Over six and one-half feet long the weapon, despite its streamlined design, still weighed 38 pounds. Other than the cheek pads, butt pads, and wooden pistol grip, the entire weapon was constructed of steel. The PTRD-41 was a single-shot weapon, while the PTRS-41 was capable of semiautomatic fire. The two primary Soviet antitank rifles of the World War II era were the PTRD 41 (top) and the PTRS 41 (bottom). This kept the shooter’s face away from the recoiling parts. Simple open sights were mounted on the left side of the weapon, as was a cheek pad for the shooter. It was a single-shot weapon consisting of a four-foot barrel, bipod, pistol grip, and skeletal butt stock. The PTRD had an almost brutal simplicity that lent itself well to mass production and rugged dependability in the field. Invented by Russian arms designer Vassily Degtyarev, who also created successful light 7.62mm machine guns and heavy 12.7mm DShK machine guns still in use today for the Red Army, the PTRD (protivotanko ruzhe systemy Degtyareva) Model 1941 (PTRD-41) antitank rifle appeared that same year. The weapon was not produced in any real numbers, and it quickly disappeared.Īlmost as soon as the sun set on the Shokolov, a new day was dawning for two weapons that were to prove a mainstay for the entirety of World War II. The only improvements to the World War I design were the addition of a somewhat effective one-chamber muzzle brake and a two-round magazine in lieu of being merely a single-shot weapon. It was chambered for the Soviet 12.7mm heavy machine-gun cartridge, roughly equivalent to the American. The Sowetskoe PTR Sholoklov 38 was an almost exact copy of the German Model 1918 Mauser. The first Soviet attempt was a rather feeble effort in “reverse engineering” so common to Soviet technology of the early Communist era. Oddly, the Red Army had all but ignored this type of weapon until immediately prior to World War II. (Read more about the weapons and armaments that shaped the war inside WWII History magazine.) The Russian PTRS 41: “ Destroy Fascist Tanks with the Anti-tank Rifle!” Yet it was not until 1941 that the Soviets had developed and put into production their own antitank rifle. By 1941, advances in tank armor and technology had rendered it all but useless. In 1939, the antitank rifle was state of the art. These weapons were actually effective enough in penetrating the armor of tanks from the 1920s and 1930s. Somewhere in the middle fell the British Boys. At the other end of the scale were the “rifles” chambered for cannon ammunition, such as the Finnish Lahti, Swiss Solothurn, and Japanese Type 97, all of which used 20mm ammunition. Some, such as the Germans and the Poles, opted for small-caliber weapons firing extremely high velocity hardened-core projectiles. While it could indeed penetrate the armor of World War I tanks, recoil was so brutal that few infantrymen wished to fire it more than once.īetween the world wars, for lack of anything better, several armies fielded anti-tank rifles. Long before the PTRS 41 was the Germans’ first attempt, made during World War I with the 13.2mm Tank-Gewehr Model 1918: a monster Mauser anti-tank rifle five and one-half feet long and weighing 40 pounds. Ever since the tank appeared on the battlefield during World War I, armies the world over have sought to field man-portable infantry antitank weapons to give the infantryman a viable defense against the metal monsters.
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