Back in the USSR, the post-war years saw a madcap drive towards establishing Russian ‘priority’ in matters scientific and technological.
Polzunov invented the steam engine, Kotelnikov the parachute, Mozhaisky the aeroplane, Popov the radio, Petrov the electric bulb, Lodygin the electric arc, Tsiolkovsky the rocket, the Cherepanovs the locomotive.
And anyone disseminating information that disputed those indisputable historical facts had to be re-enlightened at the educational facilities under the auspices of The State Administration for Camps (GULAG for short).
Though today’s Russian children are allowed to know who James Watt was, that drive hasn’t necessarily ended, except that this time the rest of the world has been taken in as well.
Only a week was left of 2013 when Mikhail Kalashnikov died at 94, the ‘K’ in the series of weapons based on the original AK-47 rifle. By far the most popular post-war infantry weapons, the Kalashnikovs have killed considerably more people than all WMD combined, and Gen. Kalashnikov’s demise was consequently eulogised in countless obituaries the world over.
However, they all omitted a rather significant detail. Kalashnikov didn’t really develop the Kalashnikovs.
Hugo Schmeisser did, except of course his original customer was Hitler’s rather than Stalin’s army.
Schmeisser, however, broke even in popular perception by being credited with the German MP-40 machine pistol, such a ubiquitous star in war films. However, that ‘Schmeisser’ was developed by others, and Hugo’s only contribution was the magazine. But the magazine had his name on it – hence the confusion.
The ‘Schmeisser’, incidentally, was far from being as popular in combat as in the post-war cinematography. It was used mostly by the Waffen-SS and officers in the Wehrmacht. Grunts usually carried bolt-action rifles that had several times the ‘Schmeisser’s’ 70-meter effective range, but of course fell far short of its rate of fire.
Long before the war the Germans realised that fire fights in modern mobile combat seldom presented targets farther than 300m away. This led to the idea of combining the features of a submachine gun and a bolt-action rifle.
The gun itself came about later, but already in 1924 Hugo Schmeisser developed the firing selector switch, a version of which is now used on all assault rifles. The hybrid rifle itself, Schmeisser’s StG44, went into mass production much later, in 1944, and the Germans only had time to make 450,000 units.
About 50 StG44s, 10,785 sheets of technical designs and, critically, Schmeisser himself along with his whole team, were in 1945 shipped to the town of Izhevsk in the Urals where they were made to work in harness with Soviet designers, including Kalashnikov. Schmeisser and his men were allowed to go back to Germany in 1952, by which time their work had been done.
Only in 2009 did Kalashnikov acknowledge publicly that in designing his rifle he had been ‘helped’ by Schmeisser. Privately, this was an open secret not only to experts but to anyone who saw the photographs of the StG44 and the AK-47 side by side.
The two guns look like dizygotic twins, if not exactly identical ones. Of course in their fine tradition of veracity the Russians have always claimed that this was where the similarity ended. It wasn’t.
All the key features of the AK-47 were copied from the StG44, if occasionally at one remove, with such features as the trigger, double-locking lugs, unlocking raceway and the high-tolerance system had been first reproduced in other rifles and then transplanted into the AK.
The long-stroke gas system and layout of the StG44 were copied faithfully, as was the banana magazine and the stamped-receiver manufacturing process. However, only in the 1959 AKM modification did the Soviets begin to use stamped sheet metal, something Schmeisser had been doing from 1943.
Long-stroke gas pistons, high tolerances and the magazine specially designed for stubby hybrid rounds simplified the maintenance of the gun, making it less likely to jam. This made the Kalashnikov ideal for the poorly trained Soviet army and also for millions of barely trained paramilitaries all over the world.
Approximately 100 million AKs have been produced and in 2006 Russia accounted for only 10 percent of the production. The rest were made in China and elsewhere, usually without the benefit of a licence.
In fact the Russians had been unable to patent the weapon until 1997. And in his adult life Mikhail Kalashnikov was never associated with the designs of any guns other than the AK and its knock-offs. Now you know why.
I apologise for the surfeit of technical detail but, as I’m sure you realise, my purpose is more general. It’s to show that, like energy in the First Law of Thermodynamics, the Soviet Union hasn’t really disappeared. It has merely been transformed.
It’s the same ulterior motive that animated my new book How the Future Worked, just published by RoperPenberthy. This is an anecdotal account of my life in Russia, written in as entertaining a form as I could manage.
The book, however, only masquerades as my memoir – it is actually less about me than about Russia, albeit as seen through my eyes. For the next few days I’ll be running excerpts, along with effusive praise by others – and will continue to do so until you buy the blasted thing.
You can get a copy on www.roperpenberthy.co.uk, which is better than getting it on Amazon.co.uk.
It should be true that Russia’s AK story began with MkH42, a karabin sized rifle designed by Hugo Schmeisser, captured from Germans in battle. They immediately began developing a firearm similar to that weapon. It is said at least ten sample admitted for tests including AS44, by Sudaev with very similar outward appereances including long safety lever at side and reveiver dust cover, large moving tolerances and similar take down features with known AK47. The date was 1944, one year before Russians came in Suhl and two years before Schmeisser and some other German gun designers taken to Izewsk with their family. Very limited number of AS44 is said produced and distrubuted for field testing and found heavy and demanded other samples. AK46 by Kalashnikov, AB46 by Bulkin and AD46 by Dementiev were the headed samples. Sudaev, since died by illness did not gave a sample. Especialy Bulkin rifle had very similar features to known AK including rotating bolt breechblock, captive recoil spring inside gas tube, and dust cover over the back plane of receiver. The test resuted by the eleminating AK46, by Kalashnikov, but He was the leaders of young comminists and found a way to return to give another sample for testing. All testing and test sample making activities is said in Kovrov. At that time, Schmeisser with other Germans were in Izevsk and busy in what demanded by Rusian Government. Schmeisser was a tilting block lock
enthuisast and demonstrated his merit in MkH42, Stg43 and Stg44 and could not be easily transmitted into rotating head bolt locking in very short time from 1946 to 1947, in which AK47 introduced. Appearently Kalashnikov, copied the usable features of both Bulkin’s and Sudaev’s rifles and rised as the winner of the tests by the communist party effects to get more people’s sympaty. If compared, it is easily be seen the close similarities between AK47 and AS44 and AB46 than the similatiries between Stg44.
In 1952, Schmeisser was sent to his country and said little about what he made in Russia. His country was in Communist Block in that time and people could not say anything if he would say he did designed a new service rifle for Russians. Besides, AK47 was not famous and even not known at that time and after the years, it rised to this reputable level through field and war experiences into a place that its designer needed to question.
By the way, AK47 can not be described as “Long Stroke Gas Piston” since the effect of direct gas push would not extend until to the end of breechblock’s rearward travel, but exhausted after a
short distance from the gas cylinder. The rearwardly extending tube should not be called as “Gas Tube” and it is only a gas piston guide.