SKS History

[Gtscotty]

Hey, this is my first thread, so I'm gonna go ahead and apologize in case I do something wrong.

Anyway, I was perusing wikipedia for interesting gun information when I stumbled over this on the page devoted to SKS's:

"Because of the massive size of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, over 800 million Chinese SKS rifles were produced during their 20 years of use making the Chinese SKS the most mass produced military rifle of all time."

I found this interesting, because I have always heard that the AK-47 and its variants were produced in the highest numbers of any firearm. Also, the number seems a bit high to me, (I had always heard 50-70 million AKs produced), I could be flat out wrong on this though. One thing is for sure, anyway you cut it, 800 million is quite a large production number for a firearm, especially one that has a milled receiver. I figured I'd toss that out there to see if anyone has any information as to its accuracy. Wikipedia is definitely not infallible, but on the other hand, I could not find any info countering their statement. Any one know?

 

[BamBam-31]

Welcome to THR.

Try here: www.simonov.net

 

[Limeyfellow]

Just a bit over. According to Joe Pryor's book they estimate about 4 million SKS' produced between the Soviet Union and China.

Yugo SKS' number are a little difficult. The serial numbers indicate about 750000, however we know that a large number of the early 59 models were later upgraded to 59/66 and the serial numbers changed and later again with the 59/66a1. We do have 225,000 Model 59s. Half of these were upgraded at least.

Romanian SKS' are estimated at about 500,000

Albanian SKS' were used by the police and number about 20,000 in number.

No real number on Koreans, Vietnam, East Germany. Say maybe a couple of million.

One thing that was important to note that more Chinese SKS' were made for the civilian market than for the military.

Its still no where near 80 million. I would think 8 million would be a truer number.

 

[Spiggy]

the 800 mil might be a little high, but one has to consider the non-military config simonov rifles made as well... still very high

The AK boasts the most produced being that almost every comblock, comblock neighbor, and comblock neighbor's freind has produced some variation of the AK, and even today, the AK action is still being used in all sorts of makes, even shotguns and other sporting rifles.

Example, Russians create the AK, which goes to finland and becomes the Valmet... Isreal likes the idea and turns it into the Galil... South Africa gets the Galil Contract and designs a CR21 bullpup


what can we say, Father Kalashnikov has a lot of children

 

[Chipperman]

(Nothing wrong with your thread. )

There's no way that SKS numbers come any way near to those of the AK. The AK has been made for more than twice the duration, in many more countries.

The bottom line is that you need at least one of each.

 

[dstorm1911]

Back in 1992 while in China inspecting weapons to be imported to the USA we saw alot of SKSs in the caves but not even in the ballpark of 800 million not even anywhere near 8 million, We spent 3 months traveling from one stockpile to the other and there were by far more AK47 rifles than the SKS, in fact Don ended up buyin up all of the clamp on spike bayo's that were intended to upgrade older AKs that were made without a bayo option as they had no plans to complete the upgrade plan as they had out produced the SKS with the newer AKs which did have the SKS style bayo mount that all the SKS rifles had been collected from the villages citizen gaurd and placed in arsenals while the civilian guard were re-armed with the older non bayo AKs as it was felt they did not require bayos.......... we got every last one and Don's been sellin em to distributers for the last 20 years... if Clinton hadn't banned imports from China we'd have ended up with the rifles to match the bayos as well...... He did get the entire inventory of the chromed cerimonial SKS rifles and has been sellin em the last 13 years in fact just put an add in the shotgun News to get rid of the last 300 of em once and for all they were made from true military grade rifles etc.. No there was no where near 800 million SKSs ever built in China we were shown the massive stockpiles of brand new military AKs I doubt they woulda bothered hiding the obsolete SKSs from us......

The 800 million screaming chinese is an old threat against any country that would dare oppose a Chinese backed government such as N-Vietnam etc... Some folks take that to mean they would all be armed with modern weapons when in reality to field that army the Chinese would pull in all the civilian gaurd who are always armed with the weapons of 5 years previous in some cases even older ie; the Chinese mausers we have saw duty by the civilian gaurd well after the T-53 had replaced the mauser for the regular army and in fact was still in use even after the T53 was dropped for the Type 56 etc....

The Chinese have a very strange military, it is pretty much completally replaced every 5 years.... everyone goes in at age and they all discharge 5 years later to serve in the civilian gaurd ....... they do not have 800 million regular army soldiers at any given time unless they mobilize the entire male population.

I'm pretty burned out tired at the moment please excuse redundancies and missed info I'll come back later and see what I forgot or got outa sequence etc....