D letter series type 56

[StraightShooter]

Here are some pictures of an SKS I received in February of 2014. 

[StraightShooter]

[StraightShooter]

[StraightShooter]

[Bacarnal]

 

[Boris Badinov]

Very nice.
Large font serial on the stock indicates late series production. Possibly as late as 1961.

Definitely among the finer examples from the Albanian caches.

[Phosphorus32]

Nice! I'd say a 1960. I wish a rare, mythical (non-existent?) 1961 Type 53 would show up to stamp a solid boundary (or not) on the prefix letter guns.

[carls sks]

nice one SS, thanks for sharing.

[Boris Badinov]

Nice! I'd say a 1960. I wish a rare, mythical (non-existent?) 1961 Type 53 would show up to stamp a solid boundary (or not) on the prefix letter guns.

I  keep the door open on 1961  for the large font letter guns because there is only about one month's worth of known 6 mil guns.

It is my belief that there was at least a one year halt to all Type56 production. Similar stoppages occurred for the typ53 and type54. Just my $.02.

[Bob_The_Student]

Really nice, SS.

[running-man]

Definitely a real beauty and a 100% keeper in my book.  Those letter D's with matching stocks just don't pop up very often at all.

I'm not opposed to the idea of letter guns spilling into '61, but there's not much evidence to support that one way or the other.   If we are tossing ideas out, another option is that there were two lines running simultaneously during letter gun production and the large font / narrow font guns were actually made concurrently in '59 with '60 being a completely empty year and '61 the year when they had to slowly ramp up 100% domestic production with the 6 million /26\s.  It's likely going to be one of those things that we know a date range, know what came before and what came after, but may never know the exact 'born on' date of any particular carbine in the letter series.   

[Boris Badinov]

Though it is not impossible that the Chinese were running two simultaneous lines of production for the letter guns, it seem very unlikely.

1958-61 was a very tumultuous time in China with near social, economic, industrial, and political collapse. Type 53 production stopped for three years ('57-'59) and Type54 production for two years ('60-'61).

With only 3-4 full capacity production weeks worth of 6mil guns, we are left with a three year period 1959-1961 during which only two years worth of type56 light production occurred. And the Letter gun production totals indicate those would have been two very lean production years-- 140k-180k guns per year and well below the 220k yearly average from 1956-1958. The Chinese would have bee very keen to keep such stoppages concealed, and the letter serials would have been one way to do that.

It also coincides with the en masse pull-out of Soviet technical advisers by Kruschev in 1960, that marked the start of the Sino-Soviet split.



Taken all together, I think it makes a very compelling argument for a halt in type56 production that lasted about one year. Alternately, letter gun production might not have been interrupted at, and instead a halt in type56 production could have started in the first month of 1961-- resulting in the low 6 mil serial totals.

Either way, the halt in production seems very plausible -- even probable (imho).

[Phosphorus32]

Acknowledging that all we can do at this point is raise hypotheses, not verify or refute them, I think a production slow down rather than a complete halt makes mores sense. The fact that they restarted Type 53 production in 1960 shows that Jianshe, as a whole, wasn't completely shut down in 1960. I think they deliberately shut down Type 53 production from 1957-59 and restarted largely to equip the Vietnamese and/or their militias, rather than the PLA. For Type 56 SKSs, there is the number 6 year code production from 1961 and the letter guns from 1959-1960 (maybe into 1961).

The absence of Type 54 production at Factory 66 at Bei'an in 1960-61 may suggest that 66 was harder hit by material shortages, or that they simply focused there limited steel and other material inputs on higher priority Type 56 AK production. We don't have extensive (any) lists of Type 56 AK production, so that hypothesis is definitely hard to examine.

[pcke2000]

Though it is not impossible that the Chinese were running two simultaneous lines of production for the letter guns, it seem very unlikely.

1958-61 was a very tumultuous time in China with near social, economic, industrial, and political collapse. Type 53 production stopped for three years ('57-'59) and Type54 production for two years ('60-'61).

Don't know where you got the info. According to a Chinese published book (2015) and the official factory archive quoted in the book, Factory 626 (66) sent North Vietnam about 30,000 Type 56 automatic rifles (AK) and 20,000 Type 54 pistols (Tokarev) in 1961 alone. So obviously, production did not stop.

[Boris Badinov]

Though it is not impossible that the Chinese were running two simultaneous lines of production for the letter guns, it seem very unlikely.

1958-61 was a very tumultuous time in China with near social, economic, industrial, and political collapse. Type 53 production stopped for three years ('57-'59) and Type54 production for two years ('60-'61).

Don't know where you got the info. According to a Chinese published book (2015) and the official factory archive quoted in the book, Factory 626 (66) sent North Vietnam about 30,000 Type 56 automatic rifles (AK) and 20,000 Type 54 pistols (Tokarev) in 1961 alone. So obviously, production did not stop.

The failure of Mao's 2nd Five Year Plan is well documented in the historical record. The number of deaths that occured during this period is estimated between 20million and 60million.

30,000 Ak56 and 20,000 type54 in 1961 is not at all significant. By that time the Chinese had been producing each for  at least half a decade. 50,000 total pieces to N.Vientnam would have been a drop in the bucket, and threats of self-induced internal collapse wouldn't have dulled Mao's political aims in Vietnam as far the western threats was concerned.


The Chinese turned out over 650,000 sks carbines in the first three years of production with production increases in the 1957 and 1958. Yet  the following 3 year span 1959 - 1961 the serial data indicate that the production dropped to below 400,000 -- and possibly closer to 300,000.