PPSh-41 SMG Vs Thompson M1928A1 SMG

[Juha]

I haven't fire either but having used Suomi smg during my military service, only as a secondary weapon, my personal weapon was a Rk-62 assault rifle, I'd say, that Suomi smg was surprisingly accurate weapon with automatic fire and fairly easy to control, one didn't need a pistol grip for a good control. 70-round drum magazine was reliable but not very easy to fill. And in WWII battlefield dust was very common, thanks for plentiful use of artillery, so dust resistance was very important for automatic weapons. And Soviets had understood that very well, better than others, I think. That's why their opponents liked to use automatic weapons they had captured from Soviets. They were usually robust and reliable weapons and that was a most important thing for a military weapon.
On the bottom of this page one can see an appraisement of firing a Suomi which i agree.
FINNISH ARMY 1918 - 1945: MACHINEPISTOLS PART 1

Juha

 

[JoeB]

Some Thompson cost/prices. The original relatively small number of Model 1921's were being sold in the 1920's for around $160 dealer wholesale. When the gun was finally mass produced from 1939, the M1928 that is, the first contract for 10,000 Savage was $67 each. The last lot of 400,000 M1928A1's from Savage was $59, and the company got $34 for most of the M1 and M1A1 Thompsons it produced. The cost of M3 'Grease Guns' was around $20. So the simplified mass produced Thompson's cost might not have been much greater than PPSh-41 which had wood furniture and in general wasn't as bare bones and production oriented as the M3, or Sten, or PPS-43.

But, the relevant comparison would be what US manufacturers would have bid to make the PPSh for, which we really don't know. The Soviet price even if anyone here might know it, I don't, is meaningless to compare to US weapon prices because not only the finished product but prices of all components, material, labor, capital expense of plant etc in Soviet system were determined by bureaucrats semi-arbitrarily. And, the exchange rate from US$ to Ruble was set almost completely arbitrarily.

Joe

 

[parsifal]

It is difficult to make any real price comparisons of ujnit costs for Soviet weapons to any other nation because of the artificial pricing mecahnisms and subsidies that tend to hide the real cost of any goods and services in a communist regime. However, it is almost certain that it was far far cheaper to build than anything in the US. It seems about 7 million were produced, very roughly, to 1.7 million Thompsons. Yet the Soviets had an Industrial base far smaller than that of the US during the war....for example they produced about 2 million tons of steel to the Us 20 million ( I think) Further the Soviets in almost every category of weapons outproduced nearly everyone (naval craft excepted). Soviet build quality was simple to the extreme, and sometimes they cut just too many corners, but in the main it was the Soviet forte to build things cheaply, and field tons of thiose items....eg the t-34

 

[JoeB]

However, it is almost certain that it was far far cheaper to build than anything in the US. It seems about 7 million were produced, very roughly, to 1.7 million Thompsons. Yet the Soviets had an Industrial base far smaller than that of the US during the war....

With all due respect I don't see much validity to that argument. The Soviets produced a lot more SMG's because they had a bigger army, and their doctrine and tables of organization and equipment derived therefrom included more SMG's per unit. If you scan over TO&E's of WWII US infantry formations there were relative few SMG's authorized, many were for vehicle crews. SMG's were often provided in excess of TO&E, as can be seen in photo's, and in heavy concentrations in a few cases (eg. some airborne units) but all in all the weapon didn't play nearly as big a role in the US Army as Soviet (or German). And that wasn't due to a dire shortage, since many US produced SMG's went to other countries, in contrast to say the M1 rifle, which was really a key 'can't get enough of' production item for the US Army for most of the war and hardly given to other countries during the war (in 1944-5 a fair number were given to the rebuilt French Army, that was the main exception in terms of number sufficient to equip multiple large units).

But anyway SMG production was a quite small % of either country's war output. By far the largest US consumer of steel was shipbuilding for example, which the Soviets did relatively little of. I don't see any possiblity of sensible results about SMG cost by trying to back it out of the whole huge defense industrial effort in both countries when SMG production was a small % in Soviet case and miniscule % in US case.

I think the best we can do is just look at the weapons. The PPSh required a degree of machining and used wood furniture. It was replaced by an all metal weapon made almost wholly of stampings, the PPS. The simplfied Thompson (M1) required a degree (significantly less than M1928 ) of machining and used wood furniture. It was replaced by an all metal weapon made almost wholly of stampings, the M3. But the M3 was still 60% the cost of the M1 Thompson, not some small fraction, and again much simpler and more mass-production oriented than the PPSh; the M3 was more like the PPS. So I think it's questionable whether the PPSh was much cheaper than the M1 Thompson.

Joe

 

[riacrato]

The receiver was still milled and the empty weight is still considerably more than that of the PPSh. I think its safe to say machining hours and raw material costs were still way higher than that of PPSh 41 and MP-40.