The Russians were desperate they would have taken anythingLend lease. Give them away. Many were worn already.
The Russians were desperate they would have taken anythingLend lease. Give them away. Many were worn already.
And the problem with M3The problem with the M1 carbine is while it's a good carbine, it is not as good when used as a beefed up SMG: recoil is much more important and thus accuracy suffers. Honestly, a cheap SMG (3 times cheaper than a carbine) which is easy to use and very controllable is better. At less than 100 metres, a M3 Grease Gun firing bursts of 45 ACP with good stopping power is perfectly adequate for heavy weapons' crews being forced to defend themselves.
The M3 was retained by tankers as there was no room for M1 carbines!And so it proved with the M3 pretty much retained as a tankers weapon with the M1/M2 used for pretty much everything else
The M3 was retained by tankers as there was no room for M1 carbines
M1A1 would have been nice, but the airborne had them all. M1s sent back and refurbished.View attachment 590807
less room than the M1928A1 that the M3 Lee and M4 Sherman were set for
View attachment 590808
If you can throw a grenade at 50 metres with some accuracy, you're an absolute athlete. The maximum practical range was 30 metres, beyond this, it's grenade launchers (up to 150 metres).And the problem with M3
It weighs 50% heavier
Ammo is 100% heavier
and shoots to 100m. An M3 is 50m
One of the important parts of rear defence,
Keeping attackers beyond grenade range ,
Something SMGs don’t
When you fire rapid accurate semi fire, you don’t need weight to make the weapon controllable.If you can throw a grenade at 50 metres with some accuracy, you're an absolute athlete. The maximum practical range was 30 metres, beyond this, it's grenade launchers (up to 150 metres).
And heavier means controllable. A light weapon has more recoil. Weight is a weapon is a double-edged sword. Why the SUOMI was so controllable? Because it had the right weight which kept the barrel down while firing bursts. The M3 followed the same logic. A fully automatic M1 carbine is too light to be controllable.
45s drop like rocks, but you could get a grease gun on target at 100 yards without much trouble, especially if you're walking it on target in full auto. I'd expect similar results from the Sten, done similar shooting with my own personal 9mm rifles at that range and it's not bad.
Now with drop being parabolic, you wouldn't want to push either one much further than that, but they're not hard-limited to 50 meters either.
The full auto recoil on the Carbines isn't bad either. I had a Carbine with a sticky firing pin, and it would randomly double/triple when you pulled the trigger. I played with it for a few boxes before cleaning it - "it's a feature, not a bug." Keeping it on target for a quick burst was no problem at all, even when that burst caught me by surprise. If you were just hosing a target down, I don't think 150 yards would be a problem.
If the M1 was used as a submachine gun to replace the Thompson from the word go, I think it would have been very successful. It would need a better magazine because the issue magazines are chintzy as hell and full auto would exacerbate that, but otherwise it would be entirely adequate.
My understanding of the Magazine issue was that they did not like extended field use and were easily degraded over time
This was not such an issue for the US Army as they simply pushed so many magazines that troops could replace 'old' with new almost as if they were a disposable item
I don't know what the thinking was behind the carbine's magazines. I doubt they were considered disposable by an army that still insisted on clips for the Garand, but they were definitely not built for hard use. I guess the expectation was back-rankers simply wouldn't use them that much.
It was really controllable in .45.From what I've read it's more like 50m for the M3 grease gun.
The M2 would have been very controllable in .22 and much more lethal.
The M3 was retained by tankers as there was no room for M1 carbines!
Racks were designed for Thompsons.
The only advantage was the tankers had m1911 and the heavy M3 fitted through the hatches a bit easier.
I meant M2 carbine, not M2 SMG prototype.It was really controllable in .45.
No, the M2 Carbine was fine on FA. I've done it. It's actually far better than the Thompson, that you got to fight to keep lined up. You would think that heavy pig would be easy, but it certainly isn't from the too high RoF.A fully automatic M1 carbine is too light to be controllable.
Best thing about the Grease Gun, was for Road Marches with full gear, you could 'forget' and leave the heavy bolt behind, while you march with a light steel tube. More than one DAT told me about that.As the Chieftain said about the M3, its role was to make the other guy keep his head down while you ran away from your burning tank.
I never praised the Thompson for being controllable, I was talking about the Grease Gun, which definitively is. And, even if the US Army didn't care much about spending a lot of money in the 1940's (quite revealing about their financial and industrial might, I'll admit it), you can produce two M3 for one M1 Carbine and borderline exceed the Soviet production of SMGs in that regard (we are talking more than 8 MILLIONS smgs here, probably around 12 millions). That's a mind-boggling amount of decent and reliable weapons (provided they're designed to use the Thompson's excellent magazine) which would litteraly takes a couple of days for a private to be familiar with. M2 Carbines are good, I've never said the opposite (see my previous posts and I too watch Forgotten weapons about it, I'll also recommand VickersTactical videos in that regard), but they require more training.No, the M2 Carbine was fine on FA. I've done it. It's actually far better than the Thompson, that you got to fight to keep lined up. You would think that heavy pig would be easy, but it certainly isn't from the too high RoF.
You see those wacky maniacs in ordinance seeking to avoid confusion at every turn.I meant M2 carbine, not M2 SMG prototype.
It could be worse, imagine the poor sod issued one of these by mistake instead of a carbine or smg.You see those wacky maniacs in ordinance seeking to avoid confusion at every turn.