I thought it was obvious
I would guess he was also “helped” by Simonov too.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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February 19th, 2009 at 10:22 am
The first time I saw a picture of a G44 I thought it looked an awful lot like an AK47 and wondered if there might be a connection. Interesting post, thanks.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Schmeisser spent quite a bit of time in the USSR after the war. It’s pretty obvious that the AK-47 incorporated a lot of things that he had been working on for a long time.
I always thought it seemed a lot more likely that Schmeisser designed the AK as an evolution of his work on the similar german weapons rather than MK getting injured and suddenly conceiving an intermediate power rifle made from sheet metal stampings.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
This is all kind of pointless IMO. Every gun designer stands on the shoulders of those who came before. From what I can tell about the StG44, it used a tilting block, so maybe the SKS owes more to the StG44 than the AK does. Also remember, the AK-47 started out with milled receivers before being replaced with the stamped-receiver AKM. Also keep in mind that there were plenty of wartime guns (primarily SMG’s such as the Sten and PPS/PPSh models) made with the cheapest materials available, namely steel tubing and sheet metal. And supposedly the 7.92x33mm Kurz intermediate-power cartridge used in the StG44 was originally created in 1933, so the intermediate cartridge idea was in place for many years before the StG44 came along to take advantage of it. Furthermore, the SKS takes a lot from the Tokarev-designed SVT-40. So who the hell knows.
There are only so many ways to design an autoloading rifle, given the standard cartridge design that has been with us for the past 100 or so years. Different designers have provided different approaches to the problem, but they all have built off one another. We can recognize and appreciate the StG44 for what it was: the first of a new class of firearms. But at the same time it was a fairly obvious development to split the difference between a pistol-caliber SMG and a full-power machine gun.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
The heart of the AK is a Mauser – same two-lug rotating bolt to lock the breech. The bolt handle becomes a stub, to be operated by machine (the bolt carrier) instead of by the human hand.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
The AK has a Garand trigger (no; don’t argue. It does) and John Browning invented gas operation. Then there was that guy in China who came up with black powder…
February 19th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Yeah, yeah.
But was he influenced by Smirnov? 😉
February 20th, 2009 at 9:20 am
As others above have pointed out, the StG and AK may be shaped alike, but are about as mechanically similar as a ’73 Bug and a New Beetle.
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I thought Al Gore said his father invented it.