How many films would there be about Mad Jack if he'd been an American?
Most exotic plausible World War 2 standard-issue weapons?
- Thread starter Myth
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Is that really so awesome? For all the finesse involved, he was still just killing people, just like any other combatant.
marathag
Banned
The US made more Uranium Metal by Fall 1942, than Greater Germany would by the end of the War.
It seemed to take 10 years for anyone to think of using it alloyed with other materials as a projectile, you just can't use pure U or DU
marathag
Banned
Only one for Andy Murphy, and that film toned down a lot of what he did.
And there has never been a film on Stephen Decatur, whos one of his Barbary War actions impressed Nelson(yes that Nelson) to remark 'the most bold and daring act of the age'
Same for never getting a film on Admiral Lord Cochrane himself, who inspired a lot of fictional RN Captains
We did get one with George Ritter Von Trapp and it focused on his later career as the head of a family singing group and his marriage to a former nun. So, count your blessings we didn't get a movie featuring Mad Jack's later surfing career (first man to ride the Severn's tidal bore) or Cochrane's involvement in the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814.
The T23 Machine Gun gets adopted by the US Army.
guns.fandom.com
By 1944, US divisions landing in Normandy have an ur-FN MAG in .30’06.
T23 machine gun
The T23 machine gun was a prototype general purpose machine gun developed in WW2. Its design is very similar to the FN MAG. [1] [2]
guns.fandom.com
By 1944, US divisions landing in Normandy have an ur-FN MAG in .30’06.
I could see Italy going with a Praying Mantis-style vehicle built on top of one of their light tanks to try to keep the hulls useful as the war progresses.
Maybe add in the Trombocino as a infantry platoon weapon.
Put the Piaggio P.108A on anti-shipping duty with a 90mm cannon in the nose (one prototype built OTL)
Italy'd be a reasonable choice for a country developing cargo subs too, come to think of it, given their prewar expansion into Africa, specialist frogman program and fear of the Royal Navy.
Have them capture some Pyrkal proto-assault rifles from the Greeks.
Mix in a dash of WW1-era weapons hastily reactivated when the war moves onto Italian soil- captured Austrian pneumatic mortars, the Villar-Perosa, a variety of civilian shotguns getting issued out to frontline units.
There's a perfectly reasonable path to the Italians developing a rocket-propelled fighter, given their efforts to develop the Campini motor-jet, which were unlikely to be successful but reportedly involved designing an airframe and their desperate need for air defense by 1943. If you can't put a jet into your jet fighter airframe a rocket is the next best thing, after all.
Just keep the Red Devil grenade as is with no modifications. But have the Italian Army decide to copy some of the British Sticky Bombs they captured in North Africa.
Now, have the allies start shipping all these captured Italian weapons to support the Yugoslav Partisans, with their fondness for knives as a sidearm, brigade of M3 light tanks, and pre-existing reliance on a mish-mash of captured or smuggled in weapons from across the globe, including all the fun OSS and SOE liberator pistols and silenced Stens and so on. Then give the British Raiding Support Regiment another battery (or just re-equip C Battery, their AA battery), this one equipped with rocket Z batteries for air defense, and remember that the reported genesis for the Land Mattress was a Z battery used in a ground role in North Africa and that Luftwaffe activity over Yugoslavia was declining rapidly by 1944.
Now, imagine being a Yugoslav Army officer trying to coordinate logistics in the last offensives in 1945, and despair.
Maybe add in the Trombocino as a infantry platoon weapon.
Put the Piaggio P.108A on anti-shipping duty with a 90mm cannon in the nose (one prototype built OTL)
Italy'd be a reasonable choice for a country developing cargo subs too, come to think of it, given their prewar expansion into Africa, specialist frogman program and fear of the Royal Navy.
Have them capture some Pyrkal proto-assault rifles from the Greeks.
Mix in a dash of WW1-era weapons hastily reactivated when the war moves onto Italian soil- captured Austrian pneumatic mortars, the Villar-Perosa, a variety of civilian shotguns getting issued out to frontline units.
There's a perfectly reasonable path to the Italians developing a rocket-propelled fighter, given their efforts to develop the Campini motor-jet, which were unlikely to be successful but reportedly involved designing an airframe and their desperate need for air defense by 1943. If you can't put a jet into your jet fighter airframe a rocket is the next best thing, after all.
Just keep the Red Devil grenade as is with no modifications. But have the Italian Army decide to copy some of the British Sticky Bombs they captured in North Africa.
Now, have the allies start shipping all these captured Italian weapons to support the Yugoslav Partisans, with their fondness for knives as a sidearm, brigade of M3 light tanks, and pre-existing reliance on a mish-mash of captured or smuggled in weapons from across the globe, including all the fun OSS and SOE liberator pistols and silenced Stens and so on. Then give the British Raiding Support Regiment another battery (or just re-equip C Battery, their AA battery), this one equipped with rocket Z batteries for air defense, and remember that the reported genesis for the Land Mattress was a Z battery used in a ground role in North Africa and that Luftwaffe activity over Yugoslavia was declining rapidly by 1944.
Now, imagine being a Yugoslav Army officer trying to coordinate logistics in the last offensives in 1945, and despair.
marathag
Banned
One bit of exotica would be the rocket assist sticky bomb with a PIAT style launcher.
The sticky bomb was a low tech HESH device, and would be very effective against even highly sloped thick armor. Rocket assist gives it a flatter trajectory and a bit better range
Pedantic mode engaged. A claymore is a gurt big two handed sword. He would need a batman to carry it around for him. He just had a Highland basket hilt sword. Pedantic mode off.Anyone who was using a longbow and a Claymore (sword, that is) in 1944 France DEMANDS a mention.
Claymore originally referred to basket-hilted broadswords. They were called "great swords" or "broad swords" (in Scottish Gaelic) either because they had bigger blades than the basket-hilted swords that the English used or because they had bigger blades than common civilian rapiers. Using the word "Claymore" to refer to early modern two-handed swords is a modern corruption. Also, Scottish two-handed swords were relatively large compared to English longswords but small compared to the Continental two-handers that the Landsknechte used as polearms.
Are they not Lyran illuminating mortars? And in AFVs armed and then just fired later from inside not by infantry ridding on top..... it's just confusion as the same system can be used by the infantry?
I've always been puzzled by the fact that he retired from the Service after the war ended in 45. At least considering his supposed quote he said when informed of the twin nuking of/surrender of Japan "Damned Yanks without them we could have kept this going for another ten years at least". I mean there would have been plenty of opportunities for his favorite activity in Malaya, Kenya, and the like late colonial wars. Or become a mercenary or something.
Considering he apparently seriously loved war and was a high grade commando he probably could have easily founded his own merc group. Instead he settled down to a life that didn't involve killing large numbers of Germans.
The regular Army doesn't like odd ball characters, he may not have been given a choice about being demobbed. Paddy Mayne is a good example of this, he was essentially told "Thank you for your service but don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out".
Seems like MI6 could have found a use of a patriotic lunatic with a love of killing that would make most out and out serial killers blanche.
Or like a said a mercenary. Plenty of work for those in the couple decades after WW2. I could see an interesting story involving Mad Jack forming his own Merc regiment and getting caught up in say Katanga and Biafra.
It's not the Lyran mortars, it's a full on 3" class job. Apparently a post-war mod, but it's a WW2 mortar on a WW2 tank. Allegedly the following is an explanation:
"I samband med pbrig på fastlandet utrustades med Centurion och de tidigare lätta vagnarna blev övertaliga fördes huvuddelen av m/40K över till P 1G och var kvar en bit på 60-talet. De kunde inte slå en sjöinvasion men luftlandsatt trupp på fälten vid Follingbo - Roma klarade de av. På den tiden fanns ingen kapacitet att fälla strf eller tung mtrl utan det var huvudsakligen fotsoldater som fick bära sin utr. Skillnaden till föregångaren på P 1G, m/41 var inte särskilt stor, samma kanon 37 mm med pprj och sgr, två 8 mm kulsprutor, samma hastighet. M/40K var rätt slitna, se besiktningsprotokoll längre ner, de hade varit i bruk under 10 år. Det blev ytterligare 10 år på Gotland. 37 mm sgr var inte särskilt effektiv så en vagn/pluton utrustades med 8 cm granatkastare på bakpansaret för att skjuta effektivare granater i målet."
Using Google Translate and a pet Norwegian, I think this means they were to be used against light infantry forces without much heavy firepower and that the mortar was added because the 37mm HE wasn't very good. Certainly a plausible situation for the Japanese to be in in WW2, US forces landing on islands and being opposed by light tanks with ineffective guns.
I've had this idea floating around for years of a completely insane but entirely plausible (engineering-wise) development of non-electric externally-powered Gatling guns. Originally as sort of a steampunk thing - the airship equivalent of a naval gun deck, a battery of large-bore Gatling guns driven by belts and line shafts off a deck boiler - but if for whatever reason electric motors don't catch on...
Dr. Gatling himself did experiment successfully with an electrically driven Gatling gun in the late 1890s. So it's definitely plausibly possible.