers, and it needed one that could be produced cheaply and quickly. The existing Soviet submachine gun, the PPD-40 designed by Vasily Degtyaryov, was a good weapon, but it was expensive and slow to make, with many machined parts, and only about 90,000 had been produced.

It was not the weapon for an army of millions. The lesson went beyond the weapon itself: the Winter War showed that whole units armed with submachine guns could dominate forest and urban fighting, and by 1942 the Red Army was fielding dedicated submachine-gun companies, and later battalions, built around the new weapon.

3.2. Shpagin and the Race to Produce

In 1940 the Soviet government held a competition for a new submachine gun that could be mass-produced. Georgy Shpagin, a designer at the Kovrov arms plant, submitted a weapon that was deliberately designed for cheap, rapid manufacture: most of its parts were stamped from sheet steel, the barrel was made from a simple tube with a chrome-lined bore, and the wooden stock was a plain, easily shaped piece of wood.

The weapon was tested in late 1940, adopted in December 1940 as the PPSh-41, and put into production in 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the PPSh-41 was still new, but production expanded with extraordinary speed: factories were evacuated east of the Urals, new plants were built, and by 1942 the PPSh-41 was being produced in hundreds of thousands.

Its simplicity was its strength — a PPSh-41 required far fewer machining hours than the PPD-40, and it could be made by workers who had never built a firearm before.

4. Design and Development

4.1. A Weapon Built for Mass Production

The PPSh-41’s design was governed by a single idea: make it as simple and as cheap as possible without making it unreliable. The receiver was a tube of stamped steel, the barrel shroud was a perforated steel sleeve that protected the shooter’s hand and helped cool the barrel, and the stock was a single piece of wood, shaped with a pistol grip and a butt that could be used as a club in close fighting.

The weapon used a simple open-bolt blowback action, in which the bolt’s weight and a spring held the breech closed until the pressure of the fired cartridge drove the bolt back, extracted the empty case and loaded the next round. There was no locked breech and no gas system, which meant that there were few parts to break and few parts that needed precise machining.

The PPSh-41 had a fire selector that allowed semi-automatic and fully automatic fire, and a simple tangent rear sight graduated to 500 metres, although the weapon was rarely effective beyond 200 metres. The barrel was chrome-lined, which resisted corrosion and fouling and made the weapon easier to clean in the field.

4.1.1. Stamped Steel and the Cost of War

The use of stamped steel was the PPSh-41’s most important innovation, and it was a response to the conditions of total war. Machined parts require skilled workers, expensive machine tools and time; stamped parts can be made by pressing sheet steel in a die, which is fast, cheap and can be done by workers with little training.

Shpagin designed the PPSh-41 so that most of its parts could be stamped, and the weapon’s production time was a fraction of the PPD-40’s — Soviet sources claim that a PPSh-41 took about 7 hours of machining time, against more than 13 hours for the PPD-40, and that it used far less steel.

The result was a weapon that could be produced in millions by an industry under enormous strain, and the PPSh-41 became the symbol of Soviet wartime production: a weapon that was good enough, cheap enough and available in the numbers the Red Army needed.

The same principle — stamped steel, simple design, mass production — would later be used in the AK-47, and the PPSh-41 can be seen as a step on the road to the modern assault rifle.

4.2. The Drum Magazine and the Cartridge

The PPSh-41’s most recognisable feature was its 71-round drum magazine, copied from the Finnish Suomi’s drum. The drum held 71 rounds of 7.62×25mm Tokarev ammunition in a spiral, and it gave the soldier a huge volume of fire without reloading — a full drum could be fired in about five seconds on fully automatic.

The drum was heavy, weighing about 1.8 kg loaded, and it was awkward to carry and slow to load, which was why the PPSh-41 was also issued with a 35-round curved box magazine, which was lighter, easier to carry and faster to load.

In practice, soldiers often carried one drum in the weapon and box magazines as spares, or they used the box magazine for routine patrols and the drum for assaults. The 7.62×25mm Tokarev cartridge was a powerful pistol round, firing a light 85-grain bullet at about 488 m/s, which gave the PPSh-41 a flat trajectory and good penetration at short range, and the same cartridge was used in the TT-33 pistol, which simplified supply.

The cartridge’s high velocity also gave the PPSh-41 a longer effective range than most submachine guns of its day.

4.3. Sights, Controls and Handling

The PPSh-41 was a large submachine gun by the standards of its day — 843 mm long and 3.63 kg empty — and it was designed to be fired from the shoulder, with the stock held firmly against the body.

The fire selector was a small lever on the receiver, and the safety was a sliding catch on the bolt handle, which was simple but not always reliable: the weapon could fire if it was dropped with the bolt open, and soldiers learned to carry it with the bolt closed and the magazine removed, or with the safety engaged.

The rear sight was a tangent leaf graduated from 50 to 500 metres, and the front sight was a protected post. The weapon’s high rate of fire — about 900 rounds per minute — meant that it climbed sharply on fully automatic, and soldiers were trained to fire in short bursts of three to five rounds, which kept the weapon controllable and conserved ammunition.

In trained hands, the PPSh-41 was accurate to about 200 metres, and its volume of fire made it devastating at the ranges where infantry fighting actually took place.

5. Technical Specifications

5.1. Ballistics and Rate of Fire

The 7.62×25mm Tokarev cartridge was one of the most powerful pistol cartridges of the war. It fired an 85-grain (5.5 g) bullet at about 488 m/s from the PPSh-41’s 269 mm barrel, giving a muzzle energy of about 660 joules — roughly a third more than the energy of the 9×19mm cartridge used in the German MP 40.

The cartridge’s high velocity gave the PPSh-41 a flat trajectory and good penetration, and it could defeat light cover and body armour at short range. The weapon’s cyclic rate of fire was about 900 rounds per minute, which was higher than the MP 40’s 500 rounds per minute and higher than the British Sten’s 550 rounds per minute.

The high rate of fire was both a strength and a weakness: it gave the PPSh-41 a devastating volume of fire, but it also meant that a 71-round drum could be emptied in about five seconds, and a soldier who held the trigger down would quickly run out of ammunition. Soviet doctrine therefore emphasised short bursts, and the PPSh-41’s semi-automatic setting allowed aimed fire at longer ranges.

5.1.1. The Drum Versus the Box Magazine

The choice between the 71-round drum and the 35-round box magazine was a practical one, and soldiers had strong opinions about it. The drum gave the soldier more than twice as much ammunition without reloading, which was a great advantage in an assault, when there was no time to change magazines.

But the drum was heavy, it rattled, it was difficult to load — it had to be wound with a key, and the rounds had to be fed in one by one — and it was prone to jamming if it was dirty or damaged. The box magazine was lighter, quieter, easier to load and more reliable, but it held only half as much ammunition.

In practice, many soldiers carried a drum in the weapon and box magazines as spares, and the German army, which captured large numbers of PPSh-41s, preferred the box magazine and even converted some captured weapons to use the German 9mm cartridge and MP 40 magazines. The drum remains the PPSh-41’s most iconic feature, but the box magazine was the more practical one.

5.2. Weight, Size and Reliability

The PPSh-41 weighed about 3.63 kg empty and about 5.45 kg with a loaded 71-round drum, which was heavy for a submachine gun, but the weight helped to control the weapon’s recoil and to keep it steady on fully automatic fire.

Its overall length of 843 mm made it longer than the MP 40, which was 833 mm with its stock extended, but the PPSh-41’s wooden stock gave it a better grip and made it more comfortable to fire from the shoulder. The weapon’s reliability was good, provided it was kept clean: the open-bolt blowback action was simple and tolerant of dirt, and the chrome-lined barrel resisted corrosion.

But the drum magazine was the weapon’s weak point — it was the most common cause of stoppages — and soldiers who used the box magazine reported fewer jams. In the cold of the Russian winter, the PPSh-41 continued to work when more complex weapons froze, and its simple construction meant that it could be repaired in the field with basic tools.

6. Variants

6.1. Wartime and Post-War Production

The PPSh-41 was produced in only one main wartime version, but it was made in many factories and there were small differences between them — in the finish, the shape of the stock, the type of rear sight and the markings.

The most important variant was the PPSh-41 with the 35-round box magazine, which became increasingly common as the war went on, because the box magazine was cheaper and easier to make than the drum. After the war, the PPSh-41 was produced under licence in China as the Type 50, in North Korea, in Yugoslavia and in other countries, and it was used in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and many other conflicts.

The Chinese Type 50 was the most numerous post-war copy, and it was used by Chinese troops in Korea and by the Viet Cong in Vietnam. The PPSh-41 was also converted to semi-automatic-only for civilian sale in the United States and other countries, where it remains a popular collector’s item.

6.1.1. German Captured Weapons

The German army captured so many PPSh-41s that it gave them an official designation, MP 717(r), and issued them to its own troops, especially on the Eastern Front. German soldiers prized the PPSh-41 for its firepower, and they often carried it in preference to the MP 40, which had a lower rate of fire and a smaller magazine.

The Germans also converted some captured PPSh-41s to fire the 9×19mm cartridge, using MP 40 magazines, under the designation MP 41(r), so that they could use German ammunition. The conversion required a new barrel and a magazine adapter, and it was done in workshops behind the front.

The fact that the German army, which had its own excellent submachine gun in the MP 40, chose to issue a captured Soviet weapon in large numbers is one of the strongest testimonies to the PPSh-41’s quality. It was a weapon that even its enemies wanted to use.

6.2. The PPS-43 Successor

The PPSh-41’s successor was the PPS-43, designed by Alexei Sudayev in 1942–43 as a lighter, more compact submachine gun for tank crews, scouts and paratroopers. The PPS-43 weighed only about 3.0 kg, had a folding metal stock, and used a 35-round box magazine, but it never replaced the PPSh-41, which remained the standard submachine gun of the Red Army to the end of the war.

The PPS-43 was produced in about 2 million examples, and it was a better weapon in many ways — lighter, handier and cheaper — but the PPSh-41 was already in production in enormous numbers, and the Red Army saw no reason to replace a weapon that was working well.

The two weapons served side by side, with the PPSh-41 arming the infantry and the PPS-43 arming specialists, and both remained in service after the war. The PPS-43 was also used by Soviet partisans and by the armies of Poland and other allied states, and it remained in production after the war in several countries that had received Soviet technical assistance.

7. Combat Service

7.1. Stalingrad and the Eastern Front

The PPSh-41’s finest hour was the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, where the fighting took place at close range in ruined buildings, cellars and sewers, and where the weapon’s volume of fire was decisive. Soviet assault groups, armed with PPSh-41s and grenades, cleared buildings room by room, and the submachine gun’s 71-round drum allowed them to keep firing without reloading in the confusion of close combat.

German soldiers, armed with the bolt-action Kar98k, were at a severe disadvantage in this kind of fighting, and they prized captured PPSh-41s. The PPSh-41 was also used by tank riders — infantry who rode on the outside of tanks into battle — who needed a compact, high-firepower weapon that could be fired from a moving tank, and by scouts and partisans, who valued its firepower and its reliability.

By 1943, whole Soviet infantry battalions were armed with the PPSh-41 as their primary weapon, and the Red Army’s infantry tactics were built around the submachine gun’s volume of fire.

7.1.1. Tank Riders and Assault Groups

Tank riders were one of the Red Army’s most distinctive uses of the PPSh-41. Infantry rode on the outside of T-34 tanks into battle, dismounting to fight on foot when the tanks reached the enemy, and they needed a weapon that was compact, reliable and capable of a high volume of fire.

The PPSh-41 was ideal: it could be fired from the deck of a moving tank, it could be used to suppress enemy infantry and anti-tank gunners, and its drum magazine gave the rider a large amount of ammunition without reloading. Assault groups, small units of infantry, engineers and flamethrower operators who cleared fortified buildings, also relied on the PPSh-41, which they used alongside grenades and satchel charges.

The weapon’s role in these tactics was to suppress the enemy while the engineers placed their charges, and its volume of fire was essential to that role. The PPSh-41 was therefore not just a weapon, but a part of the Red Army’s way of fighting.

7.2. Berlin, Korea and Vietnam

The PPSh-41 fought through the whole of the war on the Eastern Front, from Stalingrad to Berlin, where Soviet troops used it in the street fighting of April–May 1945. After the war, the PPSh-41 was supplied to the armies of China, North Korea and North Vietnam, and it was used in the Korean War (1950–53), where Chinese and North Korean troops armed with the PPSh-41 faced American and United Nations forces, and in the Vietnam War, where the Viet Cong used it in the early years of the conflict.

In Korea, the PPSh-41’s volume of fire was effective in the close fighting of the hills, and American troops who faced it respected its firepower. In Vietnam, the PPSh-41 was gradually replaced by the AK-47, which was lighter, more accurate and used a more powerful cartridge, but the PPSh-41 remained in use with second-line units and militia into the 1970s.

The weapon’s long career, from the forests of Finland in 1940 to the jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s, is one of the longest of any submachine gun of the Second World War.

8. Strengths and Weaknesses

8.1. Firepower, Simplicity and Cost

The PPSh-41’s greatest strength was its firepower. With a 71-round drum and a cyclic rate of about 900 rounds per minute, it could put more bullets into the air in a few seconds than any other infantry weapon of its day, and at the ranges where infantry fighting took place, that volume of fire was decisive.

Its second strength was its simplicity: the weapon had few parts, it was easy to train a recruit to use, and it could be produced in enormous numbers by factories that had never built firearms before. Its third strength was its cost: the PPSh-41 was one of the cheapest weapons of the war, and the Soviet Union could afford to issue it to millions of soldiers.

Its fourth strength was its reliability in the cold: the simple blowback action and the chrome-lined barrel worked in temperatures that stopped more complex weapons, and the PPSh-41 became a byword for ruggedness on the Eastern Front.

8.2. Range, Accuracy and the Drum

The PPSh-41’s weaknesses were the price of its firepower. Its effective range was only about 200 metres, and beyond that range the light 7.62×25mm bullet lost energy quickly and the weapon’s accuracy fell off sharply. A soldier with a PPSh-41 was at a disadvantage against a rifleman at 300 metres or more, and the Red Army’s infantry had to close with the enemy before its firepower could be used.

The weapon’s accuracy on fully automatic fire was poor, and soldiers had to fire in short bursts to hit anything. The drum magazine, the weapon’s most iconic feature, was also its weakest point: it was heavy, awkward to carry, slow to load and prone to jamming, and many soldiers preferred the 35-round box magazine.

The PPSh-41 was also heavy for a submachine gun, at 5.45 kg with a loaded drum, and it was tiring to carry on long marches. These weaknesses did not prevent the PPSh-41 from being an effective weapon, but they meant that it was a specialist’s weapon, best suited to close fighting, and that it needed to be used as part of a combined-arms force, with rifles and machine guns covering the longer ranges.

9. Comparison with Rivals

9.1. Against the German MP 40

The PPSh-41’s most direct rival was the German MP 40, the standard submachine gun of the German army. The MP 40 was a well-made weapon, with a folding stock, a 32-round box magazine and a cyclic rate of about 500 rounds per minute, and it was more accurate and more controllable than the PPSh-41.

But the MP 40 was expensive to make, with many machined parts, and it was produced in much smaller numbers — about 1.1 million, against the PPSh-41’s 6 million — and it was issued mainly to squad leaders, tank crews and paratroopers, not to ordinary infantrymen. The PPSh-41, by contrast, was issued to whole battalions, and its volume of fire was far greater than the MP 40’s.

In a close-range firefight, a Soviet soldier with a PPSh-41 and a 71-round drum had a clear advantage over a German soldier with an MP 40 and a 32-round magazine, and German soldiers knew it: they prized captured PPSh-41s and often carried them in preference to their own weapon.

9.2. Against the Sten, the Thompson and the Suomi

The British Sten gun was the PPSh-41’s opposite: a weapon designed to be as cheap as possible, made from stamped steel and tubing, and produced in about 4 million examples. The Sten was cheaper than the PPSh-41, but it was also cruder, less reliable and less powerful, with a 9mm cartridge and a 32-round magazine, and its rate of fire was only about 550 rounds per minute.

The American Thompson submachine gun was a better weapon than the PPSh-41 in many ways — it was accurate, reliable and well-made — but it was expensive and heavy, and it was produced in only about 1.5 million examples. The Finnish Suomi KP/-31, the weapon that had inspired the PPSh-41, was a beautifully made submachine gun with a 71-round drum, but it was expensive and slow to produce, and only about 80,000 were made.

The PPSh-41’s achievement was to combine the Suomi’s firepower with the Sten’s cheap mass production, and to do so in numbers that no other submachine gun of the war could match.

10. Legacy

10.1. Symbol of the Red Army and the Eastern Front

The PPSh-41 became one of the great symbols of the Soviet victory in the Second World War. It appears in almost every photograph, film and monument of the Eastern Front — in the hands of soldiers raising the flag over the Reichstag, in the hands of partisans in the forests, in the hands of the tank riders who rode into Berlin.

The weapon’s distinctive drum magazine and wooden stock are instantly recognisable, and it has become, along with the T-34 tank and the Katyusha rocket launcher, one of the three weapons that the world associates with the Red Army. The PPSh-41’s legacy is also a technical one: its stamped-steel construction and its emphasis on cheap mass production influenced the design of the AK-47, which used the same principles to become the most widely produced assault rifle in history.

The PPSh-41 was a weapon of its time, but its lessons — that a weapon must be simple, cheap and available in large numbers — remain relevant to military design today.

10.2. The PPSh-41 in Museums and Popular Culture

Today, the PPSh-41 is preserved in museums around the world, from the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow to the Imperial War Museum in London and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. It is a popular collector’s item, and semi-automatic versions are sold to civilians in the United States and other countries.

The weapon also appears in films, television dramas and video games about the Eastern Front, where its distinctive shape and its drum magazine make it instantly recognisable. The PPSh-41’s place in popular culture is a testament to its importance: it was not the most sophisticated weapon of the war, but it was the weapon that armed the army that bore the brunt of the fighting against Germany, and it is remembered as the weapon of the ordinary Soviet soldier who won the war on the Eastern Front.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Who designed the PPSh-41?
Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin, a designer at the Kovrov arms plant. The weapon was adopted in December 1940 and put into production in 1941.

How many PPSh-41s were made?
About 6 million were produced between 1941 and 1945, making it one of the most numerous submachine guns ever built.

What magazine did the PPSh-41 use?
It used a 71-round drum magazine and a 35-round box magazine. The drum was copied from the Finnish Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun.

Why did German soldiers use captured PPSh-41s?
Because its volume of fire was far greater than the MP 40’s or the Kar98k’s, and it was reliable in the cold. The German army issued captured PPSh-41s officially as the MP 717(r).

What was the PPSh-41’s effective range?
About 200 metres. Beyond that range the light 7.62×25mm bullet lost energy and accuracy fell off sharply.

Was the PPSh-41 used after the Second World War?
Yes. It was used in the Korean War and the early stages of the Vietnam War, and it was produced under licence in China, North Korea and Yugoslavia.

12. Sources

1. Wikipedia, “PPSh-41” — designer Georgy Shpagin, adoption December 1940, production of about 6 million, specifications (3.63 kg, 843 mm, 900 rounds per minute, 71-round drum).
2. Wikipedia, “Suomi KP/-31” — the Finnish submachine gun that inspired the PPSh-41’s drum magazine.
3. Chris McNab, Soviet Submachine Guns of World War II — the PPSh-41, the PPD-40 and the PPS-43 in Red Army service.
4. Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow — the PPSh-41 in Soviet service, Stalingrad and Berlin.
5. Imperial War Museum, London — captured PPSh-41s in German service as the MP 717(r).
6. Gordon L. Rottman, The PPSh-41 Submachine Gun (Osprey Weapon series) — design, production and combat service.

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