Any opinions on why shotguns were not used in Europe?GI's had a couple models but were mainly Pacific theater use.Did any Axis power have one and/or why were they not popular in Europe?Seems to me they'd be handy in street fighting etc. FramerT.

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It appears in house-to-house, or rather room-to-room through walls, some Soviets preferred picks and shovels to guns. They evolved a practice of smashing though and rushing in so quickly the simplest and an effective way was to dispatch the enemy with the tools already in their hands.

The British Commandos, who did their fair share of close clearance, preferred the sub-machinegun as it held a much higher capacity magazine, was quicker to reload with a new mag, had a greater range, gave a capability to spray fire and shared common ammunition with the .45 ACP Colt pistols they carried or the widely used 9mm by many forces, (Thompsons and Stens)

No.9

I was thinking, quite simply, range. It seems to me that the ranges in Europe in general would be much greater. All I can use as a reference is my Remington Model 870 Express Magnum which, if I am not mistaken, is an offshoot of a model produced by that company for use in combat. This shotgun, loaded with heavy steel or lead shot, is probably ineffective over 50 yards. With slugs one is pushing the accuracy envelope at 100 yards. Therefore, unless used in extremely close quarters, it would just be "dead weight" to carry in combat. In the jungle however, where one can often only see 10 or 20 yards, I can see an application.

Just my opinion.

Later

We've discussed this before, example:

http://www.ww2forums.com/cgi-bin/ubb...=000780#000000

No.9

Thanks # 9, I went through the weapons archives before I posted but did'nt see anything about them.FramerT.

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Ah well I suppose you can’t always reckon on subjects being in the most logical section? (especially with Freddy about)

I think in connection with the earlier posting and my ref to Viet Nam, I asked a friend who was in No.1 Commando in Burma about shotguns. He said he never used one and didn’t remember seeing any. He went on to add he wouldn’t have liked to have been armed with ‘two-shots’ [thinking of a double-barrelled gun]. Admittedly you had two shots to hand as opposed to one in an Enfield, but there were usually plenty of Thompsons and Brens around so there was rapid fire when needed. Though not used for the purpose, the Thompson had a tendency to defoliate quite well as the heavy slugs would easily break thinner branches so the whole branch disappeared instead of just the leaves. Their style was only to shoot at identified targets so they didn’t engage in random fire for effect.

No.9