Better US Army Weapons/Equipment in WW1

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Federal troops could have intervened earlier. Federal legal machinery (14th Amendment) existed to cool-down the situation. Wilson did nothing. Credit Congress with finally fixing that mess.

Again, I agree he was total crap, just not nefariously behind everything bad. Except Veracruz, that's worth bashing the hell out of him for.

EDIT: Anyway, I think we've exhausted this tangent that started because I probably misread your post and thought you implied Wilson's mistake in Mexico was in supporting the Constitutionalists at all, not his terribly heavy-handed response to what was essentially a bandit raid which I think is what you intended to suggest.

 

[M79]

Ketchum modified into a potato masher.

Read this at first as Ketchup modified into a potato masher - gonna go eat some fries...

 

[M79]

A) What stops someone from looking at an older Congaree rocket and wondering if they could attach a better warhead and launch it from a tube over the shoulder?

B) Using hexamine (stoves) as a portable heating source earlier, ideally for warming a canned ration or keeping a little warmer on the winter plains.

C) Concentrated soups already exist - refine them and send them overseas while doing the same for juices.

D) Mondragon pattern 1908 rifles might be worth looking at, Fusil Automatic Mod 1917 (and especially 1918) *are* worth looking at for weapons, as are a Marble's Ideal (1899) or Leuku (Finland, traditional)

E) As strange as it may sound, better field kitchens with a better understanding of 'battle fatigue' and how small efforts yield disproportionate returns, especially if made into a small easy-to-read field manual, could go a very far way.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

D) Mondragon pattern 1908 rifles might be worth looking at, Fusil Automatic Mod 1917 (and especially 1918) *are* worth looking at for weapons, as are a Marble's Ideal (1899) or Leuku (Finland, traditional)

I don't think semi-autos were ready for widespread adoption yet, the Mondragon was an expensive rifle that required precise tooling and didn't handle dirt all that well, essentially a self-loading Ross rifle, and the ones that saw use in WW1 were generally given to German air crews. Even in Mexico their service wasn't that widespread. Diaz, who backed Mondragon's efforts all the way, arranged to have his army armed primarily with Mausers or even Arisakas, cheaper yet more reliable weapons that Mexico could actually produce on its own and were proven to stand up to rigorous conditions.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

You have a choice between the Chau Chat or the Lewis Gun as your LMG. I know what I'd choose.

 

[marathag]

7.. The armor was binding. it restricted the ability to run and shoot.
8. The best rocket possible in that era is little better than a Hale and Goddard knew it. He planned for a tube and bipod affair with a mortar like effect. It would have been nothing like a bazooka.

12. Winchester 1907 is complex, expensive and FRAGILE. Not trooper suitable.

All armor is mobility limiting, but not to shoot with that set. Don't you think they didn't test for that? It was tested with firing the M1903

The launcher isn't a rocket. At all.
It just has a big BP charge in the middle of the pipe

Complex? Feel free to watch some youtube videos on the takedown of the Winchester. It isn't.
M1 Garands cost $82 in 1942
The Civilian version Winchester was $28
Thousands sold to the Entente during WWI, so they thought it suitable

22. Neither the propellant or the metallurgy is there.

In 1895, correct.
Things had seen a lot of improvement in just 10 years and then more by WWI, when the .250-3000 Savage was viable

Austrians did not have problems with their straight pull rifles in t WWI mud Lee had the problem of early powder, not the action

And more corrections, but it is late

 

[Reggieperrin]

Lots of nations were fighting smaller wars as well and more of them than the United States and yet none of them devolved down from Company to individual fireteams as the manoeuvre unit before 'Wipers'

As I understand it, the primary reason is that the ‘modern system’ is terribly expensive to implement and very challenging to use. You have to not only train every NCO to command the type of small-unit tactics that you’d previously only train company commanders in, train the company commanders to manage semi-autonomous minor units rather than blocks of obedient proles, but also train everyone to deal with a battlefield where every unit is by intention virtually invisible and moving unpredictably, etc. etc. It’s very difficult and even today lots of armies haven’t managed it.
Of course, when obliteration by modern firepower becomes an issue its extremely attractive but then runs into practical problems, namely that multi-million man armies need vast numbers of NCOs and officers to receive this complex small-unit training at the exact same time when millions of recruits urgently need to be trained how to hold a rifle and tens of thousands of officer trainees are struggling to hurriedly learn map reading and whistle blowing.
OTL that put everyone into a situation of having huge rapidly expanded armies that were tactically clumsy for a while, in both world wars.

All this to say that though it is not impossible that fully automatic 1907's with bayonets were issued to assault troops during WW1, I am a little skeptical as the primary evidence seems spotty.

At this point the French Army ground use select-fire 1907 is more a religious discussion than history, IMO. The true believers refuse to countenance any interpretation other than that word of mouth has somehow passed on the true facts for a hundred years despite no physical evidence having survived. The sceptics similarly refuse to believe that all the rifles and all the documents could have disappeared in only two world wars, two demobilisations, one Great Depression and one foreign occupation.
Fortunately it doesn’t really seem to matter, since either they never existed or else they did and were so amazingly nondescript that the French army (home of the chauchat, ribeyrolle, RSC) retained literally not a single written sentence about them. Either way I think they can be ignored as utterly irrelevant.

 

[McPherson]

All armor is mobility limiting, but not to shoot with that set. Don't you think they didn't test for that? It was tested with firing the M1903

They did. That is why they did not use it.

The launcher isn't a rocket. At all.
It just has a big BP charge in the middle of the pipe

This is the Goddard rocket.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_one/comments/79k3tt

Complex? Feel free to watch some youtube videos on the takedown of the Winchester. It isn't.

The Winchester is not function taken down.

It was not robust enough for trooper use.

M1 Garands cost $82 in 1942
The Civilian version Winchester was $28
Thousands sold to the Entente during WWI, so they thought it suitable

For limited air to air combat use. NOT for the infantry.

In 1895, correct.
Things had seen a lot of improvement in just 10 years and then more by WWI, when the .250-3000 Savage was viable

Incorrect on all counts.

Austrians did not have problems with their straight pull rifles in t WWI mud Lee had the problem of early powder, not the action

I report what the Austrians lesson learned. They went to bolt action after WWI after they switched from the Mannlicher 1924s. About 1938.

And more corrections, but it is late

If this is the corrections, it will be interesting to see them.

 

[marathag]

Incorrect on all counts

Not proven.

 

[McPherson]

Not proven.

Actually proven before the attempted refutation.

 

[Not James Stockdale]

28. Spanish American war and the Filipino American War had lots of Americans shooting UPHILL at Spaniards and Illustrados. They desired a rifle that could carry bullets up a hill. Hence 1000 meter downrange carry. Where this horses nonsense came from is still something I am trying to actually historically justify. I see it in the British literature, but official American records seem to suggest it was not what prompted the requirement.

My understanding is that the "kill a horse at 1,000 yards" was a capability supposedly attributed to the Minie rifles in the Civil War. The .45-70 was required to have the same or better kinetic-energy-at-range characteristics as the rifled muskets, and then every cartridge after that (.30 Krag, .30-03, .30-06, .308) was supposed to be at least as powerful as the preceding cartridge. The transitive property would therefore imply that all of these cartridges were designed to be powerful enough to kill a horse at 1,000 yards.

 

[McPherson]

My understanding is that the "kill a horse at 1,000 yards" was a capability supposedly attributed to the Minie rifles in the Civil War. The .45-70 was required to have the same or better kinetic-energy-at-range characteristics as the rifled muskets, and then every cartridge after that (.30 Krag, .30-03, .30-06, .308) was supposed to be at least as powerful as the preceding cartridge. The transitive property would therefore imply that all of these cartridges were designed to be powerful enough to kill a horse at 1,000 yards.

The ACW Union army knew an average human being could not reliably hit a man sized target with an aimed Minie ball throwing rifle like the Enfield or the Springfield 1858 beyond 300 yards *(270 meters). Berdan's Sharpshooters were considered marksmen if they could achieve an 8 inch circle 20 cm grouping at a target at that range 8 shots out of 10. They used state of the art rifles and methods. They did not expect to kill horses at 1000 yards.

 

[Driftless]

28. Spanish American war and the Filipino American War had lots of Americans shooting UPHILL at Spaniards and Illustrados. They desired a rifle that could carry bullets up a hill. Hence 1000 meter downrange carry. Where this horses nonsense came from is still something I am trying to actually historically justify. I see it in the British literature, but official American records seem to suggest it was not what prompted the requirement.

29. The Americans used cavalry as dragoons in the Philippine Islands. That was where they cursed the Krag carbine as lacking carry down-range.

Honestly, that's the first time I've heard the shooting uphill point, but it sounds valid. The US certainly considered the Philippine experiences in weapons considerations. But, wouldn't the 7 x 57mm "Spanish" Mauser round achieve nearly the same performance, or am I overrating that cartridge? That cartridge certainly raised hell with US forces in Cuba. It's a bit smaller/lighter and from what I understand, shoots a bit flatter, with less felt recoil.

 

[Father Maryland]

Honestly, that's the first time I've heard the shooting uphill point, but it sounds valid. The US certainly considered the Philippine experiences in weapons considerations. But, wouldn't the 7 x 57mm "Spanish" Mauser round achieve nearly the same performance, or am I overrating that cartridge? That cartridge certainly raised hell with US forces in Cuba. It's a bit smaller/lighter and from what I understand, shoots a bit flatter, with less felt recoil.

I did post a thread a while back that had the US post Span Am war adopt the 1903 (or it's equivalent) in German 7.92mm Mauser.

 

[McPherson]

Honestly, that's the first time I've heard the shooting uphill point, but it sounds valid. The US certainly considered the Philippine experiences in weapons considerations. But, wouldn't the 7 x 57mm "Spanish" Mauser round achieve nearly the same performance, or am I overrating that cartridge? That cartridge certainly raised hell with US forces in Cuba. It's a bit smaller/lighter and from what I understand, shoots a bit flatter, with less felt recoil.

Sure would, which would be a post war lesson learned if the .30 was not already the Krag bullet bore size. The penny pincher US army wanted to save money on arsenal tooling as well as ammunition stocks.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

As I understand it, the choice of the .30 was itself kinda arbitrary as that was the smallest caliber permitted in the rifle trials of the 1890's and the Krag just barely squeaked in there with the smallest acceptable bore. And the Krag itself was chosen over rifles from the likes of Lee and Mauser because the Army officers in charge preferred the idea of firing and loading single shots at a time and thought the magazine should be emergency use only, hence they desired a magazine cut-off and weren't particularly enthralled by stripper clips like every other nation in the world but the Nordics and France.

 

[Catsmate]

some small ideas i have, working on the assumptions

• i can start in 1914
• that the "big push" will be in 1919

put a bipod on the bar
cancel the pederson device, develop a stand alone carbine instead
hire more ordinance officers in 1914
give fewer contracts to colt and spread out the mg contracts

The Pedersen device was a fascinating attempt to 'square the circle'. Perhaps with a more powerful cartridge and dedicated carbines? Take a bunch of rifles, shorten them and permanently convert them to fire a short .30 round?

 

[Catsmate]

8. The best rocket possible in that era is little better than a Hale and Goddard knew it. He planned for a tube and bipod affair with a mortar like effect. It would have been nothing like a bazooka.

Goddard had four rocket designs in 1918, demonstrated a few days before the Armistice.
The largest was an indirect fire weapon with a range of over a kilometre (some sources claim ~1,800m), weighed about 50lbs and carried an 8lb payload.
The intermediate was a 3" tube launched, direct or indirect fire, weapon weighing about eight pounds while the lightest (~5lbs) was a 2" version. Both were fired from tubes mounted on a device made from two music stands. All three devices used the De Laval nozzle. He had earlier trialed, and probably demonstrated, a long 1" diameter rocket.
Goddard had developed the potential weapons in about a year but had a factious relationship with the Army Signal Corps.

Unfortunately there is little data on the accuracy or payload of the lighter rockets or the weight of the launch apparatus (not that much I'd estimate as it was a 5.5' sheet steel tube).

 

[Father Maryland]

Goddard had four rocket designs in 1918, demonstrated a few days before the Armistice.
The largest was an indirect fire weapon with a range of over a kilometre (some sources claim ~1,800m), weighed about 50lbs and carried an 8lb payload.
The intermediate was a 3" tube launched, direct or indirect fire, weapon weighing about eight pounds while the lightest (~5lbs) was a 2" version. Both were fired from tubes mounted on a device made from two music stands. All three devices used the De Laval nozzle. He had earlier trialed, and probably demonstrated, a long 1" diameter rocket.
Goddard had developed the potential weapons in about a year but had a factious relationship with the Army Signal Corps.

Unfortunately there is little data on the accuracy or payload of the lighter rockets or the weight of the launch apparatus (not that much I'd estimate as it was a 5.5' sheet steel tube).

The whole "Made from two music stands" bit is pretty funny.

"Well I'm developing a new weapon system. Off to the Guitar shop then."

 

[Questerr]

You have a choice between the Chau Chat or the Lewis Gun as your LMG. I know what I'd choose.

View attachment 647313

The Chauchat but leave it in 8mm Lebel.