Tula Tokarev, on the whole, showed himself well during the Second World War. However, already during the very first winter battles, a number of shortcomings of this weapon made themselves felt. The moving parts of the TT corny froze to each other in severe frosts, which actually made the weapon useless. The problem had to be solved. While on the ground they were coping with all available improvised methods, in Leningrad they began to develop a fundamentally new pistol, which was named "Baltiets".
The main drawback of TT was required to be eliminated at a rapid pace and preferably at the production stage. At the end of 1941, Admiral Yu.F. Rall, the chief of staff of the Baltic Fleet, found a very simple way out of this situation. The commander suggested taking a fairly successful German Walther PP pistol and creating a new Soviet one based on its design. This is how the history of a promising short-barreled weapon for the commander of the Red Army began. The pistol was named "Baltiets".
In fact, "Baltiets" was simply copied and adapted for domestic production by Walther PP. The pistols did not differ much. They even used the same cartridge 7.62x25 mm. True, the legendary TT used the same cartridge. The first "Baltiets" showed itself well in the shooting, however, it turned out to be too heavy, because of which accuracy suffered. The weapon was reworked and a second sample was released, which did not surpass in its characteristics the original German Walther PP or domestic TT, however, solved the main problem of the latter - not froze in the cold.
“Baltiets” was produced in only one small batch of 15 pieces. True, the 15th pistol was not completely assembled, since some parts for its assembly disappeared somewhere. On this basis, there was a real scandal. Considering that the case took place during the war years, and even at a defense enterprise, such an incident could not be left without investigation. Despite all this, the creation of a new pistol had a huge propaganda positive effect, primarily for the Leningraders themselves. For a short time "Baltiets" became one of the symbols of the fact that the city continues to fight and live despite the blockade.
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And yet, the new pistol was not allowed into mass production purely for economic reasons. The enterprises of Leningrad were too heavily loaded with defense orders of the native Fatherland to add pistols to them. The Baltiets were never adopted, and the first batch was the only one. The pistols were donated to the army and navy leadership of Leningrad. Comrades officers in the winter period of the war had to continue screwing in with the help of improvised means, old and captured weapons. To this day, out of 14 ready-made pistols, only three have survived. All of them are now kept in the Central Naval Museum of St. Petersburg.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about Lerker and Kuppini pistol: why successful weapons for self-defense were banned.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/141120/56753/
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