Finland is a young country in the historical sense; it became independent only after the second Russian revolution (or the October Revolution of 1917). Prior to this, the territory was more often called Chukhonia, and this province was not among the most developed. Having become a sovereign power, the country began to develop, and soon its own industry appeared in it. Finnish weapons did not receive much distribution, except for the famous knives, so beloved by hunters and robbers both in Russia and abroad, but they were also made not only by Finnish craftsmen. Despite the peaceful disposition of the inhabitants and a short history, the country still had to fight. In both international conflicts, in which the Finnish army took part, its armament consisted of samples created by self-taught designer Aimo Johannes Lahti. The Suomi submachine gun was not a masterpiece, but you can’t even call it bad. The guarantee of this is the popularity of this model all over the world, even if it did not lead to its mass production. More than a dozen countries armed them with their police and military units.
A war that few people know about
In 1932, the most bloody war in Latin America began. It lasted three years, claimed the lives of tens (or even hundreds of thousands of people, no one was then puzzled by the exact count of victims), and, in the end, was almost useless. The desert region of Chaco was the subject of a dispute between Paraguay and Bolivia, where oil fields were supposed to be. Actually, Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Oil were in conflict, and it was these two companies that unleashed a war for control over the fields. The armies of Bolivia and Paraguay were supplied with various types of weapons, including guns and aircraft. In this carnage, even Finnish submachine guns were used against an exotic background. The Russians, on both sides, were not dispensed in the war — these were tsarist and White Guard officers who proved themselves to be excellent military specialists. No oil was found in Chaco, but there was still a result. Latin American land has become, along with Spain, a testing ground for the latest weapons. In particular, in close combat (a feature of the Paraguayan-Bolivian theater of war was just short distances between opponents), the Finnish Suomi submachine gun perfectly demonstrated its deadly capabilities. It was his debut.
Lahti inventor in his youth
Aimo Johannes did not receive a special technical education, which was manifested in part in a certain engineering naivety of the design of his brainchildren. But he was undoubtedly a talented person. The peasant son, having worked for the first month at the glass factory (he graduated from only six full classes of the school), Lahti spent five marks on the old Russian berdanka and immediately began to mess with her, trying to improve it. Realizing that this was much more interesting than routine work, he asked Sateri, a gunsmith, for an apprentice. By the time the young man was mobilized, he was already well versed in rifles and was striving for more.
Dream of a Rapid Fire Pistol
In 1922, Lahti fell into the hands of the German MP-18 rapid-fire carbine, and he became interested in the ingenious mechanism. He served in the army at an arms repair shop, but he was creative in his pursuit. He managed to improve the three-ruler, and the Finnish army was armed with a new model - Lahti-Saloranta M-26 (the corporal had to perpetuate the name of the immediate superior captain Salorant, who became a co-author). And at the same time he invented other types, among them - a gun and a machine gun. They were not very successful, but in appearance they resembled home-made products (they, in essence, were such). The Suomi M-26 submachine gun became the weapon of the police. By the way, the tradition of naming their samples in honor of their native country Lahti remained faithful in the future. He rose to the rank of general and resigned in 1944 after a scandalous story with the loss of a batch of experimental weapons. He was not guilty, but the sediment, as they say, remained, and this happens not only in the Finnish army. His submachine gun Suomi M-31 was adopted as early as 1931.
Winter war
The end of the thirties of the XX century is usually called the pre-war period. In fact, the process of redistributing spheres of influence in Europe has already begun, and it was just as impossible to stop it as avoiding a bullet flying out of the barrel after the firing pin hit the cartridge capsule. According to the official version, the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 began with the provocation of the side adjacent to the USSR. The term “White Finns” was immediately coined, suggesting the presence of representatives of another, “red” part of this people, and a large one. There were no grounds for assuming any aspirations of the “military”, and there couldn’t be any. Finland did not have strong aircraft; tanks also could not be compared with the Soviet ones. Most of the military budget was spent not on offensive, but on exclusively defensive programs. The construction of the "Mannerheim Line" has become a matter of national importance, the attacks were waiting and preparing for it. Fortifications really amazed the imagination with their scale and inaccessibility, which was promoted by the terrain. Nevertheless, the Red Army managed to overcome it, despite the enormous losses. In the conditions of a harsh polar winter, the Suomi submachine gun demonstrated its fighting qualities. The use of weapons revealed its strengths and weaknesses. The slightest contamination of the bolt mechanism led to failure, it was heavy, but, most importantly, the quantity did not satisfy the needs of the army.
Tactical Issues
The Latin American experience, despite the obvious difference in climate, was the reason for revising the tactical aspects of using automatic weapons. The field charter of the Finnish army established the presence of one unit in the platoon, the commander. The industry simply could not produce a sufficient number of “trunks”, although by the beginning of 1940 it was possible to issue a Suomi submachine gun to each squad leader, bringing the total to four. But that, too, was not enough. Then - in violation of the charter - separate consolidated companies of machine gunners began to form, ambush and open unexpected heavy fire, making maximum use of the total firepower. After the raid, this unit again dispersed in their companies and platoons.
The second phase of the Soviet-Finnish war (1941-1944)
It should be noted the ability of Red Army commanders to adopt the experience of the enemy. With the outbreak of World War II, companies of machine gunners became a full-time structure in the Soviet armed forces. So, along with the “Molotov cocktails”, the Finnish method of massive fire exposure was used in the fight against fascism. In addition, the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 became a kind of catalyst for a substantial increase in the production of automatic weapons in the USSR.
It is believed that after the capture of the Mannerheim Line and the conclusion of a peace treaty, this international conflict ended. Some territories were torn away from Finland, the border from Leningrad was pushed back, and in return the Soviet side provided other lands of approximately the same area. However, the conditions of this world were imposed by force, and after the German attack on the USSR, Finland attempted to return the taken away. The second phase of the war began. The Finns in every way emphasized the lack of an alliance with Hitler and claimed that they were fighting on their own. The Suomi submachine guns, however, somehow got into the Third Reich (a little more than three thousand pieces) - they were armed with some parts of the Waffen-SS.
The Finnish venture failed.
Device
The submachine gun used a free shutter. The loading handle is made separately, it remains stationary during firing. Another design feature is the ability to control the rate of fire with a special membrane-spring pneumatic device with five holes of different diameters.
Protection from an accidental shot and transfer to a single fire is carried out by a switch located behind the store below.
The forearm is absent as such, so firing in long bursts is problematic: you cannot take the casing with your left hand - it heats up, and it is forbidden to hold weapons by the magazine so as not to loosen the joint assembly. However, the same situation was with the PCA. “Bunker-Suomi” was also made without stocks (a total of five hundred pieces), which were used not only for firing from fortifications, but also for tanks.
TTX
Suomi is designed for a 9 mm cartridge for the Parabellum.
High weight (4600 g unloaded and up to 7000 g with a magazine), low initial bullet speed (200 m / s) and insufficient reliability - these are the three main shortcomings that suffered the Suomi submachine gun. Its characteristics are inferior to the parameters of both Soviet and German weapons of the Second World War. But the main vice was not even technical, but technological in nature. The sample was almost impossible to launch in mass production. The receiver was milled from a single forging, which greatly increased the cost and lengthened the process. Millions of machine guns cannot be made without stamping; weapons technologists understood this long before the start of the war. Small parties of Suomi, however, dispersed around the world in the 1930s, and the release continued until 1953, until the Soviet Union teaching staff was copied in Finland.
The solution to the quick-change barrel was recognized as successful, a similar technique was used in the Israeli Uzi.
Score
The Suomi submachine gun and the PPSh are similar from afar. There are two reasons: firstly, a rifle butt without a pistol grip, and secondly, a disk clip in which many cartridges are placed. Two options have been developed for Suomi (for 40 and 70 pieces). But, as practice has shown, this type of store, although it has a large capacity, does not justify itself. It is expensive because of the complexity of the device, and in reliability it is inferior to conventional box-shaped ones. In the second half of the war, both PPSh and Suomi began to be equipped with just them, simpler and more reliable. The same thing happened in other countries where this Finnish submachine gun was produced under license (Denmark, Sweden). In just 32 years, eighty thousand M-31s were produced.