PTRD 41: The Simple Soviet Antitank Rifle of WWII

Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look at this Soviet PTRD-41 anti-tank rifle. There were actually two different designs of 14.5mm anti-tank rifles that the Soviet Union developed, adopted, and produced, and used in large numbers during World War Two. This is the simple one, the other was the PTRS by Simonov. That was the more complicated one, and in fact that's kind of like a scaled-up SKS, or rather it became an SKS when it was scaled down to 7.62x39. But that's outside of the scope of today's video. What we have here is Degtyarev's anti-tank gun. Now, this had its genesis, not surprisingly, in Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets actually had developed an earlier anti-tank rifle, but they kind of just took it out of service and scrapped the idea, on the assumption that, well, if they ever use these things in combat, they're not going to be against tanks that are actually vulnerable to an anti-tank rifle of this sort. So it wasn't really a priority. Then when the Germans invaded, turns out the Germans invaded with a lot of, a remarkable number of light and medium tanks, Panzer I's, II's, and III's, that were actually quite susceptible to an anti-tank rifle like this. Now, the development program really kind of kicked off in 1938, so a little earlier, when the Soviet artillery directorate put out a request for basically a statement on anti-tank rifles, that they wanted an infantry portable anti-tank rifle, something light enough to be carried and operated by a crew of two men, because they had this concern that the infantry would inevitably, in combat, they would get separated from their anti-tank artillery support. So proper, you know, large crew serve, 37, 45 millimeter and larger anti-tank guns, inevitably would not be able to keep up with the infantry during combat. And they didn't want the infantry to be stranded, assaulted by tanks, and unable to defend themselves, short of Molotov cocktails and improvised weapons. So, that was the idea behind having anti-tank rifles. And that's what set the parameters for the gun. Has to be portable and operable by two men. Now the PTRS actually has a detachable barrel, which made it easier to transport than this thing, because this is what you get. You can't take this apart or make it smaller in any practical way. It's two meters long. It's a little over six and a half feet long. It is a little over 17 kilos. That's like 38 pounds. This is really kind of a beast of a gun. And it's chambered for this 14.5x114 millimeter cartridge. I've got it here next to a 50 BMG cartridge, just for comparison. The projectile in use there was actually developed in the late 30s. And it was a hybrid metal ceramic core with some explosives. So, it was an armor-piercing incendiary or armor-piercing explosive projectile. And the development that went into that projectile, and the cartridge as well, is really what made this gun as effective as it was. Contrary to, well, when I first started reading up on these, contrary to my expectation, these guns are actually remarkably effective on armor. More so than pretty much any of the other anti-tank rifles that were being used at the time. Including larger ones, like the 20 millimeter Ladis and Solothurns. What the 14.5 does is it combines a very well-designed armor-piercing projectile with a very high-velocity cartridge. So, this thing's firing a 988 grain bullet at 3,320 feet per second. It's a very high-velocity cartridge for something this huge. And with that velocity and that bullet design, this thing was able to perforate about 35 millimeters of vertical armor out to 300 yards. This is remarkable. This is a lot more than you get with a boy's anti-tank rifle, or a Solothurn or Lati, or any of the German guns. The Germans used an 8 millimeter, a much smaller bullet. Didn't have the armor-piercing performance that these did. So, up until about the middle of 1943, these guns were actually capable of defeating most of the German armored vehicles that were being encountered. Now, you might not be able to defeat the very front armor, but the sides, and the rear, and the tracks were all vulnerable to these guns. So, that explains why the Soviets put them into production and used them as heavily as they did. Now, from the very beginning, they understood that this wouldn't just be a weapon for use against tanks. It was also a good weapon for emplacements, or strong points, for attacking machine gun nests, or enemy anti-tank guns. You know, you hit anything with basically a thousand grain armor-piercing projectile, and you're going to mess it up pretty good. So, they knew that going in, and this was a multi-purpose weapon. So, even after the Germans were using tanks that weren't really all that vulnerable to these, Panthers and Tigers, they were still deployed and used extensively for shooting at other things. Light armored vehicles, trucks, Zip, you know, emplacements, that sort of thing. So, one of the other really impressive elements, maybe even the most impressive element about this gun, is just how quickly it was put into, well, it went from concept to production to field use. In August of 1941, Stalin personally ordered the development of anti-tank rifles. They wanted something to get out there. The Soviet army didn't really have anything in substantial use. And, wow, you know, the Germans have invaded, and they're actually using tanks that we could be destroying with a gun firing something like this. So, I want guns now. And I suppose Stalin was the sort of guy you took seriously when he said something like that. So, two different designers were both put to work on this, Degtyarev and Simonov. Degtyarev came up with this very simple, lighter, but has less firepower. It's a single-shot rifle. Simonov came up with a gun that had more firepower. It could be disassembled, you take the barrel off, so it was easier to transport in the field, despite being overall a little bit heavier. But it was also much more complicated to manufacture. And what the Soviet Union decided to do was put both guns into production simultaneously. This, they were able to tool up really quickly. Almost everything on this gun can be made on a lathe, or is a very simple pressing or milling operation sort of production. And by the end, oh, I should say, August, development is ordered. The end of August, they actually have these things in trials. So, best source I can find says the development timeframe on this gun was 22 days, which is almost inconceivable. I mean, this thing was put onto paper and then into production faster than the Sten gun was. And by November of 1941, these things were actually in the field in substantial numbers being used. By the end of 1941, they had produced 17,688 of these guns. And to help, they also had 77 of the Simonov PTRS-41 rifles. By the end of 1942, that number had gone up to ... almost 185,000 of these guns, and a little over 63,000 of the PTRSs. And by 1943, basically the TO&E of the Soviet Army was fulfilled. Every unit had its ... allocated number of anti-tank rifles, and they didn't have to have this breakneck production any longer because they actually made enough to equip the Army, which is kind of amazing by itself as well. The guns did stay in service to the end of the war, although, of course, by late in World War Two, the newer modern tanks were not vulnerable nearly to the same degree to these rifles. Anyway, let's take a look at how this operates, because it's actually sort of a half semi-automatic rifle, despite being single shot. We'll start with some markings here. This is on the receiver of the gun. We have the arsenal mark. We then have date of production, 42, and a serial number. That's it. You know, these were produced very quickly and under some substantial duress, so they didn't bother putting any other fancy markings on it. The bolt also has a serial number, as do some of the other parts, which may or may not always match today. For sights, we have a very simple U-notch flip. So this is the 400 metre setting, and you can flip it up to the 600 metre setting. And with a muzzle velocity of 3,300 feet per second, you have quite a long mean point-blank distance. And especially, let's remember, you're shooting at a tank, so we're not talking minute of angle sort of accuracy being required here. The front sight is just a very, very simple square blade with a reinforcing sort of girder there holding it in place. You will notice, of course, it is offset to the left side of the gun. This is done because the gun actually is recoil operated. So let me show you that. So here's the cheek rest. That's what you actually put your face on to get lined up with the sights. Then we have, really, a pretty basic bolt-action system here. If you want to unload it or load it, you open the bolt, pull it back. There's this nice contoured bit in the receiver there to allow you to drop a cartridge in. So if I take... this is a dummy cartridge. If I take that and just set it on there, that contour acts kind of like a feed ramp and allows me to just slide that cartridge right into the chamber. Then close the bolt. It's cocked on closing there. This is connected to the firing pin, and it does act as the safety. So you can pull this back and rotate it up, and that disables or disconnects the trigger entirely, and that's your safe position. This also allows you to re-cock the gun should it misfire for some reason. And then when you pull the trigger, the firing pin drops and it fires. And then the interesting stuff happens. So what's going to happen is when you fire this, you're going to get a massive amount of recoil out of this cartridge. And the entire assembly from here forward is going to recoil backwards. What I'm holding on to, this grip frame, is actually attached to a pair of rails, basically, right here. And the whole upper assembly is going to slide back, as my assistant will help me demonstrate. There we go. When that happens, you can see the bolt is going to hit this angled surface, and that's going to cause it to come up, and then it's going to cycle open under residual pressure in the chamber from firing. And that is going to automatically eject the casing downward, in this case. Your face is offset to the side, so that you don't get your face crushed in by this thing when it opens. But that's there for two reasons. It's partially to increase the rate of fire, because you don't have to do the first step of reloading. It automatically opens by itself. It's also there to absorb some of the recoil, so that you don't have to have quite as heavy of a gun in order to tame down the recoil from this thing, to not, like, physically injure the shooter. All right, we're going to try one more here. We have an empty case in it, so in theory, hopefully, we should see the case eject downward when this thing cycles. You ready? All right, go. It's kind of hard. You can see the amount of recoil that's required to actually do this for real. All right, looking at the controls, there aren't very many. This is a very simple gun. Trigger makes it go bang, and this is the bolt release button, right there. So, if I push that button, I can pull the bolt out. There's the bolt. It's actually kind of like a tank-of-air bolt, although it only has locking lugs in the front. It's got two really huge locking lugs in the front, and then, of course, we have an extractor on your ejector. And that's it. There's our striker at the back. It's got a very simple sear that it works upon. And when it's fired, it goes down into that position. Firing pin is exposed, and it fires. So, that's it. That's how you do a firearm that is quick and dirty and out in the field to be used as quickly as possible. So, people often ask to see a shot of what it looks like actually shouldering a firearm, and, well, here's what this thing looks like. This thing's a bit of a behemoth, actually. It's interesting, you've got this cheek rest on the side, and normally you think about putting your cheek on top, or your chin on top of the cheek pad like this. In this case, no, this is to set your head off to the side so that it lines up with the iron sights there. And it actually does really well. And then I'm holding ... the pistol grip that I'm holding and the butt plate that's in my shoulder, those pieces aren't going to move. But this whole ... everything above here, this whole assembly is going to come slamming back when you fire. Which is a good thing, because otherwise it'll break your arm off from the recoil. Interestingly, you actually still see these things in combat today. If you look at the footage from Middle East and North Africa, as well as the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, you will find Soviet anti-tank rifles, both PTRDs and PTRSs, sometimes in use in their stock configuration, sometimes guns have been modified. I've seen pictures of guys in North Africa who have these things with scope mounts, put it on them. And of course the 14.5mm cartridge went on to be used extensively in machine guns. The KPV machine guns used this cartridge. It was a vehicle gun, it was an anti-aircraft gun. It's still extensively used today. So there's a long history ... This gun didn't just go away after World War Two, they're still out there, and the cartridge in particular is still heavily used. Now I know people are going to ask why didn't they make these sniper rifles? Well, the answer is this thing is way more powerful than you would actually want for a sniper rifle. Barrel life on these is about 500 rounds before you start seeing problems. Even before that they'll start losing a little bit of their velocity. And the thing kicks too much. If you want a sniper rifle, you're better off with something a lot smaller, that's a lot more manageable, that doesn't have the firing signature that you can imagine this thing has coming out of that muzzle brake. So an optical sight probably would have been helpful on these guns because they were effective out to like 300 metres. But look at the construction. Adding an optical sight to this probably would have tripled the production time and cost, and the Soviet Union didn't have the luxury of doing that when they were producing these guns. Hopefully another day we will have a chance to actually take one of these out and do some shooting with it. I look forward to trying it. I'd love to get some slow motion of the whole cycling action working. But for the time being we have a chance to take a look at one, and I didn't want to miss out on that. So if you enjoy this sort of thing on the internet, I would hope you might consider taking a look at my Patreon page. It's support from you guys right over there that makes it possible for me to travel, find these guns, and bring them to you. But either way, thanks for watching.