In honor of the 100th anniversary of Kalashnikov: TOP-5 brilliant developments of the gunsmith

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On November 10, 2019, Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov would have turned 100 years old. Unfortunately, the legendary Soviet and Russian gunsmith died at 94 on December 23, 2013. Despite this, today is a suitable date in order to remember the most striking creations of Mikhail Timofeevich (except for the famous AK-74, which does not need any presentation anyway), which he managed to create during his busy design life.

1. PP Kalashnikov

The famous Kalashnikov assault rifle was not Mikhail Timofeevich's first assault rifle. In 1942, the designer created his new submachine gun. The solutions used then by Kalashnikov turned out to be unsuccessful, however, the young sergeant-designer did not look for an easy way and tried to create a weapon with a semi-breech bolt on the interaction of two screw pairs. This was the wrong, albeit very original, decision. Most designers at the time preferred to use the proven free-gate design.

The weapon could conduct single and automatic fire and, in general, it turned out to be quite good for that time. However, the excessive originality of the young engineer led to the fact that the PPK was extremely difficult to manufacture, and therefore cost a lot. The Soviet Union could not afford to make such machines during the war. Simple and reliable PPS and PPSh turned out to be much more preferable.

2. AP Kalashnikov

It may sound strange (and somewhat inappropriate), but the fourth and fifth decades of the 20th century were some of the most interesting for weapons designers. The appearance of intermediate calibers forced designers to create the most incredible weapons for them. And not only in the USSR. Only after the appearance of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the era of pistols, carbines and submachine guns will finally pass. However, then they did not even know about it.

Mikhail Timofeevich tried his strength at the start of his career in the creation of pistols. A Kalashnikov automatic pistol could fire a shocking 1000-1100 rounds per minute. However, the project was abandoned by the designer himself. The weapon did not even reach proving grounds. This is because at the time of its appearance for the engineer there were more preferable directions of work than the creation of a new pistol.

3. Self-loading Kalashnikov carbine

Back in 1943, right at the height of World War II, the first domestic intermediate cartridge of 7.62x39 mm caliber was created in the USSR. At the same time, the USSR decided to develop for this caliber not only an assault rifle, but also a carbine. The Soviets wanted to create something like the American Grant rifle. As a result, Kalashnikov competed with his project for the right to arm the Red Army, as well as Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov, who created his famous SCS with him.

As a result, the version of the carbine presented by Simonov turned out to be more preferable for the command, but because of the war, the armament of the army with the novelty was delayed. The carbine hit the troops only in 1949. The Kalashnikov carbine version was also not bad, but still slightly lost in a number of SKS parameters.

By the way, Mikhail Timofeevich himself considered his self-loading carbine to be the first successful development. Despite the fact that the weapon did not go into the series, it became an important step towards the creation of the Kalashnikov Assault Rifle.

4. Kalashnikov light machine gun (model 1943)

The Soviet Union was quickly and tensely preparing for a new war in Europe, the beginning of which was no secret to anyone. It was only a matter of date and configuration. Despite the colossal work done by 1941, there were still a lot of problems in the troops. In particular, the troops needed a new machine gun. The DT-27 available at that time was no longer the most modern and problem-free weapon.

The young designer Mikhail Kalashnikov took part in this project as well. In just 2 months, he created a light machine gun with a firing range of 900 meters, with a short barrel travel and locking the channel with a lever. The main drawback of the Kalashnikov design was the ammunition supply element. These were magazines that were inserted into the weapon from below, which in turn imposed serious restrictions on the size of the ammunition load.

In addition to Kalashnikov, such eminent people as Goryunov, Simonov, Degtyarev participated in the competition. Ironically, none of the new machine guns impressed the command. As a result, they decided to simply modernize the PD troops already available.

5. AK-102

The name AK-102 does not often appear in the media space. Much more often used the wording "machine of the hundredth series", which denotes all varieties of machines of this family, created after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the way, the AK-102 appeared precisely "thanks" (no matter how cynical it may sound) to the disintegration of the country of the Soviets. For example, in the 1990s, Russia began to rapidly lose trading partners in the arms market. China was glad to take advantage of the weakening domestic military-industrial complex and immediately tried to occupy a more spacious niche in the market, offering good weapons at a low price.

With all this, something had to be done, and Mikhail Kalashnikov developed the same AK-102, which was supposed to replace the AKS-74U. Both assault rifles are classified as "Personal Defense Weapons" by NATO. First of all, such machines are received by artillerymen and drivers. They also have great potential in the police and civilian markets.

The new machine gun turned out to be very successful and in fact was able to completely remove all the "innate" shortcomings of the AKS-74U (first of all, the terrible accuracy of fire). Subsequently, the novelty laid the foundation for the creation of a whole family of assault rifles.