SOVIET QUAD MAXIM AA MG AND CREW

The Red Army at the end of the civil war and the Soviet-Polish war (1919-1921) had a relatively large number of heavy machine guns (machine guns in short) Maxim wz. 1910. It was an obsolete weapon at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. Its main disadvantages were the high production costs and the very large weight of the weapon. However, despite attempts to introduce a new heavy machine gun into the service of the Red Army, these efforts did not bring the desired effect. Although the DS-39 rifle was introduced, it did not live up to all hopes and turned out to be unreliable. As a result, at the start of the German-Soviet war in 1941, the production of this obsolete weapon was resumed. It is worth adding here that in 1941 there were three rifle companies in the Soviet infantry battalion, and each of them had a heavy machine gun platoon with two rifles (usually Maxim wz. 1910), and the battalion included a full company heavy machine guns. It was not until 1943 that a new machine gun, SG-43, was put into production. From 1943, it was introduced first in guard units, and later also in other branches of the Red Army.