Forgotten Hope 2 is an award-winning World War II modification for Battlefield 2TM and is based on the original Forgotten Hope, a modification for Battlefield 1942TM, one of the most popular multiplayer games ever. Battlefield 1942TM featured land, sea and air combat in a way never before seen. It was the goal of the development team to maximize the game experience by adding both a realistic and enjoyable gameplay to FH and now to FH2.
The Red Army in the 30s had made some aborted attempts at producing an anti-tank rifle, but no real progress was made before the Invasion of Poland in 1939. The Poles had in the Wz.35 a capable weapon that was used against the light German tanks to some effect. Following the fall of Poland, the Soviet Union captured a number of these rifles but did not make much use of them.
The shock of Operation Barbarossa provided the urge to restart development of an anti-tank rifle. Both Vasily Degtyaryov and Sergei Simonov provided a design that was accepted into production, with the first rifles reaching the front by the end of the year.
Degtyaryov's PTRD was the simpler of the two, and featured some elements of the Wz.35 and the Panzerbüchse 38. It was a single shot weapon, and unusually for a bolt action weapon was designed to automatically extract the spent case. The whole barrel recoiled into the stock, and the bolt was forced open by the protruding metal opposite the cheek rest.
In action, the 14.5x114mm ammunition with the BS-41 tungsten cored bullet was capable of penetrating up to 40mm of armour at 100 metres. This was more than sufficient to deal with the Panzers of 1942, but by 1943 the level of armour protection was starting to increase. The rifles remained in use until the end of the war, seeing use against APCs and hardened firing positions. About 190,000 PTRD were made during the war, and ours was made for the original Forgotten Hope by McGibs, with Toddel updating them to FH2 standards.