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The StG 44 was the first "modern" assault rifle, there were several similar automatic weapons earlier.
by Uchikoma 13y ago
The StG 44 was the first "modern" assault rifle, there were several similar automatic weapons earlier.
- mynameishere 13y agoPretty much. Submachine guns had been around for years, and WWII saw millions of them, but it apparently never occurred to anyone to scale them up to use rifle cartridges. There were 4.5 million of this weird thing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten In street fighting, I can't imagine it being much worse than an AK 47 (at least in close contact)...and they cost 1/8th of an M1 Garand, so presumably a lot cheaper than what an assault rifle would cost.
- Gravityloss 13y agoAs far as I know, the submachine gun has a somewhat different and simpler operating principle. The assault rifle key invention is piping gas from quite far downstream the barrel to a piston that pushes the receiver back and makes it pick a new round. So you get delayed pushback. In a submachine gun with immediate receiver recoil you either lose a lot of gas or have to make the receiver heavy. That's also why the AK47 looks like it looks, it has a "twin barrel" part way, that's where the gas piston is.