He didn’t recover quickly from his wounds. He began work on the thing late in the war, and didn’t finish the design until 1947. Of course he saw the M1 and the StG44. Of course he took into account what he could learn from observing those weapons and from accounts of their field performance.
The beauty of the AK47 design is that the damned thing works. It doesn’t have to be kept spotless. It doesn’t take a natural -born mechanic to keep it in working order in the field. And it doesn’t need to be real accurate since most infantry combat either is at point-blank range, or involves firing in the general direction of an imperfectly spotted enemy.
The Russians are the masters of the simple solution. I read that German rifles froze up during the siege of Stalingrad because their gun oil turned into glue at the low temperatures. The Russians mixed gasoline into their gun oil and the problem was solved.
The Kalashnikov design is probably the ultimate in automatic rifle design where a mid-powered, 7.62 cartride is concerned. I know that there are some that liked the M14, but that beast had a reputation of being tough to handle on full auto.
Eugene Stoner's M16 was a real departure & had the US Army Ordnance not futzed with the powder & chinsed on chroming the chambers it probably wouldn't have developed the bad reputation that still haunts it to this day.