Best cost effective rifle

Deleted member 1487

Arguably the rifle the U.S. should have had in the second half of WW II and in Korea, ideally with a cartridge in the 7mm range (.276 Pedersen was a favorite early in the development of the M1, but it was rejected in favor of the .30-06).
Failing that there is always the British .270 or .280 post-war.
 
ideally with a cartridge in the 7mm range (.276 Pedersen was a favorite early in the development of the M1, but it was rejected in favor of the .30-06).

Failing that there is always the British .270 or .280 post-war.

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M1 garand, by quite a far margin.

Only semi-automatic as de-facto standard infantry rifle with no availability issues. No other country can make that claim meaning their comparative sollutions were substandard for their own conditions.

Sturmgewehr doesn't even come close. Good concept, failed implementation and timing.

Same reason chauchat was best LMG in WWI.
 
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the question isn't best weapon, it's most cost effective. All the American machine guns used 30-06 since the US Army picked it up back before WW1 and they fielded the M1 in 30-06 with good reason. Doctrinally nobody was advanced enough to see any practical advantage of the smaller 276 Pedersen anyway, so there's little reason to make the switch.

At any rate, my vote goes to the Soviets and their PPs-43, which was even more production friendly than the PPSh-41 (350,000/month vs 135,000/month) and could army the millions of conscripts the Reds threw around. Doesn't take much training at all to be effective with, takes the bare minimum skilled man hours to build, and most importantly saves tons of steel (only 6.2kg steel per weapon vs the 13.9kg of the already production friendly PPSh-41).
 
At any rate, my vote goes to the Soviets and their PPs-43, which was even more production friendly than the PPSh-41 (350,000/month vs 135,000/month) and could army the millions of conscripts the Reds threw around. Doesn't take much training at all to be effective with, takes the bare minimum skilled man hours to build, and most importantly saves tons of steel (only 6.2kg steel per weapon vs the 13.9kg of the already production friendly PPSh-41).

Not a rifle
 
Probably the cheapest rifle of the era, not counting German last ditch junk was the Springfield 1903A3 with stamped magazine and bottom metal, a two line rifling barrel, which surprisingly had no detrimental effect on accuracy. It even had the best rear sight ever mounted to a bolt action service rifle.
 
Probably the cheapest rifle of the era, not counting German last ditch junk was the Springfield 1903A3 with stamped magazine and bottom metal, a two line rifling barrel, which surprisingly had no detrimental effect on accuracy. It even had the best rear sight ever mounted to a bolt action service rifle.

if it was still a springfield it means it had the same mauser style bolt and reciever and as such would have been relatively timeconsuming to machine. Cheapest and simplest bolt action of WWII would still be MAS-36 by a fair margin.
 
I think you misspelled 'Lewis'

Not produced in nearly enough quantities. 50000 lewis guns (including the ones used in aircrafts) vs 250000 chauchats. Lewis was also insanely expensive costing more to buy than a a vickers. French were the ones who managed to put functioning LMGs in the field, outnumbering just about all other western allied machinegun types put together.
 
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Not produced in nearly enough quantities. 50000 lewis guns (including the ones used in aircrafts) vs 250000 chauchats. Lewis was also insanely expensive costing more to buy than a a vickers. French were the ones who managed to put functioning LMGs in the field.
Wasn't the Chauchats notorious for jamming?
 
if it was still a springfield it means it had the same mauser style bolt and reciever and as such would have been relatively timeconsuming to machine. Cheapest and simplest bolt action of WWII would still be MAS-36 by a fair margin.

Maybe, but the single most time consuming process in making the rifle is the rifling, which had to be cut individually. Springfield 1903A3 could be cut in half the time.
 
Wasn't the Chauchats notorious for jamming?

US ones were thanks to a faulty chambering conversion which is why they were used for training in the US only. After arrival in france they were then issued functioning french ones instead. Problem with the chauchat was the open magazine and heat expansion of the barrel which would lock the gun in its shroud after 300 rounds of continous non-stop fire. Both were matters that could be dealt with by proper training. Generally the gun had a good reputation with the troop as there really wasn't anything comparable that was this available at the time.
 
Moving away from what is the best weapon, I would rephrase the OP (apologies to the original poster) thus:

You have 1,000 suitcases of used notes. You have barracks crammed with conscripts. You are told to arm them with rifles. What would be the best balance between expensive cool rifles or cheap shoddy junk rifles that you can give them? The term is 'rifles'. Not guns generally, not sub machine guns nor light machine guns but rifles. You have no rifle manufacturing of your own but have an industrial economy and only some skilled and much semi skilled labour. By a miracle of coincidence you are just about to set up a small arms ammunition industry too. This awaits your choice of round.

One end of the spectrum is a fully machined walnut stocked Garand in .30-06. The other is the simplest bolt action possible with fixed sights. The Garand can only arm a fifth of your conscripts and will take much time to deliver. The simplified bolt action will arm them all fast.

Where might be the best compromise?
 

Deleted member 1487

Moving away from what is the best weapon, I would rephrase the OP (apologies to the original poster) thus:

You have 1,000 suitcases of used notes. You have barracks crammed with conscripts. You are told to arm them with rifles. What would be the best balance between expensive cool rifles or cheap shoddy junk rifles that you can give them? The term is 'rifles'. Not guns generally, not sub machine guns nor light machine guns but rifles. You have no rifle manufacturing of your own but have an industrial economy and only some skilled and much semi skilled labour. By a miracle of coincidence you are just about to set up a small arms ammunition industry too. This awaits your choice of round.

One end of the spectrum is a fully machined walnut stocked Garand in .30-06. The other is the simplest bolt action possible with fixed sights. The Garand can only arm a fifth of your conscripts and will take much time to deliver. The simplified bolt action will arm them all fast.

Where might be the best compromise?
Again in terms of cost the StG was per unit cheaper than even a bolt action rifle. Not sure about the Springfield specifically (only price I found was $40.44 for NRA members with reference to the 1929 version, which would make the Stg44 much cheaper at RM 75 when factoring in inflation by 1944 and exchange rate), but it was cheaper in dollar value than the Garand and even the K98K. Ammo was cheaper per unit too.
 
Not a fan of the 7mm family?

I like 'em fine. See below.

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It's just, they get touted so often by people who see them as "the right answer" and who see the decision-makers of the time as "stupid" or "wrong" for not having gone that direction that I find it a bit nauseating. Yes, yes, .276 Pedersen is sexy and cool (trust me, there are probably 4 people alive who know that as well as me, and one of them's first name is "Ian"), but being sexy and cool isn't enough sometimes.

Both the .276 Pedersen and .280 British had problems, and broadly speaking the US Army was right to reject both of them. Certainly, given their own priorities, they were.
 

Deleted member 1487

Both the .276 Pedersen and .280 British had problems, and broadly speaking the US Army was right to reject both of them. Certainly, given their own priorities, they were.
In terms of production pre-WW2 the .30-06 had the advantage due to existing production and stockpiles, but the Pedersen was the ballistically superior round:
http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.co...n-were-pipsqueak-cartridges-in-compariso.html

The .280 was effectively an optimized assault rifle round prior to the SCHV revolution, designed to do something different than a full powered battle rifle round (i.e. perform at 500m or less). The .280 was rejected based on criteria that favored a full powered battle rifle round designed to perform out to 1000m....so of course it underperformed on metrics it was not designed to meet.
 
You have 1,000 suitcases of used notes. You have barracks crammed with conscripts. You are told to arm them with rifles. What would be the best balance between expensive cool rifles or cheap shoddy junk rifles that you can give them? The term is 'rifles'. Not guns generally, not sub machine guns nor light machine guns but rifles. You have no rifle manufacturing of your own but have an industrial economy and only some skilled and much semi skilled labour. By a miracle of coincidence you are just about to set up a small arms ammunition industry too. This awaits your choice of round.

One end of the spectrum is a fully machined walnut stocked Garand in .30-06. The other is the simplest bolt action possible with fixed sights. The Garand can only arm a fifth of your conscripts and will take much time to deliver. The simplified bolt action will arm them all fast.

Where might be the best compromise?

Have patience with me, but this scenario doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So you're buying rifles off the shelf (not manufacturing them yourself), and the Garands are being made by some incompetent manufacturer who can't make deliveries on schedule?

Historically, the M1 Garand was about as cheap as a Mauser or Springfield, maybe just a little more. The reason being that the USA IS DOMINATE and could out-manufacture literally anyone else on earth by a factor of at least 2. John Garand himself was a huge factor in making the Garand as inexpensive as it was, so really the Garand itself and its high cost effectiveness are pretty inseparable. Italy, for example, happily manufactured them for years postwar.

You could get a simpler bolt-action than a Mauser, sure, but who would want a gun that was so simple it was 20% the cost of a Mauser? It would be a miserable rifle to shoot, and it's not at all easy to see how the M1 could give your troops 5x the combat effectiveness versus that gun. Arguably, Garands already give troops several times the combat effectiveness of a Mauser or Springfield!

Maybe it's postwar and the bolt-actions are surplus - but wouldn't the Garands be surplus then, too?

It seems like you wanted to make the cost of the M1 proportional to its increase in effectiveness, but it didn't really work that way historically - and that's key to this discussion about cost effectiveness.

If it's M1 vs. bolt action, the M1 simply kicks the bolt gun's teeth in. God Bless J.C.G.

So if we're talking overall cost-effectiveness, the M1 and the StG-44 dominate the whole list. Below that are things like the MAS-36, but frankly any bolt gun is simply not a contestant. The Madsen M47 points the way here; it sold, like, two whole orders. Nobody thought bolt-actions were cost-effective by 1947, not unless they were given for free as aid, or at fire sale prices.

My personal opinion is that the MP.44 is too rough around the edges to be a very good assault rifle. I think the M1 in general would give better cost-effectiveness for a number of technical reasons. However, it would depend highly on your doctrine.

We also must consider submachine guns. Oh yes, this thread is about rifles, but we need to talk about submachine guns nonetheless or else we're missing a good number of the lessons from WWII. The thing is, that war (especially the Eastern Front) proved that the submachine gun had enough volume of fire to make a reasonable rifle or machine gun substitute in many cases. So it's not too crazy to say "screw it, just give them PPSh-41s". This tints things a particular shade when we consider that the MP.44 is really best suited to a doctrine of massed fires - which could be accomplished perhaps even more efficiently with submachine guns due to their low cost. Just something to think about.

So if it's just rifles, my list looks like (excluding experimentals and leaving out some guns that weren't produced in large enough numbers to make an accurate assessment):

1. M1 Garand

2. MP.44 (could be number 1 depending on doctrine)

3. MAS-44

4. MAS-36

If we include submachine guns though, slots 3-7 or so could be taken up by various types (PPSh-41 probably up top, PPS-43, Sten, M3, etc.).
 
In terms of production pre-WW2 the .30-06 had the advantage due to existing production and stockpiles, but the Pedersen was the ballistically superior round:
http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.co...n-were-pipsqueak-cartridges-in-compariso.html

To M1906 Ball? Sure. To M1 Ball? Hell no. Remember which was standard at the time.

Stockpiles were used as a justification, but they weren't a major reason to keep the .30. Read The Home Team Advantage, all is revealed there. The real selling point of the .276 caliber was the idea that it was the only way to get a reasonably sized semiauto; once the T1 proved that notion incorrect (God Bless J.C.G., A-MEN!) then the writing was on the wall for the .276.

The .280 was effectively an optimized assault rifle round prior to the SCHV revolution, designed to do something different than a full powered battle rifle round (i.e. perform at 500m or less). The .280 was rejected based on criteria that favored a full powered battle rifle round designed to perform out to 1000m....so of course it underperformed on metrics it was not designed to meet.

This is incorrect. The .280 was designed for performance out to 2,000 meters (why do you think the Taden was designed?), but the US had different ideas about what that meant. It underperformed in all respects during testing, including reliability and especially accuracy. The .30 T65 was just far more mature of a design. Of course, the US could have had Frankford Arsenal work on the .280 to move it along - but why would they when they already tried that with the .276, and the .30 T65 was, in their eyes, the perfected version of that round anyway? It would just be retreading ground they already went over. When multiple efforts to improve the performance of the .280 resulted in rounds extremely similar to the .30 T65, but for the caliber, I am sure Ordnance felt awfully smug.

Now we don't really see it that way today. But that's hindsight.
 
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