The AK-47 is easily both the most famous and infamous firearm in all of the world’s history. With over 100 million made, its appearance in over half a century of cinema, and its place within the hands of players in hundreds of video games, the Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947 is undeniably the most recognisable weapon ever made.
With the help of Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, we chart the AK-47’s journey, from its post-WW2 creation through to its huge pop culture footprint as the quintessential Hollywood “bad guy gun”.
0:00 – Intro
01:02 – Origins of the AK-47
02:30 – Misnaming the AK
04:02 – Different Variants
06:11 – AK-47 In Pop Culture
09:18 – AK-47 In Gaming
16:04 – Ending
In this episode of Loadout, Dave Jewitt visits the Royal Armouries to talk to Keeper of Firearms & Artillery Jonathan Ferguson to chat about the legendary AK-47 rifle, its history and production, and its mammoth pop culture footprint.
You can check out more episodes of Loadout right here. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzSrmGkpWKk&list=PLpg6WLs8kxGMzIemU1gyyLmg5VlKI2UvC
You can check out our Firearms Expert Reacts series here. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FVzcoRjoN4&list=PLpg6WLs8kxGMgYb13XjPgOKbm5O-CDq7R
If you’re interested in seeing more of Jonathan’s work, you can check out more from the Royal Armouries right here. – https://www.youtube.com/user/RoyalArmouries
If you would like to support the Royal Armouries, you can make a charitable donation to the museum here. – https://royalarmouries.org/support-us/donations/
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Thanks for watching another episode of Loadout!
We wanted to do our very best to do the AK justice, and it was a real privilege to get to see some real historic firearms as part of making this episode.
Stay tuned as tomorrow (5th Dec) we have a bonus chat with Jonathan, breaking down a few of the examples and their lives in games, including a golden AK….So make sure to come back for that.
We could never cover every part of the AK's future in one episode, but I hope this was an interesting spotlight on a little of it's history as well as it's life in games and pop culture.
I appreciate you all watching and sharing your thoughts and hope you are enjoying the series.
<3
At 5:52 you say that the AKS-74U is often mislabeled as a submachine guns. Well yes and no, sure it's just a shortened assault rifle but the Soviet army's officially designated it as a SMG. In fact the original AK-47 was adopted to fufill the SMGs role while the SKS was supposed to be the main fighting rifle, however things turned out differently in practice.
*good guy
MG42/MG3 IS SUPERIOR!
Accept reload time. That's a bit of an inconvenience.
shoutout to Conflict: Desert Storm. Its age shows but I look back fondly on it. This game birthed a love for the SVD.
8:25 that is a vz 58 dog
dude the ak even made its way to titanfall 2 and it is given to you right at the beggining of the game
after watching this…..I feel the first assault rifle to shoot lasers will be based on the AK platform.
… and then there is a variant of it in Star Wars as well! Unmatched in our galaxy and long ago in far far away galaxy. 🙂
a sci-fi rifle with wooden grips makes no sense.
Pedantic correction, I don't think there were AKs used by the hijackers in Air Force One, they used reappropriated MP5s.
AKs were used by the prison guards later in the film.
I was really hoping they would give an honorable mention to HK-47 from KOTOR
Kalashnikov isnt just a pop culter bad guy gun. Its a actual bad guy gun.
"The good guys using AR-15s" ugh I'm sorry the AR15 is a civilian version of the M16 or M4 rifle
I prefer my AK’s over everything else
In Mexico, it's called "Cuerno de Chivo" Goat horn' because of it's curved magazine.
Kalashnikov was in a T-34 in WW2 Russian service!?!? That was the worst place you could possibly be. Thinking about all the brilliant minds that died horribly in those metal coffins drives me crazy.
Well, that's because it was bad guys.
Here in the United States you don't got to go somewhere to study it you can just go to the gun store and buy one 😂🇺🇲
It's so simple, a child could use it and they do!
I ❤ my AK-47.
Andor had those space AKs too
Imagine how many Russian lives could have been saved if Kalashnikov had gotten injured earlier
This is a great series
I remember particularly enjoying the Far Cry 2 rendition of the AK-47 since it was a game that featured weapon deterioration (partially as a means to counter players upgrading by picking up weapons of the fallen). AKs would jam later in their cycle and take longer to fully come apart.
One of the oddities about the AK and clones is how what was allegedly the same gun would feel differently in different games (even though, yes, it'd fit the same slot among the guns within the same game). The Left 4 Dead unnamed Soviet Rifle curiously sounded similar to a YouTube video recording of an MP40 being fired (think, an evil sewing machine).
In my understanding (mind you I'm not an academic but an armchair enthusiast that reads about stuff), The American encounter of AKs in Vietnam not only turned the AK into a bad-guy gun, but also drove the US to consider implementing its own US standard assault rifle.
The M14 was a full-powered battle rifle using some design elements of the M1. Opinions of a friend who was in the USMC at the time noted there was some disappointment from his fellow infantrymen on the performance of the M16 over the M14. (The primary nightmare the US was trying to avoid was threading in yet another ammunition type into its supply lines). Besides which Americans want to see a visible hole in the thing they just shot.
The story I heard was that some generals were trying to reconfigure ten-man squads to include three M2 fire teams rather than one, but to do this they had to lighten the carry-loads of the riflemen, and switching them to the M16 allowed them to do that, and this was what finally got the Armalite commissioned for deployment by the US in the Vietnam theater.
…An elegantly simple nine pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam or overheat, it will shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it, and they do. The soviets put the gun on a coin, Mozambique put it on their flag…
I personally never found the alleged Soviet coin that featured the AK-47
That "AK" James Bond is sliding down the stairs with at 08:25 is a VZ-58 😅
When I played golden eye as a kid I always felt the Ak in that game looked like a pencil and I would call it the pencil gun lol
CSGO is a game where good guys using AKs go up against bad guys using M4s
– heyzeus