#Mkb-42h

It’s a blunder so bad it makes you look twice: On the new sculpture dedicated to Russia’s most famous small arms designer, there is an unintentional homage to a weapon of Russia’s hated adversaries during the Great Patriotic War. Behind the tasteful statue unveiled last Tuesday of Mikhail “Mikhtim” Kalashnikov cradling his invention like a fine instrument, there lies a sculpture panel dedicated to his inventions themselves – and, by accident, the Nazi Sturmgewehr of World War II. While the majority of the panel is filled with models of Kalashnikov’s inventions and derivatives, nestled in the backdrop of the representation of the AKS-74U compact assault rifle is a slab depicting an exploded view of the MKb42(H),, a World War II German assault rifle which helped serve as the inspiration for the program Kalashnikov’s rifle was designed to satisfy.

Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it.

The M1 Carbine is a lightweight, handy weapon that is well-liked by many. One of its weakest points for many people, however, is its cartridge: The .30 Carbine caliber is regarded by some as being too weak to be a true intermediate caliber round fully capable of effective 300m fire. Still, the .30 Carbine is short, so maybe there is another caliber out there that could fit into an M1 Carbine’s action while giving it a little more punch… It turns out that during the late 1940s and early 1950s, at least one Spanish small arms designer felt the same way, and invented the gun in the Forgotten Weapons video below:

Recently, I ran an article on this site pointing out some of the less impressive aspects of the MP.44 assault rifle’s history. Many people were unhappy with my assessment that the legendary Sturmgewehr was overrated and over-hyped, and therefore I think it’s worth spending some time to examine, by analogy, why I think that. But first, let’s talk about a French rifle.

In the early summer of this year,  a car-full of gun nerds set out to capture the rare Pedersen rifle on camera for the first time. The passenger with the van Dyke mustache and ponytail had just mentioned how if he could own any machine gun, it would be an StG.44, the German assault rifle of the second World War. Upon this, the driver, a tall, blonde Texan in cowboy boots, rebounded that one of the other passengers was the only person he’s ever met who wasn’t impressed with the German ur-sturmgewehr, which caused a great deal of whiplash to the others as their heads spun around to look in surprise and incredulity at the overweight one with the unkempt beard and brown mop of hair.

In November of last year, we blogged about an early Soviet encounter with the MKb.42(H), the open bolt machine carbine that would become the famous closed bolt MP/StG.44 assault rifle. Ensign Expendable, author of the Soviet Gun Archives blog that provided the material for the previous article, has posted another, probably even earlier source on the Soviet reaction to the weapon:

The first prototype of what was then the FN Universal Carbine, but that would become the FN FAL (Light Automatic Rifle), was not chambered for the familiar 7.62×51 NATO, nor its competitor round the .280 British, but in the German 7.92x33mm Kurzpatrone round developed in 1942 for the MKb. 42(H) (the predecessor of the famous Sturmgewehr):

The MP-44, also known as the “Sturmgewehr”, was  a very influential weapon to post-war thinking. Even the Americans – who at the time rejected the “assault rifle” concept as we now know it – took notice and immediately began development in March of 1944 of a shorter round for infantry weapons, which later became both the .308 Winchester and 7.62 NATO rounds.

The still below captures the use of a weapon that some of our readers will immediately recognize, but that might be new to others:

The Sturmgewehr is a rifle that will never lose it’s place in history; it is one of the single most influential weapons of the 20th Century. It is not the first of its kind, however, and we at TFB have previously taken a look at some of the rifle’s predecessors that it has since overshadowed. Larry Vickers has come at it from the other end; he and his signature StG-44 have been the subject of three shooting videos so far, each one well worth watching: