Drums are much more expensive to produce
Drums rattle a bit while moving potentially giving away your position
Carrying spare drums is awkward
You can carry generally more ammo when using stick mags because those pouches take away much less space.
Drums are usually less reliable than stick mags.
Drums add alot of weight to your gun.
Drums make holding your gun awkward.
PPSH was however very very easy to control, the fire rate actually was so fast that the recoil feels like a evenly continuous push. Also 7.62 TT is a smaller and lighter bullet than 9mm. So by weight you could theoretically carry more ammo, still my main argument however is that only just pulling the trigger for a few seconds could deplete like 10- 20% of the total ammo you are carrying. So you are much faster out of the fight than using MP40 or PPS43, not to mention that your PPSH41 drum mags were famously not interchangeable with PPSH41 drums of other Soldiers - the drums in production were hand fitted for you gun, and most drums actually dont fit into every PPSH41.
Probably bit more time laborours but the price hardly was factor.
Not anymore than regular stickmags.
Sovjets copied M37 drum that is springloaded, cartridges stays tightly in theyr grooves.
I guess, sovjets had pouches for them if I recall.
Or hanging from belt.
Well not really, the exact drum we’re speaking here could be explained as 2 stick mags curved into box.
not necessarily bad thing for guns that likes to climb while firing.
I think the doctrine was to not hold from magazine, regardless of type to prevent miss feed.
it does “kick” like most firearms does and wants to climb.
While on continuous fire, sure after the first kick its much like controlling fire hose and then your mag is already empty.
differency is about 1 gram.
Hence, excessive firerate rather than supply problem.
dont forget that drums only had 0.5mm thick wall which could get damaged very easily (from things like dropping to the ground which happens often in combat) and drums were usually not interchangeable between guns.
I believe I read somewhere it took longer to make one of those drums than to make the gun itself, tho I dont remember the exactly.
All drums are spring loaded no?
Of course, but thise pouches dont change the shape of a drum - which is the problem to begin with.
Which is exactly why drums generally are less reliable, you need a longer spring to feed the extra rounds, while creating more friction, no to mention the spring pressure needs to be balanced right - when the drum is full you have enormous pressure because the spring is compressed, when the drum is near empty the spring pushes much less, both extremes can couse feeding issues.
I dont think you even can hold a PPSH41 on anything else than the drum.
I dont know, from what I see on videos is that people have zero clib from shooting.
It isnt exactly a nuclear reactor, somehow, they however managed to make by far more drums than they did guns.
No, lewis gun comes first in mind.
Another technically springloaded but not in same sense as stickmags is the tommy drum, where the spring tension rotates the internal mechanism that advances the rounds.
This is also the mag that is responsible for ppl thinking all drum mags rattle.
Ive had the pleasure to carry both AK bananana mags as well as M37’s.
If I got to choose id rather not carry either one.
Finns had actually completely opposite experience.
Regardless they also eventually made some stick mags, what came to reliability nothing was on par with the original drum.
As side note, the soviets as well quit the production of stick mags for ppsh41 while drums remained in production to ~1950?
However, sovjets did increase the steel thickness on drums.
As sidenote, the margin of user error is obviously present in drum mags since you do can wind too much or too little.
But this also isnt exactly rocket science. Winding explained below.
Spring sure, friction ? Not really, theres grooves on magazine where the cartridges moves rather freely, even on outer ring theres stamped grooved to minimize the contact. Unlike sten magazine for example, that had flat surfaces.
Theres “ratchet” mechanism in that makes quite distinctive click when winding it.
If I recall the correct spring load was 8 clicks for 68-71 load aka full load.
If I recall some soviet drum mags had “fake” rounds on end of the spring preventing “over” filling as well as helping to push the last rounds to gun. Could be PPd38/40 mag.
Finns however never had issues with it however the common load was about 67-69 rounds rather than absolute full capacity 71.
So to clarify, there was no issues after figuring out that magazine should not be loaded to absolute full capacity. Which, I think happened already before the war.
even rather small climb makes differency of point of impact in meters at 50 - 100m.