Korean PPSh 41 Sub-machine gun : Lance Corporal G C Ralston, 1 Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment

The PPSh-41 (Pistolet Pulemjot Shpagina sub-machine gun, 1941 model) was one of the most significant infantry weapons used by Soviet troops during the Second World War. Robust, simple to use, fast-firing, and compact, it was tremendously useful in the massive urban street-to-street fighting on the Eastern Front between 1942 and 1945. Captured examples of this weapon were prized by German forces, who used them against their former Soviet owners. It is estimated that a total of six million PPSh-41 sub-machine guns were manufactured during the Second World War. The weapon became one of the iconic symbols of the “Great Patriotic War”

The weapon was retired from front-line Soviet Army service soon after the end of the Second World War. Since then it has been widely spread throughout the world and for some years it was almost as potent a symbol of communist forces as the ubiquitous AK47 rifle. The PPSh-41 was widely exported to many pro-Soviet countries around the world, including China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and many African countries. Australian forces have encountered the PPSh-41 in a range of conflicts over the past 60 years, from the frozen hills of Korea to the jungles of Vietnam, to the deserts of Somalia and Iraq and in the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.