It was no doubt an influence for Mikhail Kalashnikov, father of the AK-47 assault rifle.
The StG-44 was a truly revolutionary weapon, bringing firepower down to the individual soldier level. A large amount of German war resources were spent on the Krummlauf, far outstripping the theoretical value of shooting Red Army soldiers through firing ports, and few guns were actually produced. The objective was to create a weapon that could be poked through the firing ports of halftrack armored personnel carriers, firing on enemy infantry attempting to place magnetic anti-tank mines on the sides of friendly vehicles. The oddball project involved a MP-44 fitted with a curved barrel and mirror sights attached to the muzzle.
One unusual variant of the MP-44/StG-44 produced during wartime was the MP-44 Krummlauf. Despite wartime shortages, German industry produced 425,977 StG-44s for the German Army. After the weapon’s success on the battlefield, it was renamed the Sturmgewehr-44 (“Storm Gun”), reportedly by Hitler himself.
The weapon was produced under the “machine pistol” (“MP”) designation after Hitler had decreed development of rifles was to cease and production of machine pistols was stepped up. In April 1944, the weapon was renamed the MP-44. The MKb42(H) prototype was reworked by Schmeisser and turned into the MP-43 operational weapon, entering service in 1943. The weapon was easy to field strip, breaking down into six different parts, the upper and lower receivers connected by a hinge behind the magazine well. The weapon had a pistol grip, wooden stock, hooded front sight and a 30-round magazine. Schmeisser’s weapon, the Haenel MKb42(H), was a piston-driven gun with frontal locking lugs on the bolt. The guns weighed approximately nine pounds, fired from a 32 round detachable magazine and had effective ranges of approximately 200 yards.īy 1942, the famous small arms designer Hugo Schmeisser had produced an early version of the required rifle. The MP series, including the MP-38, MP-40, and MP-41, were a new design of compact, folding stock submachine guns. It weighed 8.2 pounds, had a five round internal magazine, and an effective range of 600 yards.
The 98k was a shorter, handier version of the Gewehr 98 rifle used during the Great War. The weapon, urgently needed as Germany found itself increasingly losing the war, was a template for future weapons, including today’s AK-74M and M4 carbine.Īt the outbreak of World War II, the German Army fielded two infantry small arms: the Karabiner Modell 1898 kurz, otherwise known as the 98k bolt action carbine, and the MP series of submachine guns. The Sturmgewehr-44, or StG-44 was the first mass produced assault rifle. StG-44: A Short History: During World War II, the beleaguered German Army fielded a revolutionary new infantry weapon designed to make the German soldier the most powerful on the battlefield.
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