Today we are taking a look at three different pieces of kit developed to carry Degtyarev DP pan magazines. These mags are really inconveniently shaped, and traditional magazine pouches just don’t work for them. Instead, the Soviets initially fielded a stamped steel can that held three pans. This was durable, but had to be carried by hand, and basically limited a solider to carrying 6 pans (just 282 rounds) at the expense of having anything else in hand. An improved World War Two system was the cloth 3-pan carrying bag, which included a shoulder strap.
Today, the Degtyarev remains in use with Ukrainian Territorials, and there is domestic Ukrainian production of DP-specific web gear. Specifically, I have an Akinak 2-pan Multicam pouch to show you (they also make a gunner’s backpack based around a 4-pan storage pouch).
I have a Chauchat magazine canvas carrying bag and it looks a lot like the second DP version. Straight top and a round bottom. Simple and effective.
Here is, I think, the manufacturers’ web listing for the modern pouch (in this case shown in OD not camo): https://akinak.com.ua/ua/p1567353653-podsumok-dlya-pulemetnyh.html
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You have to evaluate machineguns and other weapons on a systems basis, including everything it takes to make them “go”.
An abysmal weapon can be salvaged by way of having better support equipment, and a great weapon can be ruined because the support equipment is horrible.
If you’re reduced to carrying the magazines loosely in a gunnysack, then that weapon is going to give you worse effects in combat than the one that maybe has reliability issues, but which is well-supported in terms of accessory gear.
It’s the support systems and the matrix of training/tactics surrounding it all that are the most interesting to me. WWII is an excellent example; the German MG systems were very well thought-out, supported lavishly, and they produced tactical results far in excess of other nations. Contrast the tactical effect of the German weapons going against the equivalent Soviet ones… The DP was a good gun, mechanically, but as a light machinegun, it was nowhere near as capable as the MG34/42 in the LMG role. On top of that, the MG34/42 family could be easily transitioned up the food chain to outright heavy machinegun (using the WWII definition based on sustained fire), and you start to see the issues inherent with the DP/Maxim/Goryunov Soviet MG complex. The MG34/42 was just way more versatile and destructive, superior in nearly every way. The casualty figures tell the story, for any disbelievers out there.
One of these days, I’d like to see Ian get his hands on a complete MG34/42 “outfit”, as you’d find in a German HMG unit, and do a compare/contrast with the Allied systems. I think that would be enlightening; I’ve seen something like that done at a reenactment, and it really made it clear to me who’d gotten machineguns more “right” in WWII.
look here
https://www.did.co/portfolio/e60066/