The Historical background for the Personal Defence Weapons

Before, during and shortly after the First World War, there were no or only very few submachineguns available. But the need for a quick-firing weapon for short-range combat was pressing, especially during that war. One of the reactions was to add a wooden detachable buttstock to the common service semi-automatic pistol and at least the U.S.A. did also use pumpguns for trench fighting. An Austrian-Hungarian pistol even had a select fire ability and was therefore in 1916 the very first machine pistol. Pistols with buttstocks had sometimes lengthened barrels for higher muzzle velocities and therefore higher muzzle energies with standard-issue pistol cartridges. It was possible to hit targets farther away than with standard pistols, but such constructions  were obviously less than what the weapons designers could achieve. The success was much lesser than the impression left by the first submachineguns. Nevertheless, buttstock add-ons for pistols have survived for decades because they add accuracy (greater efective range) and therefore flexibility to pistols.

The submachinegun wasn’t fully embraced by the inter-war militaries; in the U.S.A., it suffered from the reputation of being a “gangster gun” and little progress was achieved in Europe either. Only in the late 1930’s, during the years with the most urgent threat of a European war, submachineguns became important infantry weapons. Since it proved difficult to design semi- or even fully-automatic rifles for the powerful standard infantry rifle cartridges, the submachinegun became the easy automatic rapid fire addition for close combat to the infantry’s arsenal. Despite the assault rifle was invented in the 1930’s in Germany, the assault rifle appeared in service only late in World War 2 - the StG 44 used short cartridges that were less powerful than rifle cartridges and had a select fire safety. But during this birth of the assault rifle and the peak in the history of the submachinegun, another category of weapon made its debut - and almost disappeared few years afterwards.

This new category of weapon was no rifle, carbine, assault rifle, submachinegun, machine pistol, pistol or revolver; it was called “carbine” but didn’t meet the contemporary understanding of a carbine (that is either a shorter rifle for cavalrymen or a mis-labelled standard rifle that was intended to be shorter and lighter than an almost identical World War One rifle). Instead, it was intended for support personnel that should not consider infantry combat as its primary purpose. Light and compact, it should be less of a burden and hindrance to these troops but nevertheless give them a self-defence capability. It appeared in the form of the U.S. M1 Carbine with medium calibre .30 cartridges. Its cartridge was almost exactly as powerful (in muzzle energy) as the modern 5.45 x 39 mm cartridge of the second and still modern Kalashnikov assault rifle generation. But it had rather the appearance of a handgun than that of a rifle cartridge due to its rounded nose. This at aerodynamically disadvantageous feature limited its effective range.

This ‘carbine’ cartridge disappeared from service during the Cold War, and the golden age of the assault rifle begun, still accompanied by the submachinegun. But synthetic high-performance fibres became cheaper and vests that at the begining only protected against light fragments became bulletproof against submachinegun projectiles. The submachinegun’s lack of penetration capability and effective range stimulated the long overdue insight that it wasn’t good enough. In an attempt to cover the range/penetration gap between assault rifles and the very light and compact pistols, several categories of weapons emerged. The machine pistols which were never completely given up in some countries were even weaker than the submachineguns, so a logical action was to produce assault rifles with shortened barrel and either folding or telescopic buttstock or in bullpup configuration to reduce the length at least during the times of non-combat service (of which the first appeared before the new synthetic fibres became relevant). This wasn’t enough, and even shorter barrels were used during the 1980’s and continue to appear; examples of these too short carbines are presented here, too. Another debut was made by high-velocity cartridges and even pistols dedicated to their use (they did appear around 1970, but only as prototypes) - since these are designed to push the limit of a pistol’s range and penetration towards those of a true PDW, examples will be described in the chapter about high penetration handguns. Their penetration properties can indeed be impressive, but they lack range simply by their small size - it’s too hard to quickly aim at a target more than 25 m away and even at that distance, hit chances are surprisingly poor under combat stress. Some more compact submachine guns were labelled “PDW”, but weren’t such - their primary advantage over conventional submachineguns was rather that they were controllable like a submachinegun but in compactness more comparable to pistols and machine pistols. If penetration and practical range are not as high-valued as in the official PDW requirements of NATO, US and UK, they might fulfill the same function of a compact, light self-defence weapon for non-combat personnel and are therefore represented by some examples in the chapter about “PDW’ submachineguns”.

Finally, the ’Western’ SCHV PDWs were born - as a requirement of U.S. forces and separate requirement of the NATO. As such, it needed to be compact, light, have enough penetration ability to penetrate a 1.6mm titanium plate and 20 layers of Kevlar® and have an effective range well beyond the practical range of most submachineguns. This is what this site is primarily about; a fascinating new breed of weapon, designed for the 80% non-combat soldiers and plagued by a lack of confidence in its man-stopping power...

www.personaldefenceweapons.com

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