While I am sure NIH did come into it, there are multiple examples of Britain using equipment invented elsewhere, Before during and after WW2. The Bren for example. You are likely safe suggesting something from another country
Rearm the British Infantry for WWII
- Thread starter Peg Leg Pom
- Start date
Is it not more important to be ready for expansion and use than actually what they are armed with?
I would give the British Infantry training text books as they are all going to be drill Sargent's soon and a French phrasebook and WWI battlefield guidebook? (bonus points if I can have it as a WWI not Great War guide book?)
Branch next door got to good in WWII
View attachment 562644
Postwar, ditched brown leather and a few other fixes to make better than just 'good' Tanker Boots
Q. Yep.
View attachment 562650Though back when I was doing ACW reenacting, had one similar, and it worked really well.
Beret? only headgear worse than that is the Cun.. er Flight Cap
The boots illustrated wore and chaffed at the heels and the buckle up feature failed mechanically quickly.. Love the hat. The cav is cooler though both in the aesthetic and practical sense.
The blow back SMG is a 2 handed weapon. The carbine if properly designed and balanced is 1 handed in an emergency, and furthermore at select fire can be used in a conserve mode. Idiots who over design it are candidates for the mine clearing volunteer platoon.
Your expected ally designed it and intended it for general issue in 1929-1933. One decade later, your expected ally was still using 1890's era Lebels in 8 mm as his PRIMARY battle rifle and was having trouble making the 7 x 54. Maybe both of you should take a proven cartridge that works and design/modify existent rifles and machine guns to use it? Reinventing the mouse trap only gets you sued and you wind up with more mice, than when you started.
Grenade launcher. The later version was copied DIRECTLY off the USN K-gun.
Ain't that the truth, but even so... I have yet to find general issue boots that worked ever.
Depends.
The Bowie, with its complicated history is an evolved modern general purpose knife originating from the 19th century Spanish/Mexican hunting/field use knife. The model I think of; is a balanced general purpose knife with a clip point and handguard that was designed to mount like a bayonet and yet was still balanced for THROWING. It was something like this:
That is not something I can see as a general purpose knife. Use it to cut rations and throats? Throw it? YMMV.
Your mileage probably will vary on throwing any blade. It took me only slightly longer to figure out how to stick the point throwing a kukri as it did with my Bowie. Now, granted my life did not depend on either. But you rarely end up throwing a knife in combat anyway. Particularly one the size of a Bowie or Kukri.
The Americans did produce a Bolo Bayonet
issue that in place of the standard bayonet to British troops fighting in Jungle or Bush country and I think that they will use it more than the standard bayonet it replaces. Not perfect but good enough. Get the Gurkhas to teach your infantry how to use it in hand to hand combat and there you go!"
As to the PIAT, Talking to a vetran who fought ar Arnhem, he firmly believed it was the best MPATW available, A bastard to use but ever so effective if used with skill and had one huge advantage for the user, a very low launch signal. Often the enemy had no idea where the round had come from, now that can be a life saver!
issue that in place of the standard bayonet to British troops fighting in Jungle or Bush country and I think that they will use it more than the standard bayonet it replaces. Not perfect but good enough. Get the Gurkhas to teach your infantry how to use it in hand to hand combat and there you go!"
As to the PIAT, Talking to a vetran who fought ar Arnhem, he firmly believed it was the best MPATW available, A bastard to use but ever so effective if used with skill and had one huge advantage for the user, a very low launch signal. Often the enemy had no idea where the round had come from, now that can be a life saver!
Grenade launchers are not a substitute for a PIAT which throws a way larger warhead and was a step forward from the No68 Rifle Grenade. They have different uses. Try knocking out a PzV with a 40mm grenade launcher. In use the PIAT is closer to the Charlie G except for the lack of back blast and worse range and accuracy. The army was quite happy with the 2" mortar and rifle grenades otherwise. Different answers for different questions. BTW I was wrong on the Canadian assessment. The PIAT was the No1 choice exceeding even the Bren Gun and this from the chaps who used PIATs in NW Europe and Italy.
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Oh dear. I should never have bitten the bait on knives and bayonets. Given my choice of an SMG as the default personal weapon a Kukhri, Smatchet or similar will be a better field tool than a pointy stick and will reach as far in the hand as a pointy stick on the end of a short SMG. With a full length rifle the pointy stick can be useful.
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Deleted member 1487
HEDP rounds should do it actually if fired at the weak armor areas. 50mm armor penetration. At very least you'd get a mission kill.
M433 40mm Cartridge
When given a Lemon, you can make tasty Lemonade, with enough practice
Or this with a standard Grenade Launcher
So that gives you a portable 60mm mortar, and all the extra ammo type, from WP, to HE to Starshell even, then to the standard Rifle Grenades, and then back to a regular rifle
Deleted member 1487
Only issue is apparently after 3 shots it cracked the rifle stock and by the 12th the rifle was smashed. Use of the pineapple hand grenade had the same blast radius at a fraction of the weight.When given a Lemon, you can make tasty Lemonade, with enough practice
Or this with a standard Grenade Launcher
View attachment 56270160mm Mortar rounds could be utilized with the GL adapter normally meant to toss a standard hand grenade, besides the standard GL cartridge, the US had what was called the 'Pep Pill' an additional propelling charge for more range
So that gives you a portable 60mm mortar, and all the extra ammo type, from WP, to HE to Starshell even, then to the standard Rifle Grenades, and then back to a regular rifle
The French 50mm mortar shell/rifle grenade was light enough not to have that issue though.
Perfect is the enemy of Good enough
this is far better than most others, fast to put on or take off unlike high cavalry boots, tongue sewn right to the top to keep water out, yet ventilated enough to be comfortable.
No laces.
Get troops in these, then modify the 1937 pattern, like rubber soles and better straps, like the postwar Bundeswehr guys had
Make Stronger Stock. Some GL Rifles meant for the Grenadier had reinforced wire wrapping .
Besides the larger 6 ounce HE filling(vs 2), the 60mm casing had far better fragmentation, and a real fuze rather than a 4-5 sec time delay, initiated at firing
I object to the PIAT as heavy, AWKWARD, and DANGEROUS. It was a 15 kg odd shaped contraption that had to be cocked like a foot stirrup crossbow, (You have to stand or sit and use your legs to charge it.); but with the added exercise benefit that you had to twist its cocking mechanism as you pulled on it to lock it to the ready to fire position. You had to be a gorilla to do it. Furthermore, another whoopsie waiting to happen besides the release going sproing before you lined up your candidate tank or bunker to love, was the feed trough. The grenade, laid in, often would slide off the spigot spindle and fall off in front of the shooter. Embarrassing when Herman Tanker charges at you all happy and chipper in his PZKWIV, because he spotted you trying to manhandle your PIAT and/or recover the HEAT bomb you dropped out of it.
The lesson learned was rockets were better. Proof. Nobody uses PIATs today. Bazookas as evolved into recoliess projectile throwers or RPGs (Even inside rooms and through bathroom sized windows) is the method that survived the lessons learned process on how to do it.
Deleted member 1487
Why not use the cheaper and more plentiful hand grenade if it had the same impact? Use 60mm mortar shells in a 60mm mortar without the overly heavy base plate.
So two pineapples have the effect of one mortar round.
Seems to me, that says a single mortar shell is more effective
Downsides of the mortar round, you need the carrier, as the carrying tubes aren't easy to carry by themselves
You need an assistant to hump the extra ammo for the Grenadier
and point e, if mortar fire is the solution, best to use mortar shells. Note they didn't say that
'e. Use two fragmentation grenades'
So if you don't have a 60mm Mortar Section nearby, well, the grenade adapter is next best thing
Seems to me, that says a single mortar shell is more effective
Downsides of the mortar round, you need the carrier, as the carrying tubes aren't easy to carry by themselves
You need an assistant to hump the extra ammo for the Grenadier
and point e, if mortar fire is the solution, best to use mortar shells. Note they didn't say that
'e. Use two fragmentation grenades'
So if you don't have a 60mm Mortar Section nearby, well, the grenade adapter is next best thing
Deleted member 1487
Not if it breaks the rifle and the mortar shell is more than twice as heavy as the grenade.
What I get from the report, is that the Squad Leader likes the effect of the 60mm, but doesn't like his guys having to hump the ammo, but calls the support section for the benefit of the fire, without having to move the gear with his men.
I get that.
But what if the Heavy Weapon Platoon is busy helping another squad?
Then you rely on what the squad has, with a few of the guys having a pair of grenades, each
Now in WWII, 60mm Mortar rounds were also used as grenades in themselves, without the launcher. but they have a farther fragmentation range that what a normal human could throw, so are a super defensive type grenade
PIAT gets a bad wrap for being unwieldy, but it's warheads could penetrate the top and side armour of most German late war tanks, because no one is stupid enough to engage a tank head on even with a Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck, plus it has the added advantage of producing no backblast like the Bazooka or Panzerschreck, which means it can be fired from within a house or bunker without destroying or damaging your cover. If the Army can develop the Burney Gun earlier, basically a recoilless rifle, that might be better. EDIT: I should also add re rifle grenades, that the PIAT was used as an ersatz mortar in the absence of enemy armour, in periods of static fighting such as on the Senio river in northern Italy during the winter of 1944 and spring of 1945.
Bren and Vickers are perfectly fine in their designated roles, you'd just need more Brens or a better sub-machine gun. If the British Army can get the Sten Mark V or Sterling into service sooner, or perhaps develop/adopt the Owen Gun that the Australians used, that should be fine. No. 2 Operational Research unit, attached to 21st Army Group during 1944-45, recommended adding a second Bren Gun to the section, essentially creating two Five-man fireteams centered on a Bren, or keeping the one Bren but rearming all but two rifleman with Sten Guns.
Earlier adoption of the 'Pepperpot barrage' method could improve infantry assaults, if divisional RA can coordinate the fire of Vickers guns, Bofors guns, 6 and 17 pounders, and 3 inch and 4.2 inch mortars to shell the immediate vicinity of position being attacked, along with whatever tank guns can be added in, so as to better deal with any pockets of resistance that survive the opening barrage. Another idea might be to have the RA enter the war with the BL 5.5 inch gun already the main heavy gun, instead of in tandem with and only later replacing the Bl 4.5 inch gun. With better medium-heavy artillery at divsion-level and use of smaller caliber guns in fire plans, this would more than offset the 25 Pounder's lack of shell weight compared to the German and American 105s.
Bren and Vickers are perfectly fine in their designated roles, you'd just need more Brens or a better sub-machine gun. If the British Army can get the Sten Mark V or Sterling into service sooner, or perhaps develop/adopt the Owen Gun that the Australians used, that should be fine. No. 2 Operational Research unit, attached to 21st Army Group during 1944-45, recommended adding a second Bren Gun to the section, essentially creating two Five-man fireteams centered on a Bren, or keeping the one Bren but rearming all but two rifleman with Sten Guns.
Earlier adoption of the 'Pepperpot barrage' method could improve infantry assaults, if divisional RA can coordinate the fire of Vickers guns, Bofors guns, 6 and 17 pounders, and 3 inch and 4.2 inch mortars to shell the immediate vicinity of position being attacked, along with whatever tank guns can be added in, so as to better deal with any pockets of resistance that survive the opening barrage. Another idea might be to have the RA enter the war with the BL 5.5 inch gun already the main heavy gun, instead of in tandem with and only later replacing the Bl 4.5 inch gun. With better medium-heavy artillery at divsion-level and use of smaller caliber guns in fire plans, this would more than offset the 25 Pounder's lack of shell weight compared to the German and American 105s.
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Deleted member 1487
Use the pineapple grenade projector. You can carry more and have multiple launchers in a 11-12 man squad if needed.
Frankly though I think the Germans got it right by 1944 when they reorganized their platoon into having 3 dedicated rifle grenadiers under the direct command of the platoon leader and by being at the platoon rather than squad level they could have much easier access to the platoon supply cart and focus on just launcher grenades rather than trying to also be part time riflemen and denying the squad a rifle during their grenade launching moments. Only difference was that the Germans were using 30mm rifle grenades out of a rifled projector, so the range and accuracy was better and the blast effect smaller, but the ammo was a lot lighter and easier to use than a 60mm mortar shell or even the pineapple grenade. Plus having the concentrated fire of 3 rifle grenadiers on a target to either suppress or destroy it is probably better than some random squad level rifle grenades being launched when it was possible to take the time to set up a launcher.
The point of the 25 pounder is the British learned from WW1 that division artillery couldn't really destroy enemy defenses, you needed heavier artillery than a 105 or even 150mm gun and generally a lot of shells for destruction of a bunker. It was more effective to suppress with artillery and let the infantry overrun it and knock it out with grenades, so they choose a caliber that could suppress well enough and be cheap enough for mass use. Heavy corps or above level artillery was then only called in for counter battery or destruction work as needed, which was only a fraction of the missions called for.
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Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
I'm all for increasing the squad's firepower, but giving a 15" rifle to a Pongo is asking for trouble!