Overview[]
The AK-47 is a 7.62 mm assault rifle developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in two versions: the fixed stock AK-47 and the AKS-47 (S—So skladnym prikladom) variant equipped with an under-folding metal shoulder stock. Design work on the AK began in 1944. In 1946 the rifle was presented for official military trials, a year later the fixed stock version was introduced into service with select units of the Red Army (the folding stock model was developed later). The AK-47 was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces in 1949. It is also used by the majority of the member states of the former Warsaw Pact. The AK-47 was also used as a basis for the development of countless many other types of individual and crew-served firearms. It was one of the first true assault rifles and, due to its durability and ease of use, remains the most widely used assault rifle in the world. More AK-type rifles have been produced than any other assault rifle.
Design and History[]
During World War II, the Germans developed the assault rifle concept, based upon research that showed that most firefights happen at close range, within 300 meters. The power and range of contemporary rifle cartridges was excessive for most small arms firefights. As a result, armies sought a cartridge and rifle combining submachine gun features (large-capacity magazine, selective-fire) with an intermediate-power cartridge effective to 300 meters. To reduce manufacturing costs, the 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge case was shortened, the result of which was the lighter 7.92x33mm Kurz.
The resultant rifle, the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG44) was not the first with these features; its predecessors were the Italian Cei-Rigotti and the Russian Fedorov Avtomat design rifles. The Germans, however, were the first to produce and field sufficient numbers of this assault rifle to properly evaluate its combat utility. Towards the end of the war, they fielded the weapon against the Soviets; the experience deeply influenced Soviet military doctrine in the post-war years.
Mikhail Kalashnikov began his career as a weapon designer while in a hospital after being wounded during the Battle of Bryansk. After tinkering with a submachinegun design, he entered a competition for a new weapon that would chamber the 7.62x41mm cartridge developed by Elisarov and Semin in 1943 (the 7.62x41mm cartridge predated the current 7.62x39mm M1943). A particular requirement of the competition was the reliability of the firearm in the muddy, wet, and frozen conditions of the Soviet frontline. Kalashnikov designed a carbine, strongly influenced by the American M1 Garand, that lost out to the Simonov design that would later become the SKS battle rifle. At the same time, the Soviet Army was interested in developing a true assault rifle employing a shortened M1943 round. The first such weapon was presented by Sudayev in 1944; however in trials it was found to be too heavy. A new design competition was held two years later where Kalashnikov and his design team submitted an entry. It was a gas-operated rifle which had breech-block mechanism similar to his 1944 carbine and curved 30-round magazine.
Kalashnikov's rifles (codenamed AK-1 and -2) proved to be reliable and the gun was accepted to second round of competition along with designs by A.A Demetev and F. Bulkin. In late 1946, as the guns were being tested, one of Kalashnikov's assistants, Aleksandr Zaytsev, suggested a major redesign of AK-1, particularly to improve reliability. At first, Kalashnikov was reluctant given that their rifle had already fared better than its competitors; however eventually Zaytsev managed to persuade Kalashnikov and the new rifle was produced for second round of firing tests and field trials. There, Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1947 proved to be simple, reliable under a wide range of conditions with convenient handling characteristics. In 1949 it was therefore adopted by Soviet Army as '7.62mm Kalashnikov assault rifle (AK)'.
Also see[]
Communist world! (1922-1991) | |
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The Warsaw Pact and the military | Warsaw Pact - People's Republic of Albania (left) - German Democratic Republic- Czech Socialist Republic- Warsaw Pact Rail - USSR -People's Republic of Poland - Hungarian People's Republic - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - People's Republic of Bulgaria - Polish People's Republic - Romanian Popular Republic - Romanian People's Republic - Soviet 5.45x39mm - Soviet Southern Group of Forces -Seven days to the River Rhine (1979) - Jüterbog Airfield -Topoľčany Army Barracks and bunker system - Brezhnev Doctrine - Soviet war in Afghanistan - Vladivostok Navel base - Murmansk Navel base - Archangelsk Navel base - Kaliningrad Navel base - Sevastopol Navel base - Kazan Higher Tank Command School and related tank factory - Burevestnik Airport - People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (de facto, but not de jure) - AK-47\Kalashnikov assault rifle - Red Army - Kartsev-Venediktov Design Bureau (OKB-520) - KhPZ Factory No. 183 in Kharkiv/Malyshev Factory - Mikhail Kalashnikov - Soviet Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buros (OKBs) - Eastern bloc - Tupolev Tu-160- 9M14 Malyutka - RPG-7 - R-7 ICBM - Tupolev Tu-95 |
The Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance (ComEcom) nations |
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The ones with nukes | USSR - Cuba (gave them up) - Cuban Missile Crisis - Tupolev Tu-160 - R-7 ICBM - Tupolev Tu-95 |
The Sino-Soviet Split | Sino-Soviet Split - USSR - Zhou Enlai - Nikita Khrushchev - Mao Zedong - People's Republic of China People's Republic of Albania |
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Economics | Sakhalin Island - Life under communism - Food cards- Collective farms- Yugoslavian Agricoles - Political Committee of the Communist Party of China - Soviet political organs - Soviet Social Apparatus - The purveyors of crappy Cold War era Easter Block cars - Mirny Diamond Mine - Magnitogorsk - Virgin Lands campaign - Soviet Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buros (OKBs) - The Agrokomerc Affair - Wuxi (diode) Factory 742 - Jiangnan Radio Factory - Agrokomerc - Kartsev-Venediktov Design Bureau (OKB-520) - KhPZ Factory No. 183 in Kharkiv/Malyshev Factory- Eastern bloc |
Politics and Geo-politics | Sakhalin Island - Stalin Monument (Budapest) - Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Khrushchev Thaw- Tito–Stalin Split- Life under communism - Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - Cold War - Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia - Soviet "Era of Stagnation" - Soviet 'oligophrenics' and 'oligophrenia' - Soviet political organs - Soviet Social Apparatus - Russian and Soviet Leaders between 1917 and 2018 - Stalin's purges and ethnic cleansing- Closed Soviet locations - Gulags - Berlin Wall - Détente - Sino-Soviet Split - Brezhnev Doctrine - Stalin's cult of personality - De-Stalinisation -Glasnost - Perestroika - Kuril Islands - Rybachy Peninsula - Kaliningrad Oblast - Eastern bloc - The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union |
Technology and outer space | Sputnik 1 - Soviet Space Program - Mirny Diamond Mine - Magnitogorsk - Virgin Lands campaign - Tatra trams#T3 and T3R.P trams - M62 locomotive - TEP80 locomotive -Soviet MSI nMOS chip - Soviet Ice Breaker Lenin - Chernobyl disaster - AK-47\Kalashnikov assault rifle -Soviet Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buros (OKBs)- The Space Race - Mikhail Kalashnikov - Yuri Gagarin - Vostok rocket-Soyuz rocket - Baikonur Cosmodrome - Plesetsk Cosmodrome - Zenit 2 - Tupolev Tu-160 - R-7 ICBM |
People | Stalin Monument (Budapest) - Vladimir Lenin - Leonid Brezhnev - Mikhail Kalashnikov - Yuri Gagarin - Nikita Khrushchev - Joseph Stalin - Stalin's cult of personality - De-Stalinisation - Mikhail Gorbachev - Ho Chi Minh - Fidel Castro - Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej - Mohammad Najibullah - Maurice Bishop - Zhou Enlai - Salvador Allende - Dr. Kwame Nkrumah |
Important places | Sakhalin island - Moscow - Nakhodka Port - Vladivostok Navel base - Murmansk Navel base - Arkangelsk Navel base - Kalinningrad Navel base - Sevastopol Navel base - Kazan Higher Tank Command School and related tank factory -Burevestnik Airport- Jüterbog Airfield - Topoľčany Army Barracks and bunker system - Kuril Islands - Berlin Wall - Mirny Diamond Mine - Magnitogorsk - Rybachy Peninsula - St. Petersburg - Closed Soviet locations - Kaliningrad Oblast - Wuxi (diode) Factory 742 - Jiangnan Radio Factory - Agrokomerc -KhPZ Factory No. 183 in Kharkiv/Malyshev Factory - Wuxi (diode) Factory 742 - Jiangnan Radio Factory - Agrokomerc - Baikonur Cosmodrome - Plesetsk Cosmodrome |
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The political heretics who were
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and Iranian puppet or client states |
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Other stuff | Life under communism - Sputnik 1- Khrushchyovka - When is not a Yugo to a Yugo? - Soviet Space Program - The purveyors of crappy Cold War era Easter Block cars- Vietnam War - 1950–1953 Korean War - Family in the Soviet Union - Radio Moscow - Tatra trams#T3 and T3R.P trams - M62 locomotive - TEP80 locomotive - Stalin's cult of personality - De-Stalinisation - Soviet medals - Colombian conflict (1964–present) - Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros - The Agrokomerc Affair - Peruvian conflict - Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement - Cambodian genocide - The Jewish Holocaust and Roma Porajmos in the Baltic states - Italian Communist Party -"Reds under the bed" - The Holodomor - Colombian conflict (1964–present) - Peruvian conflict - 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution - Sandinistas - Guerrilla Army of the Poor - Viet Cong - Pathet Lao - Soviet 'oligophrenics' and 'oligophrenia' - New Jewel Movement - The 'false' Cold War theory - All the Communist countries during the Cold War - People's Liberation Army (of China) - People's Republic of China |