Soviet Forces

Fire Hedgehog

pinterest/guns.com

In the tail end of World War 2, a pair of Soviet ground crew men looked at a shipment of rapid-firing submachine guns and hatched a plan to provide some very rapid firepower to the bottom of a bomber. This idea, brilliant at first thought, but flawed in the end, is remembered as the ‘Fire Hedgehog’. The main ingredient of the Hedgehog was the Pistolet Pulemjot Schpagina model of 1941, or rather just PPSh-41. Its design was by Soviet weapons guru Georgii S. Shpagin and was very basic: a short 33-inch (828mm) long blowback operated fully automatic submachine gun with a 10-inch (265mm) chrome lined barrel inside a wooden stock. It weighed 12 pounds (5.4 kg) when loaded with a 71-round drum magazine or about 9.5 pounds with the more reliable and preferred 35-round box magazine. Used by the Red Army, the plane, a TU-2 was loaded with 88 PPSH like machine guns. Due to the limited range of the machine guns it flew at low altitudes and on seeing an enemy regiment the pilot would open the doors and shower them with lead. The ground troops would not stand a chance against 88 machine gun firing at the same time a combined 80,000 rounds per minute.