Sub-Machine Gun : The Development of Sub-machine Guns and Their Ammunition from World War 1 to the Present Day

Maximizing firepower has always been a primary goal of firearms designers, as experience of warfare has shown that this provides a decisive advantage on the battlefield. For small arms carried by the infantry this can mean weapons firing explosive shells or grenades, but it also means guns capable of firing a lot of bullets in a short space of time.

Maxim Popenker was born in Leningrad, graduated from St Petersburg State Technical University, and is a lieutenant (reserve) in the Russian Armed Forces. He is an established author and writer of magazine and online articles on the subject of firearms. He is also contributing editor to a leading Russian gun magazine, and owner of a leading Internet resource on small arms at www.world.guns.ru. Maxim has a long-term interest in the history and technical aspects of firearms, especially those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Anthony G Williams is a military technology consultant with a special interest in ammunition and automatic weapons. He is the author of Rapid Fire, Assault Rifle and Machine Gun (both with Maxim Popenker), and the Flying Guns trilogy (with Dr Emmanuel Gustin). He maintains a website at www.quarry.nildram.co.uk