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Talk:RPD
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RP-44/RPD-44
Here's a fun bit of information. RPD was originally produced in the later stages of the Second World War, and became the staple light machine gun of the Combloc through the 50s, but it did actually see use as early as 1944-'45. Later stages of field testing with the 1000 unit strong conformance batch was handed to the troops, including the field army. However, it's very unlikely the weapon was used on the edge of the front or against the opposing forces. The machine gun would almost wait a decade before being widely fielded within the Soviet military, in 1953, phasing out the previous DP series machine guns as the mainstay infantry light machine gun.
Picture of the 1944 conformance model. --BeloglaviSup (talk) 04:09, 12 March 2016 (EST)
- Another fun fact: MACV-SOG liked using a version in Vietnam with the barrel sawed off right in front of the gas piston to make it 31 in (78.7 cm) long, and with a modified 125-round drum lined with linoleum (!) so it didn't rattle. Looked like this. Evil Tim (talk) 04:42, 23 December 2017 (EST)
- On the topic: I've heard a fair amount about the whole MACV-SOG RPD thing, and one thing seems strange to me: the supposed 125-round belt drum looks, for all practical purposes, exactly like a normal hundred-rounder. However, given that a lot of the military supplies that the North Vietnamese received were from China, and Chinese RPD belts were divided into 25-round segments that could be daisy-chained to any arbitrary length (as opposed to the original Soviet belts, which were split into 50-round segments that had a definite start and end), is it possible that this is just the result of the MACV-SOG guys tacking on an extra 25-round belt segment and forcing it into the belt drum (or even just leaving it hanging loose between the drum and the gun)? Pyr0m4n14c (talk) 15:43, 26 August 2022 (EDT)
