During the Battle of Bryansk in 1941, Kalashnikov, a tank commander with the rank of sergeant, was hospitalized for German anti-tank guns, and during his hospitalization Kalashnikov tried to discuss with other comrades about the automatic weapons used by the Germans.
During his six months in hospital, Kalashnikov conceived the idea of developing a new submachine gun to equip the Red Army on a large scale.
The PPK-42 submachine gun from the movie
After Kalashnikov was discharged from the hospital, with the help of acquaintances, Kalashnikov made the PPK-42 I prototype gun in the warehouse workshop of Matei.
The prototype I gun is the one in the movie "Kalashnikov" above, with a wooden fixed stock PPK-42, but for unknown reasons, the wooden fixed stock version of the I type PPK-42 is still missing.
PPK-42
After the development of the PPK-42 submachine gun, Kalashnikov immediately took his submachine gun to Almaty and showed his submachine gun to the Central Committee of Kazakhstan.
PPK-42 submachine gun
After seeing Kalashnikov's prototype gun, the Central Committee of Kazakhstan immediately recommended Kalashnikov to the Moscow Aviation Academy.
Kalashnikov studied systematically at the Moscow Aviation Academy and then improved his PPK-42 submachine gun to design a new type II prototype gun.
The PPK-42 with the metal telescopic stock I showed above is Kalashnikov's newly improved Prototype II gun after he went to the Moscow Aeronautical Institute to study.
Kalashnikov was then recommended by General Kubatkin of the Turkmen Military District to go to the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Anatoly Arkadievich Blagunravov, then the director of the Kirzhinsky Artillery Academy, also personally test-fired and inspected Kalashnikov's PPK-42 submachine gun.
Although Anatoly Arktievich Blagunrawolv, after examining the PPK-42 submachine gun, had an overall negative evaluation of the gun, he noted Kalashnikov's outstanding talent and talent and wrote a letter of recommendation encouraging Kalashnikov to continue his research on light weapons.
The PPK-42 submachine gun from the movie
Kalashnikov then went to the Shurov range in Moscow as a technician at the Shurov Range under the General Directorate of Artillery Equipment Technology, and then took his PPK-42 submachine gun to the 1942 bid for a new submachine gun.
(After that, everyone knows that Kalashnikov's PPK-42 submachine gun lost to Sudaev's PPS submachine gun)
Kalashnikov's wooden fixed stock version of the I PPK-42 produced at the Matei warehouse has been lost both in sample and data, but fortunately Kalashnikov's metal folding stock version of the II PPK-42 sample gun and data are still preserved in the Moscow Artillery General Directorate.
The PPK-42 submachine gun fired a 7.62x25mm Tokarev pistol cartridge, fed with a 25-round magazine of the PPD-34 submachine gun, with a full gun length of 750 mm when the metal folding stock was unfolded, a full gun length of 532 mm when the metal folding stock was contracted, a barrel length of 250 mm, a full gun weight of 2.9 kg, and a fast and slow machine near the pistol grip that could choose between single and burst shots, although the continuous firing rate data of the gun is currently unknown.
The PPK-42 submachine gun adopts the principle of free bolt and the locking method adopts inertial locking, but unlike most submachine guns at that time, the PPK-42 submachine gun adopts closed chamber standby and adopts V-shaped notch scale machine aiming, the barrel radiator of the gun is made of stamped steel plate, but the body is made of metal milling.
(Because it looks a lot like an American Thompson submachine gun, the PPK-42 has a nickname also called Soviet Thompson))
PPK-42 submachine gun, grip feels real, the gun is short and tough, the shooting is stable, but because the gun body and receiver and other parts are made of metal milling, compared with the Sudaev PPS submachine gun in the same period, metal processing manufacturing is too cumbersome and complex, and the cost is more expensive, so although the gun has quite an advantage in performance, the cost and manufacturing processing technology are not suitable for manufacturing during the large-scale war that was in full swing in the Soviet-German War at that time.
(Some small parts of the PPK-42, such as screw bolts, also need to be manufactured using a metal milling process))
Finally, although Kalashnikov's submachine gun was defeated by Sudaev's PPS, Kalashnikov was friends with Sudayev in reality, and Kalashnikov himself admitted that Sudayev's PPS submachine gun design was better, and in reality Sudayev was also a legendary Soviet gun designer.