Kalashnikov KA174
N.F. Makarov designed a curved barrel assembly and K.T. Kurenkov developed a ball-shaped mount. They performed all the work required to create a curved barrel machinegun with a 90 deg. barrel curvature. The machine gun was intended to arm tanks, more precisely to protect them in the "dead zone" that cannot be engaged by conventional straight-line machinegun fire. To resolve the problems of disabled or trapped tanks it was decided to mount such machineguns on the turret hatch. The tankmen were not very enthusiastic about it, to say the least. Consequently, the idea to protect tanks by curved barrel machineguns was abandoned and all activity to this effect came to an end. Characteristics Caliber, mm 7,62 Cartridge, model 1943 7,62x39 Barrel: length, 90mm curvature, deg. 1,020 Information from Http://www.Kalashnikov.guns.ru
Picture and information courtesy of: Andrew Terentyev
