Why don’t Soviet soldiers like the DP-27 light machine gun?

Why don’t Soviet soldiers like the DP-27 light machine gun?

It can be said that the DP-27 machine gun is one of the representative firearms of the Soviet army in World War II. Soviet soldiers used this highly recognizable light machine gun and participated in countless tragic battles. The scene of them operating this light machine gun was captured by a photographer, turning a moment in history into eternity.

When many people affectionately call it a "rotary machine gun", does anyone know that the Soviet soldiers at that time did not like this kind of machine gun. A total of more than 795,000 DP-27 machine guns were produced. This number can be described as terrifying. Therefore, the Soviet army has a very large number of DP-27 machine guns, which can be described as being seen everywhere.

In World War I, weapons designers from various countries clearly realized that on the battlefield, infantry not only needed medium machine guns supported by tripods, but also light machine guns that could be carried lightly. Of course, the performance of the first batch of light machine guns cannot be described as good. The most typical example is the French "Chauchard" light machine gun. Whether it is manufacturing quality or performance, it can be said to be at the bottom.

There is a saying in Russia, "The first pancake is always mushy." This sentence also applies to light machine guns. The DP-27 was the first light machine gun developed by the Soviet Union. Although its performance was much better than that of the French Chauchat, it was not much better.

There are many shortcomings in the design of the DP-27. The most obvious problem is that the center of gravity is forward, there is no handguard and handle, and it is difficult for the machine gunner to operate, so it does not get much love. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the DP-27 light machine gun did not fall behind, but it was not the latest weapon. Technology was developing rapidly at the time, especially in the interwar period.

The development in the field of weapons and equipment can be described as rapid. If you pay attention, you will find that whether it is an airplane or a tank, the difference between the models launched in 1918 and 1939 is one in the sky and one on the ground.

The Soviet Union’s development process of light machine guns was very tortuous. The DP-27 was actually one of the first batch of light weapons developed after the founding of the Soviet Union. Although the model name is DP-27, it was actually born in 1928. The designer is Vasily Deggarev, and the DP-27 can be regarded as his early work.

Thanks to the 7.62×54mm ammunition it fires, the DP-27 light machine gun has an effective range of 750 to 800 meters. The ammunition is powerful, the shooting accuracy is high, and the trajectory is low. From a standard perspective, the shooting performance of the DP-27 is still very good. In fact, that's all that's great about this gun.

It may be that the designer Vasily Deggarev lacked experience. He set the strength of this machine gun very high, which resulted in the weight of the DP-27 empty gun reaching 11.8 kilograms. Even if It was a very considerable weight at the time.

In addition, the DP-27 uses a huge bullet disc to feed ammunition. When shooting, the inner layer of the bullet disc will rotate, so it got the nickname "turntable machine gun". A bullet disc weighs 1.6 kilograms, but its ammunition capacity is only 47 rounds. When full of ammunition, the bullet disc weighs 2.7 kilograms. Such a bomb is not only heavy in weight, but also very large in size, requiring a special bullet box to carry it.

The most terrible thing is that if the ammunition in the bullet tray is not full (this happens often, for example, after firing a few rounds of ammunition and need to move the position), the bullet tray will make a loud metal impact sound when it shakes. , which will reveal the position of the machine gunner.

In addition, the DP-27 light machine gun is completely a "character detector." Due to many reasons such as insufficient production capacity of the Soviet arsenal, low precision of production equipment, and poor technical skills of workers at that time, the production quality of DP-27 was very poor. This directly affects the reliability of the machine gun. Maybe one machine performs normally, but another one performs very poorly.

In fact, the gun’s designer Vasily Deggarev had taken into account the poor management conditions of the arsenal at the time, so he designed the DP-27 to be very simple, which made it almost useless It can be bad. However, even so, there is still a flaw, that is, seemingly identical bullet discs cannot achieve completely universal effects.

Similar problems also appeared on the PPSh-41 submachine gun produced in the early days of the war. Not all drums could be mounted on a submachine gun. This restricted the operation of Soviet soldiers. They could only Choose the drum drum with the same serial number that comes with the original factory.