Kalashnikov

Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov began designing an assault rifle while hospitalized after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. He entered his design into a competition, launched by the Red Army, to find a weapon that could use 7.62 x 39mm cartridges and no jam under the adverse conditions of the Soviet frontline. It was no immediately taken up by the Red Army, but in 1949, the Soviet Union adopted on e of the models dating to 1947.