Osprey Publishing continues to expand its weapon series, this time by adding a book on the exemplary Finnish-made Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun.

The book has a very reasonable breakdown of the following chapters: Introduction, development, use, impact, conclusion and bibliography, plus an index.

I’ve found particularly interesting the development, use and impact chapters. They were clearly really well researched and it included descriptions of the weapon characteristics, as well as the description of its use in combat by the Finnish ski troops against the Soviet troops. It should be noted that this submachine gun could also be used as a sniper gun, giving its high accuracy up to distances of several hundred meters.

Perhaps one of the best compliments to the overall design and performance is that this particular submachine gun was somewhat copied by the soviets and issued to their own troops in the later years of the war.

The author has done a great job writing this book, providing an excellent balance of historical facts, first-hand accounts from Finnish troops and also describing his own experience while firing the gun (albeit not in combat situations). I’ve found of great interest the comparison he has done of this gun with other submachine guns of WWII identifying pros/and cons between them.

Highly recommended.

I would like to thank Osprey Publishing and IPMS/USA for the review sample.