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Sturmgewehr 45 (StG45(M)) / Maschinenpistole (45 MP45(M))

1945 WORLD WAR 2

History

By the end of World War II, the potential of automatic weapons was greatly appreciated by all parties. Automatic weapons outperform traditional bolt-action rifles because they can fire repeatedly with relative accuracy at ranges often encountered by infantry. This gun can also be replenished from a larger magazine before it needs to be reloaded.

Automatic weapons - which had success in other forms such as the German MP40 and the Soviet PPsH-41 submachine guns - were here to stay, followed by the rise of "assault rifles" - a weapon that combined portability with a machine gun Submachine gun/carbine with repetitive fire. Among the Germans, assault rifles were called "assault rifles" - the image of German infantry rushing into Allied lines and fatally mutilating them.

The first "true" front-line assault rifle was the German StG44 - known in today's literature as "the father of the assault rifle". The weapon is centered on a 7.92x33mm Kurtz ("Kurz") intermediate cartridge, fired from a curved 30-round detachable magazine. The weapon had a fixed stock, gas operation with an inclined bolt system, and by the end of the war 425,000 copies had been produced for the German army.

However, like most early attempts, the StG44 was not a practical mass-production weapon for a shrinking wartime economy, and its overall weight has come under some scrutiny.

Subsequently, the StG44 initiative resulted in a project aimed at providing the German Armed Forces with a more cost-effective and manufacturable solution that also proved to be lighter in the field. Design work began in 1944, and the new gun definitely shares some similarities with the previous StG44 series. A prototype - called "Gerat 06" - was subsequently tested. The Gerat 06 uses a roller locking short recoil mechanism with a pneumatic piston.

After abandoning the gas system and introducing a modification of the "roller delayed recoil" breech system, the prototype was renamed "Gerat 06H". The weapon subsequently received the official designation StG45(M) and was ready for production.

However, the end of the German war in May 1945 meant the end of the development of all ongoing German projects - including the promising StG45. Some sources say that only 30 units were completed - so the StG45 never existed, except in some prototype form and maybe some evaluation models. The system is known to be designed to enter real-time troop ratings before the war is over.

In any case, the StG45 represents the last further development of Hitler's German assault rifle.

Externally, the StG45 has a traditional design with a fixed wooden shoulder rest, a sloping pistol grip and a receiver that matches the barrel assembly. The magazine is placed in front of the trigger group in the traditional way, and all relevant internal functions are located in the receiver. A charging handle with a protruding protrusion is installed on the receiver side. The fire selector has been placed near the thumb for quick access.

And contains three modes labeled "S", "E" and "D". The front sight is mounted in front of the receiver, while the front side is mounted on the muzzle. The construction of the receiver consists of steel stampings with welds at some joints. Designed as curved magazines in the traditional sense, these magazines include a 10-round capacity version for testing and a 30-round capacity version for full-size production models (the StG45 is often depicted as a shorter 10-round version). All in all, compared to the earlier StG44 series, the StG45 costs about half as much and materials to manufacture it.

Compared to the StG44's 10-pound curb weight, it weighs less than 9 pounds.

After the war, it was common for German engineers to transfer their talents to other countries. Some Mauser employees ended up in France, where they continued work on a similar automatic weapon that fired the American 30 M1 carbine with roller-delayed action, but was eventually abandoned due to lack of funding. Engineers also traveled to Spain to work on the state-sponsored CETME group, which improved the barrel delay recoil into a working prototype that could fire a 7.92mm bullet.

The Spanish government acquired an improved version of the low-power 7.62mm CETME cartridge in 1958, called the "CETME 58", which was also sold to the West German Army, which was used by Heckler & Co. Koch was grouped for local production as the 1959 "HK G3 Battle Rifle" - full power firing the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. In this way, the German wartime drum delayed recoil operating system survived and was used in various HK products since then (including the excellent HK MP5 submachine gun), making the concept a reliable alternative to more expensive pneumatic weapons .