If Soviets had had the AK in WW2...

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meh... 'Guns of the South' sounds like a good read but, each age is 'traped' by it's technology and accepted methods of conduct.
would AKs have made a difference in WW2? nope. the question is academic at best. V2 rockets were a major advance in tech. but they alone could not resolve a conflict. nor could an AK. jet fighters (in the limited numbers available) were not enough to have any impact either. now they rule the sky. even that is changing. what really matters is 'getting there the firstest with the mostest'.
 
I will point out that the AK47 became the powerhouse it is, not by superior accuracy or reliability or sheer firepower, but by (again) logistics. The gun was designed from the beginning for mass production. It is the sheer volume of guns produced that make it the icon it is, not any inherent quality of the firearm.

The same can be said for the PPSH or PPS-43. They were not superior to the MP40, but they could be produced for a few rubles apiece out of metal stampings and so they simply overwhelmed the battlefield.

kal12.jpg
 
well that's a conspiracy theory that fits the facts well and I wouldn't put it past them to create a hero of soviet socialist design out of a captured german designers but is there a reputable link you'd like to share?
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Go check History.

As to links... There was reciently (Within the last year) An article (Soviet Newspaper) "Crediting" The kidnaped German arms designers with 'help' etc.

They took them, just like we in the US did, and when they were done, tossed them aside (As I said, sent to Siberia)

Hugo Schmeisser was taken to Izhvesk 24 Oct 1946 to work on weapons; Kalashnikov had already been working on what became the AK-47. There are too many differences between the StG44 and AK47 bolt locking design, fire control group, safety, etc. to credit Schmeisser with "creating" the AK, although he may well have improved the AK design based experience developing the StG44.
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To that I say:
For the naysayers who say comrade Kalashnikov couldn't have been helped by Hugo Schmeisser in the design of his AK-47 rifle because he started working on his project in 1944 and the German inventor only arrived in the Soviet Union in 1946: you forgot a little detail, my friends.
And that is Schmeisser's StG-43/44 was already in service and issued to German troops in 1944. Not coincidentally, it was the same year Kalashnikov started his work on the AK-47.
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Yea, parts of it are different... I read a breakdown one time of 'thsi from the M1, this from the M1 Carbine etc...)

But try this on for size:
WORLD FAMOUS, PROVEN German designers...

Kidnaped... Soviet Tank Sgt put in charge of the project (Not saying the man didn't have some skill...)

Germans keep doing what they were doing...

'Son of the USSSR' takes the cred...


HOW HARD is it to follow that?
(Found it BTW)
http://transsylvaniaphoenix.blogspot.com/2009/02/michail-kalashnikov-admits-german-help.html
 
You all are missing the point. There wasn't a whole lot of "new" to be discovered in firearms by the mid 40's. The AK borrows heavily from the STG44, which borrows from yet earlier designs.

It is the general concept of producing a firearm designed around ease of production which is the real key to the weapons success. And of course, even that isn't new if you look back back to the PPSH or PPS43.

The Russians (Kalashnikov) simply took the best ideas from around the world and then worked them into a weapon that used the fewest parts and the simplest/cheapest machining techniques.

One might compare it to the ubiquitous Glock seen today. There's nothing new in the Glock design. It's just that by using plastic and metal stampings in low stress areas makes it cheaper to produce. So people buy Glocks - and why not? It's less than half the cost of a Browning Hi Power and functions just as well.
 
Great discussion everyone! Thanks for all of the informative replies. I really did learn something today. =D
 
Would the AK47 have helped against Germany...Probably a little bit....

It didn't help much against tribal Afghans armed with bolt action rifles....

Neither does the M-4 apparently..

W44
 
Interlok hit the nail on the head. They were simply overwhelmed.

Germany lost the war because of Hitler trying to play general.

Had he left it to the Generals there may have been a very different outcome.
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Bingo, his Generals didn't want to invade Russia, they wanted to do a quick thrust into the Mid East, capture the Suez Canal and than move into Iraq and Iran and sit on the worlds largest supply of oil. A Wehrmacht high command study was done to this affect right before the fall of France and they determined (correctly so) that the British were very weak and fast deployment of 3 (if I remember correctly) mechanized divisions to this region could drive the British out. You also have to remember that the structure of the Panzer divisions was changed right around this time, these would be equivalent of 6 divisions later in the war. They found them to large after Poland and France so they split them all in half, 250 to 125 tanks.

He who controls the black gold makes the rules.
 
"THE ONE WITH THE RIFLE SHOOTS! THE ONE WITHOUT THE RIFLE FOLLOWS! WHEN THE ONE WITH THE RIFLE IS KILLED, THE OTHER ONE PICKS UP THE RIFLE AND SHOOTS!"

Movie? Movie?
 
The Russians already had a machine gun....that one with the drum an vented barrel...? So that was there AK...another type AK might of hurt....less ammo to go around, guys getting trigger happy....with all those Mosins, they probably tried an make each shot count......which may of been better. An please don't tell a former grunt that a rifleman doesn't win a war....try winning one without one. Or perhaps we can just get rid of the Infantry an Marines. Think of all the lives we could of saved in WWII.
 
interlock has hit the mark. It's been said that America buried its enemies under safes, meaning our industrial production migh safely behind our borders cranked out more of everything than all of our enemies combined. More bullets, guns, boots, tanks, planes, cannon, trucks, ships, etc. That equipment in the hands of our troops and allies crushed the Axis powers. It isn't that the infantryman wasn't essential, it is just that without that amazing industrial might behind him they wouldn't have had the resources in the quantities needed.
 
An please don't tell a former grunt that a rifleman doesn't win a war....try winning one without one.
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Try winning one when there are no trucks to bring beans, bacon and bullets to that rifleman. No artillery, no armor, no air support, no fuel. No industrial and economic capacity to create all of those things, no logistical support to deliver those things to the battlefield.
And no weapons to destroy and disrupt the enemies production and delivery of those things to their troops.

Yes, the rifleman is the tip of the spear, but it is industrial might that delivers that spear to the battlefield and keeps it there.


.
 
+1 ^ what KodiakBeer said.

Ya have to put a soldier in boots on the ground with a rifle to control it,..to this I agree,...but it takes a lot more than what meets the eye to put that grunt on that ground with that rifle,...and just as much to keep him there.

PS...I was a grunt.

Sergeant Major, USA, Retired
67-91
Nam to the Gulf

You do the math.....
 
Try winning one when there are no trucks to bring beans, bacon and bullets to that rifleman. No artillery, no armor, no air support, no fuel. No industrial and economic capacity to create all of those things, no logistical support to deliver those things to the battlefield.
And no weapons to destroy and disrupt the enemies production and delivery of those things to their troops.

Yes, the rifleman is the tip of the spear, but it is industrial might that delivers that spear to the battlefield and keeps it there.
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I have heard it said that amateurs discuss tactics, and profesionals discuss lodgistics.

If your initial post had simply said lodgistics, I would not have argued.

But you threw tanks, airplanes etc into the fray... that is on a level with the rifleman, and a whole new/different perspective than the one the Quoted post is discussing.

Sorry, no dice.
 
I have heard it said that amateurs discuss tactics, and profesionals discuss lodgistics. If your initial post had simply said lodgistics, I would not have argued.
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I haven't brought up lodgistics, but I did mention logistics. When you get right down to it, everything is logistics. Because it takes everything from aircraft carriers to satellites to put a rifleman at Saddam's hidey-hole so he can drag him out by his thinning hair.

And it took similar exertions in WWII to put Ivan (with whatever rifle he carried) on top of the Reichstag to plant a flag. It's just that Germany was already in ruins, the factories burned out, the German soldiers eating rats, before Ivan could get to the Reichstag. That's what it takes to win a war.
 
Issuing a semiautomatic battle rifle would have resulted in lower Soviet casualties, if it had been used to shoot Joseph Stalin.
 
Winning wars is all about cutting the enemies supply lines and communications. Historically it's what determines the winners. The rifleman is the tip of the spear, but without the shaft the spear is useless. It is completely true that humans must occupy ground and hold it for it to be won, but they must possess the ability to stay there holding it. Without supplies and communications the best army in the world is an unarmed mob.
 
THIS I agree with:
I haven't brought up lodgistics, but I did mention logistics. When you get right down to it, everything is logistics. Because it takes everything from aircraft carriers to satellites to put a rifleman at Saddam's hidey-hole so he can drag him out by his thinning hair.

And it took similar exertions in WWII to put Ivan (with whatever rifle he carried) on top of the Reichstag to plant a flag. It's just that Germany was already in ruins, the factories burned out, the German soldiers eating rats, before Ivan could get to the Reichstag. That's what it takes to win a war.
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THIS I do not.
Wars are won by artillery, aircraft, armor and logistics, not by individual soldiers with rifles. Maybe the war would have ended a month earlier if the AK had been in production in 1943 or so, or maybe the Germans would have ramped up the STG to match the AK.

By 1944, a significant portion of the German army was armed with the STG 44 and G43, but that fact didn't seem to bother the British who were still carrying Lee Enfields.
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^ Weapons centric, with LOGISTICS wedged int here.

(Yea, my spelling sux) :cool:
 
at the start of world war 2 theoretically 1 out of 3 russian soldiers were supposed to be armed with svt 40's. in fact for a short time the mosin nagant was discontinued, but as the war escalated they realized that they could not keep up with production demands and the svt was given up in favor of the quick and easy to build mosin.

even if the ak had come out sooner, they probably would have kept on making the mosin, because its cheaper and they could build it faster
 
The Soviet Union was already issuing huge numbers of PPSh-41's. Although not the same weapon, they still put a lot of lead downrange and were quite lethal.
The reason for Russia's high death toll wasn't the weapons being issued. It was the Russian mentality. The Russians had a lot of people - something around 171 million around 1939 (according to Trotter in A Frozen Hell). Their general approach was to just keep pushing men into the enemy until they overran him. Those men stopped a lot of bullets.
Add in Russia's unpreparedness... Stalin knew an invasion was coming. He knew this in August 1939 when the nonagression treaty with Germany was signed. This is why the Winter War with Finland was fought, to give the Russian's better control over the Baltic and enhance the security of Leningrad by preventing a stronger nation (like Germany) from seizing control of Finland and invading from the Karelian Isthmus. (BTW - this whole theory was a failure on virtually ever level.)
At any rate, Russia didn't expect the invasion to come yet in June 1941. They thought they had more time to prepare. They didn't.

So no, I don't think the AK would have made much difference at all.
 
It is my opinion that one of, if not THE BIGGEST, misconceptions assumed by many is that rifles are a significant factor of casualties in modern warfare (WWI to present).

In WWI, communicable diseases, the elements and lack of sanitation probably
caused 10x the number of casualties that rifle and machine gun fire did.

Mortars, bombs, missiles, land mines and indirect means of munitions have caused the largest portion of casualties in warfare, and by a wide spread.

The rifle essentially allows infantry to either advance in mass formation, or for asymmetrical warfare tactics to be employed less conventional forces.

The rifle is given far too much credit as an effective tool of causing 'game changing' casualties to enemy forces in the era of modern warfare.
 
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