Tokarev (Tokarev) rifle, also known as Samozaryadnaya Vintovka Tokareva (Tokareva self-loading rifle) for short SVT, often nicknamed Svetlana "思凡达" means light, flash or holy. This rifle was widely used by the Soviet Red Army during and after World War II, and was even used by the German army during World War II.
This rifle was originally equipped with the Soviet army as SVT-38. 38 refers to the specific date submitted to the Soviet People’s Armed Committee in 1938. Speaking of this rifle, let's briefly introduce its designer Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev (Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev).
Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev was born in June 1871 in a poor Cossack family in Stanitsa, a large village of Egorlykskaya in the Don River valley in Russia. At the age of 11, he studied with a local blacksmith apprentice. At the age of 14, he studied with his teacher, AEChernikov, the designer of the famous Cossack combat weapon model 1860. At the age of 17, he entered the Rostov State Military Academy and became a Cossack sergeant. He returned to his old unit at the age of 29, and the 12th Tang Cossack Regiment became a master gunsmith.
Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev
In 1907, during his training at the Oranienbaum Officer’s Rifle School, he revised the bolt action model 1891 Mosin-Nagan. ( Mosin-Nagan) rifle, convert it to a semi-automatic firepower rifle. Due to various red tapes at the beginning of World War I, the testing time of the weapon was prolonged.
After the October Revolution of the Soviet Union, he was transferred to the Izhevsk Arsenal in 1919. Although he had served as an officer of the Russian Imperial Armed Forces, he was appointed as the senior officer of the Izhevsk Imperial Small Arms Factory Engineer, continue the production of his modified Mosin rifle. However, because the quality could not be improved to the level before the October Revolution, on August 30, 1920, the Soviet Revolutionary Court sentenced Tokarev to death for the crime of "deliberate sabotage". Later, due to the lack of weapons experts in the Soviet Union at that time and his continuous complaints, the death sentence against him was finally revoked in the summer of 1921.
In 1930, Tokarev invented the famous TT-30 pistol . The name TT-30 (Tula-Tokarev Model 1930) is taken from the initials of Tula Arsenal and Tokarev. As a personal weapon of the Soviet army, the TT-30 replaced the Nagant M1895 revolver that has been used since the time of the Tsar.
Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev
In 1930, the Soviet Revolutionary Military Committee announced a resolution requiring the development of a pistol to replace the aging Nagant M1895 revolver. On January 7, 1931, the military noticed the potential of Tokarev's pistol. A few weeks later, 1,000 TT-30 ordered equipment units to conduct a test first, and the test result was that the gun was finally adopted. About 93,000 TT-30 pistols were manufactured between 1930 and 1936. After
, after continuous improvement of TT-30, a new version officially named TT-33 appeared in 1935. The TT-33 is similar to Browning's blowback FN 1903 semi-automatic pistol, and uses the short recoil tilting barrel system of the Browning M1911 pistol. When the bullet is fired, due to the expansion pressure of the gunpowder gas in the barrel and the acceleration of the bullet, a reaction force is generated to the gun, which pushes the bolt back to complete the ejection and loading process. The 7.62×25mm Tokarev ammunition launched by
TT-33 is powerful and has a very flat trajectory, which can penetrate thick clothes and soft body armor. my countryThe 51 and 54 pistols are developed based on TT-33. The TT-33 is still in service in the armed forces of Bangladesh and North Korea today, while the police in Pakistan still generally use the TT pistol as a sidearm.
In 1937, the TT-33 pistol
manufactured by the Soviet Tula Arsenal, we are still back to the subject. The Soviet Red Army began its first test of automatic rifles in 1926, but until the mid-1930s, the tested samples did not meet the requirements of the Soviet army. Sergey Simonov (Russian weapon designer and one of the pioneers of modern assault rifles) began to develop automatic rifles in the early 1930s, and proposed his competition designs in 1931 and 1935. But it was not until 1936 that the rifle designed by it was adopted by the Red Army, named "1936 7.62mm Simon automatic rifle" or ABC -36.
But later, because the Simonov rifle became more complicated and more capricious. Tokarev submitted an improved design of a rifle for further testing. This time, Tokarev's rifle named SVT-38 was adopted and production began. The Soviet Union hoped that it could become the new standard rifle of the Red Army. This is why the Soviet Red Army replaced ABC-36 with Tokarev SVT-38. The actual production of
SVT-38 began on July 16, 1939, and from July 25, small parts were regularly produced for actual assembly. On October 1, 1939, after fixing some assembly defects and simplifying some parts to adapt to mass production, SVT-38 began mass production.
Tokarev SVT-38 rifle
SVT-38 is a pneumatic rifle with a spring-loaded piston and a short stroke of a tilt bolt above the barrel. The configuration later gained wider acceptance. It is worth mentioning that there is some controversy as to who originally developed this principle of operation, because the mechanism of SVT (in the prototype bid in 1935) is very similar to the design of the Belgian small arms designer Dieudonné Saive in 1937. Saive finally designed FN-49 and FN FAL, their operating principles are very similar.
The safety device behind the trigger and the cleaning rod
SVT-38 This rifle has a safety device behind the trigger, which rotates down from the side to prevent the trigger from moving backwards mobile. The muzzle extension/brake has six vertical slots, which can deflect the escaping gas upwards and backwards to reduce recoil and muzzle flare. The front sight is a ball shape, just like on the Mosin-Nagan bolt action rifle, and has a screw to adjust the height. The rear sight is tangential, with an incremental scale of 1500 meters based on 100 meters, and uses standard Soviet D-type ammunition. The total length of the
rifle is 122 cm, the barrel length is 63.5 cm, and the unloaded weight is 3.95 kg. SVT-38 is equipped with a bayonet and 10-round detachable magazine. The bolt is open, and can use five-round Mosin-Nagan magazines. SVT-38 has a very advanced adjustable gas function system at that time. The SVT-38 sniper model has an additional locking notch to install a see-through sight, equipped with a 3.5× PU telescope sight.
SVT-38 made its debut in Finland Winter War from 1939 to 1940. The initial reaction of the Soviet army to the new rifle was negative. Problems include: the rifle is too long and heavy, difficult to maintain, and the magazine has fallen off. Production of SVT-38 ceased on April 13, 1940. It is estimated that the total output of SVT-38 was about 150,000 units starting from October 4, 1939.
In 1940, the Soviet Army modernized its design based on field experience and production conditions. Created a lighter and simplified version of the rifleThis is called "7.62 Tokarev System Self-loading Rifle 1940 Model", which is SVT-40.
SVT-40
It can be seen from the experience of the Finnish Winter War that the new design and production changes have improved the reliability of the rifle operation. SVT-40 is designed to be more refined and lighter. The improved folding magazine is slightly shortened, the guard is a one-piece structure, and the barrel cleaning rod is placed under the barrel. Through the redesigned bayonet lugs, the cleaning rod is fixed with a spring lock. The size of the bolt, muzzle brake and bayonet has also been reduced.
SVT-40 began mass production in Tula on July 1, 1940. Later production began in factories in Izhevsk and Podolsk. Because these factories already had experience in manufacturing SVT-38, they produced fast and produced about 70,000 SVT-40 in 1940.
When Germany began to invade in June 1941, SVT-40 had been widely used by the Red Army . In the organizational equipment table of the Soviet infantry division, one-third of the rifles should be SVT. The first few months of the war were disastrous for the Soviet Union. They lost thousands of SVT-40. To compensate for this, the production of Mosin-Nagan rifles was restarted. In contrast, SVT is relatively difficult to manufacture.
During World War II, the German Army or the German Wehrmacht used SVT extensively throughout the war. They are used so much that the German High Command issued a German ID number for them. SVT-38 is called SIG.258(r), SVT-40 is called SIG.259(r), and SVT-40 sniper rifle is called SIG.Zf260(r).
On April 17, 1942, the German High Command issued the order number 1384/42-AHA/In (VII) for "Use and Discovery of Russian Automatic Rifles". The German G-43 7.92×57mm Mauser semi-automatic rifle is influenced by SVT in design.
A German soldier is using the captured SVT-40
In April 1940, the Soviet Red Army decided to use the SVT-40 as a sniper rifle, replacing the 1891/30 PE Mosin Nagant, so Stop production of bolt action Mosin. By the end of 1942, all SVT-38 and SVT-40 were equipped with optical sight mounting rails on both sides of the camera.
In 1940, the production of the SVT-40 sniper rifle was about 7,000, in 1941 it was 34,710, and in 1942, it produced 14,200 in its last year of service as the main sniper rifle of the Red Army. In February 1942, as the main sniper rifle of the Red Army, the Mosin Nagan model 1891/30 PU sniper rifle was put into production again.
Although SVT-40 is a competent sniper rifle, the problem of inaccurate first shot has been plagued by it. In the test, it was found that there was a significant difference of 10 to 15 cm in hitting the target at 100 meters. The main problem is that the barrel moves longitudinally with the bolt.
The SVT-40 produced by Tula in 1941 adopts the original sniper configuration
The modified fully automatic shooting version of SVT-40 is called AVT-40 or Automat Vintovka Tokarreva. Allows semi-automatic and fully automatic firepower modes. When firing automatically, the rate of fire of the rifle is about 750 rpm, which is even faster than the DP machine gun. In order to better offset the pressure caused by automatic shooting, AVT uses a slightly stronger hardwood material.
Post-war documents show that AVT’s performance was disappointing. In automatic shooting mode, it is largely uncontrollable. Subsequently, the use of AVT's fully automatic shooting mode was prohibited.
Although his service life is relatively brief,But during World War II, the SVT was a prolific rifle on the Eastern Front of the Soviet Union and had a considerable influence on the design of European combat rifles during and immediately after the war. After the war, most of the SVT was decommissioned and refurbished and stored in the arsenal. At present, SVT is widely used by collectors and history lovers, and is highly sought after.
It is worth mentioning that Tokarev also designed the prototype of the FT-1/ФТ-1 panoramic camera. FT means Tokarev's camera.
In 1941, Tokarev received a doctorate in science and technology, a recipient of a Stalin scholarship, the title of Soviet Socialist Labor Hero (the highest award in the Soviet Union), and the Lenin Medal. On June 7, 1968, Tokarev passed away unfortunately. According to his wishes, he was buried in the Vsekhsvyatskoye Cemetery in Tula, Russia, at the age of 97.
