British Army adopts M1 Carbine as primary rifle for Normandy

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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How many 25 pounder shells can you fit in a tank turret compared with 2/6 pdr shells? What’s the accuracy like in direct fire on the move?
Without a two axis gyrostabilizer, shooting on the move is luck.

Fewer 25 pdr shells, of course
The Valentine XI carried 45 75mm rounds roughly same length of what Shell and charge would be on the 25 pdr
The MkIII carried 90 rounds of 2 pdr shot
 
What happens past D-Day when these M1 troops advance into Europe and non-M1 troops come up alongside them? What if paradrops of ammunition are required?

Good Lord!
However did Thompson, STEN and Enfield equipped units manage different ammo during the War?

You really should check on who many different types of small arms ammo from pistols to machines guns went to Commonwealth units
 

Deleted member 94680

Good Lord!
However did Thompson, STEN and Enfield equipped units manage different ammo during the War?

You really should check on who many different types of small arms ammo from pistols to machines guns went to Commonwealth units

But the British had supplies and manufacturers of those ammunition types ready and in place before D-Day. The OP is proposing adding yet another round to the supply chain and for rank and file soldiery at that. It adds yet another level of complication to an already complicated situation.
 
But the British had supplies and manufacturers of those ammunition types ready and in place before D-Day. The OP is proposing adding yet another round to the supply chain and for rank and file soldiery at that. It adds yet another level of complication to an already complicated situation.

38 S&W
9mm
455 Webley
45 Auto
303
30-06
8mm Mauser
50 Browning
50 Vickers
55 Boys
15mm BESA

One more isn't a problem
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
Seems the Brits did the above list during WWII without resorting to throwing rocks at the Nazis from logistics breakdowns

Yes, so throwing one more into the mix certainly won't have any impact...

Look, I've said it's an interesting idea, but like so many interesting ideas, historically they founder on the realities of war.

As it was, the British mix of small arms served the needs of their army, the Canadians, the Poles, etc in NW Europe and Italy to the point that Germany surrendered 11 months - two campaign seasons - after D-Day. Replacing SMLEs, Brens, and Stens with anything else in 1944-45 wouldn't have sped THAT reality up.
 
Plus 7.92mm version of the Besa for a while too.

Logistically it would be an issue, but hardly an insurmountable one, to keep another weapon in the field. It's what the Royal Logistics Corps did. The biggest bottleneck would have been building up a large stock of ammunition to keep those weapons in action. By WWII the .303 had been the standard British rifle calibre for 40+ years and it is the round that was in the depots. The tooling for it was in place (not just in the UK but across the Commonwealth and the ammunition then shipped to the UK) and there were literally hundreds of millions of rounds made, particularly once war actually started and production had been ramped up. To bring in another round for which there were not large reserves of ammunition to hand would have been the issue. The M1 didn't appear until 1942 I think, so couldn't have been even considered until then, so war production of .303 would have been in full swing already and switching out to another round for the front line troops, whilst still keeping the large number of SMLE's issued to 'non tooth' units supplied would have been a strange idea, something to do with not changing horses mid race.

Do you also swap out the Bren for something else or at least rechamber it? With an existing platoon, drop them a couple of cases of .303 and they can reload SMLE and Bren magazines. Change to an M1 and you need to drop off cases of both calibres.
 
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Dave Shoup

Banned
Logistically it would be an issue, but hardly an insurmountable one, to keep another weapon in the field. It's what the Royal Logistics Corps did. The biggest bottleneck would have been building up a large stock of ammunition to keep those weapons in action. By WWII the .303 had been the standard British rifle calibre for 40+ years and it is the round that was in the depots. The tooling for it was in place (not just in the UK but across the Commonwealth and the ammunition then shipped to the UK) and there were literally hundreds of millions of rounds made, particularly once war actually started and production had been ramped up. To bring in another round for which there were not large reserves of ammunition to hand would have been the issue. The M1 didn't appear until 1942 I think, so couldn't have been even considered until then, so war production of .303 would have been in full swing already and switching out to another round for the front line troops, whilst still keeping the large number of SMLE's issued to 'non tooth' units supplied would have been a strange idea, something to do with not changing horses mid race.

Do you also swap out the Bren for something else or at least rechamber it? With an existing platoon, drop them a couple of cases of .303 and they can reload SMLE and Bren magazines. Change to an M1 and you need to drop off cases of both calibres.

Actually, it was what the Ordnance Corps and Corps of Transport did; the RLC was not formed until the 1990s.

That being said, good points. ;)
 
45 Thompson, even while that heavy, you really got to bear down on it to keep on target. The stock angle doesn't help. It like wrestling a snake to keep on target for a full magazine.
M2? Easy peasy for a mag dump

Which begs the question; how good is a .30 Carbine (or equivalent round) chambered Thompson on full auto? Or an Owen in that calibre range? Does any potential ease of use make the additional weight ok? Australian soldiers who'd used the Owen in 9mm might not even ask that question, so popular was that weapon with the diggers.

Add a bipod to these heavy blowback open bolt weapons and I think you might open up a disparity between them and the lighter, non-bipod M2 that's akin to the gap in firing ergonomics which exists between full auto battle rifles and the BAR 1918 a1 & a2, if not that yawning gap between full auto battle rifles and the Bren/FN-D BAR class of LMG.

OTOH, this guy was onto the issue RE making the M2 more user friendly:
01152016-001.jpg
 
Logistics is of course an important consideration but smalls arms ammunition represents a relatively small chunk of a given units 'logistical slice'.

Water, food, POL, spares etc all take up far more logistics than ammunition on a day to day basis.

Artillery rounds was an issue and the main worry in Normandy but I am unaware of units running out of or even running low of small arms ammunition during the campaign.

At company we are adding .30 carbine and massively reducing or possibly eliminating 9mm x 19?

The biggest issue I see is cost - a No4 Lee Enfield was IIRC $25 a rifle, the Carbine was $45 a rifle - however we are leveraging Lend lease and possibly standing up UK and Canadian production?

UK made Ammo - well it had from a standing start started to produce 9mm x 19 for the Sten and I have never heard that this was an issue - so I would not envisage that 7.62mm x 33 would be an issue and of course it is being produced by the US

Organization and management of ammunition at the section - that is possibly an issue but the majority of the rifleman's .303 ammo (issued in bandoliers of 50 rounds in 5 round strips - and usually 3 bandoliers carried per rifleman) was intended for the Sections 25 odd Bren gun magazines.

Its been said that if a section ever got down to its last 30 rounds of .303 they would all be in the sections last Bren gun magazine

So given that the M1 is 2.6 Kilos loaded and a No4 is 4.1 and an M1 carbine 15 round magazine is .2 kilos - that means that means that the M1 carbine equipped rifleman can carry 8 x 15 round magazines (for a total of 135 rounds) with no appreciable increase in overall load weight and still have 150 x .303 rounds all for the units Bren gun magazines!

And if that is not enough ammunition then the unit in question, then it is having a particularly bad day at the office and carrying the M1 carbine instead of the No4 and Sten is very unlikely to be the cause.

The other problem I see is the Magazine. The Magazine was the weapons weak spot as it was not durable and damaged/worn magazines was very likely to be the driving cause of any malfunction.

The GIs always had a plentiful supply of magazines so the practice was to replace them regularly.

Given the British being of a more austere mind set this might initially cause issues.
 
I agree with all the practical on-the-ground implications as to why .303 + pistol-calibre SMGs were unmovable in OTL, but disagree that it was because the UK and Commonwealth had an oppressive economic or logistical impediment stopping all change in this area (certainly not after America WAS IN), but reupping this:
Ultimately, I think this is a military reform that only happens in the event of that hypothetical long war occurring after a Soviet collapse in '42/'43, plus the success of the Manhattan Project being knocked back a year or three.

At that point, increasing infantry effectiveness becomes a much bigger thing for Whitehall than it ever was IOTL.

Something to consider; the brasshats were fundamentally correct during the interwar period in selecting the Bren and having the Vickers Berthier as the leading alternative to it. They got that right, and any modern talk about "but they should have made 'em beltfed" ignores that the system worked within the context that existed.

A war with a vastly different strategic requirement and lengthened timeframe to OTL, that very easily leads to the implementation of our smallarms reform.


Anyway, my feeling is they wouldn't even be arming all infantry with autocarbines, they'd simply do away with 'all the king's rifle group men are equal' doctrine, and end up with like a third of the men in a section carrying bolt action carbines and acting as dedicated ammo barers for the autocarbines (autocarbineers?) and Bren team(s).

FWIW, plenty of No 5s were made IOTL, plans existed for No 4s being converted to halfstock carbine configuration, and the same can easily apply to No 6s and SMLEs in the event of a long war. This is before you factor in doing a downloaded .303 for these weapons alone, or simply chambering them in the same calibre as the autocarbine class.

but I've become wiser with more research


Off topic, but he really needs to turn his smarts into a regular PhD, his analysis is next level compared to the other brighteyed YT military history presenters.
Though I guess that career path in the gaming entertainment industrial complex is way more comfortable than throwing in to become a doctoral candidate in this day and age.
 
Which begs the question; how good is a .30 Carbine (or equivalent round) chambered Thompson on full auto? Or an Owen in that calibre range? Does any potential ease of use make the additional weight ok? Australian soldiers who'd used the Owen in 9mm might not even ask that question, so popular was that weapon with the diggers.

Add a bipod to these heavy blowback open bolt weapons and I think you might open up a disparity between them and the lighter, non-bipod M2 that's akin to the gap in firing ergonomics which exists between full auto battle rifles and the BAR 1918 a1 & a2, if not that yawning gap between full auto battle rifles and the Bren/FN-D BAR class of LMG.

OTOH, this guy was onto the issue RE making the M2 more user friendly:
01152016-001.jpg

That looks like a prop from The Man From Uncle.
 
I agree with all the practical on-the-ground implications as to why .303 + pistol-calibre SMGs were unmovable in OTL, but disagree that it was because the UK and Commonwealth had an oppressive economic or logistical impediment stopping all change in this area (certainly not after America WAS IN), but reupping this:


Something to consider; the brasshats were fundamentally correct during the interwar period in selecting the Bren and having the Vickers Berthier as the leading alternative to it. They got that right, and any modern talk about "but they should have made 'em beltfed" ignores that the system worked within the context that existed.

A war with a vastly different strategic requirement and lengthened timeframe to OTL, that very easily leads to the implementation of our smallarms reform.


Anyway, my feeling is they wouldn't even be arming all infantry with autocarbines, they'd simply do away with 'all the king's rifle group men are equal' doctrine, and end up with like a third of the men in a section carrying bolt action carbines and acting as dedicated ammo barers for the autocarbines (autocarbineers?) and Bren team(s).

FWIW, plenty of No 5s were made IOTL, plans existed for No 4s being converted to halfstock carbine configuration, and the same can easily apply to No 6s and SMLEs in the event of a long war. This is before you factor in doing a downloaded .303 for these weapons alone, or simply chambering them in the same calibre as the autocarbine class.



Off topic, but he really needs to turn his smarts into a regular PhD, his analysis is next level compared to the other brighteyed YT military history presenters.
Though I guess that career path in the gaming entertainment industrial complex is way more comfortable than throwing in to become a doctoral candidate in this day and age.

The Enfield carbine looks dashing but was not liked for a number of reasons including a wandering zero and it kicked like a mule. After the war they were pulled from service with somewhat indecent haste.
 
The Enfield carbine looks dashing but was not liked for a number of reasons including a wandering zero and it kicked like a mule. After the war they were pulled from service with somewhat indecent haste.
Apparently they are kickers (though a popular US gun writer says they're no worse than Springfield '03s in .30-06), but there is a huge debate as to whether they are inaccurate or not.

FWIW I think that if they're issued as glorified slow-firing, shorter distance PDWs, then they'd be paired with dedicated, weaker .303 loads, at the power levels of the era's .30-30, a definite step down from .303 SAA. Or even simply chambered for .30 carbine/whatever. The whole thing about exacting MOA standards ceases to be an issue.
 
Apparently they are kickers (though a popular US gun writer says they're no worse than Springfield '03s in .30-06), but there is a huge debate as to whether they are inaccurate or not.

FWIW I think that if they're issued as glorified slow-firing, shorter distance PDWs, then they'd be paired with dedicated, weaker .303 loads, at the power levels of the era's .30-30, a definite step down from .303 SAA. Or even simply chambered for .30 carbine/whatever. The whole thing about exacting MOA standards ceases to be an issue.

Mixing a lower powered .303 into the mix is a terrible idea. It complicates logistics even further, there are going to be risks that the rounds could be mixed with normal .303 which might make a Bren or Vickers fail to cycle at the worst time possible.
 

Deleted member 1487

That’s madness. Equipping the most vital component of your entire armed forces with a completely different weapon to the rest of your Army could lead to all kinds of difficulties.
Yet British and American troops intermixed all the time despite using different weapons and ammo without significant issue.
The M1 was fielded by the British IOTL yet didn't seem to cause any issues; ITTL it will be replacing the Sten and SMLE on the front line, so if anything making logistics easier with the forces using the most ammo. Besides the US issued the Garand at the front and the M1 Carbine behind it without issue, are you saying the British are incapable of doing the same?

What happens if D-Day is a failure and casualties are disastrous? Do you send in a second wave equipped with different weapons (and ammunition) to try and link up with the survivors?
What if it’s far more successful than planned for and the German front collapses? Do you throw in extra exploitation troops equipped differently?
What if the front stabilises to the point of attritional warfare? How long does British supply of American ammunition last?
All forces to be used in Normandy would use the M1 Carbine, so the second wave would also have them, as well as any reinforcements or additional waves.
I'd imagine the stockpiles of M1 Carbine ammo would last so long as the US was in the war and shipping it in for their own troops anyway. Not sure why you'd think otherwise.

What happens past D-Day when these M1 troops advance into Europe and non-M1 troops come up alongside them? What if paradrops of ammunition are required?
When did British troops from Italy link up with British troops in NW Europe? Besides that happened when British and US forces intermixed repeatedly throughout numerous campaigns, starting in North Africa and continuing into Italy, yet no major logistics issues happened then.
 
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