Muggy wrote:Would they have had AK47's in Korea? I know very little about the war but always imagined the North and Chinese using Ppsh's.
As noted by others, no Kalashnikov's in Korea.
However you are very close to the right combination with your supposition. Mosin Nagants for rifles and PPSh41s or PPS43s for sub-machine guns.
(For those who don't know, "Sh" is a transliteration of a single letter in the Cyrilic alphabet, so PPSh, pronounced something like "Pay-Pay-Shah" in Russian, is not just PPS with an "h" added.)
For the Mosins, there were probably a large number of M90/31s (the loooonnng rifle), but also a large number of M44s (the short and handy carbine with folding bayonet). An M44 should be almost indestinguishable from an SKS at this scale (both short, both with the short magazine extension beneath the stock, only visual difference is the blade bayonet beneath the barrel of the SKS vs. the spike bayonet on the side of the barrel for the M44.) The Soviets considered the M44 to be the better combat rifle, and it was eventually license-built in several Soviet client countries (including China).
The SMGs in particular are worthy of mention further. As common as the PPSh was in WW2, the Soviets considered the PPS to be the better gun, and so it was kept in production longer and seen in increasing numbers post-war. The PPS with it's folding wire stock was lighter, and had a more effective rate of fire than the PPSh (the PPS, at about 700rpm, did not consume it's ammo as quickly, and was more controllable, than the PPSh at about 900rpm). But the primary reason that the PPS was considered better was that it was cheaper and quicker to build (once production scaled-up).
Also, the 71-round drum that was so often the "trademark" of the PPSh-wielding Red Army soldier of WW2 was supplanted, and eventually replaced, by the 35-round bannana clip that was first introduced with the PPS. The bannana clip fit both SMGs, the PPS and the PPSh. Again, the primary advantage was low-cost contruction of the bannana clip, although it was also apperantly preferred by the soldiers, since the 71-round drums were awkward to carry loaded on the gun and inconvenient to re-load (as they could not be fed by stripper clips).
The Chinese communists, and many eastern european Soviet satellites, received large numbers of SMGs post-war. Most new production was the PPS and bannana clips (even in the last year of WW2), but the vast number of PPSh's already in service lasted a LONG time and were still seen as fully combat-worthy. However the drum magazines were fairly quickly replaced by bannana clips in the post-war years.
Accounts by UN soldiers in Korea often refer to the Chinese Communists using "burp guns". These were typically PPSh SMGs. The high rate of fire of the PPSh (vs. other more familiar SMGs) made it sound different, more like a "buuuurp" than a "rat-tat-tat", much as the sound of the German MG42 was likened to tearing cloth (riiiiiii-iiiiip!) in WW2. Most of the pictures I've seen from the Korean war show the PPSh41, but with the bannana clip.
So ... after all that blather ... if it looks like an AK47 to you, you should easily convince yourself it is a PPSh with a bannana clip.
However, the WW2 Soviet Infantry were actually modelled as carrying SVT-40 rifles according to GHQ, an odd choice that has been a bur under the saddle of many on this Forum, and that has led to many vigorous calls for new Red Army troopers with Mosin Nagant rifles.
(Oy, that was long-winded, wasn't it? I
really oughta switch to decaf!
)