Deleted member 1487
Sure: sighting targets, combat panic, targets taking cover, aiming errors, recoil, et.Right but there a reason why those hits were being got at 100m or less, and it not that the bullets could physically reach further
Not that that study says 'infantry hand weapon' which is about standard issue rifles, not automatic weapons. Operations Research from the Korean war noted that BARs and MMGs had much greater chances for a hit because of how much was being sent down range. Project SALVO was based on that.Actually FA isn't that great at increasing chances of hitting when shooting at specific targets:
Operational-Requrements For An Infantry Hand Weapon 1952 (PDF of old docs warning)
Pg21 is the section discussing Fully automatic fire but the relevant quote is I think:
"never did more than one round hit the target (100yds) or screen from any of the short bursts,...to obtain more than one strike on the six ft by six ft screen the range had to be closed to 50 yd. At this range it was noted that the man-silhouette target in front of the screen was not hit more than once from any burst. Since single round firing with the M-1 rifle at 50 yds yields a probability of hit of near unity, the effectiveness of automatic fire at such short ranges was of no interest"
Pg 22 basically lays it all out you get more than one round hitting at very close ranges, and regular SA fire is just as accurate in terms of hitting the target
There is a lot more (conclusions on Pg 40, and appendixes that have the results tabulated etc), but I can't get this to copy and paste.
Here is a better link of that report:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/000346.pdf
It should be noted too that recoil was a major factor in achieving hits, so less recoil made automatic fire more controllable vs. say the BAR. I'd be very interested in the comparison with SMGs at the ranges discussed in the section on automatic fire.
The Bren had only 30 round magazines. It was able to suppress. Look into the Korean War, the 'Burp Gun' was highly effective at suppression.Now suppressive fire and the benefits it gives is a different thing, but you are not going to be doing effective suppressive fire with 20-30 round SMGs.
http://www.koreanwaronline.com/arms/ppsh41.html
The point wasn't to be firing them out of an SMG, but rather a somewhat heavier belt fed version with longer barrel and fixed stock like the LAD LMG. Because of how relatively light recoiling the rounds are compared to the weapon weight recoil was minimally felt.Also when firing FA Magnum rounds out of a weapon the size and weight of an SMG, sight radius benefits of longer barrels are really not going to be your primary factor.
BTW here is a demo of a .357 magnum round recoil in a carbine, which weighs only 8lbs, 7oz...which is less than an MP40:
The point was that it could be done, especially when firing braced and prone in burst fire. In actual combat during WW2, most combat happened below 200m anyway, so max range isn't even that big of an issue, as a pistol caliber round, especially a magnum version, is going to be able to effectively reach out to normal effective combat ranges.All that really has nothing to do with shooting in combat.
There is a huge difference between theoretical maximum range, maximum range ever achieved in any set up and effective range in the situation you are in.