Kalashnikov Information part 1

Kalashnikov is the most famous living gun designer in the world, and his machine gun, the AK-47, is the most famous gun in the world. He was born on November 10, 1919, in the village of Kurya, in Alma-Ata, in Kazakhstan, to a large peasant family. Mikhail was the seventeenth child of Timofel and Alexandra Kalashnikov. When seven years old he entered the normal Soviet "Ten Year School." After finishing school, young Mikhail became an apprentice and soon after a technical secretary in the Turkistan-Siberian railway department. In 1938 He was drafted to serve his country in the Red Army. He began his military service in Kiev in the tank corp.
Kalashnikov was a natural born tinkerer and inventor. During his early months in the army, he became interested in small arms. His commanding officer recognized an eager and inventive intelligence, and recommended Kalashnikov for a technical course that would qualify him as an armorer once he had completed his basic training. As a result, Kalashnikov attended the training school for tank drivers. While he was there, he designed and built a device to measure the tank's fuel consumption. He also designed an improved track assembly for tanks, and an inertia revolution counter to register the number of shots from a tank gun, as well as other tank related inventions.
Kalashnikov was promoted to sergeant in 1939, and sent to Leningrad by his commander-in-chief General G.K. Zhukov to oversee production of his fuel gauge and track assemblies.

 

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 he became a Red Army Senior Sergeant, and went to the front lines, where he served as a tank commander. In September, during the battle for Bryansk, his vehicle was struck by an explosive round, and Kalashnikov was badly wounded in the shoulder, and was hospitalized.
During World War II, the Germans had developed the assault rifle, based upon research that showed that most fire-fights happened within a range of less than 300 yards. The rifle cartridges in use at the time were larger and heavier that what was really needed for most battles. As a result, armies sought a cartridge and rifle combining high capacity magazines, automatic fire and an intermediate-power cartridge.
The resultant rifle, the German 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.

 ("Sturmgewehr" was the origination of the term "Assault Rifle.") Towards the end of the war, they fielded the weapon against the Soviets. This experience deeply influenced both Kalashnikov as an individual, and Soviet military doctrine in the post-war years. 

German soldier with StG44

While in the hospital, recovering, Kalashnikov began to dream of a new Soviet firearm, which would match or even improve on the German weapons. In the hospital library he found V.G. Fedorov's basic weapons textbook, Evolution of Small Arms. Kalashnikov later wrote: "That was my lucky day. The book by Vladimir Federov proved to be invaluable. It gave me my first insight into the principles of developing automatic firearms, and put me straight on the positive and negative aspects of each class of firearms."
Mikhail Kalashnikov says his rifle was not based on the German StG44 assault rifle. But the AK-47 represents a combination of previous rifle innovations: the double locking lugs and unlocking raceway of the M1 Garand/M1 carbine; the trigger and safety mechanism of the Browning Remington Model 8 rifle; and the gas system and layout of the German StG44. The main advantages of the Kalashnikov rifle are simple design and adaptation to mass production. It is a melding of the best the Garand, Browning, and StG44 features.

M1 Garand Rifle

Kalashnikov had ready access to the StG44, and he experimented with similar concepts, but he threw out many details of the StG44: The two-part receiver (something that the M16 has), the clumsy return mechanism (, another something the M16 shares with the StG44), the tilting bolt, the gas piston, the left-side safety lever and charging handle, the tight part fittings. The StG44 had the right concept, but Kalashnikov found out in his development that many of the details were wrong. 

Granted a six month rest leave, Kalashnikov went home to Alma-Ata, which was also the new location of the Moscow Aviation Institute. There he visited friends in the railway technical section, and convinced one of them, Zhenya Kravchenko to let him use the depot's machine tools to continue his design work. After three months, Kalashnikov produced a working design. He then went out to find a Communist party official to sponsor his work. 

After many interviews, Kalashnikov met the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. While the Secretary was not a firearms expert, he believed that there might be some merit to the design. As a result, he arranged for Kalashnikov to continue development of his sub-machine gun at the near-by Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). Kalashnikov continued to refine his design, and it was eventually sent to the Dzerzhinskiy Artillery Academy for testing and evaluation. 

Kalashnikov's firearm came to the attention of General Anatoly Arkadaevich Blagonravov, the Chairman of Infantry Weapons at the Dzerzhinskiy Artillery Academy. He decided to provide Kalashnikov with a formal engineering education. Kalashnikov never rejoined the military, but became a technician at the proving ground at Ensk. While at Ensk Kalashnikov attracted further attention through his work on modifications to Goryunov machineguns. These modifications brought him two "author's certificates," the closest thing the Soviet Union had to patents. It was also at Ensk that Kalashnikov first came into contact with leading firearm designers Degtyarev, Simonov, and Sudayev..........to be continue