Today, February 20, 2020, is also the "father of the svd sniper rifle" and the famous gun designer of the former Soviet Union: Yevgeny Fyodorovich Dragonov (Евгений Федороров, who won the "Lenin Prize" and the "State Prize of the Russian Federation", but who has been diligent and humble in his life.
Father of svd: Dragonov celebrates his 100th birthday today
Exactly one hundred years ago, on February 20, 1920, Dragonov was born into a family of gunners, and his grandfather was a gunner at the Izhevsk Arsenal, and this place will henceforth be inseparable from Dragonov.
In 1934, after graduating from high school, Dragonov entered the Izhevsk Institute of Technology to study machining technology, and in his autobiography he said that he had to study 4-5 hours every morning during the university and 4 hours in the evening to go down to the workshop to practice operations, and this systematic study laid a solid foundation for him to design firearms in the future.
In 1940, Dragonov was conscripted into the army
A year after his graduation, that is, in 1939, the Second World War officially broke out, and Dragonov also enlisted in the army in the autumn of that year to begin his military career, in view of his mechanical processing skills, he worked as a gunner in the Red Army, and two years later he was promoted to ordnance chief, until he was demobilized in 1945, Dragonov had been exposed to many domestic and foreign weapons in the war, which made his theoretical knowledge once again tempered by practical experience.
Dragonov enlisted in the army
After retiring from military service, Dragonov came to work at the Izhevsk Arsenal and served as senior weapons supervisor of the Weapons Design Bureau. In 1948, Dragonov began to make some necessary improvements to the M1891/30 PU sniper rifle (Mosin Nagant rifle using a PU scope), eventually introducing the MS-74 sniper rifle.
M1891/30 equipped with PU sights
The main improvement of the MS-74 was the redesign of the PU sight clamp, which could no longer be fed with the 5-round bridge clamp because the sight was located directly above the receiver, and the original scope clamp was too heavy to prevent long-term aiming. Thus, the sight frame of Dragonov's ms-74 was simplified, so that the PU sight was located on the left side of the receiver, thus making room for the magazine.
The ms-74's sight is left and can be loaded with a 5-round magazine
Not only that, but because the fixture was much lighter, Dragonov added this weight to the barrel to improve accuracy, and also simplified the design of some other details, which ultimately made the MS-74 not only reduce overall weight but also achieve excellent accuracy.
MS-74 rifle
Dragonov attaches so much importance to the accuracy and ergonomics of firearms that he loved shooting during his college years, and even this gunner was already a certified shooting instructor when he graduated from college, and it is precisely because of this that in addition to the svd, a military sniper rifle, Dragonov also designed many rifles for competitive shooting.
Dragonov himself was also a great fan of shooting, with him holding his own S-49
After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union was about to face another worldwide "war" – the 15th Olympic Games to be held in Helsinki, the Netherlands, in 1952. This is not only the first Olympic Games after the end of World War II, but also the first Olympic Games since the founding of the Soviet Union (before the socialist Soviet Union believed that the Olympic Games were of a capitalist nature and disdainfully participated), in order to prove to the people of the world that Soviet boys not only beat the Nazis one by one, but also participated in competitive shooting!
Dragonov designed a rifle with extremely high precision for the Olympic Games
So Dragonov developed the S-49 competition rifle for the Olympic Games, and in the test at the end of December 1949, the s-49 could control the dispersion of 10 rounds of ammunition at a distance of 100 meters to the size of a "20 kopeck" coin, while the 20 kochi coin was only 21.9 mm in diameter, and if the commonly used angle division unit was used, the s-49 had reached an accuracy of less than 1 moa at a distance of 100 meters, which was definitely quite high in the 1950s.
Because of this, soviet shooter Vasily Borisov used the S-49 to set a new world record in the international shooting competition held in Bulgaria in 1950, ushering in the opening of the upcoming Olympic Games, and finally the Soviet Union won 22 gold, 30 silver and 19 bronze in the 1952 Olympic Games, second only to the United States.
Wartime end gun can kill the enemy, during the game to raise the gun can win gold, the picture is S-49 rear view
Dragonov designed at least 27 sports rifles in his lifetime, such as cv-55 zenith, mcv-55 arrow, biathlon-7-2, etc., of which biathlon-7-2 is dedicated to "biathlon" (a sport that combines skiing and shooting), including biathlon-7-2, Dragonov's many sports rifles have won multiple shooting championships for the Soviet national team, and can be called "Olympic gold medal royal gunsmith". ！ Even Today's Russia is still a favorite for biathlons.
Another sporting rifle of Dragonov: the CV-55 Zenith
It wasn't until 1958 that Dragonov began developing the world-famous SVD semi-automatic sniper rifle.
After a systematic study of machining technology during the university period, an in-depth understanding of many domestic and foreign small arms during the military, and since then he has been working in the Izhevsk Arsenal and improving and designing a variety of rifles, and he has always been a gun fan who has always been particularly keen on shooting, which has led dragonov to have a high degree of dedication to the accuracy of the weapons he needs to design.
Do a line of love a line
However, what the army needs is a semi-automatic rifle, because it must be cut in the barrel to conduct air to achieve the bolt action cycle, it is inevitable to let the barrel be in a non-floating state, and the semi-automatic rifle in the bolt bolt re-entry of the rapid push into the chamber action is also easy to produce vibration, scratch the bullet and affect the accuracy of the weapon.
Dragonov borrowed a lot of the mature technology of the ak-47 in the design of the svd, but the locking shoots were increased from two to three to enhance the latch strength and stability, while using a short-stroke piston to push the bolt recoil to reduce the change of center of gravity caused by the movement of the piston and bolt, and secondly, to reduce the component tolerance as much as possible under the premise of ensuring operational reliability, the barrel was lengthened and weighted to accommodate the 7.62×54mm full-power bullet and reduce the barrel vibration.
SVD semi-automatic sniper rifle
Interestingly, in the tender for this semi-automatic sniper rifle, the designer of the ak-47 Kalashnikov also participated, but the gun king designed the work is basically an ak with an extended barrel and has not made too many changes, and Kalashnikov also knows that although the design of the ak-47 can greatly ensure the reliability of the gun, as a semi-automatic sniper rifle, the accuracy is really touching. As a result, Kalashnikov gave up extending his AK army into the sniper rifle territory in time and concentrated on developing the RPK light machine gun, and the facts also proved that Kalashnikov successfully took the main weapon of the Soviet squad firepower: the ak-47 assault rifle, the RPK light machine gun, and the pk general machine gun.
Although the design of the sniper rifle lost to the svd, the RPK was a success
Dragonov's svd, on the other hand, successfully defeated other opponents in 1963 and became the standard weapon of the Soviet Army, for which Dragonov won the Lenin Prize in 1964.
Although the svd was a semi-automatic sniper rifle, and there were many designs that now seem to have a great impact on accuracy, such as the handguard still in contact with the barrel, etc., the svd's shooting accuracy was much better than the M1891/30 sniper rifle used by the Soviet Army for a long time. According to the 1984 swd operation manual, the acceptance criterion is that the diameter of the dispersion circle of 4 ordinary shells at a distance of 100 meters does not exceed 8 cm, which is equivalent to 2.7 moa per angle division unit.
Three-stage head with svd, eat chicken tonight
Note, however, that the acceptance criteria fired a normal bullet instead of a 7n1 sniper shell specially designed by Victor Sabelnikov, and the rifling of the svd was reduced from 320mm to 240mm to accommodate tracer armor-piercing incendiary bombs, while the 320mm svd designed by Dragonov had the best accuracy.
In order to make the army adapt to this sniper rifle faster, Dragonov also designed the .22lr caliber small-caliber training rifle TSV-1 corresponding to the SVD, which is not highly accurate but reduces the cost, allowing the training of snipers to adapt to future weapons in the early stages.
The accuracy of the TSV-1 within 50 meters is still very high, and there are actually three bullet holes in this coin
On August 4, 1991, Yevgeny Fyodorovich Dragonov died of a heart attack and was buried in the Kkhkhhryakovskoe Cemetery in Izhevsk, along with many Soviet heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
Dragonov lived a humble life and trained many young designers, many of whom later became teachers to his son Alexey Dragunov, and Alexei Dragunov lived up to his father's expectations by designing a pp-19 in 1993 with Kalashnikov's son, Victor Kalashnikov Bison submachine gun.
The joint work of the sons of two famous gun designers: pp-19
For Dragonov, he continued the craftsmanship of his ancestors for mechanical manufacturing, manufactured a lot of sophisticated sport rifles to win glory for the country in peacetime, and designed the svd sniper rifle to guard the tranquility of the country, and at the same time cultivated many outstanding descendants, his son also inherited his genes And his works have been passed down to the world, and on the day of his hundredth birthday, there are still people who remember and praise his life, enough.
A lifelong devotee of Yevgeny Fyodorovich Dragonov