The AK-47. How much does it owe to German Design? A LOT!

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

I can agree with you here the FG42 is not truly an AR(from our modern concept) but if you put into that category it is a poor one but it was trying to perform the same role that an AR does (the light MG is ill advised but other AR also tried to fill this) so I see no foul in calling an AR.You will also see it found in most every technical source or book listed as an AR even Ian V. Hogg one of the leading firearms/military equipment writers of his time classifies the FG42 as an AR.I know that the weapon was supposed to fill multiple roles for paratroops but by and large any weapon that attempts to combine the roles of an SMG and a rifle can be considered an AR or you could call it an OCTFTMRFPKEW:Overly Complex Attempting To Fill Too Many Roles For Paratroopers Kinetic Energy Weapon if you want to.

The FG-42 can't really be placed into a specific weapon category, because it was only designed to solve a specific problem. Since the Germans had a terrible system for executing combat drops, their weapons had to be airdropped separately and were often not available when needed (See Battle of Crete), so they developed a weapon which could fulfill the roles of all traditional infantry weapons, even if not ideally. If you look at it from that context, it makes sense. For example, it's difficult to produce in large quantities, but that's not such a big problem because it was only intended to be issued to paratroopers, not to dozens of army divisions.

It had its flaws, of course, but you can't really label it as a failed assault rifle as it wasn't designed to be an assault rifle in the first place, even if it does have similarities to one.

[Freiwillige]

Another reason the FG-42 fails to meet AR requirements is its ammo. AR dont use full sized rifle cartridges but intermediate I always was told.

This being the Internet it is essential to ascribe all things German as engineering marvels from which the rest of the world can only produce inferior copies. Such too is the frequent editorial stance of technical bibles like Popular Mechanics magazine.

You know, the same people who every decade predict the flying car?

It doesn't matter; German weapons, ships, planes, soldiers, leadership and blah, blah, blah all worshipped as superior to all else and the root of everybody successful designs.

Never mind the external and internal similarities between the original AK-47 and the much earlier SVT-40 that was in large scale service with Soviet Naval Infantry before Barbarossa. (I have owned and used both)

Never mind that in engineering similar problems tend to result in similar solutions and this is seldom more true than in the field of military hardware.

This is an existential discussion akin to the question of how many angels can swim in the head of a beer. Those who are already convinced of the superiority of all things German will just ignore the vast amount evidence to the contrary while seeking refuge in semantics and the splitting of hairs.

[Penguin]

Post #5 said it all.

Here is a comparison of the breech block, to show the difference of the "inner values" (The Sturmgewehr 44 is the one with the dark barrel):






And some scans from a German weapon mag from 1973. While the text is in German, the pics are quite clear: