“Unveiling the Unexpected: Is It Possible for a Gun to Hit Targets Beyond Corners?”
Thankfully, most armies had another class of weapon at their arsenal: the submachine gun. Developed at the end of the Great War for raiding and clearing trenches, submachine guns fired lower-recoil pistol-calibre ammunition and could deliver a murderous volume of fire at close quarters, making them ideal for urban combat. This advantage was exploited to great effect by the Soviet Red Army, who equipped entire infantry companies with PPsH-41 and 43 submachine guns for house-to-house fighting in cities like Stalingrad. But submachine guns were not a perfect solution, being inaccurate at ranges beyond a few dozen metres. Both the Soviets and the Germans quickly realized that this new kind of combat required a new kind of weapon, one which combined the volume of fire and full-auto controllability of a submachine gun with the accuracy of a rifle – at least over moderate ranges.
Interestingly, both nations approached the same problem from opposite ends. Unlike most armies, the tactical structure of the German Wehrmacht was organized not around the rifleman, but rather the machine gun squad, with rifle-carrying infantry playing a supporting role. This is a major reason army planners chose to retain the Great War-era Mauser 1898-pattern bolt-action rifle rather than adopt a more modern semi-automatic infantry weapon. But while this arrangement worked well during the Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939, 1940, and 1941, it proved less effective in 1943 as the Wehrmacht found itself in full-on retreat following the disaster at Stalingrad. Though the German MG 34 and MG 42 machine guns could lay down an impressive volume of fire, they required extensive setup before they could be brought to bear – something that was difficult to do while retreating. German industry thus set about designing a more compact, man-portable machine gun that could be more easily used on the retreat.
