- Chivers, C. J.
The Gun.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
ISBN 978-0-7432-7173-8.
-
Ever since the introduction of firearms into infantry combat,
technology and military doctrine have co-evolved to optimise
the effectiveness of the weapons carried by the individual
soldier. This process requires choosing a compromise among a
long list of desiderata including accuracy, range, rate of fire,
stopping power, size, weight (of both the weapon and its
ammunition, which determines how many rounds an infantryman can
carry), reliability, and the degree of training required to
operate the weapon in both normal and abnormal circumstances.
The “sweet spot” depends upon the technology available
at the time (for example, smokeless powder allowed replacing heavy,
low muzzle velocity, large calibre rounds with lighter supersonic
ammunition), and the environment in which the weapon will be used
(long range and high accuracy over great distances are largely
wasted in jungle and urban combat, where most engagements are
close-up and personal).
Still, ever since the advent of infantry firearms, the rate
of fire an individual soldier can sustain has been
considered a key force multiplier. All things being equal,
a solider who can fire sixteen rounds per minute can do the work
of four soldiers equipped with muzzle loading arms which can
fire only four rounds a minute. As infantry arms progressed from
muzzle loaders to breech loaders to magazine fed lever and bolt actions,
the sustained rate of fire steadily increased. The logical
endpoint of this evolution was a fully automatic infantry weapon:
a rifle which, as long as the trigger was held down and
ammunition remained, would continue to send rounds downrange at
a high cyclic rate. Such a rifle could also be fired in
semiautomatic mode, firing one round every time the trigger
was pulled without any other intervention by the rifleman other
than to change magazines as they were emptied.
This book traces the history of automatic weapons from primitive
volley guns;
through the
Gatling gun,
the first successful high rate of fire weapon (although with
the size and weight of a field artillery piece and requiring
a crew to hand crank it and feed ammunition, it was hardly an
infantry weapon); the
Maxim gun, the
first true machine gun which was responsible for much of the carnage
in World War I; to the
Thompson
submachine gun, which could be carried and fired by a single
person but, using pistol ammunition, lacked the range and stopping
power of an infantry rifle. At the end of World War II, the vast
majority of soldiers carried bolt action or semiautomatic weapons:
fully automatic fire was restricted to crew served support weapons
operated by specially trained gunners.
As military analysts reviewed combat as it happened on the ground
in the battles of World War II, they discovered that long range
aimed fire played only a small part in infantry actions. Instead,
infantry weapons had been used mostly at relatively short ranges
to lay down
suppressive
fire. In this application, rate of fire and the amount of
ammunition a soldier can carry into combat come to the top of
the priority list. Based upon this analysis, even before the end of
the war Soviet armourers launched a design competition for a
next generation rifle which would put automatic fire into the hands
of the ordinary infantryman. After grueling tests under all kinds
of extreme conditions such a weapon might encounter in the field,
the
AK-47, initially
designed by
Mikhail Kalashnikov,
a sergeant tank commander injured in battle, was selected. In 1956 the AK-47
became the standard issue rifle of the Soviet Army, and it and
its subsequent variants, the
AKM (an improved design which
was also lighter and less expensive to manufacture—most of the
weapons one sees today which are called “AK-47s” are
actually based on the AKM design), and the smaller calibre
AK-74. These weapons
and the multitude of clones and variants produced around the world
have become the archetypal small arms of the latter half of the
twentieth century and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable
future in the twenty-first. Nobody knows how many were produced but
almost certainly the number exceeds 100 million, and given the
ruggedness and reliability of the design, most remain operational
today.
This weapon, designed to outfit forces charged with maintaining
order in the Soviet Empire and expanding it to new territories,
quickly slipped the leash and began to circulate among insurgent
forces around the globe—initially infiltrated by Soviet and
Eastern bloc countries to equip communist revolutionaries, an
“after-market” quickly developed which allowed almost
any force wishing to challenge an established power to obtain a weapon
and ammunition which made its irregular fighters the peer of
professional troops. The worldwide dissemination of AK weapons
and their availability at low cost has been a powerful force
destabilising regimes which before could keep their people down with
a relatively small professional army. The author recounts the
legacy of the AK in incidents over the decades and around the
world, and the tragic consequences for those who have found themselves
on the wrong end of this formidable weapon.
United States forces first encountered the AK first hand in
Vietnam, and quickly realised that their
M14
rifles, an attempt to field a full automatic infantry
weapon which used the cartridge of a main battle rifle,
was too large, heavy, and limiting in the amount of ammunition
a soldier could carry to stand up to the AK. The M14's only
advantages: long range and accuracy, were irrelevant in the
Vietnam jungle. While the Soviet procurement and development
of the AK-47 was deliberate and protracted, Pentagon whiz kids
in the U.S. rushed the radically new
M16 into
production and the hands of U.S. troops in Vietnam. The
new rifle, inadequately tested in the field conditions it would
encounter, and deployed with ammunition different from that used
in the test phase, failed frequently and disastrously in the hands
of combat troops with results which were often tragic. What
was supposed to be the most advanced infantry weapon on the planet
often ended up being used as bayonet mount or club by troops in
their last moments of life. The Pentagon responded to this disaster
in the making by covering up the entire matter and destroying the
careers of those who attempted to speak out. Eventually reports
from soldiers in the field made their way to newspapers and
congressmen and the truth began to come out. It took years for
the problems of the M16 to be resolved, and to this day the M16 is
considered less reliable (although more accurate) than the AK.
As an example, compare what it takes to
field strip an M16
compared to an
AK-47. The entire ugly saga of the M16 is documented
in detail here.
This is a fascinating account of the origins, history, and impact
of the small arms which dominate the world today. The author does
an excellent job of sorting through the many legends (especially
from the Soviet era) surrounding these weapons, and sketching
the singular individuals behind their creation.
In the Kindle edition, the table of
contents, end notes, and index are all properly linked to the
text. All of the photographic illustrations are collected at the
very end, after the index.
December 2011 