PPS-43

Origins

The PPS-43 is a Soviet-era submachine gun introduced in 1942. The Red Army's standard PPSh-41 was an excellent weapon but a heavy one, with a wooden stock, a 71-round drum and more machining than a desperate wartime industry liked, and tank crews, scouts and sappers wanted something more compact. In 1942 the army held a competition for a lighter gun, and the winner was the design of Alexei Sudayev, a young engineer at the Artillery Academy. Its first production was an act of defiance: the gun was built in Leningrad, under siege, at the Sestroretsk works, and the first PPS-42s went straight from the factory to the front lines around the city. Refined as the PPS-43, it went into mass production in 1943.

Design & Construction

The PPS-43 is a simple blowback gun firing from an open bolt, on full-automatic only, at about 600 rounds per minute — slow enough to control, unlike the PPSh's 900. It fires the 7.62x25mm Tokarev pistol cartridge from a curved 35-round box magazine. Almost everything is stamped from sheet steel and welded or riveted: the receiver and the perforated barrel jacket are one stamping, and the muzzle brake is simply a bent flap at the end of the jacket. The metal stock folds over the top of the receiver, making the gun short enough for a tank hatch or a parachute harness. The safety is in front of the trigger guard and locks the bolt in either the open or closed position. The gun takes about 6.2 kg of steel and 2.7 machine hours to make, against 13.9 kg and 7.3 hours for the PPSh. The PPSh's drum and the PPS's box magazine are not interchangeable.

Combat Use

About two million PPS-42 and PPS-43 guns were made by the end of the World War II, mostly issued to tank crews, reconnaissance units, engineers, signalers and paratroops rather than to line infantry, which kept the PPSh. The Finns, who captured many, built a 9mm copy as the m/44, and the Germans used captured guns under their own designation. After the war the Soviet Union supplied PPS-43s widely to its allies, and North Korean and Chinese troops used them in the Korean War, where the Chinese copy was the Type 54.

Legacy

The PPS-43 is regarded by many as the best submachine gun of the war: light, reliable, controllable and extremely cheap to make. The AK-47 replaced it in Soviet service in the 1950s, but it stayed in use with Soviet client states and irregular forces for decades, and Poland built its own version, the wz. 43/52, with a wooden stock. Semi-automatic versions and deactivated originals are well known to collectors.