SVTs Outside of The Soviet Union
The first country outside the Soviet Union to employ the SVT was Finland, which captured some 4,000 SVT-38s during the Winter War, and over 15,000 SVTs during the Continuation War. The SVT saw extensive use in Finnish hands, though malfunctions and breakages were common due to different Finnish ammunition and often an incorrectly adjusted gas recoil system. Germany and other Axis countries captured hundreds of thousands of SVTs from the Eastern Front (World War II). As the Germans were short of self-loading rifles themselves, the SVT (designated as G.259(r) by the Wehrmacht) saw widespread use in German hands against their former owners. The Germans issued their own operating manual for the SVT. Study of the SVT's gas-operated action also aided in the development of the German Gewehr 43 rifle.
Read more about this topic: SVT-40
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, soviet and/or union:
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“In the Soviet Union everything happens slowly. Always remember that.”
—A.N. (Arkady N.)
“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)