The U.S. military was oblivious to the weapons revolution playing out in Europe. As World War II was winding down, American ordnance experts sent back samples of the German Sturmgewehr for study by the Springfield Armory that produced the M1 Garand semiautomatic rifle, considered one of the finest weapons of its type. Unlike an automatic, which sprays bullets with one continuous pull of the trigger, the semiautomatic requires one trigger squeeze per round. Although U.S. forces had heard about the power of Germany’s light automatic weapon, and now had them under the microscope, the upper echelon refused to acknowledge the innovation. Like the early Soviets, they believed in the higher-powered round shot long distances by a soldier/marksman. They continued to believe that the key to war was strategy, training, and high-tech weaponry. When they studied the Sturmgewehr, they could not get past the fact that these weapons were machine-stamped and welded, which in the United States was considered a second-class production method compared to machine milling and forging. They did not understand that Germany had taken stamping and welding to a high art, and that the weapons were lighter and just as rugged as guns with machined and forged parts. Armory personnel dismissed the weapons as flimsy and cheap-looking.
Although Kalashnikov had great natural instincts about weaponry, his lack of formal education put him at a disadvantage, so authorities teamed him with a small “collective” to help refine his ideas. In addition, he believed in what we would call today a “focus” group, listening to soldiers who actually fired the weapons and then offered their opinions. Using soldiers’ feedback, the weapon was changed and refined.
The young man’s success also lay in his ability to take the best ideas available from other gun makers, then combine and refine them. For example, submachine guns of the day relied on a “blow-back” system that used the power of gases shooting backward from the bullet to push back a bolt that ejected the spent cartridge and allowed a fresh one from the magazine to emerge into the chamber for firing. This system worked fine for pistol-sized bullets but not for the intermediate bullet. These new rounds were too powerful, requiring a massive bolt to control them, making for a much heavier gun. Kalashnikov realized this and opted for a gas-activated automatic weapon that used a “short stroke” piston to push back the bolt and eject and load another round. The piston offered the extra power necessary to move the heavier bolt. Although it may sound complicated, the system was actually simple in the world of arms makers.
When a cartridge’s primer is struck with a firing pin, the exploding powder creates gases that propel the bullet out at speeds greater than twenty-three hundred feet per second. As the bullet travels through the barrel, gases build up behind it but cannot escape because the spent cartridge is sealing one end and the bullet, traveling tight against the barrel walls, is blocking the other end.
The M1, or Garand, as it was known for its designer, John Garand, performed flawlessly during World War II, prompting General George Patton to call it “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” It was simple and reliable and the first self-loading rifle to be adopted by any army as standard issue. Unfortunately, the rifle was heavy, clunky, and only held eight rounds in its magazine. While Germany and the Soviet Union were moving toward automatic weapons, U.S. military planners clung to old ideas that put GIs in greater jeopardy with their outmoded rifles. U.S. Department of Defense
As the bullet nears the mouth of the barrel, a vent in the barrel diverts some of these gases into a tube that sits parallel above or below it. The gases hit a piston inside the tube, which pushes a connecting rod into the bolt carrier, forcing it backward. The bolt carrier extracts the spent cartridge from the breech and ejects it, allowing the next round to enter the chamber from the magazine, where ammunition is pushed upward by constant pressure from a spring. The signature banana-shaped magazine is a function of how the cartridges lie when placed side by side. Because they are narrower at one end, the natural and most economical shape of a thirty-round stack of 7.92mm rounds is a curve.
Every time the trigger is pulled, the firing pin strikes the primer in the center of a cartridge, firing a bullet, and the cycle continues. This happens at a rate of more than 600 rounds per minute when the selector lever is in the automatic position.
Because their fast-moving parts are confined in such a small space, automatic rifles have a tendency to jam. All it takes is a speck of dirt to clog the various movements or keep a round from being positioned properly in the firing chamber. This is where Kalashnikov shined. The bolt rotated widely, making it easy for the round to find its proper place in the chamber. Think of trying to poke a pencil into a hole drilled in a piece of wood. It would be much easier if, when you got the pencil tip near the hole, even slightly askew, you rotated it. This turning action would slide the pencil in much easier than if you just poked it straight. This is one of the best parts of Kalashnikov’s design.
In addition, rather than build components that fit tightly into each other, often a signature of professional gun makers, Kalashnikov went the other way, designing components with looser tolerances, more space between parts. Instead of dirt or sand clogging the gun, debris was thrown off in the firing process. During one test, soldiers dragged the gun through what was called the “sand baths.” Each rifle groove and slot was clogged with sand. “I began to doubt that further shooting would proceed without failures,” Kalashnikov recalled. An engineer watching the test voiced similar concerns. But the gun fired flawlessly. “The sand is flying in all directions, like a dog shaking off water,” a team member shouted.
AK prototypes were constantly honed and field-tested, each part altered based on soldier feedback. Unlike with many inventions, there were no Aha! moments in Kalashnikov’s work, only constant incremental improvement until it was soldier-proof. For example, the safety switch, which prevented the gun from accidentally firing, was combined into a single lever that also acts as a dust cover for the ejection port. In other words, a soldier who put his weapon on “safe” to slog through mud without inadvertently firing the weapon, did not also have to remember to close an additional latch to keep dirt out. Again, this was not a new idea—it existed on the Remington Model 8, one of the earliest American semiautomatic rifles, first produced in 1906—but it was Kalashnikov’s cleverness and humbleness that allowed it to be employed in a Soviet weapon. Kalashnikov did not subscribe to the “it wasn’t invented here” syndrome that plagued many other gun makers, and he wasn’t interested in producing a unique or profound piece of machinery. His only goal was to build a weapon that would work every time. He cared even less how it looked. While other designers sought to make their guns sleek and contemporary-looking, Kalashnikov dismissed this as window dressing and very anti-Soviet, which promoted utility over style.
During these testing years, Kalashnikov often found himself guided by the words of arms designer Georgy Shpagin, who developed the successful PPSh41 submachine gun: “Complexity is easy; simplicity is difficult.”
Kalashnikov’s gun also had to be easy and inexpensive to manufacture with current technology and capabilities. Again, he learned from the mistakes of Federov’s Avtomat, which could not be built rapidly or easily, drawbacks that sank it. Although milled or forged components were generally stronger, they were also more time-consuming and expensive to make. Kalashnikov’s prototype weapon would have a stamped receiver, the gun’s main frame.
After scores of modifications and adjustments, the new weapon was approved for production in 1947 with the name AK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947), but work continued for several more years to improve the weapon before it would be officially issued to the Soviet army.
The AK-47 underwent more than a hundred modifications between 1947 and 1949. During that time, Kalashnikov had moved to Izhevsk Motor Plant 524, partially to get out of the shadow of more prominent designers who looked down upon the lowly sergeant who had moved up too fast and had not paid his dues with the obligatory decades of work. Izhevsk Motor Plant 524 was not an automotive plant but a front for an arms factory, the name designed to keep away Western spies now that the Communist satellite countries were established. Stalin’s blockade of Berlin had begun and the cold war was in full swing.
By the end of 1949, arms plants had turned out about eighty thousand AK-47s, but one major modification was necessary before it could be issued to all Soviet troops and their allies. Soviet metals technology still lagged and assembly plants could not manufacture stamped receivers in large numbers. Because Kalashnikov was not versed in production techniques, the job fell to other engineers, who changed the AK assembly lines to produce forged receivers. This made the gun heavier and more expensive to produce, but there was no choice. In gearing up for the cold war, these weapons had to be made quickly.
The AK was the ideal weapon for the Soviet Union, and the nation’s leaders built military and political doctrine around it. In the early days of the cold war, Soviet military planners believed that large land battles would take place between East and West on Russia’s western border similar to those of World War II. Soviet authorities envisioned the so-called encounter battle in which Soviet troops would meet the enemy head-on at various pinch points. Believing that they had the more maneuverable tanks and armored vehicles, the Soviets would attack the oncoming columns from the flanks, with infantrymen delivering thousands of rounds per minute. They would penetrate into enemy lines and overwhelm them similar to the blitzkrieg strategy. This type of close-quarter, massive infantry assault was the AK’s forte, especially in the hands of a typical Soviet soldier.
This AKM (“AK Modernized”) introduced in the 1950s is a simplified, lighter version of the original AK-47, the world’s most devastating weapon. Its banana-shaped magazine gives this gun a familiar silhouette that makes it the symbol of what an assault weapon should look like. It is the undisputed firearm of choice for at least 50 legitimate standing armies, along with untold numbers of disenfranchised fighting forces ranging from international insurgents and terrorists to domestic drug dealers and street gangs. Between 75 and 100 million have been produced. The vast majority of AK-47s in service around the world are actually AKM models. U.S. Department of Defense.
The Soviet Union had a huge conscript army of poorly trained soldiers, many of whom could not read or write, and those that could often spoke diverse languages from the various Soviet states. This made standardized training difficult. Again, the AK suited the Soviet army because it was easy to fire, did not require a written manual or training, and rarely broke down.
In contrast to the U.S. military, which prided itself on having a pool of well-trained troops taught to make every shot count through intensive training and practice, the AK allowed the Soviets to put thousands of men into service quickly and with a respectable chance of killing the enemy. Because the AK employed an intermediate round, with less recoil than larger rounds, it allowed even inexperienced soldiers to control its accuracy during multiple bursts.
The Soviet military worked hard to keep the existence of the AK hidden from the West. Soldiers issued AKs carried them in special pouches that hid their shape. They were also instructed to pick up spent cartridges after maneuvers to keep the new ammunition secret.
Military and other official accounts differ on when the West learned of this deadly new weapon. Although the Soviets supplied arms to North Korea during the Korean conflict, it is not clear if they offered any AKs. U.S. Army historians make no mention of GIs seeing the weapon, and many Soviet records from the time are unavailable. Certainly, the Chinese, who supported the North Koreans with weapons and funds, would have welcomed the gun. Stalin was pleased to see China turn Communist in 1949 under Mao Tse-tung, and Mao’s brutal vision of war was eerily made to order for the AK. The Maoist strategy called for massive numbers of citizen soldiers armed with simple weapons to engage a technologically superior army in guerrilla and large-scale attacks. Sheer numbers, Mao believed, could win against any army no matter how sophisticated its weaponry. Even though the Soviet Union and Communist China chose different military tactics, they both benefited from the AK’s characteristics. China’s tactics were put into practice in Korea when U.S. and UN-sanctioned forces faced hordes of Chinese soldiers in many battles, leaving both sides with massive casualties. In 1953, after three years of brutal fighting and millions of dead, the hostilities ceased with a shaky armistice on the 38th parallel that continues today.
In 1956, events in Eastern Europe forced the Soviet Union to unveil the AK in public. The tumult began on October 23 with a peaceful demonstration by students in Budapest, Hungary, who demanded an end to Soviet occupation and the implementation of “true socialism.” The police made some arrests and tried to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas, but the crowds grew larger and more vocal. When the students attempted to free people who had been arrested, the police opened fire on the crowd. Within days, soldiers, government workers, and even police officials had joined the students.
Nikita Khrushchev, now leader of the Soviet Union, grew increasingly concerned about the situation and dispatched the Red Army to Hungary. They rode in tanks and in trucks, carrying their AKs. The demonstrators fought with whatever weaponry they could find, including Russian submachine guns, carbines, single-shot rifles, and grenades, much of it taken from liberated military depots. This was the Soviets’ first large-scale use of the AK, and it performed flawlessly in an urban environment where tanks became bogged down in narrow streets against crowds wielding Molotov cocktails. The revolt was squelched, with as many as fifty thousand Hungarians and about seven thousand Soviet soldiers killed.
According to U.S. Army archives, American intelligence officers took note of the AK but appeared not to be concerned. When the Springfield Armory, the U.S. military’s weapons maker since 1794, tested the Soviet weapon that year, they too appeared indifferent. It would not be until a decade later during the Vietnam War that American GIs would face the AK in action for the first time. These soldiers would pay dearly for their government’s abject failure to recognize the far-reaching significance of Kalashnikov’s simple weapon.
