Yelena, Kalashnikov's daughter, unveiled on Tuesday a 7 meters high statue of her father holding his creation & bearing his famous phrase "I created weapons for the protection of my homeland".
I cant imagine such tribute ever happening in the western for similar engineers. Different countries, different mentalities.
I would have preferred to see the sculptor use the original Type 1 model rather than the milled receiver type 2 or 3 they used. That is very much "in between" the original and what is the most common variant, the AKM.
froggy wrote:I guess the T2 was more representative of what was originally issued to the Red army in large scale ?
Yes. And the only rifle ever generally issued to a major army with a canvas cover - for the first few months they were under orders to never carry them in public unless covered !
thanks for the info Panda I did not know.
T1 or T2 , I like that statue. I like the St Michel in the background as well - Nowdays he would have unsed an AK instead of that spear ...
froggy wrote:I guess the T2 was more representative of what was originally issued to the Red army in large scale ?
Yes. And the only rifle ever generally issued to a major army with a canvas cover - for the first few months they were under orders to never carry them in public unless covered !
The West was largely unaware of the AK-47 prior to the 1956 invasion of Hungary......only three years before the AKM entered service!.
The Type 1 wasn't widely issued due to production problems with the stamped receiver, which extended the service life of the SKS by a couple of years until the milled Type 2 entered service in '49.
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle." - Joseph Stalin
Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank.....give a man a bank and he can rob the world!.
The Type 1 pistol grip is very distinctive - no metal mounting "cup" and more raked. You would notice it !!
Foresight looks type 3 though. Cannot see position of front sling loop so cannot confirm that one.
A few years back I went through 2000 AKs - my job was to use a reference book to sort them into country of origin and variant.
I found two type ones amongst them and was given a Saiga as a "thank you" for spotting them !
During that contract, I set myself the goal of test firing one AK from every country who ever made one ( including a Khyber Pass ) and managed it. The East German milled receiver variant was the most accurate closely followed by Chinese Type 56-2.
Its amazing how many "differences" there are between type 1, 2, 3 and AKM !!
I did not know.
