Welcome to this issue of More Than Just Games, I'm Joey.
As the saying goes, "As many stars as there are in the sky, there are as many AKs as there are on the earth." "Yes, the AK series automatic rifles have been mass-produced by the Soviet Army since they were officially installed, and in addition to the Soviet Army's own use, they have also been given large-scale assistance to the Warsaw Pact countries. At the same time, because of the super performance and reliable design, it has also been imitated by many countries, according to incomplete statistics, there are more than 100 million AK series rifles and derivative models in the world. The AK series is so famous that it has naturally become an indispensable weapon in major shooting games. It accompanied us from the Cold War to the Vietnam War, from the Vietnam War to modern warfare, from modern warfare to future warfare. Whether it's a damp rainforest or a shady tunnel, you can always trust Kalashnikov.
So who exactly is Kalashnikov? What are the interesting details of the AK-47?
On November 10, 1919, shortly after the end of World War I. A baby boy was born into an ordinary peasant family in the countryside of altai province of the Soviet Union. And no one expected that the masterpiece created by this child named Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov in the future will affect the history of human warfare and even the future world pattern.
As a child, Kalashnikov loved toys such as guns, and in 1938, at the age of 19, Kalashnikov enlisted in the army and served in Kiev. After enlisting in the army, he still maintained an interest in mechanical technology, so after completing all the training subjects, his company commander recommended him to enter the Ordnance Technician Technical Training Course. By the summer of 1939, Kalashnikov was escorted to the Tank Driving Academy.
After graduating, Kalashnikov served in the 12th Panzer Division, followed the troops to the front line after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, and was seriously wounded as a coach captain during the battle in October 1941 and was taken to the hospital for treatment. While recuperating in the hospital, he heard complaints from other wounded soldiers that their weapons were inferior to those of the Germans. So after being discharged from the hospital, he began to study the design of firearms. However, he designed a submachine gun at the time, and with this prototype gun, he was ready to compete with the Bobosha and other firearms of the time. Apparently, Bobosa didn't eat dry food either. As a very classic submachine gun of the Soviet Army, Kalashnikov's work was defeated in subsequent range tests.
Although the test failed, his weapon design talents attracted the attention of the upper echelons. After this he was assigned to the range of the General Directorate of Artillery of the Red Army, and the story of AK began.
During Kalashnikov's tenure, on July 15, 1943, the People's Military Technical Committee decided to develop a new type of bullet. Subsequently, after experiencing hundreds of configurations, the Soviet Experimental Design Bureau developed a .30 Russian-made short bullet, and the specification of the new bullet at that time was 7.62 * 41mm. In December of the same year, after completing the shooting experiment, the new bullet was put into trial production. However, in the test, the researchers were not satisfied with the penetration and accuracy of this bullet, and then began to adjust it in 1947, redesigning the tail of the warhead to make a stern-type warhead, which improved the stability of the bullet, and then lengthened the tip to make the bullet look more streamlined, and finally they shortened the size of the cartridge, and got the 7.62 * 39mm bullet we know. Also known as .30 Russian short bullets, but the name of .30 Russian short bullets is not often heard, resulting in many people being misled, thinking that it is a 7.62 * 25mm Tokarev pistol cartridge used by Bobosha. I just went to the shooting range here to pick up a few Tokarev shell shells, and I just picked up a few 7.62 * 39mm shells when I picked up the shells, so you can intuitively feel how different the bullets of the same caliber but the shell size look different.
When this new bullet was born, it quickly attracted the interest of Kalashnikov. So he decided to use the bullet on his newly designed prototype gun, and finally after constant adjustments and improvements, the AK-47 automatic rifle was born.
Let's re-recognize this classic, I just have a prop model of the AK-47 here, I will use this prop to let everyone know the details of this gun. AK-47 assault rifle, here to read AK and Aka is no problem. The AK stands for Kalashnikov and the 47 represents the 1947 design. In 1949, it was officially finalized and put into mass production, and in 1951 it began to equip the Soviet army.
The AK-47 uses a 7.62*39mm rifle cartridge and uses the air-conducted automatic principle. What does the air conduction type mean, that is, there is a gas duct above the front section of the barrel. After the gunpowder burns to generate aerodynamics, most of the power pushes the bullet out of the chamber, while a small number pushes the piston back along the trachea. The piston uses a re-entry spring to drive the bolt frame backwards. This automatically disemboweles and throws an empty shell casing, which is then fed into the chamber by the next bullet from the magazine.
In fact, each bullet theoretically needs to be fired like a bolt-action rifle. It's just that humans think this kind of fighting each other is too inefficient. To this end, I came up with how to use various structures and ways to "borrow power". AK's air-conduction principle, like many automatic rifles, chose to use the gas power of the previous bullet to help us "pull the bolt", and so on until the last bullet was empty. In order to free our hands, this is the principle of the AK-47 automatic firing.
At the same time, this also explains why we have to work hard to get our hands down before the first shot, pull the bolt of the gun and send the first bullet in. Because the gun chamber is empty at the moment, we can't borrow power, we can only come by ourselves.
So at this moment, the careful audience found that I could understand the air guide tube above the barrel, but there was a very thin one under the barrel that was also used for gas conduction? In fact, the thin pipe below is not a pipe, but a thing called "tongtiao". It has nothing to do with the firing of the firearm, but it has a lot to do with whether the firearm can be fired smoothly after that. After a fierce battle, the inside of the gun will produce gunpowder residue, which will affect the performance of the gun if it is piled up too much. To do this, you can pull out the strip, then install a brush and get some gun oil. You can reach in and clean the barrel, and if you want to trust Kalashnikov forever, then you have to put in your efforts too.
Then wrapping the barrel is also the part held by the hand, called the "handguard". As its name suggests, the handguard is made of wood for the protection of opponents. What about protection? It is because the barrel of the gun will continue to heat up and become hotter and hotter after continuous firing of bullets. You can't grab a red barrel and fire. With a handguard to help you isolate the barrel from the heat, you can shoot more stably. But no matter how much protection is done, there is a limit, and uncontrolled continuous fire may also ignite the handguard. At the same time, the handguard was made of wood in the early days, and with subsequent developments it could be replaced with materials and structures that were more resistant to high temperatures, lighter, more suitable for gripping, and more modular to carry other tactical accessories.
Behind the handguard is the notched door used by AK, there are 1-8 numbers on the ruler of the door, corresponding to the target of 100-800 meters, adjusted by pressing the slider on the ruler, and how many meters of the target can be adjusted to the corresponding number to carry out more accurate aiming. However, only the attentive viewer notices that there is also a symbol similar to "N" on this ruler, and this "П" symbol represents constant (постоянная), which corresponds to a close-quarters battle scene. That is to say, in most cases you only need to adjust the ruler to this position, the melee sight can cover a distance of 0-300m, in this distance do not need to deliberately too high muzzle, and when the enemy raises the gun, it is enough. Beyond this distance, it is necessary to raise the ruler to compensate for the ballistic fall.
In addition, in the game "Call of Duty", when everyone uses AK, they feel that this gap is still relatively good. In fact, the real AK shot is very small, otherwise such a wide shot gap is completely impossible to accurately aim, for this "Escape from Tarkov" and "PUBG" these two games are better.
Then there is the magazine part, most of the AK series adopts the magazine fixing mode of the front hanging rear card, which cannot be installed directly into the magazine well like a group of AR rifles, but needs to raise the magazine slightly at an angle, and then first use the magazine bulge to jam the gap in the magazine shaft, and then push the magazine backward into the magazine well, and wait until the magazine mortise holds the gap to complete the loading. Such a front hanging back card design, but also so that AK in many games, the replacement of the magazine can be very ornamental, the specific operation is to use a new magazine to resist the magazine mortise, under the action of gravity empty magazine will automatically leave the magazine well, and then then use your hand to apply a forward force to the magazine, you can complete this set of actions.
However, when the AK is loaded, you need to pay attention to a small problem, that is, AK uses a very large fuse, this fuse has three gears, from top to bottom is closed, fully automatic, single shot, and when the fuse is in a closed state, the extension of the front part will block the back part of the bolt, at this time the pull bolt will be blocked by the fuse, resulting in the gun can not be loaded, so when you use this kind of large paddle insurance AK, remember to dial the insurance to the position of continuous or single shot first. So how to achieve the switch between continuous and single shot, in fact, the design of the trigger unit of AK is very clever, the internal linkage of the fuse piece has a blocking iron, in the insurance state, the resistance iron will resist the entire trigger unit, so that the trigger can not be pulled to avoid accidental firing. In the single-shot state, the safety blocking iron will not contact the trigger unit, so that after firing, the fallen hammer will first be hooked by the single-shot blocking iron behind the trigger unit, so that even if the trigger is not released, the hammer will not be released again, and the single-shot function is realized. In the continuous firing state, the safety of the blocking iron will only resist the single-shot blocking iron in the trigger unit, so that when firing, the hammer will not be hooked by the single-shot blocking iron, nor will it be hooked by the trigger, and the continuous shooting will be realized.
Above the bolt is the dust cover, the dust cover as the name suggests is to prevent too much debris in the bolt cover, this cover does not affect the normal firing of the gun, this feature in the "Escape from Tarkov" players have a deep understanding. Because it's often seen that this kind of rotten weapon.
Finally, the stock of the AK, the stock of the AK-47 is wooden, which has three functions, one is to smash people. The second is to help the shooter hit people. The stock structure is a downward inclination, a design that allows the shooter to comfortably fit his cheeks when handling the weapon, while the sinking stock also keeps the aiming baseline of the entire gun low, resulting in lower exposure area when firing with covered backs.
The third function is to provide storage function, the tail of the stock is a storage space, the usual maintenance of the small accessories will be hidden inside, with the barrel under the strip, after the tea and dinner can be the basic maintenance of the weapon, in order to ensure that the weapon does not fail in wartime.
The last core part is that the AK-47 uses a slewing lock bolt, which I will talk about later. In general, at present, everyone is more familiar with this classic weapon, so there must be viewers who want to ask: AK-47 is rumored to be durable, whether in the harsh environment of wind and sand cement, it can have a lower failure rate and better performance. The reason for this is also that the core firing structure of the AK-47 is very simple. Unlike some other firearms, which are more complex, there are too many small parts and structures.
We can see this when we go to "Escape from Tarkov", when changing the gun, even if the gun is dismantled to pieces, as long as the core firing components are complete, it can still fire. The real AK-47 is also like this, but it is not easy to control.
The most classic AK-47 we just talked about is the 1A type. Then it had a variant of type 1B, called AKS-47 (Russian name AKC-47). The biggest feature of this model is the replacement of a wooden fixed stock with a foldable metal stock. This shortens the size of the gun and makes it easier for paratroopers and other units to carry and use.
But these two 1A and 1B AKs are actually very rare. Because the earliest stamping parts were used, coupled with the problems of the production process, the scrap rate of parts and components was high. Building guns, like many electronic products, had many problems with the first version.
To this end, they began to improve the second version of the 2A type in 1951, the same reason the AKS-47 with the folded stock is also known as the 2B type, and the second version of the AK also chrome-plated the breech when manufacturing, which enhances the corrosion resistance of the weapon. Some parts were changed to milling, and although the cost was high, the output also increased. Moreover, many of the workers who made AKs at that time were making Mosin Nagant in the early years, and the milling process was more convenient. And some parts were better enhanced, with the addition of a bayonet base. In addition, the rear shape of the second version of the AK bolt has been slightly modified, and an additional metal box has been added to the connection of the stock to facilitate the fixing of the stock. This is also the most obvious feature of distinguishing the second version of AK.
The second version actually did not build much, because although the material and structure of the gun are good, it will make the gun heavier because of this construction. Soldiers are very uncomfortable to use, this is not okay, ah, or have to change.
The third edition was finalized in 1953, and this version of the AK-47 was modified many times to make its structure better, lighter in weight, production industry and efficiency, and to optimize some small details so that the soldiers' backs were not too heavy and no longer noisy. Everyone laughed and giggled more satisfied.
For this reason, the third version of the AK-47 3A type became a more mature version under several modifications, and the Soviet Union also gave this type 3 AK to other allied countries, including the domestic Type 56 submachine gun. It is also the version of the AK-47 that we see most often in any of our works.
If we look here, the AK that has been changed three times has finally taken shape. It became what we see AK today. But it still has some flaws. This flaw many shooter game players have a deep understanding, AK-47 recoil is very large. In the past, playing CS was also specially practiced how to point and shoot headshots, if it was a fully automatic strafing, it was basically a day. The reason is that the 7.62* 39mm rifle cartridge used by the AK-47 has a relatively large recoil itself, coupled with the fact that there is an angle between the armature stress axis and the gun's rear seat axis, which will produce an upward force when firing fully automatically, which makes the AK-47 jump seriously on the muzzle when firing, and need to rely on additional breech devices to optimize.
In order to solve this flaw, we see more AK in the game, that is, AKM. This M means "modernization" or "upgrading" in Russian.
In fact, the AKM is an upgraded version of the third generation of the AK-47, and initially they wanted to continue to call this upgrade the 4A/AB type. The main difference is that the designers upgraded the manufacturing process and replaced the 3A/3B milling casing with a stamping and riveting process. The upgraded stamping process makes AK return to our impression of its simple design and easy production, and another benefit of the stamping process is that the thickness of the original steel parts is reduced, making the mass-produced AKM about 1 kg lighter than the AK47.
This is lighter, but also because this type abandons the traditional milling process of the AK-47, and finally did not have the final name of the conventional 4A/4B type, the 4A type AK-47 that uses the modern process and is slightly upgraded is eventually called AKM, and the 4B AK-47 with the folding stock is named AKMS.
At the same time, the most important point, the emergence of AKM is to solve the problem of serious muzzle jumping, the standard AKM for this purpose compared to the AK-47, the most obvious feature is that there is an additional muzzle anti-jump device, which is what we often call the miter muzzle. This muzzle can eject the gunpowder gas upwards, inhibiting the muzzle from jumping up.
In addition to adding a miter muzzle, AKM also added a raised finger groove to the handguard, after all, the accuracy of the gun shot depends on whether the shooter can grasp it steadily. In addition, because the thickness of the steel parts is reduced, the dust cover of AKM has added several reinforcements to ensure the strength compared to the original, otherwise the gun is light, but it is inevitable to bump and bump in the war, and if the dust cover is deformed and dented to affect the re-entry of the bolt, it will be fatal.
The AKM was finalized and put into production in 1959, and although the AK-47 was very good, the AKM was better. So much so that most of the AK series of weapons later produced worldwide were based on variants of the AKM design. So later, we will see that the handguard has raised finger grooves, the dust cover has a series of reinforcement ribs, and the most obvious oblique cut muzzle. You can see that this is an AKM.
However, it should be noted that many parts of the AK series are universal, and some people will replace each other with other models. What I mean by this is that you may admit mistakes in a movie or a game if he changes the structure. For example, the AKM in the hands of the Maozi squad in the movie "August 8th" does not have a diagonal muzzle. Because it can be screwed down to change accessories such as silencers. Therefore, this identification method is limited to the standard factory shape of this gun, or it depends on more details to judge.
Since the AK-47 and AKM were put into production, in addition to equipping the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union at that time, they were also used by most warsaw pact member states, and the AK-47's cheap, simple and easy-to-manufacture characteristics were imitated by many developing countries at that time. In the future, it even evolved into some of the more successful imitation models, which will be imitated again, which also makes this type of weapon become "double rabbit walking, Can Ann recognize that I am AK?" " phenomenon.
Even now, there are memes on the Internet, so that everyone can recognize who is in a pile of guns.
So if you are more interested in this and want to understand how the various AKs in the game and the movie are separated, we will tell you later, how to distinguish a bunch of AKs, and what is the subsequent development of AKs?
Thanks for watching more than the game in this issue, like the audience friends can pay attention to the like collection forward, I am Joey, we will see you in the next issue.