Inventor georgi shpagin biography

Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin was a Russian small arms designer, best known for creating the PPSh-41 submachine gun as well as working with Vasily Degtyaryov on the DShK heavy machine gun.

History

Georgy Shpagin was born on April 17, 1897 and died on February 6, 1952. He only attended school for 3 years before becoming a carpenter when he was 12 years old. He was then drafted into the Russian Army in 1916 to fight on the Eastern Front where he was assigned to repair artillery the following year.

After the October Revolution, he joined the Red Army where he worked as a gunsmith in Vladimir Oblast. In 1920 he worked in a workshop designing weapons. He worked with Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov and Vasily Degtyaryov.

In 1938 his workshop released the DShK heavy machine gun, chambered in 12.7×108mm. It is still in use today as an anti aircraft and light vehicle weapon. During WWII roughly 8000 of them were made. In 1940, he would come up with the machine gun he is best known for, The PPSh-41. The submachine gun could be fed from either a 35 round box magazine or a 71 round drum. It had a rate of fire of over 900 rounds per min, and between 1941 and 1947 an estimated 6 million of them were made. It was cheap to produce and easy to maintain. It was a highly versatile and well used firearm in the Red Army.

In 1944 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He created an assault rifle called the ASh-44 which was unique for a rifle in its class for being blowback and being chambered in a intermediate round, the 7.62x39 (M43). It never left the prototype stages as it was uncontrollable in full auto.

He also worked to create a replacement for the PPSh-41, the PPSh-2 in 1942. It was chambered in 7.62x39 Tokarev, as the original PPSh-41 was. It also was shaped more what we think of as a traditional assault rifle today. Only a small number of the rifles were produced, an estimated 200-250. It was a well liked rifle by the people that used it but ultimately never was adopted due to the simpler PPS-43. The PPSh-2 is blowback and fires full auto only. It fed from a 35 round box mag and had a cyclic rate of 550 rounds per min, which was considerably slower then his first submachine gun, the PPSh-41.

Awards

• Hero of Socialist Labour (September 16, 1945)
• Orders of Lenin (1941, 1943, and 1945)
• Stalin Price (2nd Class in 1941)
• Order of Suvorov (2nd Class in 1945)
• Order of the Red Star in 1938

Notable Designs

• PPSh-41
• PPsh-2
• DShK Heavy Machine Gun