An important element of a soldier’s equipment is a knife. This tool can be used for household purposes or used as a weapon. Also, some blades were originally designed to be used as bayonets, which had a variety of applications.
In 1941, with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Small Arms Department of the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army urgently developed a knife for Red Army commanders and soldiers. In August 1941, it received the designation “knife model of 1941” and the index 56-H-714.
The production of knives was entrusted to the enterprises of the Vacha Metal Industry Union, located in the urban-type settlement of Vacha, the center of the Vachsky district of the Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) region.
The design of the knife was modified taking into account the feedback received from the soldiers who by that time had been using the original model for a year. Thus, the knife with GAU index 56-H-714 had two sets of designs: No. 3-7402 (straight guard, leather gasket in front of the guard on the side of the blade, leather sheath) of the 1941 model and No. 3-8512 (S-shaped guard, no leather gasket, wooden sheath with metal collar and tip) of the 1942 model. The enterprises were instructed to switch to the production of knives according to new designs, “which they tried to implement more or less successfully during the war.”
It is interesting to note that the name “dagger-knife” was used in documents related to the factories of the Vacha district. It is possible that it was the presence of a developed guard (in combination with a knife blade) that made this term popular. In the documents of the Zlatoust Tool Factory, it was called “army knife model of 1941” and “AN-41”. GAU documents list it as the “knife model of 1941” and “army knife model of 1941”.
The appearance of a new army knife made it possible to get rid of the identified shortcomings, as well as to give submachine gunners an additional edged weapon.
It was assumed that these weapons would be first sent to reconnaissance units and submachine gunners, therefore, the Russian abbreviation NA (stands for “army knife”) was often interpreted to mean “submachine gunner’s knife”. In addition, the NR-40 knife was called “scout’s knife”. All variants of names and interpretations of abbreviations were rather popular, but, according to available data, the new knife was officially listed as the “Army Knife”.
It is believed that when
working on the knife’s design, Soviet specialists took into account Soviet and
international experience in knife design.
