During the Second World War, many nations participating in the conflict realized that the rifle models supplied to their soldiers, such as the Russian-made Mosin Nagant, were no longer suited to the needs of modern wars where firefights took place. often at short or medium distance. The old Mosin, adopted by the Russian army in 1891, was now obsolete. At over 120 centimeters in length and its 4.3 kilos of weight it was anything but handy and the caliber it used as the 7.62x54 of the Russian variant was effective and ideal for long distance. Furthermore, the Russians realized too late - and at their expense - of the functioning problems of the weapon which, exposed to extremely cold temperatures, often jammed.
In this scenario a new weapon comes into play, the SKS or SKS-45 (the 45 indicates the year of its creation) abbreviation of Samozaryadny Karabin sistemy Simonova, in Italian semi-automatic rifle system Simonov, designed by the arms designer Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov based on the design of a gun preceding the AVS-36 created by himself between the 1930 and the 1934.
Simonov was a Russian engineer who worked from a very early age on various projects including the automatic rifle Federov. From 1924 he began working for the Tula, the largest arms factory in Russia.
His most popular invention was however the SKS, a rifle-shot rifle and wooden body, almost always supplied with a folding bayonet and, in some Yugoslav variants, of grenade launchers, the loader is fixed and recharged thanks to a stripper-clip or manual insertion.
The SKS presents notable differences with respect to its predecessors including a different caliber (7.62x39) a magazine supplied by ten shots (compared to Mosin's 5). Moreover, the possibility of choosing the automatic fire mode, present in the previous AVS-36 model, whose recoil was almost impossible to control, was removed.
The SKS also had reduced dimensions and weight (3.8 kg per 1 meter in length) compared to previous rifle models, which made it more manageable and easier to use.
In the 1949 the Russian arms factory Tula began production of the SKS rifle models that continued to be produced up to 1955.
However, despite being a superior weapon from every point of view compared to previous models, the design of the SKS was considered obsolete one year after the beginning of its production, almost exclusively supplanted by another weapon that soon became very popular and that would change the fate of numerous conflicts around the world, we are talking about the AK-47 (v.articolo)
The AK was lighter, more versatile, fitted with thirty-shot magazines and had two modes of fire, automatic and semi-automatic, as well as having a simpler design and easy production at reduced costs.
So why talk about the SKS if it is a weapon so quickly forgotten by the Russian army and relegated to use in second lines or to make a scene in military parades?
The motivation must be sought in the fact that the SKS was appreciated outside the country in which it was born. Used extensively by the People's Liberation Army (the Chinese army) from the 1956 for over 30 years who preferred guerrilla tactics involving medium-range fire fighting and the use of rifles and carbines with precision fire compared to the use of repeating rifles. Only with the Sino-Vietnamese 1979 conflict did the Chinese Army prefer to use AK variants, as the long barrel made the SKS unfit for warfare in the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia.
SKS rifles have also been used by nations such as Bosnia, Somalia and various Asian and African nations that have led to the creation of weapon variants for every need, depending on the conflict in question and the SKS has played its part in over 70 of these, from the 1945 up to today.
(photo opening: 1970 - Australian War Memorial, Australian soldiers take an SKS of Chinese production from the body of a Vietnamese soldier)
