Alternate Weapon Development

BlondieBC

Banned
Consider the weight and lack of durability versus the weather, it sounds like it would be used in set point defense where these liabilities would matter less. This type of armor would be pulled out of the armory in major forts to be used in major defenses of the fortress. It will have little impact on battle of maneuver like Napoleon did. I can also see it being used on ships and only brought out for storage for major battles.
 
interesting approach. If it is too expensive to make a full suit, perhaps just plates protecting vital areas such as a small one on the chest?

Again, they'll find that its too much extra weight/cumbersome/not durable enough for the regular infantryman and they'll get rid of it.
 
Again, they'll find that its too much extra weight/cumbersome/not durable enough for the regular infantryman and they'll get rid of it.

Army and Marines didn't in Vietnam, the 10 pound M-1955 and 8.5 pound M-1969 were used, even though they trapped in body heat, and same in Iraq decades later, 30+ pounds of plate and Kevlar

Seeing a buddy saved by armor makes you a believer
 
Army and Marines didn't in Vietnam, the 10 pound M-1955 and 8.5 pound M-1969 were used, even though they trapped in body heat, and same in Iraq decades later, 30+ pounds of plate and Kevlar

Seeing a buddy saved by armor makes you a believer

See that third point, ballistic nylon wasn't a thing in WWI
 
Army and Marines didn't in Vietnam, the 10 pound M-1955 and 8.5 pound M-1969 were used, even though they trapped in body heat, and same in Iraq decades later, 30+ pounds of plate and Kevlar

Seeing a buddy saved by armor makes you a believer

A lot of infantry lads in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to dump body armour in certain circumstances - they felt that losing the weight would make them more able to avoid likely positions of IEDs and allow them to move faster under fire and be less likely to be hit in the first place.

Given the controversies about MOD under funding, lack of equipment etc and 'compensation culture' there's precisely zero chance of it ever being allowed but I always thought they had a point.
 
Most wounds in WWI wasn't from high velocity bullets, but fragments going under 1000fps

Artillery 73%
Machine gun 12%
Grenade, mortar, bomb: 8%
Rifle bullets 5%
Other 2%

Anything that reduces fragments going into the torso will save a lot of lives. World War I hospital reports also show about 20 percent of wounds were to the head and throat: helmets, when introduced, were said to have saved yens of thousands of lives by themselves, and the French Adrian and British Brodie were not good designs, but better that a cloth cap they had before

IIRC a major source of deaths were due to artillery damage to limbs (and actually simple stuff like first aid splints that immobilised broken and crushed limbs as the casualties were transported also saved a lot of lives).

But you are right would it potentially prevent low velocity fragment wounds to the torso, yeah maybe. But not all wounds are in the torso, not all frag is low velocity and so on (artillery can leave a wide range of wounds*), it's still all a trade off. They issued lots of these vests reinforced with steel plate to Russian troops during the Russo-Japanese war but the balance was still not there in terms of cost effectiveness weight and effect for it to be widely adopted .

Sadly a big factor is just how much time and effort was seen as cost effective for protecting your troops against wounds. However this balance also changes as the rest of the balance changes. e.g once you have something that can stop the bullets they're likely to face as well as other stuff.

Look at the body armour in WW2 it largely similar stuff designed to stop flak fragments in air crew (who you never have enough of, and have specialist training so take time to replace, and tend not to be walking long distances in their kit).

Basically they kept trying to make body armour work all the time even when it wasn't common on the battlefield, but that balance wasn't right.


*teh wounds figures get interesting here, because if it's just number of wounds in total artillery frag can leave a lot of wounds on the same target in the same attack.


Not far off from what current US Army body armor can weigh with all the plates in place.

Right which is lot, however there is another major problem with Brewster over and above the weight, and that is it looks like this:

%D0%91%D1%80%D1%8E%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0_%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%8F.png



Anyone fancy moving about in that for more than 5 mins, let alone fighting in that!

OTV gets a bad rep for inhibiting movement by modern body armour standards, but you fancy trying to get a cheek weld in the above, let alone maintaining any kind of situational awareness, or hell going prone?!
 
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Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'm back again. Will consider your responses. Seems like it could be a static defense or specialized heavy assault thing until modern ceramic armor and something comparable to modern ballistic fabrics comes around. When is the earliest that could appear?

On another subject could we decrease the size of the bullet used by a Grease Gun whilst keeping the propellant the same and lengthening the barrel to transform it into a very early assault rifle? A lighter bullet could travel faster and increase range somewhat. It'd definitely have some trade offs but in a WW2 environment we'd just have to increase the range to the minimum useful range. A rather crude and nasty solution but in an environment where assault rifles aren't common it would be pretty handy to have around. Hand out some M1 Garands to some assigned marksmen to cover long rage combat.
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'm back again. Will consider your responses. Seems like it could be a static defense or specialized heavy assault thing until modern ceramic armor and something comparable to modern ballistic fabrics comes around. When is the earliest that could appear?

On another subject could we decrease the size of the bullet used by a Grease Gun whilst keeping the propellant the same and lengthening the barrel to transform it into a very early assault rifle? A lighter bullet could travel faster and increase range somewhat. It'd definitely have some trade offs but in a WW2 environment we'd just have to increase the range to the minimum useful range. A rather crude and nasty solution but in an environment where assault rifles aren't common it would be pretty handy to have around. Hand out some M1 Garands to some assigned marksmen to cover long rage combat.
That's basically an M2 carbine.
 
@Catsmate oh nice. That'll do quite nicely for my timeline :) What is the earliest we could get something like that rolled out as the main infantry rifle? Could we use the shrink the bullet, keep the same propellant to extend the range tactic to make an .45 ACP into a barely passable round for an alternate variant of the M2? It's supposed to be a rather inefficient and awkward early phase of assault rifle development.
 
@Catsmate oh nice. That'll do quite nicely for my timeline :) What is the earliest we could get something like that rolled out as the main infantry rifle? Could we use the shrink the bullet, keep the same propellant to extend the range tactic to make an .45 ACP into a barely passable round for an alternate variant of the M2? It's supposed to be a rather inefficient and awkward early phase of assault rifle development.
OTL, in the 1970s there was a company who made Carbine barrels in 45 Win. Mag, used the same magazine.

230 gr (15 g) JHP 1,600 ft/s (490 m/s) 1,307 ft⋅lbf (1,772 J) intermediate round energy, with worse ballistics at long range drops around 4ft at 250 yards
Regret not getting one when they were around
 
@Catsmate oh nice. That'll do quite nicely for my timeline :) What is the earliest we could get something like that rolled out as the main infantry rifle? Could we use the shrink the bullet, keep the same propellant to extend the range tactic to make an .45 ACP into a barely passable round for an alternate variant of the M2? It's supposed to be a rather inefficient and awkward early phase of assault rifle development.
It depends on your PoD. For example some of my gaming scenarios incorporate the Vogelmann Machine Carbine, a weapon firing a .30 cartridge (originally .30 Mauser) from a pan magazine. It was the product of a relatively small US company, used on a small scale in WW1 and later a Thompson rival. It's relatively easy to assume a minor divergence in the late nineteenth century that leads to the formation of such a company, which later has a clever idea.

Personally I favour the idea of a rimless .30-30 being adopted for an early twentieth century autoloader, adopted in WW1 as an expedient and leading to the idea of an assault rifle late in the war.
 
Exactly. But done better.

Well, it was 1906.

With 'modern' (by which I mean after 1922) smokeless powders, the case length can be shortened
DSCN0558.jpg

.223
6.8 SPC ( a necked down, shortened 30 Remington, that was a rimless 30-30 Win)
30 HRT ( a necked up, shortened 6.8 SPC, or really short 30 Remington)
7.62x39

For the WWI timeframe, the Model 8 could have been used, would have been a bit less finicky than the French RSC rifles, and been a good place to improve from.

As it was, the AK-47 uses that John Browning Safety and Hammer/Trigger assembly.
 
There's also the FN Browning Model 1900 (the non-US version of the rifle). Historically it saw little interest but could have ignited interest in a less powerful autoloader.
 
At work.

For bullet velocity/range/low recoil perhaps look at "Forgotten Weapon" piece about the 7.92x 41mm CETME cartridge?

Cheers.
 
Back again. Thanks for the patience :) Just continuing this timeline so I'm posting in here again.

Taking the small bullet thing to extremes, what is the smallest you could conceivably get a bullet before it becomes ineffective or too difficult to manufacture the rifled barrel?

Can we apply this to tank combat, where a tank has a kinetic round with a regular sized (or slightly larger) propellant charge and very small projectile? Thinking of an alternate WW2 tank which uses these rounds to outrange the enemy. The tank has a larger engine for its size than usual. It is a fast, lightly armoured tank that attacks enemies in open spaces from beyond their effective range then runs away when the enemy chases, firing the entire time.
 
A couple issues with the small kinetic round, high velocity for tanks. Smaller rounds have less momentum, and less cross sectional density, so lose energy faster than bigger rounds. At longer range the small projectile is generally less accurate than a slightly slower but bigger one, and loses its penetration ability faster. Ergo your hypothetical tank won't have an effective range any longer than a more conventional tank and be inferior at infantry support and more vulnerable to older AT weapons

For infantry firearms it depends. 2.7mm was consider barely functional as a self defense weapon, while in military terms I haven't heard of anybody talking about below 4.38mm or adapting below 4.6mm, so probably 4mm for a military weapon
 
@RamscoopRaider, good point. Perhaps we can go a different route with the tanks and have one that is like a more conventional tank but with a bigger engine. So a medium battle tank that is faster and a bit larger as a result. Got a decent punch but the extra speed allows the tanks to group together in larger groups much faster for a defeat in detail or allows each tank to more effectively intercept an enemy attack. The extra speed would also allow formations to choose their battles, such as retreating when they are losing and having their enemy not be able to catch up. The speed means that enemies will find it hard to retreat. Same conventional medium tank gun and armour, extra cost and bigger profile (perhaps looking like a heavy tank due to the large engine size) but very fast.

About the 4mm bullet, thanks for that.

On another note when you look at a bullet the gunpowder granules seem to have a bit of air space between them. Would it be worth it to pour some gunpowder like substance into the cartridge so it perfectly fills the cartridge with no air spaces? The point is to potentially increase the power of a piece of ammunition without changing the dimensions at all by removing all the air spaces. You could also try having ammunition with the same power but is now able to be smaller due it having no airspaces inside the cartridge. You could use the stuff they use on caseless ammunition which seems to be able to be moulded into shapes.
 
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