During
World War II, the
Germans developed the
assault rifle concept, based upon research that showed that most firefights happen at close range, within 300 meters. The power and range of contemporary rifle cartridges was excessive for most small arms firefights. As a result, armies sought a cartridge and rifle combining
submachine gun features (large-capacity magazine, selective-fire) with an intermediate-power cartridge effective to 300 meters. To reduce manufacturing costs, the
7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge case was shortened, the result of which was the lighter
7.92x33mm Kurz (German: Short).
The resultant rifle, the
Sturmgewehr 44 (StG44) was not the first with these features; its predecessors were the
Italian Cei-Rigotti and the
Russian Fedorov Avtomat design rifles. The Germans, however, were the first to produce and field sufficient numbers of this assault rifle to properly evaluate its combat utility. Towards the end of the war, they fielded the weapon against the Soviets; the experience deeply influenced Soviet military doctrine in the post-war years.
According to
Mikhail Kalashnikov, he began imagining his assault rifle while in hospital after being wounded in the
Battle of Bryansk.
[4] A frequent topic of conversation among the patients was the lack of an automatic rifle to match those of the Germans. After tinkering with designs, he entered a competition that had been launched for a new weapon that would take the 7.62x41mm cartridge developed by Elisarov and Semin in 1943 (the 7.62x41mm cartridge predated the current 7.62x39mm). A particular requirement of the competition was the reliability of the firearm in the muddy, wet, and frozen conditions of the Soviet frontline. Influenced by the simplicity of the design of
Aleksei Sudaev's
PPS-43 submachine gun, Kalashnikov produced his "Mikhtim" (derived from his first name and
patronymic) and won the competition after it was dragged through mud, sand, and dust and was still able to fire without jamming. The "Mikhtim" was the prototype for the development of a family of firearms which culminated in the AK-47 in 1947.
[5]