Ideal OoB and Equipment for WWI Combatants

[SealTheRealDeal]

View attachment 545267

The Huot is an ergonomic and feed function disaster. So not only no but ____ no.

[Citation needed]

 

[Scott Washburn]

You are kidding? How was Mukden not a trench warfare nightmare or Santiago de Cuba a miniature continuous front as the Americans closed in on San Juan heights?

As Hammerbolt said, those were situations with local assaults against fortified positions. Essentially sieges. Such things had happened for centuries. The idea that two sides with huge armies could be locked in a stalemate along lines hundreds of miles long was not something anyone foresaw. When I was in graduate school I did a very long research paper on the development of tactics between the Franco-Prussian War and WWI. I read translated works on tactics from all the major European powers and none of them were talking about a possibility like this. Everyone was of the opinion that well-trained soldiers with the proper spirit could overcome field defenses.

 

[McPherson]

[Citation needed]

System analysis. Magazine is a design bolo, cheek weld does not work, awkward to hold, and probably not that wieldable in battle.

 

[McPherson]

As Hammerbolt said, those were situations with local assaults against fortified positions. Essentially sieges. Such things had happened for centuries. The idea that two sides with huge armies could be locked in a stalemate along lines hundreds of miles long was not something anyone foresaw. When I was in graduate school I did a very long research paper on the development of tactics between the Franco-Prussian War and WWI. I read translated works on tactics from all the major European powers and none of them were talking about a possibility like this. Everyone was of the opinion that well-trained soldiers with the proper spirit could overcome field defenses.

Hmm.

ACW. Siege of Petersburg was almost 9 and 1/2 months long and involved deadlocking the two main field armies involved. That does fit the criteria (^^^). AND it was an alarm bell.

Also... ever hear of Jan Bloch?

Thirteen years before the start of the First World War Britain’s military establishment was warned explicitly that offensive operations in a major conflict in Europe would be unsuccessful and that such a war would end only when one side was exhausted.

The prediction was delivered in 1901 at the Royal United Service Institution (now the Royal United Services Institute), a military think tank and discussion forum in Whitehall founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. The warning came in a lecture given by the unlikely figure of Jan Bloch, or Jean de Bloch as he was later known. Bloch was not a military man, but a banker and financier, who was born in Poland in 1836 and rose to an influential position in the Russian empire, of which Poland was then a part. He was an important figure in Russia’s railway system and took an interest in international affairs. He called for arbitration to replace warfare as a way of settling disputes and organised a peace conference at The Hague in 1899 to further that aim.

He first laid out his thesis in a six-volume book published in Paris in 1898 called The War of the Future in its Technical, Economic and Political Relations. In it he argued that such was the power of defence in modern warfare that it would be impossible for major wars to be won, especially general European conflicts, without huge casualties.

Full text of "The Future of War in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations"

It sometimes takes looking in the oddest places to see the history of a thing. The professionals knew. Oh, they knew, some of them, because they were warned. They were not that stupid.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Seen that video (a couple times now, same with Bloke on the Range's video on it). I think you're missing some key details in it.

Magazine is

-functionally no more complex than any belt fed system. The only difference is that it is acting on a gear rather than a belt.

And given how infamously unreliable springs for WWI-era high capacity mags were* I think this was a decent enough system.

*and IIRC you recently made a little diatribe on how crap the Madsen's mags were

And as Ian notes, the mags would seen to be very robust given that only five of them were used to feed over 100,000 rounds during the British trials.

cheek weld does not work,

It's plainly apparent in the video that the dust cover is much larger than it actually needs to be. It could be easily reduced for the production variant.

awkward to hold,

Only comment either of them made was that a pistol grip would be preferable to the bootleg thumbhole stock.

and probably not that wieldable in battle.

On the contrary, Nathaniel mentioned in his video that it was far easier to hold than on Lewis gun on account of its much lower weight (and the variant he was filming with didn't even have the added hand guards that as Ian noted "do definitely help you get a better grip").

additionally there's the whole

"The Huot did better in some tests than the Lewis. It was superior in snapshooting from a trench, in quickness of getting into action..."[4]

part of the 1918 British test results and the whole

After exposure to it in France, Lieutenant-General Arthur Currie, commanding the Canadian Corps, reported every soldier to come in contact with the Huot liked it, and on 1 October 1918 wrote requesting 5,000 be purchased, arguing casualties required increased firepower for each remaining man,[6]

part of the field trials. Which seem to indicate that general handling wasn't an issue.

 

[AJE]

That's a neat trick - but did anyone ever actually pull it off in practice? And is direction-finding equipment good enough to use for artillery targeting practical with WW1 technology? (Remember, this was WW1, when you could shell a observed and well-located enemy strongpoint for a week, and it would be back in action ten minutes after you ceased fire.)

Of course- direction-finding has been used to target artillery and guide other forces since WWI. The French/US even had a continuous RDF/listening network along the front by the end of WWI.

 

[Worffan101]

Ideally, I'd hire a mercenary to shoot Woodrow Wilson, put Kaiser Wilhelm in a coma, and drug Franz Ferdinand for like 2 weeks starting the week before his trip to Sarajevo. But failing that, all Great Powers would be a lot better off with the following:

1. Something vaguely resembling camo for field uniforms. Napoleonic snazziness is all well and good for the parade ground, but in the field you want dull browns and greens. Also, nobody has time to do up a fancy outfit anymore.
2. Until someone develops a walkie-talkie, every platoon should have a pair of designated radiomen to carry the comms gear. Better comms = better tactics. Reducing radios to easily man-portable size is a top priority.
3. Recon airplanes. Get them up immediately. By which I mean, get a fucking Wright Flyer if you have to and start using it for recon. Start working on synching machine-guns to the propeller ASAP.
4. Every army should reorganize their officer training doctrine to emphasize initiative among low to mid-level officers. Until decent radios are available, this is the best way to counter for the comms problem.

Most of these have already been covered in some capacity by other people, though.

Specifics for each country:

• America: Wilson hits his head and is left unfit for office.
• Italy: Shoot Luigi Cadorna, stake him in the heart with green wood, cut his head off with a silver sword, then shoot him again, just to be sure.
• AH: Oh boy. Send von Hötzendorf to train cadets or something, or just shoot him. And make sure the lieutenants all have adequate winter gear BEFORE launching an offensive in the Carpathians in fucking JANUARY. Better yet, follow up getting rid of Conrad by not launching a winter offensive in the Carpathians.
• Germany: Hit anybody who even suggests unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic over the head and have them cashiered and locked up. On the spot. Including the Kaiser if need be. And send Ludendorff on vacation in late '17 and have somebody who isn't cracking under the stress try to unfuck Kaiserschlacht.
• Russia: Fire the entire General Staff. You can't possibly get any worse.
• Turkey: Shoot Enver Pasha. Fucking megalomaniacal mass-murderer.
• France: Where to start? Um. Have a functioning government that isn't basically a provisional government that got entrenched? Don't try to use attrition tactics against the neighboring major power with a significantly greater population?
• UK: Strip Haig naked, beat the crap out of him, and force him to live like a conscript in a trench for a month. Maybe that'll help.
• Belgium: Beg, plead, and suck up to France for help, up to and including letting them in to defend Belgium once the diplomatic crisis starts. Also, have the entire military built to hold off the Germans at the border. France isn't the threat at this point.

First of all, higher a mercenary to kill Sam Hughes.

I love comments like this, it's what makes this site so much fun.

 

[McPherson]

*and IIRC you recently made a little diatribe on how crap the Madsen's mags were

I sure did. Different principle on Huot (finger indexed cam with ratchet wheel and with a "break me here fiddly bit finger no wider than a wire coat hanger rod and probably as fragile, so thanks for reminding me about that engineering disaster. I actually forgot that part.

Of course- direction-finding has been used to target artillery and guide other forces since WWI. The French/US even had a continuous RDF/listening network along the front by the end of WWI.

Courtesy of ye Royal and United States Navies which had been in the RDF business for about a decade. French arrived at it independently as they listened to Germans yak on the radio. I believe it was counter fire control center and not counter-battery per se. They were trying to knock out the directors, not the guns.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

a "break me here fiddly bit finger no wider than a wire coat hanger rod and probably as fragile

Given that it never came up in testing I think its a non issue, and if it was a concern it could be made slightly bigger, there looks to be room to do so.

 

[McPherson]

Given that it never came up in testing I think its a non issue, and if it was a concern it could be made slightly bigger, there looks to be room to do so.

Given that the test results are not easily accessed I have to use Bloke on the Range for further information.

As an HFE freak, I just don't like it. Pay attention to the magazine defects as illustrated. Another reason to prefer the Lewis gun. And there is the cheek slap that will knock you silly. YMMV and it probably should.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Given that the test results are not easily accessed I have to use Bloke on the Range for further information.

As an HFE freak, I just don't like it. Pay attention to the magazine defects as illustrated. Another reason to prefer the Lewis gun. And there is the cheek slap that will knock you silly. YMMV and it probably should.

HFE?

 

[AJE]

French arrived at it independently as they listened to Germans yak on the radio. I believe it was counter fire control center and not counter-battery per se. They were trying to knock out the directors, not the guns.

France was the first to use a single centralized network for signals intelligence (and whatever intelligence sound ranging was) on a front. Prior to this Germany, Britain, and other armies would maybe attach listening stations to individual corps or divisions but not coordinate all of them. Britain copied part of it from the French and improved their army network from there. The US simply integrated its forces into the French network when it entered the war. This was used to monitor allied and enemy landlines, radio stations, and radio-equipped aircraft, with the following uses (from the second source below):

• They provided Order of Battle information by locating enemy radio stations; grouping these stations into divisional, corps, and army nets (this was sometimes difficult but successful in active conditions.) Their analysis could determine the depth of the enemy echelons and could confirm the presence of troops.
• They intercepted and decoded messages from radio, ground telegraph, and telephone; intercept sites were connected directly to the analytic office by telegraph. Ground telegraph and telephone intercept was only of limited use during the war of movement but quite useful at other times.
• They intercepted airplane ranging and located the planes. Messages sent by aircraft were passed to American and French Air pursuit squadrons and often contained details about areas that were to be shelled, which was used to provide warning to troops. Sometimes this intercept indicated which German batteries were about to fire and enabled immediate counter-battery missions.

There were other duties which, while important, were not relevant to direct combat support, including communications security monitoring.

Sources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16161262.2019.1659580
https://armyhistory.org/chut-jecoute-the-u-s-armys-use-of-radio-intelligence-in-world-war-i/
http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/59/3/273.full

 

[McPherson]

HFE?

Human Factors Engineering as in how the human being and the machine get along with each other, that is whether they love each other or hate each other at the interface.

 

[YYJ]

For Canada:

First of all, higher a mercenary to kill Sam Hughes.

Second on the list is to run the Ross Rifle through some extensive tests, and actually act on the feed back this time. So many of the problems Canada had with the guns could have been found and solved pre-war (in fact, quite a few of the problems were discovered in training prior to being shipped overseas) and by just improving quality control standards at the factory. Here's a pretty good video on the numerous screw ups involved in the Ross' production.

While unruining the Ross, some enterprising factory worker starts experimenting with converting it into an automatic rifle. OTL Mr. Huot was able to successfully manage that in two years, working alone, without pay. So actually give this guy a salary, and a staff to speed up the process and hopefully the CEF can go over with some decent auto rifles.

And buy a better armoured car than the Armoured Autocar, and start experimenting with a motorized battalion before 1914.

I have heard that running trials of the Ross with the British ammunition they would be shooting in France would reveal most of the flaws. That did not apparently occur to anyone. The Canadian ammo apparently worked pretty well, in early training.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

I have heard that running trials of the Ross with the British ammunition they would be shooting in France would reveal most of the flaws. That did not apparently occur to anyone. The Canadian ammo apparently worked pretty well, in early training.

Yeah that'd probably catch the issue with the tolerances.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Regarding the Huot - had it been further developed I would imagine that the Drum and the somewhat 'Heath Robinson' gearing on the left side to work the drum would all be replaced with a far simpler trench magazine (that would likely be more reliable and easier to 'manage') - such is the fate of Drum magazines!

I would also imagine that a bespoke bolt would be created that did not result in so much rearward travel and as Bloke suggested a pistol grip.

I do not see this as replacing the Lewis gun or indeed as good as one - but instead being a supplementary weapon system that allows more automatic weapon at the nasty end.

 

[Hammerbolt]

Didn't the UK try to maybe an APC version of the Mark IV tank? maybe get that going asap?

 

[yulzari]

• [/QUOTE]UK: Strip Haig naked, beat the crap out of him, and force him to live like a conscript in a trench for a month. Maybe that'll help. [/QUOTE]

What makes you think that Haig did not know what conditions were like in the trenches? (BTW for half of the war they were volunteers) They did not live in the trenches for months. They were carefully rotated in and out of the trenches and spent more time out of them in the rear than in them. There is certainly much to criticise in Haig but he was well aware of the realities of infantry life on the Western Front and was popular with the troops. There was no reason for him to live in the same conditions. As any soldier will tell you - 'any fool can be uncomfortable'. Even if he did merit your criticism what do you expect him to do about it? The British rotated their units in and out. The Germans dug them deep in and made them comfortable and spent much more time in them. The French messed around not doing either well and mutinied.

 

[yulzari]

Didn't the UK try to maybe an APC version of the Mark IV tank? maybe get that going asap?

Gassing the deafened motion sick strap hanging troops in a spiky hot metal sauna with carbon monoxide did somewhat reduce their effectiveness when debussed.
What it would be most useful for in 1919 would be to bring supplies forward to support the troops once the line had been broken, to maintain the tempo of the beak through. Also to bring casualties back together with situation reports.

 

[Dorknought]

Mass armies prior to WW1 were 'the schools of the nation' instilling what ever 'national spirit' that the authorities at the time wanted. The man power was there to be consumed in a massive 'make work' sort of exercise. Manpower was cheap, equipment was expensive. You have to move to professional armies to flip that around.

The 1914 Battalion of 1000 rifles being taught the 'spirit of the bayonet' made way for the Battalion of 1918 with 38 Lewis guns and it didn't matter how many rifles were left and the bayonet opened cans. A 1914 Battalion commander would be completely bewildered and lost on the 1918 frontline but a 1918 Battalion commander would recognise many of the battlefield attributes evident today; fire and manoeuvre, supply, logistics, evacuating casualties, air support, cooperation and supply, radio comms etc.

The problem is not technology but leadership. The Navy, the largest heavy engineering organisation in the Empire invented the Tank - turrets, casemates, engines, hatches not doors, deck not floor etc. Even the RNAS took the first armoured cars to France and Belgium. No army was going to do something that frightens the horses. It's not really in their interest to innovate if it means just 38 dudes replace the 1000 they use to have.