AK-44

Alexander Kalinshkov was a solider in the Great Patrtrotic War (1941-1945) he was wounded and noticed that the Germans had better machine guns so he devoulped the what would be known as the AK-47. THe Soviet goverment didn't use it in the army until 1947 hence the name. What if they used it right away?
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
How different was it from the PPSh41 submachine gun? The Russians were very fond of this, it was cheap and easily mass-produced and given to whole battalions.
 
Straight off Wiki
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]
 
Kalashnikov designed several weapons after he was wounded in WWII. None of them were accepted for service. The AK-47 was developed post war and accepted for service in 1947 after several other assault rifles were eliminated in competition. They still had some bugs and eventually first saw service in 1949. It wasn't until the mid 1950s that the Soviets had enough to for their frontline units.
 
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