Why the First Kalashnikov Machine Gun was a Complete Failure?

By Vladimir Onokoy

Many people who briefly looked into Kalashnikov’s biography ask the same question – how come the first gun he developed, the AK-47, became so incredibly popular? But when you dig deeper, it turns out the AK-47 was not his first design, and Kalashnikov’s early attempts to develop new guns often failed.Perhaps the most spectacular failure was his first machine gun designed in 1943. This particular weapon doesn’t really have a name, and even many Kalashnikov experts never heard of it.But I got lucky. In 2018, I was tasked with consulting a movie production, the biopic about Kalashnikov. One of the biggest challenges was building correct replicas of the guns he developed in the 1940s. While looking for the information, I came across some declassified documents about the history of this machine gun.After the movie was released, turned out that the replicas were actually the most historically accurate part of the story. If you wanna know more about this movie, you can listen to the “ TFB Behind The Gun” podcast we did with Luke.

Source: The Firearm Blog