Out of the hundreds of thousands of mass produced SMG's used on the Eastern Front, how many do you think were actually modified later on to be folding stocks? Probably next to none. The Germans certainly didn't have time to do that, needing every last weapon in use ASAP.
Of course there were no MP-40's modified with folding stocks, but the reason for that was because they didn't need to be modified like that because they came off the production line with them allready installed.
And what do you mean by "The Germans certainly didn't have time to do that." If you knew your basic WWII history you would know that the MP-40 was made from machine pressed parts and was extreemly cheap and quick to make, even the American "Grease" Gun was designed to duplicate the MP-40's ease of production.
The Soviets were in the same boat, they had millions of men fighting by 1945, who needed to be kept in arms. And when you are dealing with lower and lower quality training as the war went on, there would be no practical use for a folding stock.
Since when is there no use for a folding stock? Not only does folding the stock make the firearm easier to carry and store, folding it also shortens the weapon up by quite a bit and can make it much easier to manuever in close quarters.
I may not have been in actual combat, but as a regular paintball player I cant tell you how convenient it was for me to buy a folding stock for my 98 Custom, and it has helped me quite a bit on the feild. If anything I feel that folding stock is the most tactially valuable addition I made to my marker.
Most of the folding stocks you see were modified post-war, when aftermarket kits became available. Even now, you are hard pressed to find guns with folding stocks unless they were modified after manufacture, or you do it yourself.
Where are you getting this information from? If your so confident that all these firearms were equiped with folding stocks after the war was over, then I'm sure youll be happy to explain why I can do a simple Google image search on "MP-40" and find pleanty of period photographs showing MP-40's with the stocks folded. Even on the pictures where the stock isn't folded the mechanism is clearly visable for all to see.
As long as adding a feature like this doesn't increase hip-shooting I'm all for it. Perhaps without the stock extended, bringing your iron sights up would be slightly quicker.
Although I do see your concern, I dont think you'll need to worry about this, not only did Jaesperson suggest this for the PPS43 for the Russians too, but when you pick up an MP-40 you get the same advantage as well, so it not like only half of us will get to use the new feature. And even if you were not equiped with the MP-40 or PPS43, you wouldn't be at a huge disadvantage anyway, because the folded stock would also make the weapon a little more wild in its recoil and would only help when indoors, but would also make that player extreemly vulnerable at medium to long range. (At least that seems like what were agreeing on so far.) So both folded and unfolded would have advantages and disadvantages.
