I read a lot of posts on this and other boards regarding claiming various facts about the heritage of the AK-47 and the MP-44 (MP43/MP44/Stg44).
Inveraibly someone will post that the AK-47 is a copy of the MP-44, and then someone will reply that they only look similar and that internally they are completly different. The reality is that the truth is somewhere in between these 2 view points.
So lets break the arguments for and against down:
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AK47 looks like the MP44.
This is true, but as often said form follows function and the use of the gas operating system and shape of both the 8mm kurz and 7.62M43 round necessates the curved magazine. What is new in the MP44 is the free standing pistol grip, no other rifle of the time has this feature, which greatly simplified gunnery training and snap shot accurcy. The AK-47 was the first Soviet rifle to have a free standing pistol grip. -
Operation of AK-47 is completely different.
I have heard some poeple claim that the MP44 was recoil operated. This is false. Both rifles are gas operated and fire from a closed bolt. Even the design of the gas system is identical. Where they differ is in how they lock the bolt. The AK-47 uses a rotating bolt like the m1 Garand and the MP44 uses a wedge lock like the SVT-40.
The trigger group is also different but not completely. They both have a claw hammer and the use of coiled wire springs is completly new in a Soviet design (as used in the G43 and MP-44). Personally I would not be surprised if the AK’s trigger group is a simplified version of the MP-44’s. But that is conjecture, I do know that the fire selector is a copy of a previous design. It is also interesting to note that the very first Assault rifle trials in the USSR was with a open bolt design.
Another point of simularity is that both designs are made from pressed steel with only minimal stampings. In the case of the AK-47 this was quickly dropped as industrial manufacturing techniques were not yet up to the standard required. The machined receiver in the AK47 (the part where the bolt locks) is very similar in design to the one in the MP44. Again the idea of having a small machined receiver housed in a sheet steel body is a concept unique to the MP44 (at the time). When the MKb42 was first designed, the very first prototype was actually made out of machined steel once it was shown that the design was sound, experts in manufacturing with steel pressings were contracted to Heanel to apply the technology to the MKb42.
Personally the most significant fact in the whole debate is that Hugo Schmeisser the designer behind the MP-44 was working in the same factory where Kalshinokov was perfecting the AK-47 and he stayed there from 1946 to 1949, the very year that the AK47 went into service!
To conclude I don’t believe the AK-47 is a direct copy of the MP44, in reality it uses different features of various other arms and the design has nothing new or revolutionary.
However there is enough similarity to the MP-44 coupled to the fact that Schmeisser himself worked on it, to say that the MP-44 is a close ancestor to the AK47 (like the StG45 is the ancestor to the CETME & G3
(at work at the moment, will post references when I get home :oops: )
