British Army adopts M1 Carbine as primary rifle for Normandy

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A bit off topic, but where exactly were Sten SMGs deployed, since it seems to me that there were very few of them in the British Rifle Sections?
iirc
large numbers were used by paratroopers, commandos, and insurgents
troops that didn't have access to the support that the regular infantry enjoyed in the form of hmg's, armored vehicles, or artillery other than anything that's organic to the unit

That just turned the £2 STEN to a £4 weapon. Sometimes going cheap on QC is costly....
and sometimes it's the only option you have,
 

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Oh I Never claimed it was superior. that 2 mm is sorta insignificant though compared to shot placement with all pistol rounds.
Depends. In your video they warn against using too hot of pistol rounds due to overpenetration which I understand was the problem with the 7.62 Tokarev. It had better ballistics on single shot out to 150m or so IIRC and better penetration but worse wound ballistics because of the size/weight of the bullets combined with the velocity of it.

The ppsh is nice to shoot compared to other smgs because the high RoF which makes felt recoil almost constant which makes it a bit easier to keep the sights on target without any jumping. Having shot one myself on 2 occasions I can largely agree with that.
I've heard that too. Of course you can do the opposite and have a slow rate of fire, which makes it easier to control too and has the added bonus of less wasted ammo and less quick emptying of the magazine. Kind of like the Bren v. MG42 argument.
 
The .30 carbine round can also be used as a pistol round. There were later pistols made for it. Its effectively a high end .357 round.

I'm spoiled. I want a common spitzer across carbine, rifle and machine gun with the difference being shell casing and propellant loads. Ammunition quality control issues and manufacture simplicity being logistics bugaboos I have, (But what about aerodynamics across the velocity fall ranges to be expected? Your "common spitzer" coming out of that carbine is going to have accuracy issues! Drift and tumble.)

Don't have a good solution for that one. Sorry.
 
Your "common spitzer" coming out of that carbine is going to have accuracy issues! Drift and tumble.)
M1 Carbine had 1-20" twist, and OAL issues if you wanted a spitzer rather than a RN.
But there isnt a problem if commonality for bullets was wanted in 1940. Longer magazine, different feed ramp, different twist

Not Rocket science, but I wouldn't bet against Ordnance screwing that up, as they did with many other things they got their hands on after 1941
 
I'm spoiled. I want a common spitzer across carbine, rifle and machine gun with the difference being shell casing and propellant loads. Ammunition quality control issues and manufacture simplicity being logistics bugaboos I have, (But what about aerodynamics across the velocity fall ranges to be expected? Your "common spitzer" coming out of that carbine is going to have accuracy issues! Drift and tumble.)

Don't have a good solution for that one. Sorry.
No really want artillery and a spotter capable of using it. Everything else is just dressing...;)
 
M1 Carbine had 1-20" twist, and OAL issues if you wanted a spitzer rather than a RN.
But there isnt a problem if commonality for bullets was wanted in 1940. Longer magazine, different feed ramp, different twist

Not Rocket science, but I wouldn't bet against Ordnance screwing that up, as they did with many other things they got their hands on after 1941

Since the weapon is built around the bullet and its ballistics and the propellant needed to drive it, it IS rocket science, right down tot the launch system, OTOH since I have LESS respect for US Army Ordnance than I do for USN Bu-Ord of the same period, I agree those "gentlemen" would find a way to make "good enough" the enemy of perfect.

Murphy, they screwed up the sub machine gun program. See Here.

No really want artillery and a spotter capable of using it. Everything else is just dressing...;)

Look at it this way. If the bullet is exactly the same ogived shape for the carbine, rifle, machine gun; then the things that make the throw, work time of gas pressure on the projectile as the shove forces, rifling twist along the length of the barrel to stabilize and impart spin which also imparts angular momentum drift in the direction of rotation and the frictional interval of time inside that barrel are going to have to be sufficient at the low, medium and high velocity regimes for that bullet, (radically different solutions for each launch system.); so it works stable across the three launch systems. This, again, IS rocket science and is exactly the kind of things that make gun making of any size as much a science as an art. It would have helped if the managers at Army Ordnance had figured out works well now is good enough and is better than perfect never and remembered that outfits like GM and Marlin are the kiss of death to any platform that requires precision and efficient engineered performance from milling, much less "powdered metal" forge casting tech.

Consider, we are 80 years after the fiascoes they, Army Ordnance, pulled and the best American machine gun in recent service appears to be a Belgian clone of a French reworked Browning Automatic Rifle adapted to belt field with a quick change barrel stolen from the Czecks, and that machine gun is largely milled. The best rifle was/is designed by an aviation engineer (Stoner===> rocket scientist.) and the working results still have whiners and complainers who claim neither is perfect enough.

If I am hard to please, it is because I am aware of how many near misses (7mm Garand, Johnson carbine/LMG, Ruger LMG class machine gun) there were between 1930 and 1942. And how many disasters; (BARs with no quick change barrels, Reisings with no chromed barrels, United Defense's joke of a machine pistol, the Marlin made Hyde M2 that went nowhere because metallurgy 101 was not something taught to Army Ordnance, the GM made M3, which despite its cheapness and effectiveness, was given to Joe Infantry as a "shoot yourself in the foot" SMG, etc.).
 
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@McPherson, are you trying to argue for a universal cartridge (ala 7.62 nato) or common caliber (such as the soviets use of 7.62 tokarev and 7.62*54R)?

Yes and no.

Look; there is a realistic physical limitation to the size of a bullet, the mass of a bullet and the propellant loading one can pack into a shell casing to shove that bullet. There are [also] numerous subtle aerodynamic influences that affect bullet performance in a weapon. Take for example the US 30-06 bullet. It was/is a 9.7gr to 11.3gr bullet of 7.62x63 mm either of a flat tail or boat-tail configuration. This bullet was derived from the round nosed 30-03, which in turn was derived from the 30-40 KJ rifle round the US army used in the Spanish American War.

Summary: the US discovered after WWI combat that the Spitzer bullet it thought it used in the Springfield rifle and in its machine guns did not have the 4,200 meter flyout range the Army Ordnance people who "tested" it claimed. Flyout was about 3,000 meters. The British, French and the Germans, who had ~4,000 meter flyouts had tested their bullets to use "beaten zone" machine gun tactics or indirect harassment bullet hose fires to get behind the trenches and cause casualties behind the presumed safety of the front lines. (Trust me, it is cheaper than mortar shells and it is effective to keep people miserable and or under some cover, hence communication trenches reaching at least a 1-2 km back.).

After getting their act together, the Americans improved the Ogive on their bullet (i.e. copied the Mauser bullet as well as the rifle.) and improved the aerodynamics to achieve a comparable performance of 4,000 meters or more.

Then there was the problem of Mister Machine Gun. Not only did the propellant in a bullet need to shove the bullet, but a bit of that chemical energy is also used to drive the machine gun. Whether gas tapped to operate a drive rod, or direct impingement to drive a bolt; the indexers, cams and ejectors drew off up to 50% of the propellant energy (depending on the principle and the type of machine gun), packed into each shoved bullet's propellant case. There is a decided difference between a rifle round propellant load and a machine gun round propellant load. Get the two confused in WWI and WWII, and the result could be a uncontrollable muzzle rise and/or rifleman with a badly bruised shoulder; or a hang-fired machine gun with a feed jam due to failure to extract. Messy and downright inconvenient on the firing range, it is fatal in combat.

The obvious solution is to design the (bolt action or straight pull) rifle to dump gas at the muzzle; so as to down rate the TIME the shove forces have and to mitigate recoil (short barrel). Or to design a rifle bullet and shell casing that is idiot proofed to the rifle and unusable to the machine gun and vice versa, or develop a self loader rifle that uses about the same amount of work to drive its cyclic as the machine gun. (An example would be the Johnson self loader battle rifle and light machine gun.).

Throw in the carbine and try that with the same bullet/shell casing propellant mixes? Now you have to dump gas AND have to use a self loading system so your carbine is short barreled and a full or semi-auto weapon. (and probably uses a muzzle brake to help with climb and recoil).

Have I mentioned rifling? (^^^) To get enough rotations out of your bullet to keep it stable at muzzle velocities of 600 m/s to 800 m/s for the carbine the twist is about 1.25 in (I'm estimating here) 40 centimeters of barrel length. Congratulations; your carbine has to have a barrel length of 15 inches at least as they measured in those days. Guess you better start thinking about BULLPUPS for your paratroopers.

The tradeoffs you have to make for a universal bullet are incredibly complex. No wonder the British, once they have the Vickers machine gun and the Enfield in the .303 common, are NOT going to monkey around with a new battle rifle. The US screwed around with the M1 Garand for a full decade and likewise with the Browning .30 machine gun and finally solved both about 1938. I think the .30 Browning still used "machine gun ammunition" but the 30-06 rifle rounds that passed through it would not hang it up. As for the Germans... MG 34, 42, K-98 and the FG-42 ALL used the Mauser cartridge with various degrees of success. (The FG 42 was a shoulder bruiser and a muzzle climber, until heavily modified.)

This also explains why you use gunsmiths and NOT automakers, or government weapon testers to reverse engineer a piece of enemy kit you like. GM is bound to screw up any piece of ordnance you give them. HS404 or MG 42, or FG 42.

Might also say the same about US Army Ordnance.

Clear [operator] head space is no joke. (cough "M60 machine gun" cough].

McP.
 
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Clear [operator] head space is no joke. (cough "M60 machine gun" cough].
It's off topic, but does anyone know why they completely buggered up how to change the barrel on that? An easily lost asbestos glove instead of a proper handle, what were they smoking?
 
It's off topic, but does anyone know why they completely buggered up how to change the barrel on that? An easily lost asbestos glove instead of a proper handle, what were they smoking?

Didn't want stuff sticking out is my guess. I guess they figured that if it worked for the MG-42 it would work for the M-60, the glove thing is a minor complaint. Carry 2 if you have to, we had both gloves and quick attach handles that the MG assistant carried for our MG-3.
 
It's off topic, but does anyone know why they completely buggered up how to change the barrel on that? An easily lost asbestos glove instead of a proper handle, what were they smoking?

I suspect they were told exactly how to achieve the desired aim by someone who knew - so went ahead and exhausted every possible alternative way of doing it before using said method. ;)

Its like they looked at the MG42 method and the BREN gun method which both worked really well and instead went all 'good idea fairy' on it - nope I don't get it.

There were several 'compromises' inherent to the design that probably contributed to its poor start in life.

Primarily the need to be as light as possible as it was intended to replace the BAR and so had to be able to be 'shoulder fired' as well as being able to be used like an MMG from bipod and tripod.

The need to be lighter (2kgs lighter than the FN MAG) resulted in a weapon that was not as reliable as its peers and resulted in a significantly lower mean rounds between failure and breakage than those other weapons 'suffered'.

I understand that when choosing the design the FN MAG was unproved but the MG42 was very proven.
 
I suspect they were told exactly how to achieve the desired aim by someone who knew - so went ahead and exhausted every possible alternative way of doing it before using said method. ;)

Its like they looked at the MG42 method and the BREN gun method which both worked really well and instead went all 'good idea fairy' on it - nope I don't get it.

There were several 'compromises' inherent to the design that probably contributed to its poor start in life.

Primarily the need to be as light as possible as it was intended to replace the BAR and so had to be able to be 'shoulder fired' as well as being able to be used like an MMG from bipod and tripod.

The need to be lighter (2kgs lighter than the FN MAG) resulted in a weapon that was not as reliable as its peers and resulted in a significantly lower mean rounds between failure and breakage than those other weapons 'suffered'.

I understand that when choosing the design the FN MAG was unproved but the MG42 was very proven.

When proper gunsmiths take a whack at something.

They can make almost anything work.



50 years to fix about a dozen mickey the mouse $10 details (see video ^^^). Especially, they fixed that !@# !@#$%^ indexer.
 
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This also explains why you use gunsmiths and NOT automakers, or government weapon testers to reverse engineer a piece of enemy kit you like. GM is bound to screw up any piece of ordnance you give them. HS404 or MG 42, or FG 42.

Might also say the same about US Army Ordnance.

Minimum length on a carbine or rifle barrel.is determined by a few things.

Is it long enough to burn the specified powder in the case for the desired pressure, without excessive powder burning outside the barrel?
Is the rifling of enough lands and grooves to grab the bullet without excessive blowby, and then is the twist enough to stabilize the desired bullet weight(and length, its all tied together)

With modern powder, check the 300 Blackout. For bullets over 200, you want 1-8", but 1-10" is better for the lighter bullet shapes used.
Note the 30-40 Krag did fine with 220gr RN with 1-10". Back to BLK, diwnright stubby 10" barrels stabilize the bullets well enough, and does fine at range.
How can this be? Optics.
You dont need long barrels for iron sights anymore for that sight radius. Scope takes care of that, so you can get subsonic 220s to have 1MOA accuracy, something the M1 Garand didn't have

GM did nothing wrong with the M3 Grease Gun. The other stuff they built, that was with the 'help' of Ordnance. Sometimes the design was adequate, like the M437mm built by Olds.
 
You can get around a universal bullet by having a pistol, and an assault rifle. This became the universal concept after 1945. The thread essentially argues that the British beat the Germans to the idea with an M1 / M2. The M1 is not absolutely ideal, but its there and can be manufactured in quantity.
 
Minimum length on a carbine or rifle barrel.is determined by a few things.

Is it long enough to burn the specified powder in the case for the desired pressure, without excessive powder burning outside the barrel?
Is the rifling of enough lands and grooves to grab the bullet without excessive blowby, and then is the twist enough to stabilize the desired bullet weight(and length, its all tied together)

With modern powder, check the 300 Blackout. For bullets over 200, you want 1-8", but 1-10" is better for the lighter bullet shapes used.

Intrawar is what I discussed. I think that 1 in 31cm for a 30-06 was spiral tight given the powders they had.

Note the 30-40 Krag did fine with 220gr RN with 1-10".

No; it didn't. It was significantly ballistic flyout outperformed by the Spanish 7mm Mauser, which is why Roosevelt who saw it with his own eyes, made it a point to have the USA reverse engineer the Spanish Mauser into the 30-06 Springfield.

Back to BLK, downright stubby 10" barrels stabilize the bullets well enough, and does fine at range.

How can this be? Optics.

Hunh?

You don't need long barrels for iron sights anymore for that sight radius. Scope takes care of that, so you can get subsonic 220s to have 1MOA accuracy, something the M1 Garand didn't have

The gun has to spin and shove the bullet. All a sight allows is for the user to aim and correct to correct for drift.

GM did nothing wrong with the M3 Grease Gun. The other stuff they built, that was with the 'help' of Ordnance. Sometimes the design was adequate, like the M437mm built by Olds.

Safety with the M3 was an initial issue (Drop it on its butt end and it goes bang.), and had to be back-modified.
 
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No; it didn't. It was significantly ballistic flyout outperformed by the Spanish 7mm Mauser, which is why Roosevelt who saw it with his own eyes, made it a point to have the USA reverse engineer the Spanish Mauser into the 30-06 Springfield.


The gun has to spin and shove the bullet. All a sight allows is to correct for drift.

The220gr load was accurate, but was running at lower velocity due to the pressure limits from the locking setup on that rifle. Added with the slow loading method, it was time for something new.

And 7mm Mauser is still flatter shooting than 30-03 or the later 30-06, so missed the boat there.
7mm wasn't as good at killing horses at 1000+yards, so got the .30 caliber instead.

The spin and shove is done within the first 8 to 12 inches of barrel, but with the iron sights 8 inch sight radius
(Since so many countries insisted on rear sights ahead of the magazine well) effective accuracy will be poor, since most people suck at using iron sights properly, long sight radius takes some of that error.out, to get closer to the inherent accuracy of that barrel/cartridge package.

Scopes are easy to use in comparison, so its easier to have the average shooter be more accurate.

So an AR-15 Pistol with a 10.5" barrel firing 300 BLK, is more accurate with a dot sight than Great Grandpa's Winchester 94 in 30-30 with a 28" barrel.

With modern fast, yet cool burning powders, that 10.5" barrel doesn't lose much in velocity when compared to an 18 or 24" barrel.

That's why Bullpup setups have faded: you just don't need long barrels anymore when you have optical sights. Bullpups tend to have terrible triggers, and that does effect accuracy as much as the Optics or cartridge.
 
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