Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of AK-47, dies at 94

By 1938, when he was drafted into the Red Army, as it was then called, his skill with tools helped earn him an assignment to an armored unit that later was equipped with the new T-34 tank. Tinkering in earnest now, he invented devices to count the hours a tank’s engines were running and the number of bullets fired by its machine guns.

Mr. Kalashnikov told his life story in memoirs, articles and interviews, some contradicting others, and there were almost as many variants in it as his famous assault rifle generated. In his definitive book, “The Gun ,” biographer C. J. Chivers sorted through the stories and offered the most reliable narrative available in the West.

During a 1941 battle with the Nazi invaders at Bryansk in western Russia, then-Sgt. Kalashnikov was wounded in either the chest or the shoulder.

While recovering at a hospital in Yelets, south of Moscow, he said he listened to heated discussions among fellow soldiers about the excellent weapons the Germans fielded and the shortcomings of Russian counterparts. They were particularly unhappy with their rifles, which were often retreads of single-shot weapons dating back to Czarist arsenals.

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