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The idea is to simplify logistics by having a common ammunition type in the fireteam. The other big reason they don't put a 7.62mm weapon in the fireteam is weight.

In US Army / USMC think the M249 isn't a machiengun, it's a squad automatic weapon or an automatic rifle. Basically another rifle calibre weapon in the squad that puts out a lot more bullets giving the fireteam the abillity to suppress enemy targets while still being light enough to advance.

True machineguns are assigned to platoon weapons squads or company weapons platoons and put into the line where they can do the most good and won't interfere with movement of the unit.

Or if you want to get all 40K here, the M249 is a Storm Bolter while the M240 is a Heavy Bolter.

The name says it all. SQUAD automatic weapon. It gives infantry squads a weapon that can help lay down a base of fire that also relies on the same ammo their weapons do. It simplifies the logistical trail as well as giving them a weapon they can carry a significant ammo load for without needing a mule.

I see, that makes sense. I was under the impression that the m249 was more or less a replacement for the m240, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I guess it's a good weapon for that purpose, considering most everyone just uses semi-auto.

quite an Irony. the Soviets did manage to churn out an SMG that uses drum magazine. the PPSh-41. and it is more numerous than the total production of M1928.

did the Soviets really fix the drum mag problems occured in the Tommygun?

here. Soviet conscript platoon with PPSh-41. possibly this one is from a movie or a reenactment of Stalingrad siege.


the mag itself uses clockwork spring, same as M1928. what makes this weapon superior and far more numerous than M1928 Tommy? (and what makes it more reliable while using drum magazine?)
the only weakness i've knon is that of the ammunition, this weapon uses a weak 7.62mm pistol round. (soviets still keep this weak pistol ammunition in the arsenal by the 40s, while other nations uses heavier, bigger pistol rounds)

and I'm not sure if anyone did successfully housed a set of coil springs into drum magazine feeding system in place o f clockwork. but i guess that some modern assault rifes has drum mag and its spring system should work that way and not a clockwork.

The Americans used the BAR as the Automatic Rifle in the squad up until the late 1950s/early 1960s when they exchanged it for the M60. Unfortunately the M60 was to heavy and too unreliable in its original form to really move with the squad. When the switch from 7.62mm rifles to 5.56mm rifles it also lost ammunition interchangeability.

As a result the US went looking for something lighter and firing a 5.56mm round and came up with the FN Minimi (or M249).

Most of the world did the same thing around the same time, not necessarily because the Minimi was the best weapon of it's class. It is still fairly heavy compared to a rifle, but because it was the best one going at the time. It was also the only one that wasn't jut an assault rifle with a heavy barrel on it at the time.

Nowadays there are a lot more contenders for being a decent Squad Automatic Weapon, but in general the Minimi has already filled the orders so some really good weapons are just not getting the orders they should.

One of my favourites that repeatedly gets overlooked is the Ultimax. It's everything you want in a squad automatic weapon - lightweight, controllable when fired from the hip, capable of using standard magazines as well as high capacity systems . . . but it wasn't ready at the time most armies bought the Minimi. As a result the Ultimax has only sold a few examples and a few simple development issues (a problem with the feed system) have gone unresolved.

Lone Cat wrote:quite an Irony. the Soviets did manage to churn out an SMG that uses drum magazine. the PPSh-41. and it is more numerous than the total production of M1928.

did the Soviets really fix the drum mag problems occured in the Tommygun?

here. Soviet conscript platoon with PPSh-41. possibly this one is from a movie or a reenactment of Stalingrad siege.


the mag itself uses clockwork spring, same as M1928. what makes this weapon superior and far more numerous than M1928 Tommy? (and what makes it more reliable while using drum magazine?)
the only weakness i've knon is that of the ammunition, this weapon uses a weak 7.62mm pistol round. (soviets still keep this weak pistol ammunition in the arsenal by the 40s, while other nations uses heavier, bigger pistol rounds)

and I'm not sure if anyone did successfully housed a set of coil springs into drum magazine feeding system in place o f clockwork. but i guess that some modern assault rifes has drum mag and its spring system should work that way and not a clockwork.

the drum magazine was slower and more complicated to load with ammunition than the later 35-round box magazine that increasingly supplemented the drum after 1942. While holding fewer cartridges, the box magazine did have the advantage of providing a superior handhold for the supporting hand

I see, that makes sense. I was under the impression that the m249 was more or less a replacement for the m240, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I guess it's a good weapon for that purpose, considering most everyone just uses semi-auto.

No, the M249 and M240 serve concurrently. As much as we want guys to aim, usually, there's still plenty of applications for someone who can go full rock&roll if only for suppression.

quite an Irony. the Soviets did manage to churn out an SMG that uses drum magazine. the PPSh-41. and it is more numerous than the total production of M1928.

did the Soviets really fix the drum mag problems occured in the Tommygun?

I can't speak to the reliability of the PPSh's drum mag, but I can tell you about the weapon itself. It's a Soviet weapon, designed for their type of warfare and their soldiers. It's designed to be simple and able to be slammed together by any black smith or machinist they could find. They valued ruggedness and reliability beyond all else. They were handing the weapons to kids who barely understood which end of the gun the bullets came out of. It had to be simple and able to withstand the kind of treatment it would recieve from an 18 year old with zero training in sub-arctic conditions. It was designed for short ranged work almost exclusively and made up for it's lack of accuracy by just spraying a hellacious cloud of ammo down range.

Yes, both the M1928/M1 and PPSh-41 are both submachine guns. After that there's little to really compare.

and I'm not sure if anyone did successfully housed a set of coil springs into drum magazine feeding system in place o f clockwork. but i guess that some modern assault rifes has drum mag and its spring system should work that way and not a clockwork.

There are some drum magazines in existence but the vast, VAST majority of military fire arms use detachable box magazines, not drums. It's rarely something designed for from the beginning. The Beta C-Mag that's compatible (generally) with any STANAG magazine using rifle carries 100 rounds. However it's not as reliable as conventional magazines and weighs more than a similar number of rounds in conventional magazines.

Comparing the Thompson and the PPSh is a lot like comparing the M-16 and the AK, except that this time the Soviets are the ones with the small calibre, high velocity round.

It shoots .223, which isn't a very big bullet at all....

Doesn't have to be a big bullet if you put it in the right place. Trauma inflicted by a fragmenting 5.56 projectile is also completely out of proportion to its size, don't underestimate it.

did the Soviets really fix the drum mag problems occured in the Tommygun?

A better question would be "Did they CARE?"

The Beta C-Mag that's compatible (generally) with any STANAG magazine using rifle carries 100 rounds. However it's not as reliable as conventional magazines and weighs more than a similar number of rounds in conventional magazines.

Surefire now makes 60 and 100 round box magazines with 4 columns of cartridges converging to 2 rows to actually feed into an M16 compatible magazine well. I am very interested in seeing how they handle, all i've heard so far from people who have used the 60s is that they are amazing, but heavy.

the mag itself uses clockwork spring, same as M1928. what makes this weapon superior and far more numerous than M1928 Tommy? (and what makes it more reliable while using drum magazine?)
the only weakness i've knon is that of the ammunition, this weapon uses a weak 7.62mm pistol round. (soviets still keep this weak pistol ammunition in the arsenal by the 40s, while other nations uses heavier, bigger pistol rounds)

7.62x25mm is Not a weak pistol round. It is at least as capable as 9mm and the like, it has a pretty high velocity and resulting flatter trajectory, and it punches through barriers (And kevlar) better than 9mm and the like. Mark my words: If some company starts making modern capacity handguns in 7.62x25, they will be in some serious money.

Secrets behind the PPSH41 being made in such gigantic numbers is...well...there are just fewer parts that need actual machining versus "Bend this piece of sheet metal into a "U" shape!" ....When the main body of your weapon requires you to take a 20 pound block of steel, mill half of that away (Which is now chips on the floor, unusable for anything else) and requires someone who actually KNOWS how to run a milling machine AND pay for them to take the time to do all the operations....it's a wasteful method of going about things. It also didn't hurt that the PPSh only really required a different twist rate and chamber reamer than the Mosin nagants to produce, rather than an entirely new setup on the gun drills and then rifling machines.

You also have soviet versus american doctrine involved. The soviets placed much less emphasis on aimed rifle fire, particularly with the recruits that were being inducted at that point, AND the PPSh is a lot more effective in urban fighting than a mosin nagant, AND it is cheaper and simpler to produce than a mosin nagant. It's win on all fronts. US doctrine, well... We wanted to keep fire superiority versus what we were facing at the time (Bolt actions!) and ALSO be able to shoot at range (While we call in gigantic amount of air support and artillery.)

Surefire now makes 60 and 100 round box magazines with 4 columns of cartridges converging to 2 rows to actually feed into an M16 compatible magazine well. I am very interested in seeing how they handle, all i've heard so far from people who have used the 60s is that they are amazing, but heavy.

I've seen those. I'll be interested in the long term reliability of the mags. Where the columns start to come together just looks like a clusterfeth waiting to happen.

More comment on the 7.62x25. Developed from the .30 Mauser used in the Mod96 broom handle pistol, the most powerful handgun cartridge untill the .357mag, the Russian wartime manufacter of 7.62x25 for sub machine guns led to pistol wrecking pressures. Ammo batches would be test fired, and if the dirty test gun didn't work, they added more powder untill it did. This also increased rate of fire . After WW2 Bulgaria I think picked up the PSSh as their front line service rifle, and further pushed velocity into rifle energy ranges in that little pistol round. Patton loved the garand rifle, don't remember any SMG quotes from him. Rommel's favorite pistol was a French lebel revolver I believe. Both liked innovative weapons though(Patton had his wife drive a tank chassis for a demo at the Aberdeen proving grounds). Rommel as a front line fighter in WW2 used the mg34 in north Africa. But was a fan of pistols and hand grenades in ww1 trench warfare.

I've never heard a weird concepts stemmed from Bulgaria. filling a stronger powder into lil 7.62x25 mm cartridge to make an assault rifle out of an existing SMG. where in contrast Mikhail Kalashinikov designed an assault rifle while he was in hospital as he himself experienced that either a service rifle with an ROF and weight of SMG. or an SMG with an effective range of a rifle is needed. that is. he saw that either PPSh-41 or Mosin-Nagant rifles (or even an advanced SVT-40) are inadequate... (I don't think Mikhail Kahalshinikov himself had seen germans using StG44 or get any hands on that wonder weapons.
Germans did. however. classify StG-44 as SMG rather than an actual assault rifle (dunno.. sometimes it was called "MP-44") regardless that it used a new ammunition.

Do you REALLY believe that Bulgarian works on making a 7.62x25 magnum rounds really works on making an assault rifle out of PPSh 41?

on pistol rounds. What is the proof that 7.62x25mm was more powerful than .45 ACP?

filling a stronger powder into lil 7.62x25 mm cartridge to make an assault rifle out of an existing SMG.

Not a new concept. More recently the Isrealis made 9mm ammunition that was -VERY- hot loaded,intended to be used in (and only in) the UZI. Use in anything less built like a tank than an uzi could result in...hilarity.

(I don't think Mikhail Kahalshinikov himself had seen germans using StG44 or get any hands on that wonder weapons.

Mechanically speaking, the AK47 was a lot closer to an M1 Garand with the mechanism turned upside down (Which is a rifle he very well may have ran into at the time.) than it was the STG44/MP44/MP43/Mkb42[H]...whatever you want to call the thing.

What is the proof that 7.62x25mm was more powerful than .45 ACP

Wikipedia, the box of truth, and several other websites have performance data and experiments that are quite easy to read through. It's not strictly "More powerful"...as we are talking pistol rounds here. They all suck to varying extents, it's just that 7.62 has a few nice advantages that are rather unique versus other service pistol rounds

The assault rifle is not designed to be an SMG with rifle range or a rifle with an SMG's RoF. It's a different beast. Service rifles prior to the development of the assault rifle tended to fire large (~.30 cal) rifle rounds and were intended to be accurate and lethal well beyond 300m, out to 600m for some. The Germans use the 7.92x57mm, the Russians the 7.62x54mm and the US used the .30-06. All of those rounds are large, powerful, and excellent in their own right.

What happened though is that as more and more statistics about combat in WWII were analyzed weapons designers realized they were overkill. Men in combat weren't taking aimed shots at targets 500m away. Most combat occurred at ranges of less than 300m. Also, weight of fire had more to do with successful combat than aimed fire. With bullets flying around their heads, explosions going off, and the general chaos of battle it was far more common to just empty the magazine at a target than to really aim for it.

So weapons designers got the idea to make a weapon to fight the way people fought rather than make a weapon for how generals thought they should fight. The biggest decision made was to use less powerful rounds. In the Russian case they went to a 7.62x39mm round, which they got the idea for from the MP44's 7.92x33mm round. The US reduced the size of the round but kept the velocity high with the 5.56x45mm round.

The end result is that the new rifles had higher rates of fire, were accurate and lethal up to 300m, the were more controllable in automatic fire than battle rifles, and a big bonus was that the weight of the ammo was significantly less letting soldiers carry more rounds. The 5.56mm NATO weighs half of what the 7.62mm NATO does and about 45% of what a .30-06 does.

The Former Soviet Union and their satellites considered the AK-47 and their derivatives as Submachineguns rather than Rifles. The doctrine intended them to be used primarily on automatic fire and was willing to trade of a fair bit of effective range to do so. Single shot was used to conserve ammunition and for occasional longer range shooting.

In contrast, the west developed Assautl Rifles, rifles that were intended to still provide decent single shot accuracy at range, but capable of fully automatic fire to keep the enemy under cover during an assault.

It seems a fine line of distinction and the resulting weapons had a fair degree of commonality in features and capabilities.

Perhaps the most interesting manifestation of the different philosophies can be found in the controls on the rifles in question. On M-16 pattern rifles the first position after safe is single shot. You have to click past that if you need fully automatic fire. On the AK-47 the first position after safe was fully automatic. You had to push past that to get single shots.

Lone Cat wrote:I've never heard a weird concepts stemmed from Bulgaria. filling a stronger powder into lil 7.62x25 mm cartridge to make an assault rifle out of an existing SMG. where in contrast Mikhail Kalashinikov designed an assault rifle while he was in hospital as he himself experienced that either a service rifle with an ROF and weight of SMG. or an SMG with an effective range of a rifle is needed. that is. he saw that either PPSh-41 or Mosin-Nagant rifles (or even an advanced SVT-40) are inadequate... (I don't think Mikhail Kahalshinikov himself had seen germans using StG44 or get any hands on that wonder weapons.
Germans did. however. classify StG-44 as SMG rather than an actual assault rifle (dunno.. sometimes it was called "MP-44") regardless that it used a new ammunition.

Do you REALLY believe that Bulgarian works on making a 7.62x25 magnum rounds really works on making an assault rifle out of PPSh 41?

on pistol rounds. What is the proof that 7.62x25mm was more powerful than .45 ACP?

Google pink box 7.62x25. You will find all sorts of conflicting information. But according to some of the collectors here in the USA, Bulgarian production SMG rounds are hot rounds. You can find the same sort of stuff in 9mm as SOFDC pointed out. In fact look at any old set of specs for ammo compared to today. For example, over the years .357mag has gotten slower in velocity while 9mm has gotten faster. That isn't even counting the 9mm+P or 9mm+P+. Ammo does not stay the same. So, the .45ACP of 1920 is not the .45ACP of today. I'm just to lazy to dig up my 1940 ammo spec book, to give you the hard numbers.



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7.62x25mm is Not a weak pistol round. It is at least as capable as 9mm and the like, it has a pretty high velocity and resulting flatter trajectory, and it punches through barriers (And kevlar) better than 9mm and the like. Mark my words: If some company starts making modern capacity handguns in 7.62x25, they will be in some serious money.

I wish some company would make Mauser broomhandle copies. Just think, somewhere in china is a warehouse filled with all the machinery needed to mill broomhandles. Althought most Chinese C96 were probably made by people with files. Files and at times really good welding technique

On M-16 pattern rifles the first position after safe is single shot. You have to click past that if you need fully automatic fire. On the AK-47 the first position after safe was fully automatic. You had to push past that to get single shots.

So? This has nothing to do with doctrine, and all with the fact it would require less machining and expense in the AKs case to go SAFE-FULL-SEMI than SAFE-SEMI-FULL without a redesign of the safety (Which....Honestly I don't think anyone would have thought was a bad thing.)

It's a bit like saying that since AKs lacked a last-round-hold-open and push button mag release like the M16 family, clearly the soviets didn't expect their soldiers to live long enough to reload. While that assumption might be true, it is not the reason for the design. Simpler always seemed to be better from all I have heard and read from the designer, simpler machining, simpler parts, etc. etc.

Germans did. however. classify StG-44 as SMG rather than an actual assault rifle (dunno.. sometimes it was called "MP-44") regardless that it used a new ammunition.

This, also, was a political/economic move. When the government says "YOU CANNOT DESIGN ANY MORE RIFLES, OR EXPERIMENT WITH A NEW TYPE OF MILITARY SMALL ARM!" ...well...Gotta get the gun to the people who need it regardless, so you say: "Yes sir, well, we have this new SMG design. It's more accurate, lighter recoiling, much more powerful, has a longer range, and is comparable in weapon weight to what we have now!" "THAT SOUNDS GOOD. IT ISN'T A RIFLE THAT WE TOLD YOU NOT TO BUILD, AND WE NEED SMGs AND MGs, SO YOU CAN HAVE MONEY AND WE WILL USE THIS SMG." "YAY!"

SOFDC wrote:

On M-16 pattern rifles the first position after safe is single shot. You have to click past that if you need fully automatic fire. On the AK-47 the first position after safe was fully automatic. You had to push past that to get single shots.

So? This has nothing to do with doctrine, and all with the fact it would require less machining and expense in the AKs case to go SAFE-FULL-SEMI than SAFE-SEMI-FULL without a redesign of the safety (Which....Honestly I don't think anyone would have thought was a bad thing.)

It's a bit like saying that since AKs lacked a last-round-hold-open and push button mag release like the M16 family, clearly the soviets didn't expect their soldiers to live long enough to reload. While that assumption might be true, it is not the reason for the design. Simpler always seemed to be better from all I have heard and read from the designer, simpler machining, simpler parts, etc. etc.

Germans did. however. classify StG-44 as SMG rather than an actual assault rifle (dunno.. sometimes it was called "MP-44") regardless that it used a new ammunition.

This, also, was a political/economic move. When the government says "YOU CANNOT DESIGN ANY MORE RIFLES, OR EXPERIMENT WITH A NEW TYPE OF MILITARY SMALL ARM!" ...well...Gotta get the gun to the people who need it regardless, so you say: "Yes sir, well, we have this new SMG design. It's more accurate, lighter recoiling, much more powerful, has a longer range, and is comparable in weapon weight to what we have now!" "THAT SOUNDS GOOD. IT ISN'T A RIFLE THAT WE TOLD YOU NOT TO BUILD, AND WE NEED SMGs AND MGs, SO YOU CAN HAVE MONEY AND WE WILL USE THIS SMG." "YAY!"

Ya, War time Germany weapons procurement process was a mess. A lot of stuff was intentionally obfuscated for political reasons and/or
security reasons. What a combo.

SOFDC wrote:

filling a stronger powder into lil 7.62x25 mm cartridge to make an assault rifle out of an existing SMG.

Not a new concept. More recently the Isrealis made 9mm ammunition that was -VERY- hot loaded,intended to be used in (and only in) the UZI. Use in anything less built like a tank than an uzi could result in...hilarity.

Russia has done the same thing with it's new service side arm.

Insurgency Walker wrote:

Lone Cat wrote:I've never heard a weird concepts stemmed from Bulgaria. filling a stronger powder into lil 7.62x25 mm cartridge to make an assault rifle out of an existing SMG. where in contrast Mikhail Kalashinikov designed an assault rifle while he was in hospital as he himself experienced that either a service rifle with an ROF and weight of SMG. or an SMG with an effective range of a rifle is needed. that is. he saw that either PPSh-41 or Mosin-Nagant rifles (or even an advanced SVT-40) are inadequate... (I don't think Mikhail Kahalshinikov himself had seen germans using StG44 or get any hands on that wonder weapons.
Germans did. however. classify StG-44 as SMG rather than an actual assault rifle (dunno.. sometimes it was called "MP-44") regardless that it used a new ammunition.

Do you REALLY believe that Bulgarian works on making a 7.62x25 magnum rounds really works on making an assault rifle out of PPSh 41?

on pistol rounds. What is the proof that 7.62x25mm was more powerful than .45 ACP?

Google pink box 7.62x25. You will find all sorts of conflicting information. But according to some of the collectors here in the USA, Bulgarian production SMG rounds are hot rounds. You can find the same sort of stuff in 9mm as SOFDC pointed out. In fact look at any old set of specs for ammo compared to today. For example, over the years .357mag has gotten slower in velocity while 9mm has gotten faster. That isn't even counting the 9mm+P or 9mm+P+. Ammo does not stay the same. So, the .45ACP of 1920 is not the .45ACP of today. I'm just to lazy to dig up my 1940 ammo spec book, to give you the hard numbers.



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7.62x25mm is Not a weak pistol round. It is at least as capable as 9mm and the like, it has a pretty high velocity and resulting flatter trajectory, and it punches through barriers (And kevlar) better than 9mm and the like. Mark my words: If some company starts making modern capacity handguns in 7.62x25, they will be in some serious money.

I wish some company would make Mauser broomhandle copies. Just think, somewhere in china is a warehouse filled with all the machinery needed to mill broomhandles. Althought most Chinese C96 were probably made by people with files. Files and at times really good welding technique

Chinese did REALLY make a copy of Mauser C96 series (unlicensed i think). and they DID make a .45 ACP versions (which became available duirng 30s. when the Guomindang (i'm using Pinyin romanization) faction (Nationalist. the then government body of China) got shipments of Tommygun from the US (yep to fight the Imperial Japanese Armed forces, but more likely to fight either rogue warlords or against Communists). the China did employ C96 as standard sidearm (no other nations on earht did this, or is there any?) of the armed forces, the C96 also a symbol of 20s-30s Shanghai triads (Chinese gangsters).. pretty much the same way M1928 does with the mobsters in the USA


^ Triads with C96

^Chow Yun Fa ... with his only friend. C96. also starred as a triad.

I think any Chinese businessmen of that day can afford a milling machine. many of the old milling workshops in Thailand are owned by chinese propreiters. they may use hand files to make guns but there's a registered gunsmith there so they HAVE access to milling machines.

I wish some company would make Mauser broomhandle copies. Just think, somewhere in china is a warehouse filled with all the machinery needed to mill broomhandles. Althought most Chinese C96 were probably made by people with files. Files and at times really good welding technique

Some manage it with all hand tools. Pakistan in particular has its own little riot of at-home gun factories where, if there's something like a milling machine or lathe present, it might only be getting power from a foot treadle or similar source (HABIB! GET BACK ON THE STATIONARY BIKE!)

SOFDC wrote:

I wish some company would make Mauser broomhandle copies. Just think, somewhere in china is a warehouse filled with all the machinery needed to mill broomhandles. Althought most Chinese C96 were probably made by people with files. Files and at times really good welding technique

Some manage it with all hand tools. Pakistan in particular has its own little riot of at-home gun factories where, if there's something like a milling machine or lathe present, it might only be getting power from a foot treadle or similar source (HABIB! GET BACK ON THE STATIONARY BIKE!)

Ohhh the Khber pass copies?

Need to see that movie! Back on topic, I knew a Vietnam war veteran, a pilot, who carried an M1928. Said the weight gave him confidence. No one else wanted the thing. you have to wonder what it was still doing in the armory.

Insurgency Walker wrote:Need to see that movie! Back on topic, I knew a Vietnam war veteran, a pilot, who carried an M1928. Said the weight gave him confidence. No one else wanted the thing. you have to wonder what it was still doing in the armory.

Boris the blade says "Weight is good, it is sign of reliability, if it does not shoot, you can always hit him with it."

Tyyr wrote:What happened though is that as more and more statistics about combat in WWII were analyzed weapons designers realized they were overkill. Men in combat weren't taking aimed shots at targets 500m away. Most combat occurred at ranges of less than 300m. Also, weight of fire had more to do with successful combat than aimed fire. With bullets flying around their heads, explosions going off, and the general chaos of battle it was far more common to just empty the magazine at a target than to really aim for it.

Yeah, it was a combination of figuring out more about what soldiers were actually doing in battle, and also the changes in the modern battlefield. There was a lot more support available in 1945 than there had been in in 1939, let alone 1914, and it was felt in an engagement the very least a squad call on for support would be heavy machine guns and mortars, both of which were a far more deadly threat outside of 300m than a squad full of rifles, let alone artillery or field gun support.

Nice post, by the way.


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Insurgency Walker wrote:Ya, War time Germany weapons procurement process was a mess. A lot of stuff was intentionally obfuscated for political reasons and/or
security reasons. What a combo.

And also because the Nazis were seriously bonkers.

I mean, the factory building the prototype bomber with the range to hit the East Coast of the US was overrun by the Russians. Up until it was overrun design and testing continued... When the Russians are in Germany and advancing on all fronts, is a bomber capable of hitting New York really what you should be worrying about?

both of which were a far more deadly threat outside of 300m than a squad full of rifles, let alone artillery or field gun support.

I will note on this point: You are trying to locate something that is trying to become about 3 inches tall, wearing clothing that blends in with local terrain (one would assume) and is going to actively attempt to not be noticed....and then after locating this something, you need to figure out if it's friendly. This is not really an easy task when done by eyeball.

A rifle that can kill a man at 2000 meters (With accompanying weight and recoil) is largely wasted potential if you cannot locate and engage your enemy at even a fifth of that range due to terrain, camo, etc.

SOFDC wrote:I will note on this point: You are trying to locate something that is trying to become about 3 inches tall, wearing clothing that blends in with local terrain (one would assume) and is going to actively attempt to not be noticed....and then after locating this something, you need to figure out if it's friendly. This is not really an easy task when done by eyeball.

A rifle that can kill a man at 2000 meters (With accompanying weight and recoil) is largely wasted potential if you cannot locate and engage your enemy at even a fifth of that range due to terrain, camo, etc.

That was maybe also a factor, though I haven't read it given as a primary one.

sebster wrote:When the Russians are in Germany and advancing on all fronts, is a bomber capable of hitting New York really what you should be worrying about?

Yes, if its carrying the Bomb, which also what they were trying for.

Actually weight isn't a bad thing in a weapon. There's a point where it's counter productive, making the weapon too heavy to carry for an extended period but there's nothing wrong with a few extra ounces or even a pound or so. It usually means the internals aren't cut down to a nat's ass and when you fire, especially something like a .45 ACP at full auto, it keeps the damn thing from jumping out of your hands.

Yeah, it was a combination of figuring out more about what soldiers were actually doing in battle, and also the changes in the modern battlefield. There was a lot more support available in 1945 than there had been in in 1939, let alone 1914, and it was felt in an engagement the very least a squad call on for support would be heavy machine guns and mortars, both of which were a far more deadly threat outside of 300m than a squad full of rifles, let alone artillery or field gun support.

The battlefield that birthed the battle rifle is very, very different from the one that gave us the assault rifle. Heck, even now we're seeing more and more carbines being issued to troops in urban fighting as the battlefield continues to evolve. Good thing or not long term we'll see, and the difference between an M4 and an M16 is nothing like the difference between an M16 and an M1 Garand.

Yes, if its carrying the Bomb, which also what they were trying for.

But you don't need a bomber with that kind of range when the enemy is just over the next line of hills. They already had bombers with more than enough range and capacity to hit targets far more important to their ultimate survival than New York.

And yes, the MP44 had to be called anything but a "rifle" or it would have been shot down by Hitler because you know... fething crazy.

Tyyr wrote:Actually weight isn't a bad thing in a weapon. There's a point where it's counter productive, making the weapon too heavy to carry for an extended period but there's nothing wrong with a few extra ounces or even a pound or so. It usually means the internals aren't cut down to a nat's ass and when you fire, especially something like a .45 ACP at full auto, it keeps the damn thing from jumping out of your hands.

Yeah, it was a combination of figuring out more about what soldiers were actually doing in battle, and also the changes in the modern battlefield. There was a lot more support available in 1945 than there had been in in 1939, let alone 1914, and it was felt in an engagement the very least a squad call on for support would be heavy machine guns and mortars, both of which were a far more deadly threat outside of 300m than a squad full of rifles, let alone artillery or field gun support.

The battlefield that birthed the battle rifle is very, very different from the one that gave us the assault rifle. Heck, even now we're seeing more and more carbines being issued to troops in urban fighting as the battlefield continues to evolve. Good thing or not long term we'll see, and the difference between an M4 and an M16 is nothing like the difference between an M16 and an M1 Garand.

Yes, if its carrying the Bomb, which also what they were trying for.

But you don't need a bomber with that kind of range when the enemy is just over the next line of hills. They already had bombers with more than enough range and capacity to hit targets far more important to their ultimate survival than New York.

And yes, the MP44 had to be called anything but a "rifle" or it would have been shot down by Hitler because you know... fething crazy.

Granted. However, nuking New York would have had a major impact on the war. But yea, lots of effort in the wrong way. What do you expect? They were coockoo crazy.