By Jim Dickson | Contributing Writer
DK Productions is making a semi-auto only version of the WWII German Sturmgewehr 44 so the average shooter can enjoy the benefits of this fantastic weapon with it’s perfect handling qualities and a cartridge that hits like a sledgehammer compared to the 5.56MM NATO cartridge.
Corey Baker of DK Productions and his wife Kayla came to my farm and brought his personal DK Productions Stg44 for test firing as well as his personal semi-auto MP38 which will be shown in a separate article.
Workmanship of the Stg44 was flawless and the fit, finish, and functioning left nothing to be desired. The rifle pointed so effortlessly and precisely that the sights seemed superfluous. Lock your eyes on the tiniest target and the gun hit it.
One of DK Productions customers in Indiana regularly shoots his at 400 yards. In WWII German troops began decimating Soviet human wave assaults at 800 yards and as long as the ammo held out the Soviets could not prevail.
The rifle is accurate. Corey fired the targets shown with the gun in my presence. I had 100 rounds of Privi Partizan ammo and soon wished that I had 1,000 rounds to run through this sweet shooting gun. This was a gun that I quickly fell in love with but at $6,200 for the gun and one magazine it is out of my reach. For an extra $200 you can get the optional ZF4 scope rail. The price is not high when you consider the cost of making a limited run for collectors of a gun with complicated stampings and machinings.
Making stamping dies is horribly expensive and if you aren’t making many thousands of guns at a time it raises the cost of production and the gun itself to this level. Stampings are only cheap when you make tremendous quantities at a time and can spread the tooling costs out over a vast production run. One thing that you are getting is top quality with no corners cut at this price.
DK Productions has chosen to bring back semi-auto versions of the famous WWII German selective fire weapons now that the collector cost has risen to the point that small scale production has become viable. Small quantities can only be produced at these prices but the guns are worth it, both design wise and quality wise.
The 8MM Kurz started with a 1934 requirement for an intermediate power cartridge. In 1938, Polte beat out RWS and Gustav Geneschow for the development contract. 150 of the new 8X33MM rounds weighed the same as 100 rounds of the standard full power 8X57MM Mauser rounds. The 8X33 fired a 125-grain bullet at 2,250 fps. The powder charge was 24.5 grains of flaked powder of a smaller size and granulation than what was used in the 8X57MM Mauser cartridge.
Taylor Knock Out Value of the 8X33MM is 13 which is over twice as much as the Taylor Knock Out value of the 5.56MM M855 cartridge which rates a mere 6. This quickly explains why there are so many stories past and present of the 5.56MM hits failing to have any immediate effect on enemy soldiers much less stopping power while the 8X33 never suffered from these problems. Of all the world’s military intermediate power assault rifle cartridges the 8X33 would be my choice for deer hunting.
The development contract for the rifle was awarded to the C. G. Haenel factory in Suhl. There Hugo Schmeisser, one of the all-time great firearms designers, worked closely with Polte coordinating the rifle design with the cartridge design. Since the new rifle was to be select fire he designed it to fire from an open bolt which cancels out 50% of the recoil. This is the result of the bolt’s closure knocking the gun forward making the forces of recoil have to overcome this before they can force the gun backwards.
Open bolt firings also prevent a round from cooking off and firing by itself in a hot machinegun barrel. This is predictable and highly hazardous to your own men in addition to revealing your position if you have quickly moved from your last firing position before the enemy’s squad machinegun opened up on it.
He also employed his constant recoil system with a long bolt throw that stops without hitting a buffer or the receiver wherein there is no jackhammer effect when firing full auto, only a steady push. This enables perfect control in full auto fire instead of the gun climbing off target like the M16 and AK47 do when fired full auto. It is popularly believed that open bolt firing is less accurate than closed bolt firing. Well, just as the flintlock may be more difficult to master marksmanship with than the caplock, I will concede that it may be harder for some to shoot as accurately at first. But less accurate? Having seen an open bolt firing full auto stitch a straight line across the X ring of a target at 100 yards sawing it in two in one long burst fired off hand you will never convince me of that.
Recoil is another factor in its controllability. The 8MM Kurz in the first version, the Mkb42(H), the 13 pound gun has 3.5 foot pounds of recoil compared to 7 foot pounds in the M16 and 13 foot pounds in the Kar 98. The recoil impulse of the 8X33 cartridge is 1.7 pounds-seconds. Impulse is measured in pounds-seconds or as mass times velocity. Because the recoil impulse is spread out over the entire cyclic time of the action the longer the cyclic time the less felt recoil although the recoil energy remains the same. 1.7 pound-seconds in .01 second equals 170 pounds of recoil force and that is what a bolt action rifle has. Delivered over a time of one second it is only 1.7 pounds of force.
All this force is mitigated by the elasticity of the gun and the shooter and the weight of the gun so you end up with drastically less as a final result. Also the bullet engaging the rifling and being swaged down the bore drags the gun forward further offsetting recoil. This “blow forward” force is so great that it was used in at least four gun designs, the Schwarzlose .32 ACP automatic, the Steyr Mannlicher 7.65 Mannlicher, and the Japanese Hino-Komuro in 8MM and 7.65MM are the pistols. Colonel George Chinn perfected the blow forward system of operation in his MK20 40MM Low Velocity grenade machinegun.
The cyclic rate was 500 rounds per minute for at this rate German machine gunners in WWI had found that when time seems to slow down under stress that it was possible to put one round on each man in the hordes of attacking waves of allied soldiers instead simply spraying across the front of the hoard. At higher rates of fire this was not possible.
The first version was the Mkb42(H) which had a bayonet, a most useful item when combat became hand to hand while you were trying to change magazines. Later the gun was modified into the MP43 which was a little easier to manufacture having shortcuts like dispensing with a separate gas cylinder making the gas cylinder part of the receiver stamping.
The Stg44 lacked the bayonet and in deference to the range officers who valued tight groups over all else, it sacrificed open bolt firing for closed bolt which negated the constant recoil system. This was a serious mistake that ended up costing many German soldiers their lives when they needed the extra controllability of a gun that didn’t climb when set on full auto. Now you only got the full effect of the controllability of the design in full auto fire after you were about 13 rounds into a long burst. Even so, it was and is far more controllable in full auto fire than either the M16 or the AK47.
Ergonomics and handling qualities were perfection personified with the Stg44 among the liveliest and best pointing rifles ever built. It was one of those guns that seem to want to hit the target all by themselves. Comparing the handling qualities of the M16 and the Ak47 to the Stg44 is ridiculous. You might just as well be comparing the handling qualities of a length of 2 X 4 lumber to the Stg44.
The Stg44 is a marvel of simplicity. The gas piston, operating rod, operating handle, spring guide, and bolt camming and locking unit are all in a single assembly. The bolt at the bottom locks by tilting down at the rear and locking into a shoulder at the bottom of the receiver. The tilting bolt is extremely strong and lends itself to large scale mass production where it becomes also the cheapest locking system to make. Just what Germany needed in WWII.
For those who want a legal semi-auto version of the WWII German machineguns and are able to pay the price dictated by small production runs of weapons designed to be cheap in the largest production runs their nation could produce the guns of DK Productions have you covered. You get what you pay for: Semi-auto versions of some of the finest designs possible.
As America’s greatest expert on the different mechanisms employed in machineguns, Colonel George Chinn, said “As long as nitrocellulose is our propellent every possible mechanism has been tried. All the gun designer can do is reconfigure existing mechanisms.”
The Germans got their guns right producing some of the best possible designs. Anyone buying a Stg44 from DK Productions will get more than their money’s worth of service out of this gun.
