NFT: WW2 Rifle Question

in WWII. I recently spoke to a veteran who landed on Omaha Beach with the 29th Infantry Division and he was a .30 machine gunner who (obviously) managed to survive the war. How heavy is that weapon and how was it deployed in the infantry during the war?

Also, Red Dog when you spoke about artillery, what about the legendary German 88?

So pretty heavy.

They were used as support for ordinary riflemen. Every American line company had a weapons platoon which included 2 .30 cal teams of two men each. Ordinary rifle platoons did not have M1919s. The BAR was the automatic weapon at the squad level. Earlier in the war there was one BAR team (automatic riflemen, who used it, and the assistant automatic riflemen who carried ammo and assisted with reloading). Since the BAR only had a 20 round magazine, and had to be reloaded frequently, later in the war infantry squad started using 2 BAR teams. The idea was they would alternate firing - when the first reloaded, the second would start firing, so continuous fire would be possible.

Paratroopers were structured a little differently. Since they were created to fight behind enemy lines without much support, they were given more firepower than line companies. Each platoon in an airborne company included an M1919 .30, in addition to the 2 in the weapons platoon.

They were smaller - officially 10 but often in practice 8 or 9 men instead of the American 12) but every German infantry squad included a machine gun. Generally, there were four squads per platoon and 3 or 4 platoons per company, meaning German rifle companies had between 12 and 16 machine guns. American companies had two M1919 .30s and 4-8 BARs.

In comment 14474863 Marty in Albany said:

Quote:

rifles like the M-1 was the mis-guided ideas that a single shot rifle would 1. conserve ammo, and 2. make the soldier aim more carefully before pulling the trigger.

It was the same idea why the War Office was resistant to rolling out repeating rifles like the Spencer and Henry Rifles in the American Civil War. They were only given to small specialized groups. Seeing their effectiveness, soldiers would often buy them for themselves.

The feed mechanism for the M-60 is based on the MG-42 but I believe the rest of the M-60 is very similar to another German weapon of WWII called the Fallschinjammergewehr (SP) 42 (FG-42)or paratrooper rifle 1942.

was Don Rickles trying to get someone to carry his rifle.

Has little to do with the thread....

The German 88 was an excellent weapon and unusually versatile. Originally engineered as a high-level anti-aircraft weapon, it was also used as an anti-tank gun and carried as the main weapon on Tiger tanks and some self-propelled guns. One drawback was that the wheels of the carriage for towed guns had to be removed to set it up for action, a time-consuming extra step that was not necessary for most American artillery.

However, it was only one gun in one caliber. Most of the other German artillery weapons, land and sea, were really pretty average. That doesn't preclude them from being deadly weapons, though. The PAK 75 anti-tank gun, a pretty good weapon on its own merits, was probably the best of the rest.

In contrast, the American 155mm gun, popularly called the Long Tom, and the 105mm howitzer were two of the very best land artillery weapons of the war. It would take me a couple hours to explain all the reasons why, and some of it gets pretty technical or pretty boring. The 155mm howitzer was another very good weapon. Note that these are all bigger guns than the 88, too. Even a King Tiger could not stand up to a direct hit from a 155mm shell, and this did happen.

At sea, German naval guns were anywhere from mis-matched to the ship (some of their destroyers were over-gunned which led to poor performance for the ship type) to pretty good.

But they were definitely not in the same league as American naval guns, particularly the 5-inch 38-caliber dual purpose which is universally regarded as the best seagoing artillery weapon of the war, and the awesome 16-inch 50-caliber that had basically the same performance as the Japanese 18.1-inch gun. The limited use 12-inch gun on the Alaska class large cruisers was another really outstanding naval weapon, but only two ships were completed with it and they arrived late in the war.

Again, it would take me a long time to explain all the reasons why, but briefly they include better trainability, higher rates of fire, better fire control, heavier shells in most newer guns of 6-inches or larger, the American exclusive VT proximity fuse which was light years ahead of anything anybody else had, and other factors.

The VT fuse was also used on some land guns, notably the Long Tom, and it absolutely crushed the German infantry at El Guettar in North Africa and in defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

Dog.

There were four videos covering the creation and different models over the years.

It was a tremendously expensive weapon to make and it cost the Army a lot of money. There were changes over the course of the war to make it simpler and cheaper. Even after all that, it's successor, M3, was half the price.

I'm not a gun guy, but I love this guy's channel.
Thompson 1921: The Original Chicago Typewriter - ( New Window )

movies where a guy would pick up .50 caliber machine gun fire it with his front hand on the barrel. My father said that barrel would be white hot, and that you could never fire it that way.

movies where a guy would pick up .50 caliber machine gun fire it with his front hand on the barrel. My father said that barrel would be white hot, and that you could never fire it that way.

the double post.

he was in quartermaster, gasoline supply, landed D-Day +6. He carried it through France, Belgium, Germany but never fired it in combat.

he was in quartermaster, gasoline supply, landed D-Day +6. He carried it through France, Belgium, Germany but never fired it in combat.