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Lukashenka sends birthday greetings to famous Russian gun designer Kalashnikov

 

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has sent a message of greetings to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, on the occasion of his 94th birthday.

“You are highly reputed in our country as a famous gun engineer and a good friend of Belarus,” Mr. Lukashenka says in his message, according to the presidential press office. “Your activities will contribute to the strengthening of cooperation between the two brotherly nations for many years to come.”

Mikhail Kalashnikov was born in a village in Russia’s Altai province on November 10, 1919. He joined the Red Army in 1938 in Kyiv, where he attended a tank mechanics school. In the army, he designed a device to count the number of shots fired by a tank as well as other useful tactical devices for tanks. After surviving fierce battles against the Nazis in 1941 as a tank commander, he found himself in a hospital after he was shot and badly burnt in a tank battle.

When he felt a little better in the hospital, he began to conceive ideas for a new machine gun that could provide high volume, light weight firepower for soldiers in mechanized infantry.

In 1944, his first prototype was adopted for further development. He kept working on the design, and finally in 1949, the Soviet Army adopted the automatic Kalashnikov design of 1947 as their standard rifle.

The rifle has long been the weapon of choice for guerrilla armies around the world.

More than 100 million AK-47 assault rifles had been produced by 2010.

Mr. Kalashnikov, a self-taught inventor, has developed about 150 models of small weapons. Of interest is the fact that the Americans also relied on a self-taught inventor, John Garand who developed the M1 30 caliber semi-automatic rifle used by US troops in World War II and Korea.

Mr. Kalashnikov was twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in the Soviet era. On his 90th birthday in 2009, he was granted the title of Hero of the Russian Federation and presented with a medal by President Dmitry Medvedev, who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of." //BelaPAN