The movie "Ballad of a Soldier" begins with a scene full of tragedy. A Soviet tank warrior is being pursued by a German tank, there is nowhere for a young unshooted fighter to hide, he is running, and a steel colossus is about to overtake him and crush him. A soldier sees Degtyarev's anti-tank rifle thrown by someone. And uses the unexpectedly turned up chance of salvation. He shoots at an enemy machine and knocks it down. Another tank is approaching him, but the signalman is not lost and burns him too.
“This could not be! - other "experts on military history" will say today. “You can’t break through tank armor from a gun!” - "Can!" - answer those who are familiar with this subject better. An inaccuracy in the film narration may have been made, but it concerns not the combat capabilities of this class of weapons, but chronology.
A bit about tactics
Anti-tank rifles 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 be the main means of combating it, and the PTR - auxiliary, but more mobile. The tactics of the offensive implied striking 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 (dugouts, hedgehogs, etc.) was an adventurous affair and fraught with the loss of a large amount of equipment. But if the enemy suddenly hits a poorly protected section of the front, then there will be no time for jokes. We'll have to urgently "patch holes" in the defense, throw guns and infantry, which still needs to be dug in. It’s difficult to quickly deliver the right amount of ammunition to a dangerous area. This is where the anti-tank gun comes in handy. PTRD - weapons are relatively compact and inexpensive (much cheaper than guns). They can be produced a lot, and then arm them all units. Just in case. The soldiers, armed with them, may not burn 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 many military leaders thought at the end of the thirties.
Why did our soldiers lack PTR
There were several reasons for the development and production of anti-tank rifles in the USSR in the pre-war years, but the main one was the exclusively offensive military doctrine of the Red Army. Some analysts point to the allegedly weak awareness of the Soviet leadership, which overestimated the degree of armor protection of German tanks, and therefore drew the wrong conclusion about the low effectiveness of the PTR 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 anti-tank rifle of Rukavishnikov PTR-39, adopted by the Red Army in 1939 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
Hitler’s army crossed the USSR border with tanks in an amount of over three thousand. It is difficult to appreciate this armada if you do not use the comparison method. The Red Army had much less modern tanks (T-34 and KV), only a few hundred. So, maybe the Germans had technology of about the same quality as ours, with quantitative superiority? This is not true.
The TI tank was not just light, it can be called a wedge. Without a gun, with a crew of two, he weighed a little more than a car. Degtyarev anti-tank rifle, adopted in the fall of 1941, pierced him right through. The German T-II was slightly better, it had bulletproof armor and a 37 mm short-barreled cannon. There was also a T-III that could withstand the impact of the PTR cartridge, but only if it hit the frontal part, but to other other areas …
The Panzervaffe also had Czech, Polish, Belgian, French and other trophy vehicles (they are included in the total number), worn out, outdated and poorly provided with spare parts. I don’t want to think about what Degtyarev’s anti-tank rifle could do with any of them.
The "Tigers" and "Panthers" appeared with the Germans later, in 1943.
Resumption of production
We must pay tribute to the Stalinist leadership, it is able to correct mistakes. The decision to resume work on the PTR was made the day after the outbreak of war. This fact refutes the version of the Bet's poor awareness regarding the Wehrmacht's armored potential, it is simply impossible to obtain such information in a day. As a matter of urgency (less than a month was spent on the production of experimental units), a competition of two samples was held, almost ready for launch in 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, the Degtyarev 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 three years, more than 270 thousand pieces were manufactured.
First results
At the end of October 1941, the situation at the front was disastrous. The vanguard units of the Wehrmacht approached Moscow, the two strategic echelons of the Red Army were practically defeated in giant "cauldrons", huge spaces of the European part of the USSR fell under the heel of the invaders. In these circumstances, the Soviet soldiers did not lose heart. Not having enough artillery, the troops showed massive heroism and fought tanks using grenades and Molotov cocktails. Directly from the assembly line, new weapons came to the front. On November 16, fighters of the 1075th Infantry Regiment of the 316th Division destroyed three enemy tanks, using the ATRA. Photos of the heroes and the fascist technology they burned were published by Soviet newspapers. Soon followed by a continuation, near Lugovoi four more tanks were smoking, which had previously conquered Warsaw and Paris.
Foreign PTR
Newsreel of the war years repeatedly captured our fighters with anti-tank rifles. The episodes of battles with their use in feature films were also reflected (for example, in S. Bondarchuk’s masterpiece “They Fought for the Homeland”). Documentaries have recorded far fewer French, American, English or German soldiers with PTRD for history. Does this mean that the anti-tank rifles 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 (the Boyce 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 were never able to surpass Russian weapons in their simplicity, grace of technical solutions, and in quality too. And not every soldier is capable of shooting in cold blood from a rifle into an approaching tank from a trench. Our can.
How to break through the armor?
The ATGM has approximately the same tactical and technical characteristics as Simonov’s anti-tank rifle, but it is lighter than it (17.3 versus 20.9 kg), shorter (2000 and 2108 mm, respectively) and easier to constructively, and therefore, less time is required for cleaning and easier to train shooters. These circumstances explain the preference given by the State Commission, despite the fact that the PTRS could fire with a higher rate of fire due to the built-in five-round magazine. The main quality of this weapon was its ability to penetrate armor protection from various distances. For this it was necessary to send a special heavy bullet with a steel core (and also, as an option, with an additional incendiary charge activated after passing through the obstacle) at a fairly high speed.
Armor 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 bunkers, bunkers, as well as aircraft. The caliber of the cartridge is 14.5 mm (brand B-32 is an ordinary armor-piercing incendiary or BS-41 with a ceramic superhard tip). The length of the ammunition corresponds to an aircraft cannon shell, 114 mm. The target hit distance with a 30 cm thick booking is 40 mm, and from a hundred meters this bullet flashes 6 cm.
Accuracy
Accuracy of hits determines the success of firing at the most vulnerable areas of enemy equipment. The defense was constantly improved, therefore, instructions were recommended and recommended for fighters on how to use the anti-tank gun most effectively. The modern idea of the fight against armored vehicles takes into account the possibility of getting into the weakest points in the same way. When shooting at tests from a hundred-meter distance, 75% of the cartridges fell into the 22-centimeter vicinity of the center of the target.
Design
No matter how simple the technical solutions, they should not be primitive. WWII weapons were often produced in difficult conditions due to the forced evacuation and deployment of workshops in unprepared areas (it happened that for a while I had to work in the open air). This fate was avoided by the Kovrovsky and Izhevsk factories, which before 1944 produced ATGMs. Degtyarev anti-tank rifle, despite the simplicity of the device, has incorporated all the achievements of Russian gunsmiths.
The barrel is rifled, eight-way. The sight is the most ordinary, with a front sight and a two-position bar (up to 400 m and 1 km). The PTRD is charged like a regular rifle, but the strong recoil caused 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: whispered, shock mechanism, receiver, butt and other attributes of the gun, thought out with the ergonomics that Russian weapons have always been famous for.
Service
In the field, most often incomplete disassembly was carried out, involving the removal and disassembly of the shutter, as the most contaminated site. If this was not enough, then it was necessary to remove the bipod, butt, then disassemble the trigger 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 tarpaulin 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, German industry began to produce medium and heavy tanks with powerful anti-shell armor. Soviet troops continued to use ATGMs against light, less protected vehicles, as well as to suppress firing points. At the end of the war, the need for anti-tank guns disappeared. In 1945, powerful artillery and other effective weapons were used to combat the remaining German tanks. WWII is over. It seemed that the time of the PTRD was irrevocably gone. But five years later, the Korean War began, and the "old gun" began to shoot again, however, 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. Used PTRD and as a means of air defense.
