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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It wasn't their mortars, it was their special grenade launchers whose name was mistranslated by U.S. intelligence as the "knee mortar". For once the Japanese did something kinda sensible and produced a basic grenade design that could be either thrown or fired from a grenade launcher. In tandem they designed a small launching device a man could carry alongside the rest of his gear, increasing the range at which an individual soldier could use his grenades (up to 200 yards, in fact). Combine that with the infiltration-centered tactics discussed earlier, and you can see why Allied soldiers had a healthy respect for what they assumed was mortar fire. Still knee mortar in videogames. And I thing Men of War Assault Squad 1&2 had SMG Japanese from the start of the "campaign". A very boring campaign that pales in comparison to original game and I guess red tide, but is wildly popular because of coop. EDIT: I wonder which sucked more: being an infantryman in IJA or RA.
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Dec 13, 2014 05:26
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I'd wager IJA because red army life at least got somewhat decent as time went on. Being a soldier in imperial Japan just seems like an unending road of misery and starvation.
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Dec 13, 2014 05:51
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I'd wager IJA because red army life at least got somewhat decent as time went on. Being a soldier in imperial Japan just seems like an unending road of misery and starvation. When you roll with the sun god you pull no punches.
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Dec 13, 2014 06:01
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I'd wager IJA because red army life at least got somewhat decent as time went on. Being a soldier in imperial Japan just seems like an unending road of misery and starvation.
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Dec 13, 2014 06:02
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That graphic novel is the epitome of  Pretty neat in that the author wrote it for Japanese folks originally, and was real surprised that Onwards got a following in other countries.
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Dec 13, 2014 06:07
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To be fair, if you were stationed in China, being in the IJA wouldn't be nearly as terrible as being on some lonely island garrison awaiting utter annihilation because Japan has no more ships. I don't know if that'd be better or worse than being in the Red Army proper, but you know.
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Dec 13, 2014 07:39
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When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the IJA had 460,000 soldiers. They went on to suffer 2,000,000 military deaths. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army had 4,800,000 soldiers. They went on to suffer somewhere between 8 and 14 million soldiers killed. It would be terrible to be a soldier in either of those armies in 1941, but the outlook was even worse for people conscripted in the middle of the war.
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Dec 13, 2014 10:13
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Chamale posted:When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the IJA had 460,000 soldiers. They went on to suffer 2,000,000 military deaths. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army had 4,800,000 soldiers. They went on to suffer somewhere between 8 and 14 million soldiers killed. It would be terrible to be a soldier in either of those armies in 1941, but the outlook was even worse for people conscripted in the middle of the war. That makes me curious - what percentage of the original "pre-war" armies survived the conflict? In both the IJA and the Red Army in particular, but if anyone has those numbers for the other major belligerents in WWII, that'd be interesting.
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Dec 13, 2014 11:42
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 Type 100... with a bayonet lug and a bipod  Devlan Mud posted:To be fair, if you were stationed in China, being in the IJA wouldn't be nearly as terrible as being on some lonely island garrison awaiting utter annihilation because Japan has no more ships. I don't know if that'd be better or worse than being in the Red Army proper, but you know. Best scenario, you spend some time chasing partisans and harassing villagers in China, then your unit is moved to defend the home islands in 1945 and the war is over. Worst scenario, you are stationed in Manchuria in August 1945 and disappear to Soviet POW camps.
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Dec 13, 2014 12:03
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Sticking with WW2 chat: is there a record of roughly how many German soldiers were "at large" at the time of surrender? I.e. Not captured or killed
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Dec 13, 2014 12:17
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Nenonen posted:Worst scenario, you are stationed in Manchuria in August 1945 and disappear to Soviet POW camps. It wasn't quite that bad, which surprised me when I looked it up some time ago. About 10% of the Japanese POW's died, but most had been released by 1948.
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Dec 13, 2014 12:47
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Nenonen posted:
It's so you can brace it easily when charged by cavalry. 
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Dec 13, 2014 13:16
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Tomn posted:That makes me curious - what percentage of the original "pre-war" armies survived the conflict? In both the IJA and the Red Army in particular, but if anyone has those numbers for the other major belligerents in WWII, that'd be interesting. I've heard a figure of 3% of the Red Army at the start of the war making it through to V-E day without being killed, wounded, or captured.
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Dec 13, 2014 14:16
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I recall a figure of 2% of the pre-war Luftwaffe pilots surviving to the end of the war.
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Dec 13, 2014 14:43
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Nenonen posted:Best scenario, you spend some time chasing partisans and harassing villagers in China, then your unit is moved to defend the home islands in 1945 and the war is over. Comedy scenario, you're in some jungle in the Pacific and spend the next 20 years believing the war's still on.
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Dec 13, 2014 14:46
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I've seen it written that the U-Boat service suffered the highest casualty rate of any military service in any modern war.
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Dec 13, 2014 14:47
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Tomn posted:That makes me curious - what percentage of the original "pre-war" armies survived the conflict? In both the IJA and the Red Army in particular, but if anyone has those numbers for the other major belligerents in WWII, that'd be interesting. Or WWI, for that matter. I wonder how many of the Old Contemptibles made it out. Nenonen posted:
It's a submachinegun so your need the bipod. It's also a submachinegun, so you attach the bayonet! Now image P90 or a micro Uzi with a pigsticker....
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Dec 13, 2014 14:54
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Alchenar posted:I've seen it written that the U-Boat service suffered the highest casualty rate of any military service in any modern war. Approximately 75% died, I believe. It's a problem in any service where failure is total failure if you're on the less well-equipped or well-led side.
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Dec 13, 2014 15:06
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JcDent posted:Now image P90 or a micro Uzi with a pigsticker.... 
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Dec 13, 2014 15:07
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And let's all remember the sword bayonets that armies became so obsessed with at times in the Napoleonic wars and after. Really comically long, ungainly, useless, making your fire utterly inaccurate. Useful mostly for morale. A good concept, but some armies wound up with really overlarge versions and put them on anything they could. And nobody ever used the damned things because bayonet charges that resulted in hand to hand combat were much rarer than everyone thinks. They were mostly just pointed at cavalry. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 15:08
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JcDent posted:
Well a micro uzi is literally just a pistol so it wouldn't work but regular Uzis do have bayonet lugs.
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Dec 13, 2014 15:17
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JcDent posted:Or WWI, for that matter. I wonder how many of the Old Contemptibles made it out. More than you might expect when you read figures like "90,000 in the BEF in August, 85,000 casualties by December". A lot depends on how you want to answer the many excellent pub questions like "who counts as an Old Contemptible?" and "did they have to spend the entire war in a front-line role?"
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Dec 13, 2014 15:45
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I remember reading somewhere that the sword bayonet attached to the Arisaka rifle made the gun so long it was taller the average Japanese soldier holding it,
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Dec 13, 2014 15:52
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I saw this in an exposition in Rotterdam, Bayonets On Everything !
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Dec 13, 2014 17:24
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SeanBeansShako posted:I remember reading somewhere that the sword bayonet attached to the Arisaka rifle made the gun so long it was taller the average Japanese soldier holding it, The Type 30 bayonet had a 15" blade and the standard Type 99 Arisaka was 44" long, so roughly speaking your overall length would be around 59" or 150cm. Average height of a Japanese soldier is usually given as 5'3" or 160cm, so nearly but not quite. Of course there were other variants of the Type 38 and Type 99 rifle carried by some soldiers, and that's an average height, so there were probably some shorter men carrying longer weapons. Even if it wasn't literally taller than the average soldier, it was still relatively large and bulky.
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Dec 13, 2014 17:29
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Not very fun to run around with in a thick jungle sort of enviroment I imagine.
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Dec 13, 2014 18:04
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CeeJee posted:I saw this in an exposition in Rotterdam, Bayonets On Everything ! Pretty much steampunk. Almost.
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Dec 13, 2014 18:30
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JaucheCharly posted:Pretty much steampunk. Almost. You want steampunk? 
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Dec 13, 2014 18:39
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Skippy's List posted:101. I am not allowed to mount a bayonet on a crew-served weapon.
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Dec 13, 2014 18:40
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There's a simple solution to all this, just put the pointy bit on a different piece of equipment entirely...
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 19:04
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Somebody posted on this en detail before, but I'm still surprised how odd japanese infantry weapons were.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:17
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Throatwarbler posted:Well a micro uzi is literally just a pistol so it wouldn't work but regular Uzis do have bayonet lugs. The HK416 carbine has lugs for a bayonet, but the bayonet for the regular sized 416 won't fit on them and noone I work with has ever seen a bayonet that fits the carbine in the system, which makes me think there actually isn't one in existence. Is this common, making guns with lugs just in case there's a demand somewhere down the line? Also, I used a bayonet to cut bread once, so they arent completely obsolete.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:22
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Nuclear War posted:Also, I used a bayonet to cut bread once, so they arent completely obsolete. Gross. Like many tool knives, bayonets are often treated with machine oil to protect the blade.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:28
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My favorite stat someone compiled in the Finnish Army Quartermasters Center is what people used to throw away the most during WW2. Number one is bayonets, number two is gas masks.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:37
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I was just about to say that. My combatknife had a heavy coat of oil on it. You can skip the butter. Heh.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:42
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Kaal posted:Gross. Like many tool knives, bayonets are often treated with machine oil to protect the blade. It had been. At the time I really didn't care
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Dec 13, 2014 19:43
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JaucheCharly posted:Somebody posted on this en detail before, but I'm still surprised how odd japanese infantry weapons were.
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Dec 13, 2014 20:05
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HEY GAL posted:What makes them so unusual? Probably the large amount of independent development and lack of popular representation involved. The Type 100 SMG is a bit of a goofy looking gun because of the full wood stock and big ol' curved box magazine being so far forward, but that's probably only because many people are most familiar with the MP40/Thompson style downward-facing straight box mags and maybe the STEN's less-protrusive magazine. Also they used tiny bullets.
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Dec 13, 2014 20:28
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FAUXTON posted:Also they used tiny bullets.
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Dec 13, 2014 20:35
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The Australians made their own submachine gun with a top-mounted magazine. It's a skinny looking thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmAigxjQbtE
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Dec 13, 2014 20:39
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