Submachine Guns available in 1915

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Shotguns will shrink in barrel length to become only slightly larger than SMGs once box magazines are used while being much simpler than their tube magazine counterparts.
Which only serves to shorten range further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_FABARM_FP6
Effective range is only 30m, shorter than an 18 inch barrel weapon which is between 40-50m:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchi_SPAS-12

The opposite is true. An automatic shotgun may fire at 250-300 rpm and put out 8 pellets of 00 buckshot per shot, giving an effective ROF of 2000+ pellets per minute, or more practically the equivalent of an 8-round burst 250 times per minute.
Do you have any idea what the recoil is of an automatic shotgun? Good luck hitting much beyond 40m:

SMGs on the other hand have a minimum 'max effective range' of about 125m. MP40 are listed as effective out to 200m as is the MP18.
Smaller, lower weight ammo, and longer range all in one:
 
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Shotguns will shrink in barrel length to become only slightly larger than SMGs once box magazines are used while being much simpler than their tube magazine counterparts.

The opposite is true. An automatic shotgun may fire at 250-300 rpm and put out 8 pellets of 00 buckshot per shot, giving an effective ROF of 2000+ pellets per minute, or more practically the equivalent of an 8-round burst 250 times per minute.


....

Are you being sarcastic? Or have you played too many videogames?

Just going on the assumption that you are not here. Thing is:

SMGs are practical, light, all-purpose weapons that function in most common combat scenarios and ranges up to a bit more than 100m a soldier may find themselves in. Shotguns do not fill this role and thus they have never found more than a VERY niche application in military situations, mostly/exclusively among american troops. In WWII it was not uncommon to have entire units armed with nothing but SMGs, this would not work for shotguns. They are not able to fulfill the number of tactical niches required for a generally issued weapon and thus has never been considered one by any combative nations, including the US.

Light shotguns have never been popular, full auto ones even less so and examples of them are generally considered horrible. SMGs can be light and simple because of comfortable recoil even in full auto.
 

SwampTiger

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Shotguns will shrink in barrel length to become only slightly larger than SMGs once box magazines are used while being much simpler than their tube magazine counterparts.

The opposite is true. An automatic shotgun may fire at 250-300 rpm and put out 8 pellets of 00 buckshot per shot, giving an effective ROF of 2000+ pellets per minute, or more practically the equivalent of an 8-round burst 250 times per minute.

Do you really want to fire a 250-300 rpm shotgun? You would be firing 4-5 rounds per second rapidly into the air, loosening fillings as you arced backwards. To control such a weapon, you need to add weight, lots of weight, negating the advantage of a shotgun. If you want a fully automatic weapon, stick with the SMG.

The advantage of simple blow back weapons is their simple, cheap construction. As wiking shows, the US worked on an intermediate round based full-auto carbine. Based upon the .351 Winchester Self Loading cartridge. The French did the same with the Ribeyrolles 1918 using a .351 WSL based 8x35 cartridge. However, upon the end of the war, the conservatism of the professional military returned to the aimed rifle concept of 800-1000 meter ranges. The 8x35 was only good for 400 meters, insufficient for modern battle according to the experts. The French stuck to the Lebel cartridge, and developed the 7.65x20 for their mini-SMG.

What is most confusing is the French were among the first to develop trench raiding and assault tactics. Their developments were adopted by Germans also working on similar tactics. These small unit tactics led to German assault troops of 1918. You see similar development in AH and Italian forces. Liberal use of grenades, light machine guns and pistols with infiltration maneuver allowed units to close with and overwhelm their opponents. Should the upper echelon of any of the major powers had accepted these developments in 1915, added a light weight fully automatic weapon to the mix and developed better counter battery tactics, some level of mobility could have appeared in the trenches. War winning was unlikely unless you stopped the railroads supplying more troops.
 
I don't think that focusing on the ballistics or industrial benefits of the smg misses the most important benefits of the weapon: the changes in tactical behavior that it would likely lead to.

I doubt we'd see the slaughter of the Somme is the BEF was the early adopter for example, because they would have spent a year winning little nighttime firefights in no mans land. As a result of such success higher commanders would adjust their methods accordingly, leading to widespread use of infiltration tactics and artillery tactics to support this success.
 
Do you have any idea what the recoil is of an automatic shotgun? Good luck hitting much beyond 40m:

Things don't have to be 12 gauge

12 gauge 16 .30 caliber pellets.
16 gauge 12 .30 caliber pellets
20 gauge 10 .30 caliber pellets

recoil. How much shot, and how fast?
bore/hull length/shot weight-velocity/weight of gun/calculated recoil

410 bore, 2.5" (1/2 at 1200) 5.5 7.1
28 gauge, 2.75" (3/4 at 1200) 6 12.8
20 gauge, 2.75" (7/8 at 1200) 6.5 16.1
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 6.5 21
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1175) 6.5 25
20 gauge, 3" (1 1/4 at 1185) 6.5 31
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 7 21.5
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1240) 7 27.6
12 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1180) 7.5 17.3

So you can fire twice the .410 to equal one 12ga shot, but 18% less recoil for those two shots. Or you can load more shot in a 16 or a 20 than a 12, but more recoil due to the lighter gun
 

Deleted member 1487

I don't think that focusing on the ballistics or industrial benefits of the smg misses the most important benefits of the weapon: the changes in tactical behavior that it would likely lead to.

I doubt we'd see the slaughter of the Somme is the BEF was the early adopter for example, because they would have spent a year winning little nighttime firefights in no mans land. As a result of such success higher commanders would adjust their methods accordingly, leading to widespread use of infiltration tactics and artillery tactics to support this success.
The slaughter on the Somme was due to the tactics used by the brand new units, 'Pals Battalions', which didn't have time to train on modern tactics; units with experience weren't slaughtered when they attacked IOTL.

Things don't have to be 12 gauge

12 gauge 16 .30 caliber pellets.
16 gauge 12 .30 caliber pellets
20 gauge 10 .30 caliber pellets

recoil. How much shot, and how fast?
bore/hull length/shot weight-velocity/weight of gun/calculated recoil

410 bore, 2.5" (1/2 at 1200) 5.5 7.1
28 gauge, 2.75" (3/4 at 1200) 6 12.8
20 gauge, 2.75" (7/8 at 1200) 6.5 16.1
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 6.5 21
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1175) 6.5 25
20 gauge, 3" (1 1/4 at 1185) 6.5 31
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 7 21.5
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1240) 7 27.6
12 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1180) 7.5 17.3

So you can fire twice the .410 to equal one 12ga shot, but 18% less recoil for those two shots. Or you can load more shot in a 16 or a 20 than a 12, but more recoil due to the lighter gun
From what I've read about shotgun lethality, 00 12 gauge buckshot is the only certain human lethal round for normal shotgun combat ranges (i.e. less than 50m).
 
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Things don't have to be 12 gauge

12 gauge 16 .30 caliber pellets.
16 gauge 12 .30 caliber pellets
20 gauge 10 .30 caliber pellets

recoil. How much shot, and how fast?
bore/hull length/shot weight-velocity/weight of gun/calculated recoil

410 bore, 2.5" (1/2 at 1200) 5.5 7.1
28 gauge, 2.75" (3/4 at 1200) 6 12.8
20 gauge, 2.75" (7/8 at 1200) 6.5 16.1
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 6.5 21
20 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1175) 6.5 25
20 gauge, 3" (1 1/4 at 1185) 6.5 31
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1220) 7 21.5
16 gauge, 2.75" (1 1/8 at 1240) 7 27.6
12 gauge, 2.75" (1 at 1180) 7.5 17.3

So you can fire twice the .410 to equal one 12ga shot, but 18% less recoil for those two shots. Or you can load more shot in a 16 or a 20 than a 12, but more recoil due to the lighter gun

So you mean you wish to give a weapon with limited use an even more limited use.
 
I don't think that focusing on the ballistics or industrial benefits of the smg misses the most important benefits of the weapon: the changes in tactical behavior that it would likely lead to.

I doubt we'd see the slaughter of the Somme is the BEF was the early adopter for example, because they would have spent a year winning little nighttime firefights in no mans land. As a result of such success higher commanders would adjust their methods accordingly, leading to widespread use of infiltration tactics and artillery tactics to support this success.

Why? the circumstances surrounding the somme will be identical. you have a little trained conscript army which HAVE to launch an offensive against a well fortified enemy over terrain that said enemy control. SMGs would not have made an inch of a difference and the need for it was simply not percieved.
 
Those will make submachine guns redundant altogether once they are adopted. The shotgun reload times decrease to be the same as a submachine gun, the magazine size increases to be the same as a submachine gun (with 30-round drums), and the barrel length goes down to the same as a submachine gun. The only reason submachine guns even existed in the first place was because almost all shotgun designers were too unimaginative to think of this for over 100 years.

eh combat shotguns are never going to really be a wide spread thing in teh military because the rounds are too big and heavy, and your capacity in a shot gun can always be beaten by a gun (especially a SMG) of similar or smaller size. And on size Shotguns, even cut down combat ones are on the heavy side compared to carbine and short ARs. Plus of course short ARs and even SMGs can do stuff shotguns can't really compete at all in the same package.

even a hundred years after WW1 look at how wide spread shotguns are in actual military use today compared to Assault rifles or even SMGs.

Or put it another way you say a 30 round 12g drum matches a 30 round SMG magazine, have you actually handled a 30 round shotgun drum?
 
Or put it another way you say a 30 round 12g drum matches a 30 round SMG magazine, have you actually handled a 30 round shotgun drum?

30 rnd Shotgun mag 480 pellets downstream, each 40.5grains, roughly 2.75 pounds of lead.

30 rrd SMG mag, 30 . 357 bullets downstream, each 115 grains, roughly half a pound of lead

No, they don't match magazine to magazine, at all. you need five 9mm mags to match the weight of shot
 
The slaughter on the Somme was due to the tactics used by the brand new units, 'Pals Battalions', which didn't have time to train on modern tactics; units with experience weren't slaughtered when they attacked IOTL.

I think it would be easier to train the Pals Battalions to use SMGs and be useful than it was IOTL to train them to use rifles, assuming that a lot of that stuff in that link I posted earlier is true.

However I was thinking more along the lines of how the artillery would have developed if the BEF became the early adopter of SMGs. If the BEF started to get SMGs in early 1915, within 6-9 months Brigade and Divisional artillery practice would have diverged significantly from OTL practice in order to exploit the ability of small units to win firefights that IOTL didn't exist.

Why? the circumstances surrounding the somme will be identical. you have a little trained conscript army which HAVE to launch an offensive against a well fortified enemy over terrain that said enemy control. SMGs would not have made an inch of a difference and the need for it was simply not percieved.

Firstly, my assumption is that the British would be an early adopter by a fluke more or less, perhaps because cheap SMGs doing spray-n-pray makes sense for poorly/un-trained volunteers or because they just want to get guns into the hands of a massively and rapidly expanding Army rather than some well thought-out doctrinal decision.

So the butterflies arising on the battlefield from this early adoption will ensure that by mid 1916, 12-15 months later, will ensure that conditions are different.
 
Which only serves to shorten range further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_FABARM_FP6
Effective range is only 30m, shorter than an 18 inch barrel weapon which is between 40-50m:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchi_SPAS-12
It does not reduce range further, the difference between a 30" (762 mm) or longer shotgun barrel and a 12" (305 mm) shotgun barrel is less than 200 fps (61 mps). Accuracy of pellets peaks at about 18" (457 mm) barrel length and a 12" (305 mm) barrel will still have very little difference in accuracy, comparable to that from a 24" (610 mm) barrel. That FABARM FP6 actually has a longer barrel than the SPAS-12 and yet still has a shorter range so range does in fact have little to do with barrel length. In general a 12" (305 mm) shotgun barrel should be considered the ideal barrel length for almost all military applications, with an 18" (457 mm) barrel only being required for extreme accuracy or muzzle velocity (there's negligible gain beyond that). Long barrels are only used for better handling on sporting weapons.
https://www.kommandoblog.com/2017/05/16/shotgun-barrel-length-velocity/
https://www.theboxotruth.com/barrel-length-shotgun-affect-velocity/
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=111
Velchart.jpg


Do you have any idea what the recoil is of an automatic shotgun? Good luck hitting much beyond 40m:

SMGs on the other hand have a minimum 'max effective range' of about 125m. MP40 are listed as effective out to 200m as is the MP18.
Smaller, lower weight ammo, and longer range all in one:
Light shotguns have never been popular, full auto ones even less so and examples of them are generally considered horrible. SMGs can be light and simple because of comfortable recoil even in full auto.
Do you really want to fire a 250-300 rpm shotgun? You would be firing 4-5 rounds per second rapidly into the air, loosening fillings as you arced backwards. To control such a weapon, you need to add weight, lots of weight, negating the advantage of a shotgun. If you want a fully automatic weapon, stick with the SMG.
A submachine gun is controllable only because it's putting out 1/3 to 1/4 as much volume of fire as an automatic shotgun. If controllability is suddenly more important than volume of fire (contrary to prior concerns) a shotgun only needs to be fired at 60-100 rounds per minute to match the volume of fire of a submachine gun. That rate of fire was routinely achieved and controllable on pump-action combat shotguns with slam fire, much less semi-automatic shotguns, and with short-barreled light guns at that. Far from light shotguns never being popular, the most popular form of combat or riot shotgun has always had the shortest possible barrel that the tubular magazine will allow, and they have routinely been fired as fast as the action could be cycled with no complaints about recoil in combat. In short, the shotgun is limited use in combat due to its reload time and unwieldy length but if the box magazine shotgun is used 100 years earlier as marathag suggests it will make the submachine gun redundant before it is ever invented.
 
Long barrels are only used for better handling on sporting weapons.

Back when Iron Sights were the only real sighting device, the longer sight radius made for more accurate firearms.

But once real optics come into play, all that's needed is the correct smokeless powder characteristics for a good powder combustion for the given barrel length, and not make huge flares of unburnt powder at the muzzle
 
30 rnd Shotgun mag 480 pellets downstream, each 40.5grains, roughly 2.75 pounds of lead.

30 rrd SMG mag, 30 . 357 bullets downstream, each 115 grains, roughly half a pound of lead

No, they don't match magazine to magazine, at all. you need five 9mm mags to match the weight of shot

That's kind of my point, you still have to carry all that shot around;)! Also since the number of actual rounds fired is the same unless you can show me that each 12g round is 5x as effective in doing its job as a .357 round (you compare the .357 weight but then talk about 9mm, not that they're that different in this). Just comparing weight of stuff going down range isn't a very good way of looking at this. Or put it this way do you think in abstract the the 7.62 nato is roughly 3x better at doing it's job than a 5.56, what about a musket ball?

This leaves aside the weight of the projectile isn't the whole story you have the rest of the cartridge, you have the magazine or drum they're in, the weight of the gun firing this stuff. Again seriously have you handled a 30 round 12g drum, even empty it's an awkward shape. The 32rnd drum on the AA-12 weighs 2.1kg, how many of them do you think you're going to carry in comparison to 9mm or even 5.56mm magazines when you include it in with the rest of a load out. The AA-12 itself's empty weight is almost double that of the M4.

Again shotgun with shot shells are severely limited in the roles they can operate in. So you have a very specialised weapon compared to short AR. So you say ok we'll have rifled slugs as well. Well OK that's now 2x ammo types each with all the issues above and the issues of carrying 2x different round types. Or you go with something fancy and expensive like fragmenting explosive shells, but that runs into supply and resource issues, and how much of that rounds utility is just making up for a shotgun shell's deficiencies i.e. running to stay still?

Basically people have been trying to shoe horn shotguns into a significant combat roll for well centuries actually, and it's never really happened other than very specific and limited examples. The reason is that while there might be some specific situations in some conflicts* where having one has had benefits in the context of the time, the down sides of getting it there and actually operating with it in combat out weigh it.

Atchisson's being trying for decades and it's not happening. You might consider it a lack of imagination by overly conservatively thinking military assessment boards (and well that's by no means an insane idea in general), but I think it's more that the inherent issues of shotguns hasn't actually changed in that time.



*skirmishing riders in the send half iof C19th with shortened double bore, trench raiders in WW1, spec forces in Vietnam jungles or other CQC (spec forces use all sorts of weird and wonderful and mission specific stuff with way more resource leeway than most though, they also are more able to withstand heavy load outs and adjust them as they see fit)
 
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Shotguns will shrink in barrel length to become only slightly larger than SMGs once box magazines are used while being much simpler than their tube magazine counterparts.

The opposite is true. An automatic shotgun may fire at 250-300 rpm and put out 8 pellets of 00 buckshot per shot, giving an effective ROF of 2000+ pellets per minute, or more practically the equivalent of an 8-round burst 250 times per minute.

that's only true if you count each 00 as the equivalent of a 9mm (or whatever) in terms of effect. Also it's not practically 8 round bursts 250 times a minute because you can't refill you gun that quick (even with a 25 round capacity, and that's basically a drum in shot guns, you'd need to reload 10x*). And even if you could, have you carried 250 12g rounds? I'd carry 250 9mm any day of the week



*yes there's probably some youtube video of someone standing still and shooting paper at point blank range matching this but that's not relevant to combat.
 
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A submachine gun is controllable only because it's putting out 1/3 to 1/4 as much volume of fire as an automatic shotgun.

No it's more controllable because each round it fires is more controllable


If controllability is suddenly more important than volume of fire (contrary to prior concerns)


Volume of fire means nothing if you can't hit, in fact it's worse because you've carried all those rounds you are not hitting with around with you. And as above shotgun rounds are heavy and bulky not only individually but when loaded in magazines or drums.

Also what prior concern? Effective fire has always been the primary concern, sometimes in some situations that means volume but not always, and even when it does it still takes into account the effect of the other characteristics of what you are firing lots of. e.g volume of fire is very important if I'm suppressing some chaps 500 yards away with an emplaced MMG, but don't fancy doing that with a shot gun.

a shotgun only needs to be fired at 60-100 rounds per minute to match the volume of fire of a submachine gun. That rate of fire was routinely achieved and controllable on pump-action combat shotguns with slam fire, much less semi-automatic shotguns, and with short-barreled light guns at that. Far from light shotguns never being popular, the most popular form of combat or riot shotgun has always had the shortest possible barrel that the tubular magazine will allow, and they have routinely been fired as fast as the action could be cycled with no complaints about recoil in combat. In short, the shotgun is limited use in combat due to its reload time and unwieldy length but if the box magazine shotgun is used 100 years earlier as marathag suggests it will make the submachine gun redundant before it is ever invented.

The combat shotgun is limited in far way more issues than reload and length (although yes full fowling length individualy loaded cylinder shotguns certain have major issues with that in combat)
 
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Shotguns will shrink in barrel length to become only slightly larger than SMGs once box magazines are used while being much simpler than their tube magazine counterparts.

The opposite is true. An automatic shotgun may fire at 250-300 rpm and put out 8 pellets of 00 buckshot per shot, giving an effective ROF of 2000+ pellets per minute, or more practically the equivalent of an 8-round burst 250 times per minute.
As demonstrated by the widespread use of automatic shotguns in the 21st century, eh?
Automatic shotguns are nonsense for several reasons, the most significant being that:
- shotgun ammunition is bulky, heavy and not well suited to being shoved through a firearm at high rates of fire
- the recoil from large loads of pellets is substantial and automatic fire does not go well with lots of recoil
Any attempt to mitigate these problems takes you rapidly down a road that leads to the same destination as multiball rifle/pistol ammo which is another bright idea of little demonstrated value.

You can make them, and make them work, but you can’t make them practical any more than you can make a practical military sidearm in .44 mag.
 
that's only true if you count each 00 as the equivalent of a 9mm (or whatever) in terms of effect. Also it's not practically 8 round bursts 250 times a minute because you can't refill you gun that quick (even with a 25 round capacity, and that's basically a drum in shot guns, you'd need to reload 10x*). And even if you could, have you carried 250 12g rounds? I'd carry 250 9mm any day of the week
Each 00 is indeed the equivalent of a 9 mm round (well, 8.38 mm round), giving each round the effectiveness of an 8-round burst. Any target that is normally shot at with a burst from a submachine gun is shot with a buckshot round. 2000 9mm rounds would have to be carried to replace 250 12 gauge rounds (or more realistically 1000 9mm rounds would replace 125 12 gauge rounds).

No it's more controllable because each round it fires is more controllable
Which is because each shot is putting out less volume of fire and only firing one bullet instead of 8. If a submachine gun fired rounds as fast as an automatic shotgun fired 00 shot, it would be firing at 2000 rounds per minute and it wouldn't be controllable at all.
 
Each 00 is indeed the equivalent of a 9 mm round (well, 8.38 mm round), giving each round the effectiveness of an 8-round burst. Any target that is normally shot at with a burst from a submachine gun is shot with a buckshot round. 2000 9mm rounds would have to be carried to replace 250 12 gauge rounds (or more realistically 1000 9mm rounds would replace 125 12 gauge rounds).



Ok to be honest all that is based on

1) a 00 shot being the same as 9mm in terms of effectiveness on target, this is to be blunt not true (the diameter of the projectile is merely one in many relevant factors here, or put it this way place the following into that argument: 5.56mm nato at 55gr*, a 9mm at 115gr* and 8.38mm 00 at 55gr*)

2). Shooting clumps of shot is the same as a continuous burst.

You get this a lot "shot guns are like fully automatic fire were you times the number of pellets in the shell by the rate of fire of shells". Now while that might be true in abstract terms of sheer amount of material leaving the barrel of the gun, it really stops being true after that.


*obviously each is a general thing specific examples of each will have a different specific gr values (40.5gr was cited for individual 00 shot earlier for instance)

Which is because each shot is putting out less volume of fire and only firing one bullet instead of 8. If a submachine gun fired rounds as fast as an automatic shotgun fired 00 shot, it would be firing at 2000 rounds per minute and it wouldn't be controllable at all.

Yes that's the point, the SMG (let alone short AR/carbine*) maintains more effectiveness per projectile (9mmm vs 00) so does not need to have that. Now of course what great about 00 or 000 at close range is that you fire lots of it at once so overall effect can be pretty good, but that gets in the way of your per pellet / round assertion. (and there are lots of factors in that as well when looking at different weapons)

*and remember you are talking about now as well as 1915.
 
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I find it amazing that people are talking about the ballistic differences between a shotgun and an smg As if the billions of rounds fired from personal weapons in ww1 were even remotely going to hit a person, or that artillery didn't kill 60% of the people and machine guns another 20%.

How does a shotgun or bolt-action rifle fare against an smg in terms of the increase in morale arising from fully automatic fire? Pretty shit is my guess.
 
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