8 Second World War Weapons that Saw Action Long After the War Ended
There’s an old phrase commonly associated with Texas: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. While axiomatic in just about every circumstance, it rarely applies to weapons, as warfare is in a constant state of evolution between defence and offence. The Second World War, for example, hasn’t raged for three quarters of a century, and now we’re fighting each other with weapon systems that Rommel, Patton and Zhukov could only have dreamed of getting their mitts on. (God help us all if they had.)
Nonetheless, there are many innovations from the war that have stood the test of time, most notable of which is the nuclear bomb. Even weapons that fought in the war itself have managed to coexist with their infinitely more advanced counterparts all the way up to the present day. Below is a list of just some of them…
1 — Colt M1911 Handgun
Actually this one’s kind of a cheat, because it was first made in 1911 (as the name might suggest) — 28 years before the outbreak of the Second World War. Nonetheless, the Browning M1911 remained the staple sidearm in the US Army in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, and has seen action in such places as Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe), Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The M1911 stopped being the US Army’s standard-issue firearm in 1986, when it was replaced by the Beretta M9. It does, however, remain popular amongst civilians and law enforcement in the States. Additionally, several national militaries still retain the M1911 in their arsenals, particularly Brazil and South Korea.
2 — The Molotov Cocktail
A popular method for anarchists to engage in friendly discourse with fascists, the Molotov cocktail is an ad-hoc incendiary bomb created by filling a bottle full of gasoline and using an oil-soaked cloth as a fuse. The cloth would then be lit and the bomb tossed, shattering on impact, showering burning fuel everywhere and singing many eyebrows in the process.
Improvised firebombs had been used since people realised that fire was an excellent way of hurting enemies, but it was the Finns who popularised this particular one during the Winter War against the invading Soviet Red Army, and later the Second World War. Lacking proper anti-tank weapons, but armed with plenty of vodka bottles and fuel, Finnish soldiers crafted these firebombs by the bucketload to lob at Soviet tanks. And out of spite for their foes, they named this kind of bomb after Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Needless to say, the name has stuck.
3 — DShK Heavy Machine Gun
The Soviet equivalent to the American Browning M2 .50-cal heavy machine gun, the DShK (Degtyaryova-Shpagina Krupnokaliberny, or Degtyaryov-Shpagin large-calibre) — affectionately nicknamed ‘Lady Dushka’ by the Red Army — saw service as a defensive weapon both for Soviet trenches and on heavy tanks like the IS-2. Chambered for the finger-thick 12.7x108mm round, it could chop waves of German infantry into bratwurst without breaking a sweat. Depending on how good your aim was, you could even use it to shoot up half-tracks, aeroplanes and light panzers.
Lady Dushka continues to be used by military and paramilitary outfits all around the world, most of them from former Soviet or Soviet-aligned nations. One of the most recent armoured vehicles to arm itself with the DShK is the TR-85M1, a modernised Romanian main battle tank that entered service in 2002.
4 — T-34 Medium Tank
Regarded as one of the finest tanks of the war, the Soviet T-34 fought on the Eastern Front against the invading Germans. First manufactured in 1934, the tank was produced in many different versions and for many different roles. Various types of T-34 were manufactured and modified as not just medium tanks, but minesweepers, tank destroyers, self-propelled artillery pieces and even a fire engine.
The Soviet Army kept them in reserve long after the war ended, and exported them by the bucketload to its allies in the Warsaw Pact, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Various versions of the T-34 would see action in pretty much every hot war of the Cold War, fighting in such far-flung places as Vietnam, Korea, Angola and Syria. The Soviets themselves even continued to upgrade their T-34s: the T-34–85M started rolling off the assembly lines in 1969, long after the far superior T-62 and T-64 tanks entered service.
5 — StuG III Tank Destroyer
The Sturmgeschütz III assault gun was a German creation, built upon the tried and tested Panzer III medium tank. Holding the distinction of Nazi Germany’s most produced fully-tracked armoured fighting vehicle, the StuG III’s most common armament was a 75-millimetre StuK-40 L/48 anti-tank gun. Other models used 105-millimetre leFH-18 howitzers to blow up fortified bunkers, while 10 flamethrower-armed units were tested by the Wehrmacht in 1943.
Among the nations which kept these beasts in service in the post-war era was Finland, who nicknamed their reserve StuGs ‘Sturmi’. Others retained by countries once conquered by Nazi Germany were scrapped and/or sold onto allied states. Many were delivered to Syria by Soviet allies — Syria was the only country to use them in combat post-war, against the Israeli army. They fought during the Six-Day War, and there’s one preserved model on display at Yad La-Shiryon Tank Museum in Israel.
6 — PTRS-41 Anti-Tank Rifle
The brainchild of legendary Russian gunsmith Sergei Simonov, the Protivotankovoye Ruzhyo Simonova (that’s Simonov’s Anti-Tank Rifle for those of you who do not speak Russian) was created in 1941 as a semi-automatic version of the single-shot PTRD anti-tank rifle. Chambered for the incredibly powerful 14.5x114mm round, the PTRS-41 has proven itself to be an excellent tool for knocking out panzers and disintegrating varmints alike.
It hasn’t knocked out many panzers lately, but it has been used for counter-sniping and shooting BTR armoured personnel carriers by pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian volunteers during the War in Donbass, alongside its PTRD cousin (see the image at the top of the page). The ammunition used by the rifles is even said to be genuine Second World War vintage. The PTRS-41 has also been reported as seeing use against Bashar al-Assad’s armies by insurgent forces in the Syrian Civil War.
7 — StG 44 Assault Rifle
The German Sturmgewehr 1944, or StG 44, wasn’t the first fully automatic rifle to take shape (the first, if you’re interested, was the Italian Cel-Rigotti prototype). It was, however, the first weapon to be designated ‘assault rifle’ — that’s to say, a rifle-calibre fully automatic firearm that’s easily portable by soldiers and deadly at virtually any range. Nazi Germany didn’t last long enough for the Wehrmacht to really play up the concept, but the concept has persisted to this day, directly inspiring the legendary Soviet AK-47 and influencing the design of infantry weapons since.
As for the weapon itself, copies of it have been put to good use by the likes of Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Viet Cong and the PLO over the years. Perhaps the strangest and most unique use of the StG 44, however, was by the Al-Tawhid Brigade in Syria: in 2013, one militant photographed himself operating a remote-control one!
8 — RPD Light Machine Gun
Not many people are aware that the Ruchnoi Pulemyot Degtyarova (Degtyaryov’s handheld machine gun), more often than not associated with the Cold War and international terrorists, appeared in small numbers during the closing days of the war. Utilising the soon-to-be standard 7.62x39mm intermediate cartridge, the RPD also holds the distinction of being the first weapon to use the legendary round in battle.
Although it was quickly phased out of Soviet service by Kalashnikov-pattern weapons such as the RPK and PK machine guns, this precursor to the modern Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) is still commonplace in many Asian and African militaries and paramilitaries. The venerable RPD has seen action all over the world, from the Cold War’s myriad proxy conflicts all the way up to the present-day, with recent appearances in Ukraine, Syria and Yemen.
Thank you all for reading, and I will see you next time.
~ Harry