sturmgewehr

Exactly when the Red Army began to work on its own intermediate bullet remains an open historical question,29 though its interest predated the sturmgewehr.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

But at roughly the same time that the sturmgewehr was appearing in battle, opinions were shifting, and the Red Army was developing an intermediate cartridge of its own.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

The front sight post does not, and a case could be made that the image more closely resembles the G3 rifle, a widely circulated product of Heckler & Koch and another descendant of the sturmgewehr, which was designed in a Spanish–West German collaboration in the 1950s.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

The sturmgewehr represented a groundbreaking change in infantry arms, and the United States Army held the thinking behind it.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

In 1947 the teams gathered with their prototypes back at Schurovo for the field trials, to be held from June 30 to August 12.87 The new weapons would compete against one another, while three others—the AS-44 prototype made by Sudayev, a captured German sturmgewehr, and a PPSh—would be used as controls.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

But it was an acceptable descendant of the sturmgewehr.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

Engineers at the Zastava arms plant in Kragujevac, however, had been experimenting with automatic-rifle designs since 1952, working with captured specimens of the sturmgewehr.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

Experience had also shown that the sturmgewehr was not a weapon infantrymen wanted to face, at least not when armed with bolt-action arms with which to fire back.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

The sturmgewehr was only an inch beyond three feet.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010

They had studied the sturmgewehr closely and battle experience had taught them that weapons built around traditional European rifle cartridges were not necessarily the best choice for defending their thickly forested nation, where many engagements were fought at close range.

The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010