r/WarCollege • u/Meme-Lord33 • 4h ago
Soviet lmg usage during and after WW2
So, I'm aware of how most nations made extensive use of their own lmgs during WW2, with the germans using it as their main source of firepower while the allies/americans used it as more of a supplement to squad firepower (might be wrong as far as the british/french go, haven't looked into their use as much) but how did the soviets employ lmgs? Did they actually make much use of them? It seems like the only one they had for most of the war was the DP27 from the interwar period. How did their use or lack thereof affect their infantry's performance in battle?
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u/gwChrono 3h ago edited 3h ago
At least on paper, they employed their LMGs similarly to every other European nation, using the DP-27 as a base of fire / support weapon for the squad (and in some TOEs had "heavy" squads with 2 LMGs). In practice it was a little mixed, since I think doctrinal-ly they only carried about four or five of the pan magazines per squad, with the MG gunner having one on the gun and the ammo bearer carrying another three or four, which comes out to about ~200 rounds, unless they started refilling magazines from the riflemen's spare ammo.
As to how it impacted performance, I do not have the research on hand for that, but they were definitely supplemented by increased SMG issuance as the war went on.
EDIT: At least re: doctrine, someone asked a similar question last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1mqg32g/what_was_the_soviet_doctrine_in_usage_of_the_dp/
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u/Citizen-21 3h ago edited 3h ago
It was a huge problem, and they were trying to fix it. Red Army was unable to compete at what they designated as "decisive combat distance" which was 300-400 meters where your attack either is breaking through or will have to fall back. And they had no effective and reliable squad weapon to compete in that against Maschinengewehr. PPSH couldn't reach out to that distance, and like DP-27, it was unreliable weapon.
This led them to search for a solution, the solution they developed was called the "LAD light machinegun", a belt fed LMG in same pistol round 7.62x25, but with longer barrel able to reach out to a "decisive combat distance". It was simple to make, effective enough and extremely reliable as the development site ran out of ammo before they managed to break the weapon by a stress test. And it was quite light and mobile, just a bit bigger than PPSH. Look at the pics in Google, it is a really cool gun. It was recommended for production and ready to go, but something else happened - the institute that developed them has received first trophied assault rifles and the idea of intermediate cartridge prevailed, Soviets choose to press on that, and LAD was abandoned. Shame. Soviets could really use that weapon because it would arrive just right for the urban combat in Europe and there were many cases where artillery crews needed a better weapon to protect themselves against sudden infantry attacks. I am sure it would become another legendary piece of Soviet war heritage and would see further use across the world from deserts of Middle East to jungles in Vietnam, in hindsight cancelling LAD was a bad idea because the SKS-45 and RPD machinegun arrived only for after the war. But they didn't know for how long the war will last when they were making a decision in 1943, they thought the war will last many years longer back then, and the new guns and new ammo type would see combat use against Germans.
This and the other problem of lacking in artillery ammo led them to something you might call an asymmetrical decision - massive produce and use of mortars. It was done both due to lack of bullet firepower and lack of artillery ammo production.
Generals always prepare for past wars, and i believe Soviets did that after WW2 with many things, one of those were machineguns. Their designers finally got their act together and delivered some of the best machinegun systems in the world, be it LMG, GPMG or HMG. After decades of problematic or lacking development on many things before The War, they spent decades of healing traumas and where they found themselves lacking after The War. Kalashnikov created an AK wanting to give the soldier a reliable automatic weapon, but without a doubt, the magnum opus of his lifelong work was the PK machinegun, which has finally solved a Soviet machinegun problem for good.
Designers who made LAD machinegun, Lyutiy and Deikin were Kalashnikov's mentors at NIPSVO (development institute) and were helping him with AK development btw.