Rearm the American Infantry for WWII.

Spencersj345.346

Much like similar threads on rearming the Polish,British,and Italian infantry for WWII your objective is to give the American Infantry the best weapons and equipment in general you can reasonably give them. Obviously you're probably going to want to replace the BAR if nothing else.
 
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BlackDragon98

BlackDragon98

Banned
wiking said:
Oh this is too easy:
.276 Pedersen Garand with a box magazine and select fire. No need for a BAR then.
Oh and Panzerfausts. That kind of fixes all the deficiencies IOTL.
Maybe a better helmet design?
Click to expand...
M1 helmet's alright.
It's still in use today by many nations.
 

Crowbar Six

wiking said:
Oh this is too easy:
.276 Pedersen Garand with a box magazine and select fire. No need for a BAR then.
Oh and Panzerfausts. That kind of fixes all the deficiencies IOTL.
Click to expand...

They got it all pretty much right.

Garand was fine - even in -30-06.

A lot of countries tried a fully automatic rifle and generally went back to a actual LMG of some description. They should have looked at the FN modified BAR and gone with that, it wasn't a Bren but it was much better than a full auto box fed Garand in any calibre.

The US certainly needed a AT weapon for the infantry something Panzerfausty would fit the bill, the other option would likely be a recoiless rifle like the M18 or M20 would do and lots of AT rifle grenades to fill the gaps if you want something man portable then the M40 bazooka would be able to kill any tank on the battlefield in WW2.
 

James Ricker

wiking said:
Oh this is too easy:
.276 Pedersen Garand with a box magazine and select fire. No need for a BAR then.
Oh and Panzerfausts. That kind of fixes all the deficiencies IOTL.
Maybe a better helmet design?
Click to expand...
A good light machine gun would be chambered to fire .276 Padersen be belt-fed but also be able to use the 10-round boxes of the Grand in an emergency
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Tanker Boots and Nylon Body armor for everyone, with optional steel inserts
M1 Helmet liner is OK, very good even. Shape could have been better, but was huge improvement over the Kelly.

On the .276 Garand, have a muzzle device permanently attached for launching grenades, with a fold out ladder sight, when deployed, will shut off the gas automatically.
Pretty much what's on the Yugo SKS, not the M7 clamp on seperate bit of kit
'30 carbine' cartridge would be necked down, to get a flatter shooting cartridge, and full auto to begin with, and all get a folding stock.

1911? Officers only, if they want it. Otherwise, its those carbines for everybody.
C-Rations, include a fold up stove in each 5 in 1 box, and each meal comes with a few Hexamine or Trixane tablets for that stove, rather than one Coleman Stove per squad that ran off gasoline.
1601773282074.jpeg

so in time, every guy who wanted a fold up stove would have one, and get heated meals, every time, and no need to wait for the stove to be passed around
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Hmm...

M2 Carbines right out of the gate. None of this Reising gun crap.

Garand in a select fire/box magazine configuration. .30-06, .308, .276, what ever way you can get it into the troop's hands.

AN/M2 Stinger modification. Presto! American version of the MG 42.

Start the war with either an 84mm or 88mm bazooka. The basic bazooka design was terrific, the Heer stole it, scaled it up to 88mm added a blast shield and called it the paznerschreck.

Better clothing for differing climates/better cold weather gear! Newsflash. The uniform needed in Germany or Belgium in the dead of winter is not the same uniform needed in Burma or New Guinea (or the Philippines for that matter). Boots that don't rot in the mud and humidity of the SW Pacific would be nice, as would boots that don't encourage trench foot. Note: Snow is white, consider having a few hundred thousand cheap cotton covers to throw over the much improved cold weather kit. better WOOL socks!

Better individual rations, ones with enough calories to support an infantryman, 2,800 calories is plenty sitting on your butt in DC, its about half of what you need in high activity combat or long route marches. 10-in-1 are great, as long as the contents are only meant for five men, but G.I.s are not going to be getting that hot chow on the regular. Need double the calories and at least some sort of variety. Richest country one earth, breadbasket of the world, how about some decent chow?

Screw the 57mm M18 recoilless. Go big or stay home! 106mm straight out of the gate.

A company without a .50 cal M2 (or 2) is like a dog without a bone. Get with the program.
 

Spencersj345.346

How about adding quick changing barrels to the air cooled browning machines of both the .30 and .50 caliber types and fixed timing and headspaces to all browning variants?
 

Questerr

Dump the BAR and replace it with a ZB-27/Bren in 30.06 with a 30 round magazine.

Convince the Infantry and Cavalry branches that tanks covered in machine guns aren't actually as useful as they think they will be.
 

Father Maryland

CalBear said:
Hmm...

M2 Carbines right out of the gate. None of this Reising gun crap.

Garand in a select fire/box magazine configuration. .30-06, .308, .276, what ever way you can get it into the troop's hands.

AN/M2 Stinger modification. Presto! American version of the MG 42.

Start the war with either an 84mm or 88mm bazooka. The basic bazooka design was terrific, the Heer stole it, scaled it up to 88mm added a blast shield and called it the paznerschreck.

Better clothing for differing climates/better cold weather gear! Newsflash. The uniform needed in Germany or Belgium in the dead of winter is not the same uniform needed in Burma or New Guinea (or the Philippines for that matter). Boots that don't rot in the mud and humidity of the SW Pacific would be nice, as would boots that don't encourage trench foot. Note: Snow is white, consider having a few hundred thousand cheap cotton covers to throw over the much improved cold weather kit. better WOOL socks!

Better individual rations, ones with enough calories to support an infantryman, 2,800 calories is plenty sitting on your butt in DC, its about half of what you need in high activity combat or long route marches. 10-in-1 are great, as long as the contents are only meant for five men, but G.I.s are not going to be getting that hot chow on the regular. Need double the calories and at least some sort of variety. Richest country one earth, breadbasket of the world, how about some decent chow?

Screw the 57mm M18 recoilless. Go big or stay home! 106mm straight out of the gate.

A company without a .50 cal M2 (or 2) is like a dog without a bone. Get with the program.
Click to expand...

Kind of funny that the world's largest food producer and richest nation had some of the worst field ration systems of all the industrialized powers.
 

Spencersj345.346

Father Maryland said:
Kind of funny that the world's largest food producer and richest nation had some of the worst field ration systems of all the industrialized powers.
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Well to be fair we had to ship it quite the distance and moreover C-rations weren't meant to be used for more than 21 days at a time. Plus we kinda had to provide a lot of food for our allies. And the US Army was really late to the game as far as modern(for WWII that is) ration development goes which given how small its budget was prior to WWII starting makes some sense
 

Father Maryland

CalBear said:
HAS the worst ration system.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure there are modern combat rations worse then MRE's. That's not saying much in the MRE's favor admittedly.

I love that combat ration review youtube guy. For some reason watching a twenty five year old man eat combat rations that expired before the First World War is oddly satisfying.
 

Spencersj345.346

I attribute how bad(relatively speaking of course, they'd be amazing rations by almost any metric in any time period before the early to mid 2000s) modern US military MREs are to the simple fact that they have a very long shelf life when compared to most MREs and they have to be designed to stay good and work in a lot of diverse environments. Oh and the fact that the US military is definitely a victim of not invented here syndrome as related to using other nations food items in their MREs....which is ironic since a fair of them are made in the US.
 
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marathag

marathag

Banned
Father Maryland said:
Kind of funny that the world's largest food producer and richest nation had some of the worst field ration systems of all the industrialized powers.
Click to expand...
The seeming indifference to the conditions the GIs were in, is disturbing, compared Commonwealth troops, where real efforts was taken to make sure that hot meals were to the front, and trench foot prevention.
C and K Rations were meant to be temporary, days, not weeks at a time.

For a few days, they were good for what they were, excepting the low calorie count above.

Eating them cold, for weeks at end?
That's a punishment. Meals shouldn't be punishment

Spencersj345.346 said:
C-rations weren't meant to be used for more than 21 days at a time.
Click to expand...
having more variety for each of the three meals would have been easy to do, but wasn't
 

Father Maryland

marathag said:
The seeming indifference to the conditions the GIs were in, is disturbing, compared Commonwealth troops, where real efforts was taken to make sure that hot meals were to the front, and trench foot prevention.
C and K Rations were meant to be temporary, days, not weeks at a time.

For a few days, they were good for what they were, excepting the low calorie count above.

Eating them cold, for weeks at end?
That's a punishment. Meals shouldn't be punishment

having more variety for each of the three meals would have been easy to do, but wasn't
Click to expand...

Yeah there were some really ass backwards ideas at the time. Like the US military actually developed a survival chocolate bar that was apparently very high calorie, vitamin enriched, very durable, and actually tasted pretty good. But they were worried that soldiers would just eat them instead of saving them for emergencies. So they developed D bars intentionally made to taste absolutely horrible. Which lead to men starving rather then eating the horrid things.
 

Spencersj345.346

Father Maryland said:
Yeah there were some really ass backwards ideas at the time. Like the US military actually developed a survival chocolate bar that was apparently very high calorie, vitamin enriched, very durable, and actually tasted pretty good. But they were worried that soldiers would just eat them instead of saving them for emergencies. So they developed D bars intentionally made to taste absolutely horrible. Which lead to men starving rather then eating the horrid things.
Click to expand...
I'll never get why they didn't just issue more of the superior chocolate bars...or at least made the D bars tasteless instead of tasting terrible.

On another note as for why K rations had problems the things weren't meant to be used for more than 5 days in a row since they were lightweight rations orginally meant primarily for paratroopers
 
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