Well that's good to know. I wonder why the RAF and RN went with the Lanchester first. And why the UK wasn't already fielding a submachiengun earlier.
Nazis get jet fighters earlier
- Thread starter bphillip54
- Start date
Well that's good to know. I wonder why the RAF and RN went with the Lanchester first. And why the UK wasn't already fielding a submachiengun earlier.
A Me262 equivalent in 1940 might have shortened the war.
If the Nazis put major effort into this flawed machine, they'd have fewer useful prop planes.
Problems:
1) range
2) engine reliability (~30 hours before major maintenance/replacement)
3) fuel consumption
4) lack of responsiveness (while you could get a lot of power and speed, you couldn't change either quickly). In particular, this made it very vulnerable on takeoff and landing.
5) cost
6) need LONG, concrete runways.
If the Nazis put major effort into this flawed machine, they'd have fewer useful prop planes.
Problems:
1) range
2) engine reliability (~30 hours before major maintenance/replacement)
3) fuel consumption
4) lack of responsiveness (while you could get a lot of power and speed, you couldn't change either quickly). In particular, this made it very vulnerable on takeoff and landing.
5) cost
6) need LONG, concrete runways.
Earlier adoption of SMGs by the Army didn't fit with the doctrine - with the exception of two world wars, the UK had always fielded a small and highly-trained army, which would be called upon to fight anywhere in the world and often in terrain such as the North-West Frontier which required long range rifle fire. Witness the problems 5.56mm NATO is having in Afghanistan and the resurgence in the use of 7.62mm ammunition. That led to the adoption of probably the finest bolt-action battle rifle ever designed, in conjunction with probably the finest LMG of WW2 (Czech ZB vz. 26 in it's incarnation as the Bren) - not ideal for a purely European battle, but an excellent compromise given their worldwide role and the widely varying terrain in which they could be expected to fight. What it did NOT emphasise was a lot of firepower at short range - not only was that a good way to get cut to pieces by an enemy armed with inferior weapons (the British Army not having forgotten Isandlwana!), but in a colonial war supply is a massive headache and a small number of rounds that hit is vastly preferable to throwing a large number of rounds in the general direction of the enemy and relying on the fact that some will hit.
So far as the RN adoption of SMGs was concerned, it made perfect sense - they wanted a weapon that could be given to your average Matelot for guarding prisoners, boarding actions and any bluejacket landing parties. That means a robust weapon with a lot of firepower at close range to make up for the fact that the sailor handling it will have minimal range time and shooting experience. As for the RAF (Regiment) use, they weren't founded until 1942 and by that time the emphasis was as much on guarding against saboteurs in the mould of the SAS as it was on guarding against a conventional infantry assault. For that type of task firepower is pretty important and an SMG a pretty suitable choice - and the RAF's self-image would probably make it hard for them to accept a weapon like the Sten, no matter how effective.
Exactly. Doctrine is what mainly pushes weapons development not necessarily what the enemy is doing. It's only when doctrine fails in the face of enemy action that urgency becomes an issue. And that's why the repeated answer of, "well the Allies will just counter with their own" isn't always correct. It was plain to see the Nazis were ways ahead of the rest of the major world powers in fielding those two types small arms and the Allies didn't match them automatically with similar designs because they didn't see the need. And the same could happen with jets or anything else as long as one side is too convinced it's way is the only way.
Don't drink the nationistic cool-aid. All magazine fed light machine guns / automatic rifles were obselete after the MG34 was revealed. The Bren and its Czech brothers included. Now that same wasn't true for the heavy water cooled machine guns like the Vickers, the American M1917's, and even the Soviet M1910's. Being water cooled means those had a sustained firepower edge no GPMG can match.
ME 262 pilots kept complaining how the jets wree too fast to actually fight in them, i'd imagine that in 1940 it would be even harder to actually do something useful while flying around with it.
Doctrine changes to match changing circumstances - and in this case the British Army went back to something close to their pre-war doctrine right after the war (indeed, they're still holding it).
Really? So that's why I used to carry around a magazine-fed LMG (and indeed why they're still in use today). Belt-fed weapons give you a somewhat enhanced rate of fire, but only so long as you can keep changing the barrels (in reality the barrel heating rate has far more bearing on rate of fire than the magazine or belt feed).
You seem to have a major problem with understanding what a machine gun is there to do. Fundamentally it's all about suppressive fire, and doing so by creating a beaten zone through which the enemy cannot pass without sustaining excessive casualties. The density of rounds flying through the beaten zone is critical here - this can be attained by very high rates of fire (the MG34) at the expense of the rapid recoil making the beaten zone very large since the gun is hard to control, or with much lower rates of fire (FN-MAG/Bren) allowing much better control over the gun.
Unless you're firing at exceptionally long range (map-predicted fire essentially - the province of water cooled machine guns because you must sustain it for a very long period of time), the reality is that most armies prefer to go with the lower rate of fire route, and as such in most cases you don't use a lot of ammunition - 3-5 round bursts every few seconds is the British current doctrine for using a GPMG in light role, which is the LMG replacement. SF role is the Vickers replacement, for which it has never been entirely satisfactory for barrel cooling reasons.