Personal thanks to the great Master
You want, you do not want, but the change of generations is inevitable. So ended the earthly journey of the Great Arms Master (the only way - every word with a capital letter) of Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov. The whole world remembers him as the creator of the automaton and rightfully gives praise. I want to tell him “separate” THANKS for the machine gun of his name - the PC of all modifications.
Mikhail Timofeevich, you have created another MIRACLE. How many specialists were failing, and probably rightly so, our 7,62 mm “Vintpatron” caliber for its archaic character, evaluating it as “unsuitable for use in automatic weapons", And you have proved to everyone that the Russian man can do anything. I especially appreciated the creation of your hands after two occasions from my army life. Both of them occurred in the early 90s in Primorye, where I had to serve at that moment.
Our battalion was already ending its monthly stay at the training ground, or, as we said, “in the camps”. This whole month was full of very intense combat training. Crisis phenomena in the army were not yet so obvious, so every day we drove, fired, practiced practical questions on tactics, engineering training of ZOMP ... It was interesting and somehow fun ... At one of the shootings, I noticed that the machine gun was left-hand machine shoots clearly at a slower pace than the other two. Well, as they say, I didn’t have to be very surprised, these machine guns fired day and night, and I thought that the deposit was already too much in it, so at the next statement of the problem I ordered the commander tank while loading ammunition, move the regulator on the gas pipe to the -3 position. The time was very expensive, it was very hot spring days, and the field with the target environment, no, no, it caught fire and it took a lot of time to extinguish it, so we tried to have time to shoot as many crews as possible. The machine gun began to shoot “more fun”, but still lagged behind the “neighbors” in rate of fire, therefore, as soon as the next “fight against fire” began, he gave the command to remove it and serve it. Miracles began in just two minutes. From the tower it was clearly visible how to get the PKT, and, laying it out on a piece of tarpaulin at the rear of the tank, they began to disassemble it, and then ... they quickly assembled it, and the tank commander with the PKT trotted toward the "tower". It is clear that something is "wrong." It turned out that the gas piston was broken at the machine gun !!! It was broken off into two unequal parts, and the breakdown place was very “riveted”, which indicated that even in this state the piston could fulfill its “duty” as best as possible ... The machine gun, of course, was replaced, and the “invalid” bolt the frame with the extractor and the gas piston was placed on the table under the tower as an “example” ... You can, of course, say for a long time that your weapon is very reliable, but when you personally see that it, even a faulty one, will give you a chance - it costs a lot ...
The second event occurred after the first. It was associated with another weapon. The fact is that at that time, as they said, “on the wave of openness, publicity and restructuring,” we began to conduct joint exercises with the Americans, and for this purpose we received a whole “gray ship” with a division of “mariners”. The command of the Coastal Forces of the Pacific Fleet showed great wisdom and knowledge of the case, gathering officers from all its units for this event, so that we could see the actions of the “sworn friends” with our own eyes. Of course, there was a lot of interesting and different things from us, but what was especially struck was that during the "solving fire problems", their machine guns CLEAN, and so that at the end machine gunners, "spitting" on all the conventions , they stood up to their full height and with the heel strikes on the handles of the reload they tried to revive their “mashingans” ...
Mikhail Timofeevich, it was your day and your holiday, when at first very arrogant "mariners" more and more lost their snobbery, and then, like "boys", rejoiced when they were allowed to shoot at your PC, and they were long time did not believe that this machine gun shoots and shoots, if only there were cartridges ...
Once again, a personal thank you to the GREAT WEAPONS MASTER, for the creation of his GENIUS and HANDS. Here in the old days, every master put a stamp on his weapon. I remember how familiar archaeologists were very impressed when, on an excellent sword, which they unearthed in burial and considered “Western European work,” we managed to examine the Cyrillic stigma - “I did the humanity.” I would have liked to see on each of your armament a similar mark: “Did Mikhail Kalashnikov.” It is better than any quality mark!
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