The History of PKM, the Most Common Machine Gun in the World (Part 2)

By Vladimir Onokoy

In Part 1 of this article, I wrote about the beginning of the Kalashnikov machine gun story. In this chapter, I will get into details of how Kalashnikov managed to go through with his design against all odds.After a month of hard work, the first prototype of PK was ready. By that time, the rival machine gun designed by Nikitin and Sokolov completed technical trials and had a few non-critical issues that design engineers had to fix.Kalashnikov’s machinegun wasn’t even officially tested by the factory, so he didn’t really have any chance to win in this trial, since the competitor, Nikitin GPMG, was so ahead of him.

Author with a prototype of Nikitin GPMG. Photo by James Rupley.

Kalashnikov decided to once again get assistance from his old friend Vladimir Deikin, a high-ranking officer who initially put the idea of a new belt-fed machine gun in his mind. Colonel Deikin arrived in Izhevsk, inspected the machine gun, and

Source: The Firearm Blog