Copy bomber
During World War II, several American B-29 Superfortress bombers engaged in operations against Japan had to make forced landings in the Far East of the USSR. Although the Americans demanded the return of the bombers, the Russians dragged the case out with various pretexts and in the end they did not return them. The reason for this action became known soon after the war, when the recently created Soviet strategic bomber Tu-4 took to the air. It was an exact copy of the B-29, as Stalin, who was very impressed by the American bomber, is said to have ordered to build exactly the same and not make any changes to the design. The order was carried out with the diligence of an idiot: seeing that a white stripe was drawn inside the American plane, the Soviet engineers drew exactly the same on a copy, although none of them could explain the meaning of the stripe. If it has to be copied 1:1, then we do it!
Submachine gun lent from the Finns
Suomi KP/-31. (Photo: Publicity photo)
At the beginning of the 1930s, the Finnish army adopted the home-built Suomi KP/-31 machine gun – a simple and effective weapon, which could hold between 40 and 70 cartridges in its disk-shaped casing. In 1933, a left-leaning Finnish officer handed over the technical documentation of the machine gun to the Soviet Union, and – your miracle! – a year later, the PPD submachine gun developed by the Soviet designer Vasiliy Degtaryov saw the light of day. Visually, both weapons were remarkably similar, only the caliber differed – 9 mm for the Finns, and 7.62 mm for the Russians. Later, this design was perfected in the most famous Russian submachine gun of the Second World War, PPŠ.
True, the Finns did not owe an answer: in 1943, they copied another Russian machine gun, Sudayev’s PPS-43, for their own needs, calling their version the M44.
Schmeiser’s legacy?
It seems that the relationship between the German assault rifle Stg.44 and the Soviet Kalashnikov assault rifle AK-47 has caused the most controversy. Visually, they look so similar that it seems: well, it can’t be that the Stg.44 designer Hugo Schmaiser did not put his hands on the Soviet weapon, especially because after the war he had to visit Russia for a couple of years. However, it is also a fact that, despite the external similarity, the construction of the two weapons is significantly different, and in this sense, more commonality can be seen in the Stg.44 and the American rifle M-16 than in the AK-47. The official Soviet version that the AK-47 was created by a simple Soviet soldier, Misha Kalashnikov, seems to be made up of white threads, all the more so because already in 1944, something very similar – the AS-44 machine gun – had been created by the designer Aleksey Sudayev, who soon then died. Most likely, Sudayev was at least visually inspired by Stg.44, later the works he started were taken over by the design office, but for propaganda reasons, Kalashnikov was declared the main creator of the AK.
The German Stg.44 assault rifle and the Soviet AK-47 Kalashnikov are remarkably similar.
2023-08-26 06:03:00
#culture #spying #stealing #armament #USSR
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