How does the STG stack up to the AK?

The StG was absolutely used by other countries after WWII. Notably East Germany, Syria and Iraq to name a few. There have even been some anecdotal stories from our troops in Vietnam coming across a few. Some have been found in weapons caches during this century.

The gun itself was technically crude for the time, being made mostly of stampings. In the end though, that's exactly the route the Soviets went with the AK to save weight (and likely cost).

The end user is unlikely to see a useful difference between an StG and an AK other than some minor differences in how the controls are laid out.

A lot of STG44's ended up in Syria and have been seen in use in recent years in Syria and Iraq.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...sault-rifle-being-used-syrian-civil-war-50087

From what I could find, East Germany actually used the STG44 until around 1962 when it was replaced by the AK47. East Germany sold a lot of the STG44's to Syria at that time. Several articles state that Syrian rebels found a cache of 5,000 STG44s in 2012.

Ammo supply is troublesome for the STG, unless you reload.

It is difficult to look at an AK and not see its parentage....but just like critters there are two parents involved.

In this case one parent had genes that wanted every feature "perfect" to its way of thinking and the other parent wanted things good enough and cheaper and easier to reproduce.

The AK trigger mechanism is MUCH simpler than the STG 44.

The STG had a sepperate safety (easily reached and quiet lever on the left side) and selector ( a push through button reachable to the thumb on the left and trigger finger on the right.) also a dust cover that looks familiar to AR users.

The AK has the giant clacky lever safety, dust cover, selector combo thingee on the right. This reduced the number of parts and eased construction.

The AK used a rock in magazine and the STG a straight insertion magazine.

The AK used a turning bolt locking system and the STG a tilting block.

They used very similar sighting systems and gas systems.

Shooting is a personal thing. Some credit the STG with being more controllable in full auto fire, being a heavier weapon, with slightly less powerful ammo and lower cyclic rate. On the other hand in the old Combloc annual military competition Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops competed firing three round bursts to 300 meters from the prone. Try that with your G3, FN FAL, or M14!

Honestly in the "wouldn't it have been neat" catagory I always thought the world might have been different if the US had adopted the STG44 with some improvements in .30 x1.5 (7.62x37) inch before Korea. Yeah I know what if Jeb Stuart had Sten guns and what if Sparticus had a Piper Cub. but one wonders what if US decission makers could have devorced themselves from "full powered cartridges" and "Wood and steel" after having seen things like the STG44 and FG42 in action (at least they combined the FG42 and MG42 into a workable gun )

-kBob

Oh and as a user, I liked the STG44 controls better. As a grunt I noted the STG IS HEAVIER.

Being lighter the AK handles a bit better, but not that differently. Mainly I think that safety selector dust cover sucks at the user level but understand the importance of it at the national level.

During my time in Europe in the 70's and 80's I spoke to a number of combat users of the STG44 that assured me they worked well on semi out to 300 or even 400 meters and that on Full auto at under 100 meters they were very efficient. None ever complained of the fragility of the STG44 stock that I hear of nowadays.

Now I have to go did up an older edition of Cartridges of the World and look at Barnes' 7.62x33 and 7.62x 37 wild cats, so thanks a lot, I have a Tropical storm to prepare for and you have distracted me!

-kBob

There are doubts that the "tank mechanic" Kalinikov really designed the AK. It's most likely soviet propganda. The reds captured the designer's of the STG and sent them to the soviet union to the same place old Micheal K was assigned. That's why they are so similar. MK was on the team, and got credit for it, but he actually had little to do with it.

Score one for Soviet propaganda. The Victor's really do write the history.

Look it up...interesting read.

Kalashnikov said he copied the outline of the STG and the STG concept of replacing submachinegun and rifle with a weapon that could do both functions.
Kalashnikov credited his AK trigger mechanism and turning bolt operation to his study of the M1 Garand.
I doubt the Automat Kalashnikov 1947can be credited to captured STG designers, despite everyone's cynicism about Soviet propaganda.

I think that if the STG would have been in service longer & if it had improvements done like the AK has had trough the years it most likely would have made a much better weapon, but if's are if's & we will never know now.

entropy said:

Ammo supply is troublesome for the STG, unless you reload.

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Prvi Partisan still makes/sells it.

Probably easier to get nowadays than 9mm......

The Gun by CJ Chivers is an outstanding book (at least for the middle 50% - the beginning is belabored and the ending is pretty weak) that any THR regular would likely enjoy.

In it, the author details the process of the AK's invention. Basically, the Soviets took their top small arms designers, brought them all to the Tula plant, and had them all crank out prototypes until they got something good. Simonov of the SKS and PTRS anti-tank rifle was there, Degyaterev who made a couple machine guns was there, I think they had Tokarev... little surprised they didn't exhume Mosin and Nagant and put them to work too.

It wasn't mentioned in the book, but I'd be stunned if the Red Army didn't scrounge up a bunch of different automatic rifles for the designers to tear apart and look at. The safety on the AK is clearly copied from the Model 8, and the trigger is clearly copied from the Garand.

Anyway, Kalashnikov's prototype won and the Soviet propaganda appararatus was more than happy to announce a humble tank sergeant as the victor. But he worked in an environment that probably had a fair share of cribbing between designers working towards the same purpose, and obviously took some inspiration from other guns made before him.

And the chapters about the design and adaption of the AR-15 are even better than that. Chivers' book sings when it becomes more than the history of a gun and turns into a trip through both sides of the Cold War military-industrial complex.

I think there is more than just a little Hugo Schmeiser influence in the Kalashnikov, supplied while he was a guest of Stalin.

amd6547 said:

I think there is more than just a little Hugo Schmeiser influence in the Kalashnikov, supplied while he was a guest of Stalin.

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Yep. Old Hugo is the real father of the AK. Too bad he died a few months after being released by the reds...and then forced to stay in East Germany after that release to boot.

Never got to tell the real story himself. The truth is slowly leaking out.

Given that I've never fired either, semi or full auto, my understanding is the StG 44 is more controllable due to a lower cyclic rate and slightly lower-powered cartridge. On the other hand, the original StG was not an especially durable weapon in terms of round counts, while Kalashnikov variants tend to run forever. The Nazis were in a big hurry to develop their platform, while the Soviets took their time while not being bombed.

I've fired AK's full auto. Holding an M2HB in one's hands and firing from the hip would be more accurate, so the STG44 would have to be more accurate.

A USMC EOD tech friend of mine told me of seeing STG's captured in iraq, and that he personally destroyed thousands of rounds of STG ammo found in caches.

Or how about you Trump them all and have a 7.92x33 in an AR-15....

I think I'd put that in an AR-10.

CarJunkieLS1 said:

Or how about you Trump them all and have a 7.92x33 in an AR-15....

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That's not a bad idea!

There's a lot of convergent design in the StG and AK. Both use intermediate cartridges that are heavily tapered and were designed to be mass produced without using strategic materials (like aluminum). Given the design parameters and that both nations previous rifles used tangent sights it's not surprising in the least that features like the sights are the same.

It would be silly to assume that the design teams never saw a StG while the Soviet assault rifle contest was going on after WWII. The Soviet design teams lifted ideas from each other and they would have stolen what worked from the Germans too.

The biggest indicator that the Germans weren't heavily involved in the AK47 design it the original design's failure to effectively use sheet metal stampings. The Germans had complex, deep drawn sheet steel down to an art form, yet the original AK model with the sheet steel receiver had to many manufacturing defects to be mass producible, leading to the reversion to milled receivers.

BSW

briansmithwins said:

There's a lot of convergent design in the StG and AK. Both use intermediate cartridges that are heavily tapered and were designed to be mass produced without using strategic materials (like aluminum). Given the design parameters and that both nations previous rifles used tangent sights it's not surprising in the least that features like the sights are the same.

It would be silly to assume that the design teams never saw a StG while the Soviet assault rifle contest was going on after WWII. The Soviet design teams lifted ideas from each other and they would have stolen what worked from the Germans too.

The biggest indicator that the Germans weren't heavily involved in the AK47 design it the original design's failure to effectively use sheet metal stampings. The Germans had complex, deep drawn sheet steel down to an art form, yet the original AK model with the sheet steel receiver had to many manufacturing defects to be mass producible, leading to the reversion to milled receivers.

BSW

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If you were captured and made to work on the enemy's weapons development, would you let them in on every aspect? It'd be plausible to say "I wasn't involved in that part..." That's even assuming the Soviets were capable of reproducing German quality levels. They obviously did eventually get a workable solution, but it took some time.

CarJunkieLS1 said:

Or how about you Trump them all and have a 7.92x33 in an AR-15....

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There are a few floating around but they are a completely custom deal. The barrel alone ends up in the $700 neighborhood. There is also some debate as to which parts to use. It definitely fits in an AR-15, but mags seem to be the trickiest part.

I was intent on building an 8mm Kurz AR upper until the roadblocks became too much for me.

I like the STG more then the AK. Shooting both tend to give you a better perspective.

Havok7416 said:

There are a few floating around but they are a completely custom deal. The barrel alone ends up in the $700 neighborhood. There is also some debate as to which parts to use. It definitely fits in an AR-15, but mags seem to be the trickiest part.

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I know for a fact of that. Me and a buddy made ourselves some and they are awesome. They work 100% with the factory PPU load and our reloads using the Grafs exclusive 125 grain HP. Fantastic performance on deer also.

Lets be real here, everyone borrows from the Germans when producing firearms and designing new ones. However in my opinion the major reason the rifles are similar is that the soviets were searching for a rifle to fulfill the same role in their infantry, but one that also work with their overall doctrine and manufacturing methods which differed from the Germans. They borrowed ideas from multiple platforms and crediting the sole invention of it to a captured German is disingenuous at best because both have different design schools of thought. As far as which is better it would have to depend on the parameters of the situation similar to which is better AK or AR.