AK47 Story: Evolution of the Kalashnikov Weapons - Hardcover

Ezell, Edward C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0709031084 ISBN 13: 9780709031086

Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd, 1987

Synopsis

Account of the AK47 weapon and its development. The AK47 assault rifle and its many variants is the most widely distributed and best-known military shoulder weapon of the post-World War Il era. You can see Kalashnikov assault rifles on the evening television news from Beirut, Iran, El Salvador and the Lebanon. An estimated 30 to 50 million Kalashnikov-type rifles and light machine guns have been manufactured since the design was introduced in 1947. At least a dozen countries either have manufactured or are manufacturing versions of this weapon. Over 55 nations and countless guerrilla and terrorist organizations use these guns daily. This almost universal presence of the AK47 prompted the author's investigation into the origins of the Kalashnikov rifles and into the career of the man who created the weapon. Until now, there has been very little information published in English about this man, the leading contemporary designer of small arms in the U.S.S.R. For more than a decade, military historian Edward Clinton Ezell has been engaged in breaking through the secrecy surrounding Kalashnikov. Ezell examined actual Imperial Russian and Soviet weapons and includes many previously unpublished photographs of these weapons. What factors shaped Kalashnikov's career? In The story, Ezell fully explores this question. He begins, in Chapter 1, by examining the manufacture of infantry shoulder weapons in Imperial Russia from Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia to the Russian Revolution in 1917. Chapter 2 describes the rebuilding process of the military Weapons industry following the Russian civil war and the search in the 1920s and 1930s for a self-loading rifle to replace the bolt-action Model 1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle................

Edition details

• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0709031084
• ISBN 13: 9780709031086
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256