Talk:PTRD-41

message: Maybe you forgot to mention what PTRD means. PTRD stands for "Protywotankovoye Rushyo Degtyaryova". That means "Degtyaryov tank gun". Anonymous 
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There is no need that I am aware of for the "example.com" page. Al-Kadafi 23:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's much more likely.  I'm not too sure about the notability of being the "one of the world's first .50 caliber sniper rifles", though.  Whoever wrote that must not realize that 19th Century snipers used .50 to .58 caliber or larger bullets.  --UnneededAplomb (talk) 23:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Article states:
:It could penetrate an armor plate up to 35 to 40mm (40mm with tungsten ammunition) thick at a distance of 100 meters at 0 degrees.
but also:
:Although unable to penetrate the frontal armor of German tanks, it could penetrate the thinner sides of early-war German tanks as well as thinly armored self-propelled guns.
and
:During the initial invasion, and indeed throughout the war, most German tanks had side armor thinner than 40mm (PzKpfw I & II: 13-20mm, III & IV series: 30mm, PzKpfw V Panther (combat debut mid-1943): 40-50mm), 
However 40 mm penetration is more than not just the side armour, but the heaviest frontal armour, on all models of Panzer I, all models of Panzer II, all models of Panzer III prior to model H (an emergency conversion produced late in 1940, only 308 were converted in this way), all models of Panzer IV prior to model E (emergency modification started in September 1940, only 223 were up-armoured this way.) Thus at the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, it is likely that most German tanks were vulnerable to the PTRD at up to 100m, not just in the side armour as the article suggests, but even in their most heavily armoured sections.
A second problem is the implication that only early-war tanks had less then 40 mm armour on the sides, and later model tanks were immune to this rifle even on their flanks. This is kind-of true but misleading. Even as late as the King Tiger, there were always zones with less than this much armour, but they became less and less accessible to direct attack. (For the King Tiger, only a shot fired near-vertically into the top of the turret had any chance.) In the case of the Panther, for example, the low side armour was less than 40mm, but the Germans added a "skirt" (Schürzen) to enhance protection there. Upper side hull armour of the Panther was mostly 40 mm exactly; still possible to defeat with a PTRD, but only with a perfect shot from dangerously short range. But even as late as June 1943 the Germans were still in full scale production of models of Panzer IVs where no part of the side armour exceeded 30 mm.
A third problem with is the implication that SP guns are lightly armoured everywhere. In general this is not true of WW2 German SP guns, which usually had heavier frontal armour than side armour, and side armour comparable to contemporary tanks. Furthermore the Germans had surprisingly few true SP guns, and most references to German SP guns are actually assault guns. These guns tended to have a much higher frontal : flank armour ratio than even tanks! For example the Sturmgeschütz III -- the single most common German AFV of the war -- had 50 mm frontal armour even as early as the Battle of France when most tanks only had 15 ~ 30 mm; when the tanks were getting upgraded to 30 ~ 40 mm, the StuG III was up-armoured to 80 mm. -- 202.63.39.58 (talk) 06:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capabilities too pessimistic? 

message: effective/max range wrong, copy correct values from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTRS-41 - which is the same cartridge/rifle except in semi-auto.
Ricka0 (talk) 17:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  effective/max range wrong, copy correct values from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTRS-41 

message: The current citation does not say that it is being used against Ukrainian troops and either another citation is needed or the statement should be deleted. I will remove the citation and insert a "citation needed" tag.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.19.166 (talk) 03:21, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a video of the weapon being used in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N419qfDfJNY --歳 (talk) 13:01, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for use against Ukrainian troops 

message: Some fairy story there, right at the beginning of History section. 
Shouldn't be hard to find English-language sources showing the 14,5mm AT round had been effectively around since 1938, and the PTRs of 1941 weren't an eclectic rush jobs, but rather reactivations of pre-war designs, put into production willy-nilly, because of huge materiel losses of Summer 1941. Before that, PTRs just weren't considered a viable enough AT weapon by SU military authorities, while anti-tank rifle as such was a WW1 idea. Yury Tarasievich (talk) 13:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Design and development