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Communist Zombie posted:Though considering historical soldiers tendency to leave, barter away, or otherwise lose equipment is it really that odd? Soldiers in first world militaries where discipline exists and they're getting paid tend not to ditch important parts of their weapons. The magazine as designed for the enfield was just conceived of totally differently from how we think of detachable mags today. It wasn't there to allow speedy reloads (clear through WW2 you were supposed to reload with strippers) it was to make cleaning and maintenance easier while letting the gun have 10 rounds. Fixed mags that extend beyond the body of the rifle can be awkward and would not work with the Enfield because of how the action is put into the stock during assembly. Magazines are also an easy point of failure and you need a good way to get at them for repairs. One option is removable floor plates flush with the gun, but again if you extend that mag out enough to fit in 10 rounds that quickly gets awkward. Earlier enfields also had the magazines fitted to match the gun, so there's no guarantee swapping with your buddy would give you two functioning rifles. Chaining it to the gun was just a nice touch so the thing couldn't get lost. edit: it's important to remember that the lee-enfield's action (and magazine) date back to the lee-metford, which was introduced in 1888. The enfield as it existed in the 1940s had a LOT of compromises worked into it that were a legacy of things that were important before the loving Boer War. edit 2: as for magazine cut offs, it's part in parcel with why the US was issuing trap door springfields to soldiers well into the late 19th century. Logistics is a massive bitch and getting ammo out to guys in frontier posts thousands (or tens of thousands in the British case) of miles from the factory is a big loving deal. If your primary foe is going to be some native force without many modern firearms then fire discipline is a HUUUUGE thing. A lot of the units you're designing these guns for might also be out of resupply for extended periods of time. You don't want to run out of ammo at the next Roark's Drift because some green trooper freaked out and just started pumping rounds down range as fast as possible. It's not quite as paternalistic as the internet "you may only load your gun when Lieutenant Tightbritches says you may" line makes it out to be. edit: ITT Cyrano at his lowest, defending the Enfield. 
Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jun 8, 2017 |
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Jun 8, 2017 17:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:edit: ITT Cyrano at his lowest, defending the Enfield. Now let's not go too far, we've all seen the Ringo thread.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:05
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Cyrano4747 posted:Soldiers in first world militaries where discipline exists and they're getting paid tend not to ditch important parts of their weapons. I remember some story in the GiP idiots thread about dispatching like helicopters and poo poo to locate a misplaced pistol or something. Lot of "guy forgot his weapon and now we are conducting 24/7 search and rescue missions for it" in that thread.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:
The trap door Springfield wasn't introduced until 1873 (apart from a few experimental uses), and only was in general issue until 1892 (19 years, which is not all that long a service period for rifles of that era -the 1903 Springfield was standard issue for almost forty years, and in common issue for another ten) when it was replaced as standard issue by the 1892 Springfield with a 5-round rotary magazine. Selection of a single-shot rifle was not due to logistical concerns, as several magazine-fed weapons were evaluated at the same time. The difficulty was that the Army found the reliability of magazine feeding to be inadequate, and the rate of fire for the trap-door system was already quite good (unless, of course, the copper cartridge cases didn't jam it up) at up to 15 rounds a minute. Magazine systems of the era could surpass that in bursts, but the lengthy reload period somewhat negated that. Logistics may well have played a part in magazine cutoffs on the Enfield (although the British specifically selected the design because of the superb rate of fire it offered compared to other bolt-action designs, and they were willing to accept the poorer accuracy in exchange) and other contemporary designs, although there is a solid possibility that it was to ensure that a soldier always went into close combat with a full magazine (conserving the magazine rather than the soldier's total ammo loadout - even in single shot you can burn through an incredible amount of ammunition in a short time) , as they'd have been manually loading for long-range skirmishing. The literature (at least what I've seen) is inconclusive.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:23
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zoux posted:I remember some story in the GiP idiots thread about dispatching like helicopters and poo poo to locate a misplaced pistol or something. Lot of "guy forgot his weapon and now we are conducting 24/7 search and rescue missions for it" in that thread. Well, yeah. If some random dude picks it up and then uses it to do a murder/sells it to a criminal who does a murder, that's a baaaaaaad look for the military (probably also lawsuits?)
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Jun 8, 2017 18:23
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zoux posted:I remember some story in the GiP idiots thread about dispatching like helicopters and poo poo to locate a misplaced pistol or something. Lot of "guy forgot his weapon and now we are conducting 24/7 search and rescue missions for it" in that thread. When it comes to equipment in the military in this day and age losing any piece of it is a BIG loving DEAL. Hell, even using equipment that isn't specifically issued to you or having a firearm whose serial number is different is a court marshall offense. I really cannot wrap my head around the concept of selling or bartering equipment, that's how hard it's engrained. We did end up trading PT and BD uniforms with some German soldiers but that was under the supervision of our respective officers, was a one for one trade, and was only uniforms. Even then we were discouraged from doing it and were expected to buy a replacement set when we got back to base.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:27
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zoux posted:I remember some story in the GiP idiots thread about dispatching like helicopters and poo poo to locate a misplaced pistol or something. Lot of "guy forgot his weapon and now we are conducting 24/7 search and rescue missions for it" in that thread. There's a big difference between some idiot losing his m9 or ACOG in a field and guys saying "lol this is too heavy" and pitching major components of their weapons in the weeds.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:28
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Weapons, NVGs, radios, etc, are called "sensitive items" in the US military. Losing any of it, even in combat, is made to be a pretty big deal. This isn't really because losing a pistol or a radio is a huge problem in and of itself; it is made into a BIG DEAL to 1) encourage soldiers to be responsible with their gear, and 2) dissuade soldiers from doing things like taking it to the local surplus store. It is usually handled at the unit level unless it is something classified; most commanders take that poo poo to 11 because that's what they've been taught to do. Of course, you sometimes have things literally as big as a multimillion dollar missile go missing, and nothing serious happens, but god help you if you lose a Vietnam era radio.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:33
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zoux posted:I remember some story in the GiP idiots thread about dispatching like helicopters and poo poo to locate a misplaced pistol or something. Lot of "guy forgot his weapon and now we are conducting 24/7 search and rescue missions for it" in that thread. In the Russian army, you need to account for literally every round fired, usually by returning the spent casings. Shockingly, conscripts are bad at keeping track of tiny pieces of metal ejected in random directions.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:33
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Ensign Expendable posted:In the Russian army, you need to account for literally every round fired, usually by returning the spent casings. Shockingly, conscripts are bad at keeping track of tiny pieces of metal ejected in random directions. Even in a real combat situation? I'd have thought you'd want to let your soldiers stay focused on things other than their shell casings when lives are on the line...
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Jun 8, 2017 18:36
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bewbies posted:Weapons, NVGs, radios, etc, are called "sensitive items" in the US military. Losing any of it, even in combat, is made to be a pretty big deal. This isn't really because losing a pistol or a radio is a huge problem in and of itself; it is made into a BIG DEAL to 1) encourage soldiers to be responsible with their gear, and 2) dissuade soldiers from doing things like taking it to the local surplus store. I suspect (and I stress that this is just a suspicion) that an important factor is that military weapons (and some other equipment) often have capabilities beyond what civilians are legally allowed to own (especially in Europe), so losing something that might find its way into civilian hands would be something of a diplomatic faux-pas. Large missiles and other heavy weapons are something that has to be handled by specialized black market dealers, but pretty much any criminal organization could offload a M9 or a couple of M4 magazines.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:There's a big difference between some idiot losing his m9 or ACOG in a field and guys saying "lol this is too heavy" and pitching major components of their weapons in the weeds. It's much worse. The guy just lost his M9, and they dispatched two helicopters who crashed into each other and went down, killing people in the process. Now it's just GiP talk, but several other posters corroborated it. I hope it's not true 
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Jun 8, 2017 18:46
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Ainsley McTree posted:Even in a real combat situation? I'd have thought you'd want to let your soldiers stay focused on things other than their shell casings when lives are on the line... No no, just in training.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:17
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bewbies posted:Weapons, NVGs, radios, etc, are called "sensitive items" in the US military. Losing any of it, even in combat, is made to be a pretty big deal. This isn't really because losing a pistol or a radio is a huge problem in and of itself; it is made into a BIG DEAL to 1) encourage soldiers to be responsible with their gear, and 2) dissuade soldiers from doing things like taking it to the local surplus store. In the Finnish Defence Force it was pretty much the same (at least back when I did my national service), if you lose a pair of socks, a soap container or crap like that you will have to pay for it (unless it was lost for some explainable reason) but if you lost any actual combat-related gear you would be sweating bullets pretty soon. It was almost a ritual after every week or even a few days spent in the woods, the conscripts gathered in a lecture room filling in paperwork about lost toothbrushes, gloves, combs etc.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:29
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I remember we were issued casing collectors, pouches attached to the ejection port. We never used them though nor did we collect the casings by hand. Actually that feels a bit curious now, even at the firing range we were never told to clean up.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:33
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You lucky bastard!feedmegin posted:Well, yeah. If some random dude picks it up and then uses it to do a murder/sells it to a criminal who does a murder, that's a baaaaaaad look for the military (probably also lawsuits?) That story is a lot sadder than that. One of those ones that makes my teeth grind with just how stupid people responsible for lives can be. The Slithery D posted:Thanks for reminding me of this bit of epic stupidity. FOB forward operating base QRF Quick reaction force Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jun 8, 2017 |
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Jun 8, 2017 22:48
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Jun 8, 2017 23:06
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Field Marshal Paulus, give me back my divisions! -Hitler after the fall of Stalingrad
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Jun 8, 2017 23:27
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I picked up an interesting book.  A 1960s volume by some special forces guys consisting of methods of utilizing various foreign weapons.  
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Jun 8, 2017 23:38
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Ainsley McTree posted:Even in a real combat situation? I'd have thought you'd want to let your soldiers stay focused on things other than their shell casings when lives are on the line... When I was in Iraq they drilled into us that every round we fired outside the wire had to be accounted for and you needed 2 witnesses to corroborate your story of why you felt the need to fire. If you were found to have fired a round illegally you would be demoted and given extra duty on top of everything else you had to do. I'm pretty sure it happened to someone in my squad so they weren't just loving with us. They REALLY discouraged us from firing our weapons unless we absolutely had to. This includes when one of our sergeants was almost ran down and mauled by a pack of wild dogs and I wasn't allowed to shoot the dogs. All I could do was watch and yell at him to run faster. Keep in mind this was in Baghdad.
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Jun 8, 2017 23:40
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Here's a weird question - what is the reason that militaries pick tanks over assault guns? Like, it's trading between a rotating turret and a bigger gun and more armor, right? Why is the turret the superior choice?
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Jun 9, 2017 00:01
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bewbies posted:Weapons, NVGs, radios, etc, are called "sensitive items" in the US military. Losing any of it, even in combat, is made to be a pretty big deal. This isn't really because losing a pistol or a radio is a huge problem in and of itself; it is made into a BIG DEAL to 1) encourage soldiers to be responsible with their gear, and 2) dissuade soldiers from doing things like taking it to the local surplus store. Is this like "If you were around when there was some fighting but not in much risk and dropped a radio somewhere like a dumbass you have to get it after" or is it like "if you are presently running away from artillery trying to erase your grid reference and you get something knocked out of your hands the procedure-correct thing to do is get it back first"? Because if it's the second, christ.
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Jun 9, 2017 00:03
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EB Sledge's With The Old Breed has a bit where he talks about how they had to sweep Okinawa for shell casings after the battle was over.
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Jun 9, 2017 00:24
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Rockopolis posted:Here's a weird question - what is the reason that militaries pick tanks over assault guns? Like, it's trading between a rotating turret and a bigger gun and more armor, right? Why is the turret the superior choice? The short is that armor will maybe save you, maybe not, it cannot be uniform over the whole aspect of the vehicle so there are always weakpoints. On the other hand firing first, especially with modern fire control where a first round hit is likely, will almost always win you the fight. Having a turret cuts down on your engagement time significantly since you don't have to coordinate with the driver to lay on target, and it can traverse a lot faster. Also, stabilizing a gun in a casemate mount is going to be difficult, so the turreted vehicle is the only one that can reasonably fire on the move, again helping with shooting first. And in the end you're not saving THAT much internal volume even with a fixed gun like the STRV-103, so the amount of armor that you can have is not that much greater. The whole gun arc will be a massive weak point, modern armor needs a lot of space to work properly, and so you can't be as effective in areas the gun needs to move through. All in all you're not getting much out of it and the drawbacks are pretty severe.
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Jun 9, 2017 00:40
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spectralent posted:Is this like "If you were around when there was some fighting but not in much risk and dropped a radio somewhere like a dumbass you have to get it after" or is it like "if you are presently running away from artillery trying to erase your grid reference and you get something knocked out of your hands the procedure-correct thing to do is get it back first"? Because if it's the second, christ. That is probably entirely dependent on how dickish your chain of command wants to be and what the general climate is. If you're at war with Russia and a tank gets nuked by a round, you're probably not going to ensure the radios are destroyed. If you get ambushed by 3 hit-and-run Taliban and use that to say you lost all your kit, probably a bad idea. I like this video where they realize, right after withdrawing to a defensible position, that they left their grenade launcher up against their previous point of fire so a guy has to go back and get it. Another highlight from earlier in this video, prior to my timestamp, is a guy who takes cover in some brush then starts shouting about the bees that are stinging him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSVFJjvNDU&t=285s
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Jun 9, 2017 00:43
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Thanks, that makes sense. Too easy for me to get locked into thinking of everything as a frontal assault in a uniform plain. Edit Awful app saved my draft from last week about pikemen tankodesanti on one of Da Vinci's tanks. Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 9, 2017 00:54
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Does anybody know about Mughal or Persian warfare in the late medieval and/or early modern period? Only a little. The early modern Persian state was established by the Safavid Dynasty, which grew out of a Shi'a Sufi mystic order. Their military was initially based on Shi'a Turcoman militant tribes, Qizilbash, who fought in Turkic fashion as horse archers. Over time, contact with more technically advanced Ottoman armies and concern about Qizilbashi political independence led the Safavids to rely more and more on slave soldiers recruited from the Caucasus region (Ghulam), who were also equipped with more muskets and artillery. They were similar to the Ottoman Janissaries in these respects, possibly a conscious imitation. The Qizilbash continued to be an important constituent part of Persian armies for a long time, but the core strength shifted to the Ghulam.
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Jun 9, 2017 03:08
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FastestGunAlive posted:Those are the tow hooks. The m777 hooks up with the muzzle facing toward the prime mover Edit: Like so:  The carriage reminds me of the ol' 8.8cm flak. How was that hooked up to a truck? Acebuckeye13 posted:Edit: Also 7.62x51 is the equivalent of .308 Winchester, .30-06 is even bigger.  (modern gunpowder = better than whatever modified birdshit they were using in '06), as opposed to 7.62x39, which is contemporary with 7.62x51, with the reduced performance you'd expect from the shorter case length.MikeCrotch posted:Wasn't the BAR equipped with a bipod though?  Cyrano4747 posted:Enfield effortpost 
Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 9, 2017 03:55
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Speaking of, I finished this book. It was originally published in 1971 and updated in 1988. The authors have some interesting predictions for the future of weaponry: * Submachine guns as the weapon of choice for underfunded, unskilled militaries. * Assault rifles with quick-change barrels and huge magazines are the wave of the future, especially if there's a machine gun that shares a common platform like the Stoner 63! * The FG 42 is the pinnacle of high tech assault rifles. The M16 has excessive muzzle climb and is too weak, so the US will continue issuing the M14 to troops stationed in open areas. * The M60 is the perfect machine gun with an easy barrel change, and would only be improved with a higher rate of fire. * Military police, guards, and armored vehicle crews should be issued pistols with detachable stocks. The special forces would love a 1911 kit that includes a detachable stock, scope, suppressor, and armor piercing ammunition for making 200 yard kills.
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Jun 9, 2017 04:04
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Delivery McGee posted:Instead of dragging it by the trails and having the tube poking out windshields of inattentive drivers behind you, just tow it by the muzzle (think of a log trailer, it looks kinda like that). But doesn't that make it take slightly longer between firing and being able to get the hell out of there?
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Jun 9, 2017 04:08
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The Lone Badger posted:But doesn't that make it take slightly longer between firing and being able to get the hell out of there? Ah, but in attack it will be quicker. Drive directly towards the enemy, detach and drive off, and voila, the gun is pointing in the right direction without having to be repositioned! What could go wrong!
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Jun 9, 2017 04:12
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The Lone Badger posted:But doesn't that make it take slightly longer between firing and being able to get the hell out of there? I'm not a redleg, but I wouldn't think so -- lower the elevation, back up the truck and drag it out vs. manhandle it forward/dig out the spades, back up the truck, close the trails, manhandle/jack the trails onto the hitch, then drive out. Glamour shot of my 100+ year-old guns:  The rifle was built in 1916, the revolver in 1915. I've since taken the wire off the rifle stock (surprisingly, the wood underneath was pristine) and cleaned it up a bit. Also, on the origin of the term "cordite": I had a couple boxes of 1965-vintage .303, and took one apart to see what was inside:  That spaghetti-lookin' stuff is cordite. It's made of strings/cords of guncotton soaked in nitroglycerine. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 9, 2017 04:16
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Does anybody know how the wounded were cared for or treated at various points in history? Not just hospital poo poo, but how they were taken care of after the fact when they went home. From my understanding simple wounds were fatal because of poor hygiene, lovely tools, and limited medical knowledge. Afterwards the wounded were made to fend for themselves without much of a stipend , if any. I know if varies wildly but whatever anyone knows about their particular time frame would be great.
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Jun 9, 2017 04:52
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The Lone Badger posted:But doesn't that make it take slightly longer between firing and being able to get the hell out of there? You can have a m777 emplaced and ready to fire or displaced in less than five minutes. Not an exaggeration or a brag , we hit those times on the regular. One thing that makes displacing so quickly is that you don't have to completely dig the trails out. You pull a lever and they'll hang "slack" making it easier to lift them up out of the dirt
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Jun 9, 2017 05:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:Enfield effort post I shouldve added that i meant the early guns with a magazine attached by chain, which I thought would be something from the end of the early modern era not practically the modern era. In that case yea it is a bit ridiculous.
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Jun 9, 2017 06:50
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The future of reenactors with a bad sense of history limp_cheese posted:Does anybody know how the wounded were cared for or treated at various points in history? Not just hospital poo poo, but how they were taken care of after the fact when they went home. From my understanding simple wounds were fatal because of poor hygiene, lovely tools, and limited medical knowledge. Afterwards the wounded were made to fend for themselves without much of a stipend , if any. Like you said, it depends. If you can get to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, there is a Museum of Army Medicine there which is actually really cool and a good overview of how the US treated the wounded on the battlefield and transported them to the hospital since the Civil War. I might have some pictures but they're on another computer which is currently a few thousand miles away and I completely forgot to upload them somewhere I could access them From what I understand, until the formation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863, there wasn't really any organization that would treat wounded soldiers, either post-battle or post-war, but I'm only am familiar with how modern CASEVAC works.
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Jun 9, 2017 07:22
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Panzeh posted:US Armored riflemen had more m1919s than other US infantry platoons because they could haul them in their halftracks- they often ended up with a lot more gear than their TOE(they were called 'gypsy columns'), same for halftrack-mounted panzergrenadiers. I heard of one panzergrenadier squad for 4 MG42s, for example. Yet they have no integrated MG's in Steel Division  .Jobbo_Fett posted:Field Marshal Paulus, give me back my divisions! In the game Age of Decadence the commander of the Roman Legion esque faction is Dux Paullus. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 9, 2017 08:28
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Jack2142 posted:Yet they have no integrated MG's in Steel Division TO&E didn't issue them any because they had MGs on their halftracks. Of course TO&E didn't account for salvage and scrounging.
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Jun 9, 2017 08:35
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Polikarpov posted:TO&E didn't issue them any because they had MGs on their halftracks. Of course TO&E didn't account for salvage and scrounging. ~ignores all the salvaged allied equipment in the German decks~ 
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Jun 9, 2017 08:40
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Jack2142 posted:Yet they have no integrated MG's in Steel Division ...Yes they do? Just take 3rd Armored LMG Infantry.
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Jun 9, 2017 10:29
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