A brief potted history of the AK
It should be remembered that the SKS was officially the post-war Soviet infantry rifle until the AK got into full production and thus the SKS was readily able to be seen by the West in the early 1950s. Kalashnikov's first submissions required a lot of redesign work until his model of 1946 was deemed sufficiently ready to take part in the new Soviet rifle trials. The trials ran from 1947 to 1948. The AK succeeded but not without controversy. It needed more work to make the judges completely happy. It's worth noting that all Soviet weapon design was done by a project group (not by individuals as the Soviet propaganda machine would have us believe), in special administrative zones - basically, closed cities where visitors were not allowed without official Party sanction - so very few spies and absolutely no journalists!
While the AK model of 1947 was adopted as the next Soviet infantry rifle in 1949, it didn't see full distribution until the early/mid-1950s according to Jane's Infantry Weapons 1986-87 and 1992-93 yearbooks. What the Jane's yearbooks don't mention is that the versions manufactured from 1948 on were made with sheet-metal stampings that proved flawed due to the low quality of the technology in the Soviet Union at the time. This forced a redesign with the receiver then being milled from a solid billet of steel from 1951/52. This delayed large scale manufacture until the mid-1950s. Production years are as follows: -
AK-47 (1st Generation), 1948-51. Earliest models, had stamped sheet metal receiver and barrels were not chromed.
AK-47 (2nd Generation), 1952-1958. A forced redesign due to low quality of sheet metal tech at the time. Features included a milled receiver, wooden furniture and chromed barrel & chamber.
AKM-47 (otherwise known as the AKM) and variants such as the AKMS, 1959-1974. Receivers once again made from sheet metal stampings.
(So the 'true' 1st Gen AK-47 was produced for only about four years with the 2nd Gen AK-47 being produced for about double that).
Early models would not have been seen in the West until at least the time of larger scale production and even then, they were issued first to units that wouldn't be immediately in the Western eye. Many units (including Border Guards) still carried PPSh-41 & PPS-43 SMGs, SKS rifles and RPD LMGs until those weapons were fully replaced by the AK/RPK in 1957. China obtained both the SKS and the AK designs in 1956 and began mass production of both shortly after.
Due to these factors it's entirely likely that the West first saw AKs at either end of the mid-50s (elite units such as the VDV parading with it on May Day, invasion of Hungary as mentioned before but also because China began manufacture at that time and so on). US forces came into large scale contact with the AK during the Vietnam War so the earliest examples to be captured may very well have been Chinese Type56 versions given to the VC/NVA. Other examples were certainly recovered from the Rhodesian bush war. Both these conflicts would have seen AKs in use from as far back as the early 1960s.
With the Pentagon regarding the AK as little more than a crude attempt at making a more powerful SMG, it's no surprise that they also devalued the lower powered ammunition. So when it comes to the NATO adoption of the 7.62x51mm round, my thoughts on the matter are expressed far better by C.J. Chivers, a former infantry officer in the USMC who has written a few firearms books. When being interviewed by Popular Mechanics about his book on the AK (The Gun, ISBN-10: 0743271734 or ISBN-13: 978-0743271738), he was asked why the US didn't try to make a rifle in the same vein as the AK when they became aware of it. He answered as follows: -
"The Pentagon's arms-design circles were insular and informed by parochialism and biases. One of the biases was an affinity for larger, more powerful rifles. These weapons were unwieldy and, compared to assault rifles, slow to fire. But the romance with long-range marksmanship (which is part of American frontier legend) and the resistance to weapons designed elsewhere (including the Kalashnikov) led to the Pentagon misapprehending the biggest breakthrough in infantry arms since the advent of the machine gun. The Pentagon's arms designers were dogmatic and saw themselves and their weapons as superior. They missed the significance of the sturmgewehr. They took little notice of the proliferation of the Kalashnikov."
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