PV-1 (7.62 mm)

Description

The 7.62 mm PV-1 (Pulemot Vozdushnyy pervyy or Air Machine Gun the first) is a 7.62 mm calibre machine gun which was first produced in 1926 for usage in Soviet aircraft. Mass production began in 1927 up to 1940. Later it was replaced by ShKAS.

PV-1 is a modification of Maxim gun which is compatible for aviation.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• I-15 WR
• I-15 M-22
• I-15 M-25
• I-15bis
• ␗I-15bis
• Krasnolutsky's I-15bis
• ␗I-16 Chung 28

General info

PV-1 has almost the lowest fire rate (750 RPM) being higher only than Japanese Type 92 navy (7.7 mm). Aside from the default ball and plain tracer rounds, the PV-1's common round composition involves the API-T, API, and AI rounds. In game API and API-T bullets deal more damage at low distances, while AI bullet has less damage reduction, so it has more damage than API or API-T bullet in a distance higher than 500 m.

Available ammunition

• Default: T · Ball · Ball · AP-I · AI
• Universal: T · AP-I · AI · API-T
• Tracers: API-T
• Stealth: AP-I · AP-I · AP-I · AI

Comparison with analogues

Comparable machine guns to PV-1 (7.62 mm)

Country	Name	Year  of Creation	Mass (kg)	Rounds Per Minute	Ammunition
	Browning (7.62 mm)	1919	14	1000	7.62 × 63 mm
	MG 17 (7.92 mm)	1934	10.2	1150	7.92 × 57 mm
	MG 15 (7.92 mm)	1932	12.4	1150	7.92 × 57 mm
	Vickers K (7.7 mm)	1935	13.4	950	7.7 × 56 mm R
	Type 1 (7.92 mm)	1932	12.8	1150	7.92 × 57 mm
	Type 92 navy (7.7 mm)	1932	8	600	7.7 × 56 mm R
	Type 98 (7.92 mm)	1932	12.8	1150	7.92 × 57 mm
	Lewis (7.7 mm)	1911	13	900	7.7 × 56 mm R
	Breda-SAFAT (7.7 mm)	1935	12.5	900	7.7 × 56 mm R
	MAC 1934 (7.5 mm)	1934	10.7	1350	7.5 × 54 mm MAS
	Ksp m/22-37 R (8 mm)	1919	11.7	1200	8 × 63 mm

Usage in battles

The PV-1 can be best described as lacklustre. A poor rate of fire combined with the low damage of the rifle-calibre rounds it fires means that it requires significant time on target for a kill. It can still destroy aircraft with patience. However the rounds have a bad chance to impact and do no damage, or only register hits, requiring either successive passes on a slower target, occasionally 5-6 passes or more, or a very lucky pilot snipe to succeed.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Reliable machine gun
• Rate of fire allows for longer uninterrupted bursts

Cons:

• Rifle-calibre ammo does comparatively little damage
• Relative low rate of fire compared to other early MGs

History

The PV-1 (Pulemet Vozdushny or airborne machine gun) was an air-cooled version of the water-cooled M1910 Maxim gun, designed in 1926 for use on aircraft, and accepted for service in 1928. Created at the initiative of Alexander Vasilevich Nadashkevich of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Soviet Air Force, its design was adapted from the M1910 to create a lighter gun with a higher rate of fire. The end result was a relatively light machine gun, cooled by a perforated barrel sleeve, which had a firing rate of 750 rpm compared with the original 600 rpm of the M1910. An attempt to build an even lighter variant, the A-2 which substituted some of the steel parts by duralumin parts, was not accepted for service due to the high rate of wear of the aluminium parts.

The gun was used on the Polikarpov I-3, I-4, I-5 and I-15 fighters, the Polikarpov R-5 reconnaissance plane and the Tupolev TB-1 bomber. However, the design was soon considered obsolete and gradually replaced by the ShKAS, which was chambered to the same ammunition but had a much higher rate of fire. Production of the PV-1 ran from 1927 until 1940, with a total of around 18000 made.

While the PV-1 was being phased out of service by the end of the 1930s, the German invasion of 1941 saw a great number of surplus PV-1s adopted for other purposes. Numerous former aircraft weapons were either adapted for use on a ZPU anti-aircraft mount, or even on the original carriage of the M1910 for infantry support.

Media

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See also

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• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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