"The AK is as Danish as strawberry porridge with cream"
An article, author unknown, has been circulating on Danish internet forums. It claims that the AK-47 design should be attributed to Danes, rather than Russians.
Personally I do not buy this theory. Guns have evolved over hundreds of years since the cannon was invented. Each new development has been an improvement of one that proceeded it. There are few, if any, 100% original designs. If we attributed a design to the inventors of each concept that preceeded it, the AK-47 would probably have been invented by the Americans, British, Germans, French, Chinese and [insert any country here].
Still, you may be interested in reading the theory and making up your own mind.
Many thanks to Mark for translating the article into English for the blog.
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I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
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Same with the SKS most just call it the SKS while actually its called the SKS-45. The AK AKM debate is simeple most people dont know the differnce from a AK to a AKM so the most common slang used in movies and news is just AK-47 so everyone just calls it a AK-47 or just a SKS.
Its it true that if its a 5.45 caliber it is a AK-74 even east europen countries call them that even though they have there own sesingation for the weapon.
I find it amusing that so many in the west believe the Russians and Soviets only copy.
The facts are that sometimes they do copy, and they do this for very clear and specific reasons.
The B-29 copy was because the Soviets had not developed a 4 engined bomber since about 1936 and when a couple of brand new B-29s landed in their lap they decided it would be quicker to start with those than start from scratch.
The Sidewinder missile was copied because its modular design was so simple and straight forward.. easy to maintain and fix... Soviet missiles at the time were complex and expensive and difficult to find faults and fix.
The Buran looks like the US space shuttle but is fundamentally different. The US space shuttle is like a C-130 transport with a huge fuel tank and two enormous solid rocket boosters to get it moving.
The Buran is a glider that sits on a Saturn 5 equivalent.
The US space shuttle is maintainence intensive for a craft with a 10-20 ton payload capacity.
With the Buran you dont have to carry around 10 tons of dead weight in the main engines like the US shuttle and if you want to build a space station with Buran you can remove Buran from the Energyia rocket and launch 120 ton payloads in one piece. Assembly in space is incredibly difficult and slow so being able to launch larger complete sections makes building space stations much much easier.
Regarding the Mig-15 looking like the German TA-183... the Ta-183 was in the western occupied part of Germany and all the scientists that worked on it and all their designs and plans went to the US... yet no one asks why the Sabre looks so much like the TA-183 and so different from the Shooting Star that preceeded it.
The Su-25 doesn't look like the A-9... it actually looks like the Il-40 with the intakes shortened to the wingroots.
The Tu-160 is a rather larger and rather more powerful aircraft than the B-1B and if you look at the designs they rejected before they arrived at the Tu-160 design you would not say it was a copy, the fuselage profiles of both aircraft are actually quite different.
How about some western copies... they have adopted assault rifles without being accused of copying anyone.
The Bradley IFV was a copy of the BMP-2. The early prototype of the Bradley even had the same one man turret layout as the BMP-1 till the BMP-2 was revealed and they changed to a BMP-2 layout with a two man turret.
The F-15 was an almost direct copy in terms of layout of the Mig-25 and most subsequent US aircraft are copies of that basic layout... F-14, F-18, F-22, just like the Soviet aircraft adopted the same Mig-25 layout.. Mig-29, Mig-31, Su-27, PAKFA...
Now in Afghanistan the US have been adopting a marksman rifle in 7.62mm calibre to add reach for its infantry platoons... though few of them are as light and handy as the SVD.
Also in Afghanistan, US helicopters have stopped firing at the enemy from the hover and try to keep moving... like the Hind... western sources often tried to claim it was lack of power, but it was just sensible combat tactics.
Do I need to go on?
Smoothbore main guns in MBTs (T-62s).
Gas Turbine engines, both as primary propulsion of a tank and also as auxiliary power unit to reduce fuel consumption when the vehicle is stationary. (T-80).
The Soviets and Russians do copy when it suits them. They don't deny it when they do copy, and general ignorance and superficial resemblance means many things designed to do similar things will look similar even if they are different.
Fashion and technical capability are factors too... for a while the only way to get a supersonic fighter on a short air strip was swing wings, or VSTOL.
Now it is more sophisticated wing design and powerful engines.