Red Army Equipment

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it

The Soviet Union had the largest army of all factions in WWII; this meant that it could pour countless bodies into the conflict, with plenty in reserve to replaces losses (which is exactly what they did). Equipping all those soldier was another matter entirely; Though the U.S.S.R. by this time had an enormous industrial base, arming that many soldiers would still put a strain on the supply chain, and the invasion of Russia had caught the Soviets with their pants down, meaning that they couldn't arm their troops as well as they theoretically could have. Instead they would rely heavily on tried-and-true but outdated designs like the Mosin, cheap-but-effective support weapons, and an enormous number of tanks. Equipment could be categorized as follows:

• Old Designs that were supposed to be replaced, but they already had the tooling ready and made them in mass quantities
• More advanced designs that weren't quite ready yet and made in more limited quantities
• Cheap designs that could be made quickly to be sent to the front lines ASAP
• The occasional truly ground-breaking designs that eventually made it to the front lines.
• Stuff they got via Lend-Lease from when they were allies with Brittan and America.

Small Arms

Rifles and SMGs

• Mosin-Nagant: The average Soviet soldier in World War II was armed with a Mosin Nagant bolt action rifle. A time tested design that had been in service for half a century at that point through World War I and two revolutions (and subsequent Civil War) with a few tweaks. It was a bare bones five-shot gun, but was cheap to make, simple to service, robust and reliable and could put a 7.62×54mmR round through a Nazi at ranges up to 800 meters.
• SVT-40: The Soviets intended to replace the Mosin with the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle earlier in the 1940s. It was a good rifle, but what held it back was that it was too fragile for the dumbfuck farmers that were using them, and more importantly it cost too much to try and produce during a war in numbers required. Still, more than 1.5 million were made. It was at least on par with the Gewehr 43 (which had systems copied from it), and better than the Gewehr 41, interestingly enough. The Soviets continued to work on the idea of semi-auto rifles and soon after the war introduced the SKS. The SKS was expected to become the rifle component of the AK-47's planned SMG status while sharing the shortened intermediate round with the AK, but upon realizing the AK outclassed it in all ways except simplicitiy the SKS mainly became a ceremonial and export weapon.
• Winchester Model 1895: Yes, a goddamn lever-action rifle. In WWII. In Russia. The Russian Empire had procured a large quantity of them in WWI to make up for shortages of Mosin-Nagant rifles, and the Soviets still had some around for the Winter War. Unlike the vast majority of lever-actions, the Model 1895 was adapted to use stripper clips of 7.62x54mmR, to simplify logistical concerns and overall useability.
• Fedorov Avtomat: a WWI automatic rifle issued in limited numbers early in the war to make up for the lack of infantry-portable automatic weapons, and mostly saw action in the Finnish front where they were used up or destroyed. The Federov was a novel experiment cooked up during the great war and was arguably the first Assault-Rifle, but it had obvious shortcomings. The biggest being using outdated Japanese 6.5mm ammo (Protip: If your rifle needs special ammo that 99% of the army does not use, you're doing ground war wrong), as well as having a 25 bullet magazine that was fed through 5 bullet clips. As a result, it was largely forgotten about outside of Russia and obscure militaria nerds, since it primarily saw service in the Russian Civil war while everyone was trying to kill each other.
• PPD-40: Based on the Finnish KP31, this SMG was made in small numbers before the war. One of Degtyarov's many beautiful designs, it was a nice gun to shoot with. But due to pressing demands during the invasion, the design was simplified into...
• PPSh-41: After noticing how the Finns used this very simple tactic in the close quarter combat of forests and cities of the Winter War, the Soviet war machine poured huge effort into creating easy to use and more importantly easy to make SMGs. Keeping with the standard Soviet adage of 'quantity being a quality of its own' entire infantry battalions were often equipped with cheap and easy to manufacture PPSh-41's, pointed at the enemy and let loose to devastating effect in the urban battlefields of Eastern Europe. Shpagin's SMG however was still not min maxed to be fully simplified for war production. Thus, Sudayev took a swing at making the...
• PPS-43: Deciding that the PPSh-41 could be streamlined even more, the PPS-43 replaced it as it dispensed the wooden stock for a metal folding stock, among other changes. Otherwise it was mostly the same model.

Pistols

• TT33: The Soviets' first automatic pistol, essentially a browning clone in 7.62x25mm Tokarev.
• Nagant M1895: This revolver had been used since Imperial Russia, and at first glance its a very outdated revolver, requiring the use of special ammunition and being required to load and unload each cartridge one at a time. However, thanks to its unique gas-seal mechanism, it is one of the few revolvers that can be suppressed.

Machineguns

• DP27: The DP-27/28 was the distant second best LMG in the war. While it did not have the fire rate or general superiority of the MG34, it it was slightly better than the Bren due to having more shots at an almost equivalent caliber. The Pan magazine made it somewhat awkward and were a pain to reload or carry ammo for. However, its slower fire rate meant that it didn't have to worry about the barrel overheating as much. The Finns captured a ton of them during the Winter war and ended up using them to partially replace their own LMGs.
• Maxim Model 1910: Russia's version of the Maxim gun; it had gained an affectionate reputation as the "Tuchanka," a wagon-mounted MG, and continued to serve as a static emplaced gun that was slightly easier to deploy thanks to its wheel mount and gun shield.
• Maxim-Tokarev: An attempt to convert the Maxim into a more portable gun; the designers remove the water jacket and added a stock. Like most other such conversions, it was still a very bulky gun and wasn't as good as purpose-built light machineguns.
• DShK: Russia's .50 caliber machinegun. Though they didn't make as many as the M2 Browning during WWII, they still made a ton of them during and after the war.

Anti-Tank Infantry Weapons

• PTRD-41: The PTRD was similar to the Panzerbüchse in many ways, but it was a more modern design that retained service throughout the war. Arguably the second best AT-Rifle of the war after the Type 99, the thing was entirely able to kill Panzer IVs without Schurzen. And yes this this is why Panzer IV's did start being equipped with side skirts. Generally that is attributed to making them resistant to shape charges by pre-detonating the HEAT warhead, but nope it was to make them resist this thing.
• PTRS-41: The PTRS was a limited production run version that could fire semi-auto. Grunts didn't like their "fishing rods", however. As a saying went, "Long barrel - short life". It and the ammo were also quite heavy, but this wasn't unique compared to contemporary AT-Rifles.

Misc

• ROKS-2 / ROKS-3: A flamethrower disguised as a standard infantry rifle, as the logic went that enemies tend to target flame troops first. The ROKS is overall a wierd design, as it required the use of a revolver cylinder loaded with blanks at the muzzle, since that was the ignition source for the flames.

Misc

WWII Topics
History:	The World Wars
Allied Powers:	United States of America(Equipment) - British Empire (Equipment) - Soviet Union (Equipment)
Axis Powers:	Nazi Germany (Equipment) - Fascist Italy (Equipment) - Empire of Japan (Equipment)
Minor Powers:	China - Ethiopia - Finland - France - Hungary - Norway - Poland - Romania
Games:	Advanced Squad Leader - Axis & Allies - Bolt Action - Flames of War - Ostfront