Design an automatic rifle for WW2 in 1938

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Blue cat

Peg Leg Pom said:
Of the rounds available in 1938 I'd opt to change to 7.5 X 54 French. It's a good enough general purpose rifle and machine gun round.

7.5×54mm French - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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I'm thinking of something along the lines of the post war UK 7mm designs.

Essentially I would see the service rifle remaining as the M1 Garand in 30 06 at first, the BAR would be replaced by the new optimized auto rifle firing the new cartridge and ideally there would be a new GPMG style weapon (probably in 30 06) available as well.

Over time the Garand would be replaced by a new selective fire rifle firing the same cartridge as the auto rifle.

Perhaps post ww2, the usage of the 30 06 cartridge is revisited and perhaps a single unified cartridge is selected for the select fire rifle, auto rifle and GPMG ?
 
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SealTheRealDeal

SealTheRealDeal

Sam R. said:
Cheers for the reply,

I’ve assumed from my non expert reading that a great way to lose a US procurement is to supply an easily manufactured simple device that fulfills current requirements while offering to meet potential future doctrine. Puts you in the middle of a doctrine shit fight. Then there’s the potential additional weight of a box (Swappable) gpmg acting as lmg acting as an automatic rifle for doctrinal purposes.
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Well good thing the Bren is exclusively mag fed, and only a bit heavier than the BAR.

Tanks don’t have a second line assembly ready to go that’s obsolete in 38. Trucks do have excess.
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So you want an armoured truck? Ok, because "Kangaroo" specifically referred to "defrocked" tanks/SPGs.

I guess an armoured truck-type APC would be slightly cheaper and quicker to produce than the M3 APC, but I'm not sure by how much.

Splinter and or mg protected to dismount?
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Now that would be a big innovation. Pretty sure all WWII APCs had open tops.
 

Sam R.

jsb said:
If US ordered it in large numbers in early 38 they would get them in time, plenty of slack in US industry and 2-3 years would make them be ready.
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This is true, but would require such a change in mentality that 38 procures a mid war medium caliber medium tank and mid war front engine roo simultaneously. They’ve got manufacturing capacity though.
 

Blue cat

SealTheRealDeal said:
Well good thing the Bren is exclusively mag fed, and only a bit heavier than the BAR.
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Ideally I would want an auto rifle that was lighter than the BAR, yet still effective as an auto rifle at typical ranges. Perhaps a clean sheet design with an optimized cartridge might achieve that in 1938.
 
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Deleted member 1487

tomo pauk said:
If I'm reading this, a cartridge can be other than .30-06?
If so: FG-42 (shared a good deal of ideas with Lewis LMG IIRC, so it might not be too far fetched) in .250-3000.
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Normally I'm against the FG-42 because of it's complexity, but in something with say the power of the .25-3000 it could really work.
Eliminate the weird semi-auto function for an open bolt only though and modernize the .25-3000; it's ironic you said that because I was also thinking in that direction based off of a study done about future rifle calibers for France that settled on something around .25 caliber around that speed (depending on the bullet weight). My thought was a 6.35x39mm using a chopped down .30-06 case and using 1938 vintage ball powder (like was used in the .30 carbine) and an 18 inch barrel with a 108 grain/7 gram bullet with a rate of fire around 400-500rpm and a heavy barrel and chromed bore so that it wouldn't heat up/wear too much (worked for the Bren gun to the point that only one barrel was needed per gun that needed to be replaced something like every 50,000 rounds).

The heat build up would be substantially lower than even the Pedersen, which was already only 60% of the heat build up of the .30-06. With a recoil less than half that of the .30-06, a heat build up maybe 40% as large and a barrel made to the spec of a Bren gun in terms of heat treatment and thickness an FG-42 style open bolt automatic rifle in 6.35x39mm would be capable of running all day with even less barrel wear than the Bren.

Blue cat said:
Ideally I would want an auto rifle that was lighter than the BAR, yet still effective as an auto rifle at typical ranges. Perhaps a clean sheet design with an optimized cartridge might achieve that in 1938.
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Speaking of an optimized cartridge see above^
adriankowaty said:
Might it be?

Kbsp wz. 1938M - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
220px-MWP_Mors_Kbsp_wz38M.JPG

It is literally 1938 commision.
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Only problem is it is a rifle version of the BAR mechanism with semi-auto only. At that point might as well just make the Garand a select fire, box fed weapon.
 
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Deleted member 1487

BlackDragon98 said:
Pulling out some unknown Chinese history here.
Upgrade this to 1938 standards.
en.wikipedia.org

General Liu rifle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
When everyone clamors about their kickass semi auto, China beat them to the mark years before.
Unfortunately for China, they never got a chance to use it because of all the general chaos in the 20s and 30s.
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Still used a Bang style gas trap. It didn't even start dealing with the engineering challenge of a gas port in the barrel.

Glyndwr01 said:
Refined Farquhar-hill rifle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farquhar–Hill_rifle in 6.5x50mm SR Arisaka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.5×50mmSR_Arisaka.
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Not a bad option minus the drum mag. You'd probably want to tailor the powder to something more fitting to a shorter barrel, the 6.5x50 used a powder tailored to a 80cm long barrel. The FH rifle could use a much shorter barrel.
 
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McPherson

McPherson

Banned
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Get that to work. They were an industrial contract away in 1942. Army Ord thought milling was too expensive.
 
SealTheRealDeal

SealTheRealDeal

Blue cat said:
Ideally I would want an auto rifle that was lighter than the BAR, yet still effective as an auto rifle at typical ranges. Perhaps a clean sheet design with an optimized cartridge might achieve that in 1938.
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In that case maybe go all the way with that mindset and do what the Czechs did, and adopt a heavy SMG with a folding bipod as the SAW. Good out to 250m, very light, uses pistol rounds so more ammo can be carried...
 

Blue cat

wiking said:
With a recoil less than half that of the .30-06, a heat build up maybe 40% as large and a barrel made to the spec of a Bren gun in terms of heat treatment and thickness an FG-42 style open bolt automatic rifle in 6.35x39mm would be capable of running all day with even less barrel wear than the Bren.
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That sounds like a reasonable approach, issue two per rifle squad and have a belt fed GPMG in 30 06 available as well (your thread implied resources were not really an issue..)
 
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Blue cat

SealTheRealDeal said:
In that case maybe go all the way with that mindset and do what the Czechs did, and adopt a heavy SMG with a folding bipod as the SAW. Good out to 250m, very light, uses pistol rounds so more ammo can be carried...
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I would rather go with a scaled down rifle cartridge than a scaled up pistol cartridge. I also wonder a bit about drift due to wind of scaled up pistol rounds ?
 
BlackDragon98

BlackDragon98

Banned
wiking said:
Oh god no. The Fedorov was too complex:

Not only that, but the lack of an inline stock made muzzle climb a bitch (see in last 20 seconds or so):
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Yes, but i think it's biggest problem was the lack of detachable mag.
needed stripper clips instead.
Takes forever to reload.
hey, it 1918. Take what we got and make it better.
 

Deleted member 1487

BlackDragon98 said:
Yes, but i think it's biggest problem was the lack of detachable mag.
needed stripper clips instead.
Takes forever to reload.
hey, it 1918. Take what we got and make it better.
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Well OP is 1938. You can start with a clean design based on interwar experience.
 
McPherson

McPherson

Banned
Sam R. said:
Tanks don’t have a second line assembly ready to go that’s obsolete in 38. Trucks do have excess.
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Armored cars based on ATV trucks would be my COTs 1938 solution (Marmon-Harrington should be very familiar in this context.)

Splinter and or mg protected to dismount?
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Bullet and shell fragment resistant is the standard. Also...

1585866391765.png


The 375 or so M2s, could be Kangarooed as soon as the M3 gets up and going. It would help if the M3 was jump-started in 39.
 
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