Post by filakairsoft on Nov 9, 2007 22:26:14 GMT 8
THE GENERAL
Mikhail Timoveeich Kalashnikov was born on November 10th, 1919, to a large peasant family in the village of Kurya, high in the Altai Territory of Siberia. After finishing secondary school M T. Kalashnikov went to work in the Matai Depot as an apprentice and technical clerk in the employ of a Turkistan-Siberian Railway. In 1938 M T. Kalashnikov was called up for Red Army, where he finished training as an engineer in the tank mechanical school and where he started designing by creating a revolution counter to register the number of shots from a tank gun, made a special appliance for the "TT" pistol to enhance its effectiveness through tank turret slits and designed a tank running meter.
In June of 1941 Mikhail Timoveeich was ordered by the Commander-in-Chief General Zhukov to Leningrad to implement his inventions. However it was the beginning of The Great Patriotic War and Kalashnikov participated as a tank commander in fierce battles against the Nazis. In October 1941 he was severely wounded and while in hospital, Mikhail Timoveeich conceived a number of designs which, while on a six-month sick leave, he tried in the depot's workshops. So successful were they that, with the support of the Soviet leadership, Kalashnikov was posted to The Moscow Aviation Institute to further his work.
In June 1942 the famous soviet scientist A. A. Blagonravov took an interest in the talented young inventor
and made everything available to the self-taught-designer. By 1944 Kalashnikov developed an experimental model of the self-loading carbine; it became the base for a creation of a new gun which in 1946 gained a overall victory in difficult competitive tests. In 1947 the automatic device was adopted by the Soviet Army, known as the AK47, and Staff Sergeant M.T. Kalashnikov was awarded The Stalin Price First Class.
Since 1949 A number of his inventions have been adopted and as such has become the General Designer to the Soviet Army.
In honor of his services to the Soviet Socialists Republic Mikhail T Kalashnikov was given the rank of Colonel and in 1971, as well as becoming an Honorary Doctor of Engineering Science, was further decorated with three Orders of Lenin, The Order of the Red Banner of Labour, The Order of the Great Patriotic War First Class and The Order of the Red Star.
The President of Russia decorated the outstanding designer with The Order for Distinguished Services to the Motherland and promoted him to Major-General on his 75th birthday in 1994.
Mikhail T Kalashnikov, November 10th, 2007, His 88th Birthday!
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