'I made it to protect the motherland. Mikhail Kalashnikov' Renowned AK-47 inventor dies at 94

I had to gain experience as I did not have a technical education.
Mikhail Kalashnikov 

This man aged so good, Vodka I guess does the body good!

Obituary: Mikhail Kalashnikov

Mikhail Kalashnikov developed the AK47 to match the firepower of German weapons

Mikhail Kalashnikov's automatic rifle became one of the most familiar weapons on the planet.

It was employed by the armies of dozens of countries, and incorporated in several national flags.

But the AK47 also became a symbol of revolution around the world. It saw action on battlefields as diverse as Angola, Vietnam, Algeria and Afghanistan.

It was also heavily utilised by Palestinian groups and famously appeared in the hands of Osama bin Laden.

It's comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture as well as reliable and easy to maintain in the field. It became the most widely used assault rifle in the world.

Yet Kalashnikov, although honoured in Russia, made very little money from his gun and once complained he would have been financially better off designing a lawnmower.

Mikhail Kalashnikov was born on 10 November 1919 into a Russian peasant family in the village of Kurya, Altai Territory. He was one of 18 children, of whom only six survived.

He was called up by the Red Army in 1938, and his design skills were used to improve the effectiveness of arms and equipment used in Soviet tank regiments.

It was after he was wounded in October 1941, when the tank he commanded was struck by a German shell, that Kalashnikov began to design the firearm that was to make his name famous.