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I can think of a bunch of weapons that were successful within their niche but didn't see further development. The Madsen light machine gun was a highly effective design, but was not iterated upon after the war. The FAL was one of FN's most successful products, but none of their subsequent designs reused its tilting-bolt action. The Mauser C96 was a commercial success with many imitators and zero derivatives. The Maxim was the most successful machine gun ever but its short-stroke recoil operation was an evolutionary dead end. Even the Sten didn't last more than a few years; it was little more than a last-ditch simplification of the obsolescent MP28/Lanchester, while the Sterling was a ground-up redesign that only maintained the basic concept of an open-bolt 9mm tubegun.

Lack of further iteration can be for a number of reasons, be it expense of manufacture, complexity of design, unsuitability of the action for other cartridges, obsolescence due to competition or technological advances, easing of wartime pressure, loss of doctrinal relevance, or sheer political circumstances. Just saying, that's not a good litmus test for design quality.

In any case, the Chauchat is still not a good gun from a pure performance standpoint, but I don't think I've ever heard it described as such. It's merely the one that could be manufactured in staggering numbers with minimal tooling under foreign occupation and, more importantly, was praised by men who used it in combat in stark contrast to its modern reputation, and frankly I think it's worth rehabilitating (to some degree) on that basis alone. How a gun stacks up against its peers in a head-to-head comparison on a flat range is the sort of trivia that has little to do with what makes a gun successful in the real world.

Grey Templar wrote:but it is somewhat of an oddity that nobody adopted the FG42 after the war considering how good it really was.

The fire control mechanism of the FG42 to enable both closed-bolt semi-auto and open-bolt full-auto is an extraordinarily overcomplicated design, and despite the heavy use of stampings it has a lot of fiddly machined parts and complex geometries. They're also relatively fragile, and Haighus is spot-on about survivorship bias among extant examples.

It's a technological marvel that meets the highly specific and arbitrary criteria it was subject to. It's not an ideal infantry rifle, for many of the same reasons as the MP44.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:The 60 is derived from the MG34. Not the FG42. At All.

The T44 prototype that evolved into the M60 was essentially an FG42 fed by an MG42 feed tray turned sideways. The end product carries little from the FG42 (the gas system was redesigned into a self-regulating piston and the FCG was ditched entirely), but there was never any MG34 pedigree in the design.

You wouldn't have to adopt it unchanged. It could definitely have had a few tweaks to make it better, like no switching between open and closed bolt operation and strengthening a few components.

 catbarf wrote:
In any case, the Chauchat is still not a good gun from a pure performance standpoint, but I don't think I've ever heard it described as such. It's merely the one that could be manufactured in staggering numbers with minimal tooling under foreign occupation and, more importantly, was praised by men who used it in combat in stark contrast to its modern reputation, and frankly I think it's worth rehabilitating (to some degree) on that basis alone. How a gun stacks up against its peers in a head-to-head comparison on a flat range is the sort of trivia that has little to do with what makes a gun successful in the real world.

It met a need. It was a last-ditch weapon and pretty much the only option the French had, just like the Ruby.

No one disputes that, my point was that Ian's efforts to rehabilitate it involved actively denigrating competing contemporary designs. It was silly and there is a point where affectation starts to encroach upon intellectual dishonesty.

I think looking at subsequent service as well as development are fair ways to judge the success (or failure) of a design. The C96, by contrast, also was very much of its time, yet it somehow had a 40-year production run and spawned countless imitators. One sees it's design impact on the Lahti/M40 as well. Total production numbers of its derivatives are impossible to know, but clearly more than a million units were produced. Is that Browning Hi Power level success? No, but it's pretty good.

As for the FG 42, something we have to keep in mind is that wartime weapons aren't built to last. That's a "nice to have," but when you're losing 100,000 weapons a month to attrition, you aren't really concerned about a 50 year service life. That concept also justifies the Chauchat's existence - at a time when weapons were being consumed as fast as they could be built, longevity was besides the point.

In peacetime, however, longevity matters, so weapons need to be durable enough to train with and also have something left over for "the day" when the real fighting starts. Sometimes, a design seems sustained by sheer inertia. I've read lots of criticisms about the BAR, but it just kept trundling along until they finally found something that filled its niche.

The Bren gun was like that - lurking in armories long after its official replacement.

I find that kind of longevity fascinating. Consider the German Gewehr 88, the Commission Rifle. Almost immediately superseded by the Mauser, the Germans were stuck with tons of rifles and useless tooling. Happily, Imperial China was looking to 'get modern,' and that was just the thing for them.

And so was created the famous Hanyang rifle, which eventually was rechambered for 8mm Mauser and remained in production until 1943 (yes the Commission was also 8mm Mauser, but it was a different cartridge). The ultimate example of "good enough." I mean, we can say the same of the Mauser rifles, improved, modified, and cranked out by the millions and during WW II, the armies of Germany, Japan, America and China were all using them. Crazy stuff.

And yeah, I have a hankering for one of the Chinese rifles. Also a Spanish Mosin (Franco emptied out his closet before import stamps were a thing, you see).

Well, one of the two main contemporaries to the Chauchat was the MG08/15, which weighed about twice as much at a whopping 18kg. I think it is fair to say the Chauchat was more useful than that as a light machine gun. Especially as the French military produced about two Chauchats for every MG08/15.

I'd argue the BAR was a weapon far past its use-by date in WWII and it shouldn't have been kept going for so long. I think the US army would have been better served by replacing the BAR with a (then) modern light machine gun instead of replacing Springfields with M1 Garands.

Yeah, I'm going to say you are wrong on that.

Everybody having a semi-auto rifle is far far better than slightly improving your LMG choice and keeping bolt actions. While the BAR was certainly outdated in its original concept, it was still perfectly acceptable as an LMG. And having the overall firepower increase that semiauto gives you when everybody else is using bolt actions is huge.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I'm going to say you are wrong on that.

Everybody having a semi-auto rifle is far far better than slightly improving your LMG choice and keeping bolt actions. While the BAR was certainly outdated in its original concept, it was still perfectly acceptable as an LMG. And having the overall firepower increase that semiauto gives you when everybody else is using bolt actions is huge.

The BAR was not a good light machine gun by WWII, and most squad firepower was from the LMG. BARs had small magazines and no quick-change barrel, so they couldn't put out the sustained fire of a gun like the Bren or MG34 (in LMG configuration). I am confident that a squad of bolt-action riflemen with a single LMG puts out more firepower than a squad of US soldiers with M1 Garands and a single BAR.

The US also came to this conclusion, because they started increasing the number of BARs per squad, starting with 1 and ending up with 3 by the end of the war. Given that the BAR was nearly as heavy as a Bren, carrying 3 around to get adequate firepower is a big weight penalty on the squad.

Obviously, semi-auto rifles and a good LMG is better than both, but if you had to focus on one first (which most nations did coming into WWII) I think upgrading the LMG before the rifles is the smarter choice.

The BAR was great in 1918, where it was the perfection of the walking fire concept. That concept was obsolete by WWII. Incidentally, referring back to the earlier conversation, that makes the BAR doctrinally heavily inspired by the Chauchat, although not mechanically.

 Haighus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I'm going to say you are wrong on that.

Everybody having a semi-auto rifle is far far better than slightly improving your LMG choice and keeping bolt actions. While the BAR was certainly outdated in its original concept, it was still perfectly acceptable as an LMG. And having the overall firepower increase that semiauto gives you when everybody else is using bolt actions is huge.

The BAR was not a good light machine gun by WWII, and most squad firepower was from the LMG. BARs had small magazines and no quick-change barrel, so they couldn't put out the sustained fire of a gun like the Bren or MG34 (in LMG configuration). I am confident that a squad of bolt-action riflemen with a single LMG puts out more firepower than a squad of US soldiers with M1 Garands and a single BAR.

The US also came to this conclusion, because they started increasing the number of BARs per squad, starting with 1 and ending up with 3 by the end of the war. Given that the BAR was nearly as heavy as a Bren, carrying 3 around to get adequate firepower is a big weight penalty on the squad.

Obviously, semi-auto rifles and a good LMG is better than both, but if you had to focus on one first (which most nations did coming into WWII) I think upgrading the LMG before the rifles is the smarter choice.

The BAR was great in 1918, where it was the perfection of the walking fire concept. That concept was obsolete by WWII. Incidentally, referring back to the earlier conversation, that makes the BAR doctrinally heavily inspired by the Chauchat, although not mechanically.

Not sure where you're getting your facts, but the Bren was hot doo doo, underpowered, prone to being a finicky princess, and barely maintained a level of accuracy worthy of a shotgun, let alone an LMG. The BAR was accurate, had higher power than most other squad based LMGs, and was generally more effective in every catagory. Not even hating here, or nostalga teaming here. I hated most of the US WW2 arsenal, but the BAR was not a bad design.

I have seen the Bren called the "best LMG of WW2" many, many times.

How would the BAR have higher "power" than other LMGs when they are all using roughly comparable full-power rifle cartridges?

The BAR is different to the Bren, definitely, and certainly had its niche, but a 20 round bottom-feeding mag has to be inferior to a 30-round top-feeding mag in most LMG scenarios, particularly with a #2 on the gun to change the mags.

Wow... Manufacturing of the Bren stopped in India in 2012! Thats quite a long time... Is it only beaten by the MG42/MG3 that still appears to be in production in various places.

To be clear, I'm not saying the BAR is a bad design. I think it was a very good design for its role. The problem is that it was not designed as a squad LMG, which is what it got shoehorned into in WWII. The role of walking fire was obsolete and the BAR with it.

 Haighus wrote:
Well, one of the two main contemporaries to the Chauchat was the MG08/15, which weighed about twice as much at a whopping 18kg. I think it is fair to say the Chauchat was more useful than that as a light machine gun. Especially as the French military produced about two Chauchats for every MG08/15.

Given the fragility of Chauchat's construction, I'm pretty sure that at any given moment, more MG08/15s were in service than Chauchats. Less mobility, but much better reliability and a higher and more sustained rate of fire.

Maybe in open hillsides the Chauchat had the edge, but in positional warfare, the MG08/15 was unquestionably superior. Remember, if the Chauchat was any good, the Germans could have copied it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I'm going to say you are wrong on that.

Everybody having a semi-auto rifle is far far better than slightly improving your LMG choice and keeping bolt actions. While the BAR was certainly outdated in its original concept, it was still perfectly acceptable as an LMG. And having the overall firepower increase that semiauto gives you when everybody else is using bolt actions is huge.

This was proven in Korea. Decisively. Commonwealth troops using turnbolts were at a severe disadvantage against massed Chinese infantry attacks. Americans could put down much more fire much faster.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Well, one of the two main contemporaries to the Chauchat was the MG08/15, which weighed about twice as much at a whopping 18kg. I think it is fair to say the Chauchat was more useful than that as a light machine gun. Especially as the French military produced about two Chauchats for every MG08/15.

Given the fragility of Chauchat's construction, I'm pretty sure that at any given moment, more MG08/15s were in service than Chauchats. Less mobility, but much better reliability and a higher and more sustained rate of fire.

Maybe in open hillsides the Chauchat had the edge, but in positional warfare, the MG08/15 was unquestionably superior. Remember, if the Chauchat was any good, the Germans could have copied it.

Less mobility is a pretty big deal for a squad support weapon. No major WWI army had trouble in defensive fire with heavy machine guns. The MG08/15 was a whopping 18kg/40Ib, so it was not easy to lug in support of assaults.

I don't think copying weapons is a good metric of anything in most wars of the 20th century. It is incredibly rare to see weapons copied in wartime, even for obviously good and feared designs like the MG42. This is especially true if factoring in cartridge changes, such as from 8mm Lebel to 7.92mm Mauser. You can see the challenges in switching between cartridges by looking at the mess that is the Chauchat in .30-06!

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I'm going to say you are wrong on that.

Everybody having a semi-auto rifle is far far better than slightly improving your LMG choice and keeping bolt actions. While the BAR was certainly outdated in its original concept, it was still perfectly acceptable as an LMG. And having the overall firepower increase that semiauto gives you when everybody else is using bolt actions is huge.

This was proven in Korea. Decisively. Commonwealth troops using turnbolts were at a severe disadvantage against massed Chinese infantry attacks. Americans could put down much more fire much faster.

From my understanding of that conflict, Commonwealth forces performed very well in defensive operations against Chinese attacks, and were frequently deployed to rearguard positions when the 8th Army was falling back from the Yalu river (Commonwealth troops often being frustrated with adjacent US units not holding their ground in this period, probably largely due to doctrinal differences). They also performed well in defensive actions against massively-greater numbers in the battles of Imjin River and Kapyong. Commonwealth units alsohad a lower rate of casualties as a proportion of total soldiers deployed than the US forces. None of this suggests a lack of infantry firepower in comparison to their US counterparts. Indeed, the Glosters were overwhelmed at Imjin only once they ran out of ammunition.

The thing with the BAR is that it should really be viewed as "its a garand with more ammo and very controllable full auto" rather than "this is an old walking fire MG which we are desperately using as an LMG".

You can quite easily use a BAR just like you'd use a garand, but you have the option of full auto too. In that sense, its more of a "we will compensate for not having a true LMG by having 3 of our soldiers use this select-fire rifle"

I would say that in a 12 man squad, having 3 BARs, 2-3 Thompsons, and 6-7 garands is far far more effective firepower than this theoretical 1 LMG, 2-3 Thompsons, and 9-10 M1903s.

You also have the advantage of spreading out your squads automatic firepower. Instead of 1 dude carrying it its divided over 3. Making you more resilient to combat losses and if one guy is reloading the other 2 can still be ready to go rather than your entire squad being without LMG cover for the duration. And the BAR can be comfortably run by 1 dude if necessary, you don't need to have assistant gunners.

In terms of firepower, going from semi-auto to select fire is a small jump. Jumping from bolt action to semi-auto is massive. I would actually say that 12 men with Garands would be better than 11 men with bolt actions and 1 dude with an LMG.

Here's the thing about the Bren being in existence for the last 30 years. The entire military budget of the UK (68.5B) is roughly the cost of one of America's smaller state's budgets for Roads and bridges. That's why it's been in use for so long. I mean be honest. We're talking about a country that has been at best, the laughing stock of World Military technological advancement in the last 50 years. Their last great advance was WW2. And most of that was a spit polish of stuff they had from the last WW.

No, the BAR was not a piece of crap, and yes, the 30-06 was pushing a heavier bullet with more powder, than the .303 British standard round. Also, again, 90% of all ammo the British had wasn't "Fresh off the factory line", and wasn't prone to perfect performance, where on the other hand, literally everything the US used in WW2, was fresh off the line, because it was built specifically for that war.

I don't know where you get this mad-on for the BAR, but seriously. Take a step back. The Bren was a good weapon, the BAR was a good weapon. We don't need to get into a measuring contest over this.

Different armies have/had different doctrines and use different tactics. Most armies had LMGs at the squad level, some had MMGs at the platoon level in a designated weapons squad, and some had both.

I would argue that the use of the Browning Automatic Rifle at the squad level was deliberate, and that the M1919A6 variant with stock and bipod was really the "stopgap" LMG solution for units that needed that capability at a squad level such as Army Rangers and Airborne.

And that same line of thinking continues to this day. For instance, late WWII US Marine squads had 3 fireteams each with an Automatic Rifleman (BAR). Modern USMC squads still have 3 fireteams each with an Automatic Rifleman who now carries the same gun as everyone else (HK 416) and just carries more ammo and has a different role.

On that note, probably no one has a $300k FG-42 or transferable Chauchat/Bren/BAR/MG-08. If you do, I'd love to see pics. Does anyone have/use a piston AR-15 such as an HK416 or Sig MCX? How about the 60 rd quad stack AR mags they were testing for those "Automatic Riflemen"? I'm also curious if anyone uses the medium weight 5.56 ammo with bonded bullets such as Critical Defense, Gold Dot, Ranger, even Fusion, and how those perform at extended ranges. I'd like to replace my crappy battle rifle with something else and after shopping around a second "heavy" AR is a real possibility.

 Haighus wrote:
Less mobility is a pretty big deal for a squad support weapon. No major WWI army had trouble in defensive fire with heavy machine guns. The MG08/15 was a whopping 18kg/40Ib, so it was not easy to lug in support of assaults.

I don't think copying weapons is a good metric of anything in most wars of the 20th century. It is incredibly rare to see weapons copied in wartime, even for obviously good and feared designs like the MG42. This is especially true if factoring in cartridge changes, such as from 8mm Lebel to 7.92mm Mauser. You can see the challenges in switching between cartridges by looking at the mess that is the Chauchat in .30-06!

Was the Chauchat an offensive juggernaut? Did French offensives benefit from its lighter weight?

If having an agile, light-weight squad support weapon was so useful, where was this shown on the battlefield? The Chauchat's advantages were (and are) largely hypothetical.

Copying weapons is one metric; length of service is another. The Chauchat fails on both counts.

As for Korea, it is inarguable that a unit armed with bolt-action rifles is going to be at a disadvantage vs units using self-loading rifles. There's a reason why bolt rifles went out of fashion.

It is also known that - especially during the early phases of the conflict - American infantry had gotten lax in terms of individual marksmanship, relying instead on air, armor and artillery to support them. To their credit, the Commonwealth forces had maintained that proficiency.

My father, who served in the shadow of Korea, noted that an entire week of his Army training focused on close assault and hand-to-hand combat. Thus proving, once again, that armies always prepare to fight the last war.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Given the fragility of Chauchat's construction, I'm pretty sure that at any given moment, more MG08/15s were in service than Chauchats. Less mobility, but much better reliability and a higher and more sustained rate of fire.

Maybe in open hillsides the Chauchat had the edge, but in positional warfare, the MG08/15 was unquestionably superior. Remember, if the Chauchat was any good, the Germans could have copied it.

Commissar, you're veering into 'source: I made it up' territory here. By the end of the war the Chauchat was being issued at a fireteam level, and there is no evidence that any inability to keep the guns in operation led to proportionally lower rates of issue.

As for the Germans copying it: they did. Here's a photo of one of the prototypes:



I couldn't tell you exactly why it wasn't put into full production- it's entirely possible that making it work with the differing feed geometry of 8mm, lest they run into similar issues as the US .30-06 conversion, would have required too much R&D- but the German military did see enough merit in them (used, alongside small numbers of Madsens, by 'musketen' teams to counter breakthroughs) to pursue reverse-engineering.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Was the Chauchat an offensive juggernaut? Did French offensives benefit from its lighter weight?

If having an agile, light-weight squad support weapon was so useful, where was this shown on the battlefield? The Chauchat's advantages were (and are) largely hypothetical.

This thread has some translated comments from Pétain's survey (conducted across the French army) in May of 1917, a few of which praise the use of the Chauchat for walking fire and for defending against counter-attack in newly-taken lines. As mentioned above, the Germans also made use of captured Chauchats for certain mobility-oriented roles (rapid counter-attack).

As far as lightweight magazine-fed machine guns in general, you will also find much more glowing praise in primary sources for the Madsen light machine gun in this role, which was similarly lightweight but without all the problems.

Edit: Also, if we're comparing to the MG08/15 specifically- I have to point out that most of the major belligerents fielded Maxim guns, and all of them identified a need for light machine guns that could keep up with the infantry, but only Germany decided the ideal solution was to put a stock and bipod on a Maxim. If you really insist on evaluating guns on the basis of 'who copied it' and 'how long did it stick around' (to be clear, neither are actually useful metrics), the MG08/15 that was copied by nobody and replaced as soon as treaty limitations allowed was certainly no better than the Chauchat.

Again, not saying the Chauchat was a good weapon, but there is an awful lot more praise for it in primary sources than in National Interest 'Worst Guns of WW1' articles and the like, and the automatic rifle concept was clearly valid and had many (better) designs along similar lines. The nullachtfünfzehn wasn't just a dead-end design, the idea of a water-cooled 50lb (loaded) LMG was complete dead-end as a small arms concept altogether. It's a low bar for comparison.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
and yes, the 30-06 was pushing a heavier bullet with more powder, than the .303 British standard round.

Fezzik I dunno where you're getting your info but you should find better sources.

M2 .30-06 is a 152gr projectile going 2800fps.

MkVII .303 is 174gr projectile going 2440fps. Heavier round, lower velocity. About 7/8 the kinetic energy, but better terminal effect due to bullet design.

 catbarf wrote:
Commissar, you're veering into 'source: I made it up' territory here. By the end of the war the Chauchat was being issued at a fireteam level, and there is no evidence that any inability to keep the guns in operation led to proportionally lower rates of issue.

As for the Germans copying it: they did. Here's a photo of one of the prototypes:

I couldn't tell you exactly why it wasn't put into full production- it's entirely possible that making it work with the differing feed geometry of 8mm, lest they run into similar issues as the US .30-06 conversion, would have required too much R&D- but the German military did see enough merit in them (used, alongside small numbers of Madsens, by 'musketen' teams to counter breakthroughs) to pursue reverse-engineering.

My sources are small arms guides, particularly Smith and Smith (and later Ezell), plus numerous videos of the things not functioning well.

I'll allow for age, but more robust designs show no such problems.

This thread[/url] has some translated comments from Pétain's survey (conducted across the French army) in May of 1917, a few of which praise the use of the Chauchat for walking fire and for defending against counter-attack in newly-taken lines. As mentioned above, the Germans also made use of captured Chauchats for certain mobility-oriented roles (rapid counter-attack).

People complimented the M3 Lee/Grant as well because at the time of its introduction, it was better than a Crusader or (chuckle) Covenanter. But it's time in front-line service was short.

As far as lightweight magazine-fed machine guns in general, you will also find much more glowing praise in primary sources for the Madsen light machine gun in this role, which was similarly lightweight but without all the problems.

Absolute agreement, and the long service life of the Madsen, and its many users speak to its quality. Which is my point.

Edit: Also, if we're comparing to the MG08/15 specifically- I have to point out that most of the major belligerents fielded Maxim guns, and all of them identified a need for light machine guns that could keep up with the infantry, but only Germany decided the ideal solution was to put a stock and bipod on a Maxim. If you really insist on evaluating guns on the basis of 'who copied it' and 'how long did it stick around' (to be clear, neither are actually useful metrics), the MG08/15 that was copied by nobody and replaced as soon as treaty limitations allowed was certainly no better than the Chauchat.

My contention is that the MG08/15 was bad and the Chauchat was worse.

And I'm not sure what other metric one can use to measure the quality of a weapon. If the world copies it, it probably is good. If it remains in service for decades across multiple countries, that is a measure of quality.

Lots of weapons are developed in wartime conditions and typically they either get refined in some way (once the crisis is past) or dropped like a hot rock. France's "last ditch" came in 1915, when everything they could find was thrown into the war effort. The Chauchat was part of that, and it was (literally) better than nothing. The Ruby pistols were a similar expedient, and - strange to say - got the French Army hooked on .32 caliber pistols for some reason.

Again, not saying the Chauchat was a good weapon, but there is an awful lot more praise for it in primary sources than in National Interest 'Worst Guns of WW1' articles and the like, and the automatic rifle concept was clearly valid and had many (better) designs along similar lines. The nullachtfünfzehn wasn't just a dead-end design, the idea of a water-cooled 50lb (loaded) LMG was complete dead-end as a small arms concept altogether. It's a low bar for comparison.

My original point was that the efforts to rehabilitate it use a lot of special pleading. Objectively setting it against other LMGs, it was terrible. Comparing it to sledge-towed weapons demonstrates why it was made, but efforts to somehow say it was superior to the Browning, the Lewis - or as you point out, the Madsen - is so absurd as to border on dishonesty.

Grey Templar wrote:The thing with the BAR is that it should really be viewed as "its a garand with more ammo and very controllable full auto" rather than "this is an old walking fire MG which we are desperately using as an LMG".

You can quite easily use a BAR just like you'd use a garand, but you have the option of full auto too. In that sense, its more of a "we will compensate for not having a true LMG by having 3 of our soldiers use this select-fire rifle"

I would say that in a 12 man squad, having 3 BARs, 2-3 Thompsons, and 6-7 garands is far far more effective firepower than this theoretical 1 LMG, 2-3 Thompsons, and 9-10 M1903s.

You also have the advantage of spreading out your squads automatic firepower. Instead of 1 dude carrying it its divided over 3. Making you more resilient to combat losses and if one guy is reloading the other 2 can still be ready to go rather than your entire squad being without LMG cover for the duration. And the BAR can be comfortably run by 1 dude if necessary, you don't need to have assistant gunners.

In terms of firepower, going from semi-auto to select fire is a small jump. Jumping from bolt action to semi-auto is massive. I would actually say that 12 men with Garands would be better than 11 men with bolt actions and 1 dude with an LMG.

I think to suggest that an LMG is just a select-fire rifle with full auto capability is hugely mistaken. An LMG or a GPMG in a squad support role is capable of far greater sustained fire than an automatic rifle. Given the fact that squad machine guns have persisted into the assault rifle era and are still part of the default squad organisation today highlights how useful they are.

If you take a British rifle section of the era, the LMG effectively is the squad. Everyone else is there to support the gun, and if the section had a single member left, they were expected to be carrying the Bren. All members received more training on the Bren than they did on their own rifle, and carried more ammo for the Bren than their own rifle. There was about 20x more ammo carried for the LMG than there was for each rifle, to demonstrate how much more firepower it carried. In addition, whilst a Bren could be comfortably reloaded by the gunner, with an assistant this was quick enough that there was no noticeable loss of downrange firepower. Beltfed guns can be a little slower on the reload but reload less often. German squads carried a similar ratio of ~20:1 MG ammo to rifle ammo.

Interestingly, the US military agreed with this approach on some troops- US paratroopers used the M1919A6* later in the war and carried a similar ~20:1 ratio of MG ammo vs rifle ammo, and they used semi-auto rifles. The MG was still the majority of the squad firepower. In comparison, both the US army and US marines loadouts had a much smaller ammo allocation to a BAR in comparison to the riflemen (~7x for army BARs and ~4x for marine BARs). It just wasn't as suited to sustained firepower.

The above is with the caveat that the exact loads vary somewhat by non-standard loads and due to the number of subguns or M1 carbines carried.

I do think there is something to the US marine approach of 3 BARs for very aggressive troops in the assault, especially as it can be fired effectively from the shoulder. However, the BAR doesn't have huge weight savings over contemporary LMGs so I think it is a relatively marginal benefit in that niche. On the defensive the issues with sustained firepower come into play more heavily. The modern US marines have adopted a similar approach again today with the M27 IAR so clearly the concept does have merits in some contexts.

Again, I think the BAR is a great design in 1918, one of the best in the world. I just think it was obsolescent in WWII.


*Still a very heavy stopgap design modified from a medium machinegun.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Less mobility is a pretty big deal for a squad support weapon. No major WWI army had trouble in defensive fire with heavy machine guns. The MG08/15 was a whopping 18kg/40Ib, so it was not easy to lug in support of assaults.

I don't think copying weapons is a good metric of anything in most wars of the 20th century. It is incredibly rare to see weapons copied in wartime, even for obviously good and feared designs like the MG42. This is especially true if factoring in cartridge changes, such as from 8mm Lebel to 7.92mm Mauser. You can see the challenges in switching between cartridges by looking at the mess that is the Chauchat in .30-06!

Was the Chauchat an offensive juggernaut? Did French offensives benefit from its lighter weight?

If having an agile, light-weight squad support weapon was so useful, where was this shown on the battlefield? The Chauchat's advantages were (and are) largely hypothetical.

Copying weapons is one metric; length of service is another. The Chauchat fails on both counts.

In addition to Catbarf's point, I think it is a bold claim that manouevre warfare was not critical in the First World War. The very concept of small unit fire and manoeuvre used today was born in WWI (albeit at squad and platoon level rather than fireteam level as seen later). The 100 days offensive would not have been as successful without that hard-won knowledge.

As for Korea, it is inarguable that a unit armed with bolt-action rifles is going to be at a disadvantage vs units using self-loading rifles. There's a reason why bolt rifles went out of fashion.

Sure. I'm not disputing that a unit equipped with bolt actions has less firepower to a unit equipped with semi-auto rifles.

But we are not discussing such units. We are talking about a squad equipped with a proper portable MG supported by bolt actions vs a squad equipped with semi-auto rifles and a heavy automatic rifle (which is not an MG) or two or three automatic rifles. Firepower in infantry sections does not seem to have been an issue for Commonwealth troops in Korea.

It is also known that - especially during the early phases of the conflict - American infantry had gotten lax in terms of individual marksmanship, relying instead on air, armor and artillery to support them. To their credit, the Commonwealth forces had maintained that proficiency.

My father, who served in the shadow of Korea, noted that an entire week of his Army training focused on close assault and hand-to-hand combat. Thus proving, once again, that armies always prepare to fight the last war.

So you are suggesting that US troops performed poorly because they couldn't hit, rather than lacking firepower? Surely that highlights the importance of suppressive weaponry providing a beaten zone of fire?

 Haighus wrote:
So you are suggesting that US troops performed poorly because they couldn't hit, rather than lacking firepower? Surely that highlights the importance of suppressive weaponry providing a beaten zone of fire?

My point was that US infantry doctrine and training were found deficient during the opening months of the conflict, which could account for discrepancies in casualty rates. The Commonwealth had better infantry doctrine, which compensated for less firepower.

Anyway, arcane LMG debates aside, last weekend I took my new deer rifle out to the range and sighted it in. This is a CVA Scout, a single-shot, break-action weapon, chambered in .44 magnum. I went out to the DNR range (that is, state-funded), and got a sense for its feel and got a reasonable group at 25 yards. The next step is to lock it in at 50 yards, which is the expected range of next fall's hunt.

It's a very basic, affordable rifle, complies with local hunting regulations, and the recoil is quite reasonable. I've shot .44 mag through a revolver and it can be...punishing. Through a rifle it still has some oomph, but isn't bad at all. The trigger was very nice.

Alas, I decided to take a canoe home, and it (and all my other guns) were drowned deep.

What you lost your weapons? They aren't recoverable?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
What you lost your weapons? They aren't recoverable?

https://www.pewpewtactical.com/i-lost-all-my-guns-in-a-boating-accident/

The_Real_Chris wrote:
What you lost your weapons? They aren't recoverable?

There are several bodies of water that should - according to local claims - be lined with layers of steel because of all the weapons that have vanished into their rather shallow depths.

Anyhow, the CVA Scout has lived up to my expectations of being handy, easy to use, inexpensive and accurate.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

There are several bodies of water that should - according to local claims - be lined with layers of steel because of all the weapons that have vanished into their rather shallow depths.

Lake Erie would have more metal under the waves than Iron Bottom Sound.

(I mean, it *does*, because it's one of the Great fething Lakes and an epic ship eater on the scale of the Bermuda Triangle, but they're ships, not guns)

Metal is metal Baron. Insert incredibles meme

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

There are several bodies of water that should - according to local claims - be lined with layers of steel because of all the weapons that have vanished into their rather shallow depths.

Lake Erie would have more metal under the waves than Iron Bottom Sound.

(I mean, it *does*, because it's one of the Great fething Lakes and an epic ship eater on the scale of the Bermuda Triangle, but they're ships, not guns)

It is for Lake Superior but applies to all the Great Lakes, in the words of Gordon Lightfoot:
"Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early."

Scary lakes.

On that? How easy/advisable is it to try to restore a shooter that’s been in a lake for a decade or more?

I appreciate I’m gonna end up on a list somewhere from this question. But the power that be will just need to appreciate the only person in danger of me being near a shooter, is me.

Hard to say. Depends on shoota, state of said shoota, availability of spare parts, what parts need replacement ( as in, do you need special tools or does it require a particular treatment?)... Really can't say

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On that? How easy/advisable is it to try to restore a shooter that’s been in a lake for a decade or more?

I appreciate I’m gonna end up on a list somewhere from this question. But the power that be will just need to appreciate the only person in danger of me being near a shooter, is me.

There are multiple factors at work. One is the water - fresh or salt? Another is depth.

The Great Lakes - as the saying goes - are sometimes frozen, but always fresh. One reason why we have so many shipwrecks is that fresh water is less dense than saltwater. This (apparently) throws people off when determining the maximum safe load for freighters. I'm told that swimming in salt water is easier for this reason. All you Brits can laugh, but I've never gone swimming in salt water. Why would I? My home is almost entirely surrounded by fresh water.

I've seen some firearms restoration channels on youtube, and the very term "restoration" is fairly elastic because if you swap out enough parts, it's a rebuild, not a restoration.

That being said, steel is pretty easy to evaluate. If there is no visible corrosion, no rust, if the parts work, it's likely not a problem. Firearms are typically blued to resist corrosion, and conscientious owners also regularly oil and lubricate them, creating another barrier. The most important parts - the frame and barrel - are likely to be the most resistant, and the fragile ones (springs) can be replaced without much trouble.

Salt water absolutely destroys anything made of steel, bluing or not, so restoring something that has been in that for any amount of time is basically hopeless. Unless the gun was made of brass or had a titanium nitride coating its gone. Even a few drops of sweat will cause rust within a few hours.

Freshwater is much kinder and it'll boil down to how oxygenated the water is along with the temperature. A lox oxygen environment(like being buried in mud at the bottom of a lake) could keep a gun in fairly decent condition. And if the barrel is chromed it could potentially be undamaged, though any springs are unlikely to be as lucky as those are usually untreated steel.

If you're going to be pedantic and only consider the receiver, guns like glocks or ARs with polymer receivers will technically not care about any kind of water(nor would any aluminum receivers). Just replace the metal parts and good as new.