AK-47: The Guerrilla Gun

AK-47 Rifle: The Guerilla Gun

Look where you like in the trouble spots of the world today and you will see the Kalashnikov rifle. It will never win prizes for grace, beauty or elegant engineering, but it certainly wins them for reliability, toughness and simplicity. Pick it up -- it doesn't balance particularly well -- and snap the magazine into place. Pull back the cocking handle and release it, and the rifle is loaded.

Push up the combined fire selector and safety catch -- a long spring-loaded arm on the right side of the receiver to make the weapon safe. This locks the trigger, but it is still possible to pull back the bolt far enough to check if there is a round in the chamber.

Then press the selector down one notch for automatic fire, or to its lowest position for single shots. But becareful; the selector tends to be noisy, and more than one operator of a Kalashnikov has attracted unwelcome attention from the opposition by allowing the selector to announce his presence. Moveover, it's almost impossible to operate if you are wearing heavy gloves. But that's a minor defect.

Take aim across the rear sight notch and the foresight blade and, if the light isn't too good, notice the luminous spots on each sight which give you some assistance. Squeeze the trigger and fire. The recoil is easily controlled, although at automatic fire the rifle soon climbs away from the point of aim if you insist on too long a burst.

Up to 300m (984 ft) range you could hit a man-sized target, but beyond that the Kalashnikov is no prize-winner; the general standard of manufacture and the loose tolerances make the accuracy poor in comparison to most Western rifles. But it works, and works, and goes on working after many more expensive weapons will have given up the struggle.

The origin of the Kalashnikov is shrouded in mystery: officially the Soviets developed a short 7.62-mm round, and in 1944 Mikhail Kalashnikov began development of a carbine to fire it. This came to nothing, and he then sat down and designed the rifle which became the AK-47.

We know that the Soviets had been experimenting with small-calibre cartridges before 1939, and the appearance of the German 7.92-mm kurz cartridge with the MP44 assault rifle probably led them to draw on their researches and develope the 7.62x39-mm M1943 round.

Their first weapon chambered for this was a Simonov rifle, which appeared in the late 1940s. But the Kalashnikov design was simpler and easier to manufacture; moreover, it was in the 'assault rifle' style, whereeas the Simonov was a fully-stocked weapon which was more in the style of the old-time bolt-action weapons. The Kalashnikov, being smaller and more handy to operate, allowed the Soviet army to get rid of its vast stock of sub-machine guns and settle on a standard weapon which performed the roles of rifle, sub-machine gun and light automatic all in one package.

Gas Operation

The AK-47 is a gas-operated weapon, using a rotating bolt inside a bolt carrier. Over the barrel lies the gas cylinder, with a loose piston rod. When the rifle is fired, some of the gas behind the bullet enters the gas cylinder and drives the piston backwards. The rear end of the piston emerges over the top of the chamber and strikes the heavy bolt carrier, knocking it back.

The bolt, lying inside the carrier, has a peg which protrudes into a curved slot in the carrier, so that as the carrier moves back it drags this slot across the peg, causing the entire bolt to rotate. This unlocks the lugs on the bolt from the corresponding recesses in the back end of the barrel and, as the carrier continues backwards under the impetus given by the piston, it pulls the unlocked bolt back, extracting the empty cartridge case and ejecting it.

As the carrier and bolt go back, they compress a return spring, and at the end of their movement the spring driven carrier and bolt back. The bolt face collects a fresh cartidge from the magazine, rams it into the chamber and stops. The carrier, still moving forward, causes the bolt to rotate so that the lugs lock into the barrel and the rifle is then ready to fire the next shot. As the carrier went back it cocked an internal hammer; this can now be released by pressing the trigger, so that it flies up and strikes the firing pin in the bolt.

Selective Fire

The AK-47 can be set for single shots or for automatic fire. In the latter case, as the bolt carrier makes its final closing movement it trips a release which frees the hammer to come up and strike the firing pin. This automatic action continues as long as there is ammunition and the trigger is kept pressed.

The first issues of the AK-47 used a stamped steel receiver which did not prove to be robust enough for active service, and in about 1951 this was replaced by a machined steel receiver. This required a more complicated manufacturing process, and the Soviets worked on the design for several years, finally perfecting a much better stamped steel reciever in 1959. This version became known as the AKM (M for Modernised) and the pricipal advantages were a reduced weight and cheaper manufacture.

In the 1960s, the Western military world began looking seriously at the 5.56-mm cartridge, and in the 1970s the adoption of this smaller calibre became widespread. The Soviets watched this with interest and in the late 1970s introduced a new version of the Kalashnikov, the AK-74, chambered for a new 5.45-mm cartridge. This is again mechanically the same, merely adopting a new barrel and bolt, and adding a muzzle compensator which helps keep the weapon under control when firing at automatic.

Estimates vary, but it seems safe to assume that something close to 50 million Kalashnikov rifles of one sort or another have been manufactured since the late 1940s, and it is without doubt the most widely-distributed rifle in the world and the most-manufactured rifle in history.

But not all of the 50 million came from the USSR; Soviet allies soon began to produce their own.

Foreign-made AK-47 Rifles

Chinese AKs can be distinguished by their markings and by many having folding bayonets; East German AKs do not have the cleaning rod beneath the barrel nor do they have a trap in the butt for the cleaning kit. They also use plastic for the butt, with an odd stippled finish.

Hungarian models have a plastic stock and a front pistol grip attached to a perforated metal barrel shroud; the North Korean version has a peculiar perforated metal folding stock or in the fixed-stock model, a fore-end without finger-rests. The Romanians use a forward pistol grip but in this case is of laminated wood and forms part of the wooden fore-end. Yugoslavian, Polish, Bulgarian and Egyptian-manufactured versions are very difficult to distinguish from the Soviet models, except by close examination of the markings.

As a service weapon the AK series have gained a reputation for robustness and reliability in the worst conditions which few weapons can equal; on the debit side, their accuracy is slighly below Western standards, but this does not seem to make much difference in practical use.

Added:  Monday, February 27, 2006
Reviewer:  WebMaster
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Related web link:  AK-47 Wikipedia Entry
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