Weapons 28/01/20 kalashnikov.giocomo the Soviet special forces didn’t like the Makarov pistol
a Pistol — an example of successful small self-loading pistol, with high reliability and excellent accuracy. Today it remains in service in dozens of countries, despite the more than respectable age: the PM was designed more than 70 years ago. How successful and popular the model, says at least the fact that the USSR produced more than 2 000 000 copies of a legendary gun (according to “Encyclopedia of small arms” Alexander Beetle). But, despite the recognition by the military and law enforcement, special forces have these weapons caused much neglect. Why?
a Little about the stop action
according to David Bolotin’s book, “the History of Soviet weapons and ammo”, PM was created as a “weapon of peace time”, which partly determined its characteristics. For a sample layout Nikolai Makarov took the legendary at that time, Walther PP, which led to a number of shortcomings. However, Soviet designers managed almost completely to offset them. In the end, the gun is reliable and simple in design, with great precision and accuracy. It is not surprising that in 1951 he “was adopted for the army and law enforcement agencies.”
another Important success factor was the good stopping power of bullets of the gun. It is not necessarily lethal, the main thing is to put your target down. Classic blunt bullet of PM enters the body shallowly and rapidly decelerated, but it creates a powerful shock wave and, as a consequence, contusion of organs and tissues. This is even without serious damage — desorientiert the enemy and takes him down. It would seem like just what I need! But no…
the PM and task forces
Stopping action, which is a pistol, isn’t exactly hit requires weapons of the special forces. Because these units often have to act not against ordinary criminals, but against well-armed and protected representatives of crime. Even a simple flak jacket will be the PM a serious obstacle — the main part of the energy of the bullets will be spent to penetrate. And the most that gets the enemy is bruising at the site of contact. Unpleasant, but not fatal, and even almost dangerous.
So for special forces, the PM turned out to be unnecessary weapons, aggravating in combat, but ineffective. So, according to Sergey Monetchiki in the article “Arsenal: “Three heroes”, or new combat pistols”, the intelligence services are more widely used APS — Stechkin pistol with more fire power, punching power and combat effectiveness. In the early 90-ies of the last century it was replaced by a more effective breakdown action CP-1 — self-loading pistol Serdyukov.
Yaroslav Gorbunov
Source:
© Russian Seven
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