The development cycle of the AK-47 is still kind of murky, but Mikhail Kalashnikov did the general configuration design work on what is still the most famous automatic rifle of the 20th Century. It was not the most accurate rifle, but its very literal bulletproof reliability made it very widely used all over the world—indeed, for a while during the Vietnam War US soldiers often used captured AK’s against the North Vietnames and Viet Cong very effectively because it could survive the harsh jungle conditions of Vietnam.
I read, years ago, that Charles Atkins Jr was hunting in South Vietnam back in the late 1950s, before the war.
He was warned to be aware of the communist infiltrators, and while hunting, there came into his view two of them armed with rifles.
Askins pulled out his 44 Magnum and killed them both dead. One was armed with an SKS, the other with a strange rifle that turned out to be an AK.
Askins claimed that HE was probably the first person to take a human life with the .44 mag, and capture the first AK-47.