SKS short lived Russian semi-auto rifle

The SKS Soviet Union Russian semi-automatic rifle was the main battle rifle from 1945-1947. It is often overlooked because of its short time in that role but its actually a very important rifle.

#military #SKS #history

written & edited by: Chris Cappy

In the 1980’s tons of these surplus SKS’s were sent by the boatload to the US and that's how my family came to own one. My dad grabbed one of these surplus Chinese type 56 versions back then. They were cheap, about 90 bucks. Whereas today they go for closer to 600. This was the first rifle I ever fired back when I was 12 so I’ve always had a special place in my shooters heart for the SKS. We grabbed some coffee and bagels and took our SKS to the Calverton shooting range on Long Island New York.

The rifle's lightweight and open style iron sights made acquiring a target even at 200 meters relatively easy. After a few rounds of practicing my old ready up drills I was able to pick up the rifle and fire at the target within 3 to 4 seconds on average.

You might be wondering why the Russians didn’t stick with the old SVT 40 which they had before the SKS. This is an interesting story to analyze. So the SVT40 on paper seemed like it might be a better rifle since it had a 10 round detachable magazine. But there were a few issues with the SVT-40 which led to the SKS super seeding it. I think you can actually see some of the very specific design choices in the SKS that relate directly to the Red Army’s perceived failures of the SVT-40.

The SKS for instance has a non detachable internal magazine, that's one of its distinguishing features. Many might see that as a disadvantage compared to having detachable magazines because you can load those up and have them ready to rock. Magazines mean a faster reload time. That might be true at the individual level but when you try to make these rifles scale to millions and give them to not so well trained soldiers...then at that point magazines start to become a problem. The SVT40 had problems with the magazines falling out on their own. It had problems with maintaining it in brutal field conditions.

Written & Edited by: Chris Cappy

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