Although the gun was considered obsolete and was gradually being phased out of service, the German invasion of Soviet Union prompted a penury of automatic weapons, so the PV-1s were converted for various other purposes. In August 1941 the gun was adapted to be mounted on a "ZPU" anti-aircraft machine gun base created by Fedor Tokarev. These conversions were made at a factory in Tambov. In 1942, some 3,009 PV-1 guns were converted to infantry weapons by mounting them on the Sokolov 1910 carriage (the one used in the PM M1910) at a factory in Zlatoust.