Boevoy Noz
Literally: combat knife
Also known as: boyevoy nozh
General term for Soviet combat knives; attested examples are the NR-40 knife from 1940 and the NRS-2 firing knife of Spetsnaz units from 1986.
Quick Facts
RussiaAbout the weapon
Boevoy noz, transliterated from Russian as combat knife, is a general term, not a single model. In sources we have traced two specific Soviet representatives: the NR-40 knife and the NRS-2 knife. The NR-40 was introduced in 1940, after the Winter War showed that Soviet infantry lacked a good combat knife. It has a clip-point blade 152 mm long, a pronounced ricasso, a black wooden handle, and an S-shaped guard turned toward the edge, because the Soviet army taught soldiers to hold the knife edge up. It was made by the ZiK factory in Zlatoust in the Urals. Members of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps, founded in 1943, received a special version; the Germans, after a line from the corps' divisional song, called the unit the Schwarzmesser Panzer-Division, the black-knife division. Nearly faithful replicas of the NR-40 are still made in Zlatoust today. The NRS-2 has been in service since 1986. It was designed by the CNIITochMash institute and made by the Tula Arms Plant for the Soviet Spetsnaz. The knife conceals a single-shot firing mechanism for the 7.62×42 mm SP-4 round. It measures 290 mm overall, the barrel 60 mm, weighs 570 g, the bullet leaves the barrel at 140 m/s, and the effective range is 25 m. It is used by the Spetsnaz and special police units; the NR-2 variant carries survival gear instead of the firing mechanism.