This is close to a "what if" but is not its a question, so i will post it here and hope i don't get flamed lol

All major combatants in World war 2 (Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, USA, and many of the others) tried very hard and spent billions of dollars on the latest developments in tanks, ships, and aircraft - the French and British naval fleets combined were far stronger than Germany's, for example. And the British Spitfire was just as good if not better than the BF-109. The French had spent billions on their Maginot line (and even Hitler's plans for France involved bypassing it to the North). Moreover, the French and British had not only more tanks, but better tanks, then Germany did in early 1940.

Yet for all of this effort and money, every major combatant (except the USA, who came late to the war) armed their soldiers mainly with World war 1 era, bolt action rifles, or to a lesser extent submachine guns (all pistol caliber, most 9 mm, inacurate and almost useless at long range). Furthermore only Germany had a really good, modern machine gun (the MG-34/42) while the other nations, even the USA, had nothing that was nearly as good.
My question is, why do you think almost all the combatant nations spent billions on the "big-ticket" items (in the case of France, ultimately to little effect against invasion and subjugation), while seemingly arming, as an afterthought, the most important single component in any war - the average infantryman - with a 5 to 10 shot, slow reload, outdated bolt rifle?

Many decent semi-auto designs were developed in the 1930's (the Russians with their SVT and the Americans with the first-class Johnson rifle, and the war-winning M1 garand, (first issued in 1936!) and the Europeans surely had serious designs on the drawing board for similar rifles - since the mechanical engineering technology and manufacturing capability certainly existed, in all combatant nations pre-1939!

To phrase my question a different way, suppose an average French AND British army squad of 10 men had been armed like this in April 1940:

7 x Kar 43 or M1 garand,
1 x mg-42,
2 x mp40s or pistols for the assistant machine gunners/ammo carriers.

(let's assume for argument's sake the Germans were armed exactly how they were actually armed,
7 or 8 x Kar-98 bolt rifles,
possibly an MP-38 or two, and
possibly an Mg-34 per squad, or one for every 2 squads).

Might the battle of France in 1940 have turned out completely differently?

And why do you think most of the major powers armed their troops with outdated weapons anyway, when better designs were turn-key? False economy? Stupidity? Laziness? Bureacratic inertia? "Not invented here" syndrome?

To answer one bit of your question - No - the fall of France would not have been prevented by the troops being able to fire off their rounds more quickly.

Quicker rifle fire would not have stopped the German tanks coming through the Ardennes, rectified the ineptitude of most of the French generals or reversed the almost total loss of morale throughout the country.

Regards

Richie

No doubt having better small arms is an advantage, but not as large as you would think. The Germans and English would of trained religiously with their bolt actions and would of got there use down to an art. Would it make sense with war potentially coming up to drastically change a system that has proven effective in the past. Is it worth it, for the gain? Aircraft Carriers, Aircraft, Tanks and Artillery cause more casualties and are far more important in the grand scheme of things than a battlefield rifle.

Another point to make. Comparing the British to the US. The British had a bolt action that they could shoot quickly and accurately once well trained with. They also had the Bren gun in their squads. The US had the BAR which is more an assault gun than a LMG. The US needed a Semi-auto more than the British or Germans.

My view anyway.

I know the Germans put emphasis on the machine gun: MG34 and MG42 to provide the bulk of firepower in infantry squads rather than the battle rifles. I suppose by the time WWII broke out, since most nations were equipped primarily with bolt action rifles, that's what they had to go with.

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and yet - isn't there still something
remaining in it? - Takahama Kyoshi

Proud Son of Japan

Rifles aren't the real killers on the battlefield. Heck, even machine-guns were not war-winning weapons. Investing in tanks, artillery and aircraft first when you don't have adequate funds to upgrade all of the weapons in your arsenal is a necessary evil.

Well; Tanks, Machine Guns, Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, Bombers, Fighter Planes and submarines are neat and all but none of them can hold ground.

War comes down to an Infantryman and his rifle; everything else is just support.

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"Logos, Philos, Arete"

The US needed a Semi-auto more than the British or Germans.

I respectfully disagree with this. The US did not "need" a semi auto rifle "more" than the Brits or Germans. The German Army & The British Army can find their respective roots on a "Gentlemans" type of warfare. War is still war, but they both adhered to a certain code. Both armies were coming out under the influence of 19th century warfare and WWI tactics and strategy, the Mauser & Lee/Enfields were thee most succesful bolt action rifles of their time.

It was John Garand's genius to successfully develop a semi auto rifle that was acceptable to harsh military standards. The typical German & Brit train of thought still was on the boltaction rifle rifleman supporting the lone machinegunner.
Once the US discovered how successful the M1 rifle was in 1936-37, I think the powers that were at that time in the US military, saw how adventageous and superior a semi auto rifle was over the bolt action.

The US had the BAR which is more an assault gun than a LMG.
The German StG44 was the world's first "assault" rifle. The BAR was, indeed, a light machine gun. The BAR was designed to be carried by advancing infantrymen, slung over the shoulder and fired from the hip, a concept called "walking fire"—thought to be necessary for the individual soldier during trench warfare. However in practice, it was most often used as a light machine gun and fired from a bipod, the original M1918 version was and remains the lightest machine gun to fire the .30-06. The Bren is also classified as a light machine gun and is consider the BAR's contemporary.


Mike

The French actually had a semi auto rifle in development, it was modified and became the Mas 49 after the war, but originally the Mas 39/40 was a 5 round semi loaded by stripper clip. Fall of France meant an end to the project but it probably would have begun to see service in late 1940 and early 1941 since production had been given a go.

The Brits had also developed a semi-auto, didnt go into production though. If I recall the problem for the Brits that the .303 rimmed round was not suitable for semi auto use, and the semi-auto prototypes were using mauser rounds or something not .303, which when war is approaching and you have major stockpiles of .303 ammo and not the other ammo tilts the scales in favor of keeping and refining the Lee-Enfield.

Still the Lee-Enfield was a solid bolt action rifle with a very quick cycling speed. Your can easily take a shot and cycle in a new round, while still shouldered, inside a second.

I disagree with calling the BAR and LMG. The BAR is an automatic rifle, even its name implys that. Its lack of a quick changing barrel and larger magazine for greater sustained rates of fire, not to mention bottom loading magzine which disallowed the use of a loader or at least complicated the process, prevented it from being a squad LMG even if it was thrusted into that role for lack of anything better.

Its not that it ws a bad weapon, it just did not have the features required to do its job as efficiently as other LMGs.

The bolt-action rifle was nothing to write home about but had adequate firepower for the job. Whereas the tanks, airplanes, ships and artillery pieces the Europeans had at the time were not.

Yeah well while they were writing home it seems their positions were over run by Infantrymen with M-1 Garands.

A country can have all the "gee whiz" shiny stuff it can produce; but, if they can not occupy and defend their objective then they are doomed to failure.

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"Logos, Philos, Arete"

That's a good one. I am not trying to defend European small arms policy in the 30's, just giving an explanation of what went on in the thought process. Besides, antique bolt action rifles were perfectly adequate when that's the only thing your likely opponents had.

Got to give credit to the Russians though, they tried.

I guess my point is that the sole purpose of every piece of military equipment is to give support to the Infantry, and the Infantry in it's very basic form is a Rifleman.

America is the only country that devoted any effort, during the inter war period, to developing a new battle rifle; and not just improving what ws already in service.

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"Logos, Philos, Arete"

I think you are reading too much into the fact the US army accepted a solid semi auto like the M1 when it was presented to them by Garand. Every country was looking into semi-auto rifles at the time. Hell the french had a semi-auto rifle in WWI, the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917, and the Mas 40 semi auto was going to go into production in late 1940 had France not fallen. The British were also looking into semi-auto rifles and prototypes were presented. Europe was no less interested in semi-automatic weapons for their men, wherever you are getting this gentlemans concept of war is is wrong, gentlemens war went out the window in WWI with mass slaughter by machine guns and poision gass. Circumstances rather than interest prevented or delayed the arrival of these rifles in European armies.

The US was simply lucky enough a man like Garand came up with such as reliable and effective design, the contender, the Johnston rifle, could quite well have never seen service en mass like the Garand given its complexity, and the US may well have stuck with the Springfield as its main weapon for the infantry, as they were forced to do for the first year and a half of their participation of the war when M1 stocks were not sufficient to allow all soldiers to have one during the North African/Tunisia campaign, and into the Sicily campaign.

Things to remember in the time period. First off, America had become the "banker" to the world post-war (1920s), and none of the other allies (Japan excepted), let alone any of the Central Powers had money to spend on research and development of "new" weapon systems or concepts.

America had been looking at a semi-automatic infantry rifle even before WW1, and that fellow named John Pedersen had come up with the Pedersen Device to convert the Springfield rifle into a semi-auto firing a short .30 round while he was working at Remington. But production had just gotten well underway when the war ended.

After WW1 the US Army really was still looking into a general issue auto-loading rifle, not an attachment like the Pedersen Device, since the success of the BAR was obvious, but it’s weight was a detriment. To get nearly the same ballistics as the venerable .06 round, the new Pedersen .276 cartridge was explored for the semi-auto designs, and the first Garand models were in this caliber.

This was while the Canadian Garand was working with the Springfield armory. His (Garand) design was robust enough to withstand upgrading to the 30.06 size round, where the Pedersen rifle with its up-breaking toggle lock receiver design simply wasn’t.

The whole idea of a semi-auto for the infantryman was explored by many nations, but the US came out on top simply because we devoted more time and wealth to the problem. Of course we devoted this during the "roaring twenties" when the industrial and military budgets were not nearly as constrained as they became in the thirties.

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Happy Trails,
Clint.

Its not like the other nations were lost on the concept, they just had trouble following up our designs with good weapons of thier own. The same thing happened when the Germans invented the Needle Gun in the 19th century: everyone wanted a gun just like it, or better.

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Best Regards, Hufflepuff

A big reason had to do with the economics of such a rifle. First, a semi-automatic rifle is more complex to manufacture than a bolt action rifle. For the British and Japanese who still used a rimmed cartridge this would have been an even more difficult transition. They would have to put in more development work (like the British did with the BREN) or switch cartridges to a semi-rimmed one. The later would have decimated existing stocks of small arms ammunition. Not a small cost in itself.

The second reason is simply cost. Most nations had huge stocks of bolt action rifles. Getting rid of these in favor of a semi-automatic rifle would have been expensive. Then too, the semi-automatic rifle would also cost more to produce and likely to fire (more ammo use) and maintain.

The US chose to manufacture a semi-auto rifle and forego a new machinegun. The British and Germans chose new machineguns to go with their existing rifles. The French, a day late and a dollar short, decided on the US course with a new semi-automatic but too late in the game to see it in service before they fell.

To answer the second question first: Because they realized that rifles alone don't make a huge difference in battle As for the first: It would have made no difference. The French lost because they had a totally hosed doctrine of warfare not because their weapons were inferior.

I do not believe any Army troops went into combat with Garands. The Army was fully equipped with the Garand by 1942.

Regardless of what abilities European contries possesd at the time; the US is the only country to field an Army with a semi auto matic battle rifle in 1942..........period.

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"Logos, Philos, Arete"

Agree with all the comments above. That was the point I was making I wasn't trying to say that the US had inferior squad setup, rather that the lack of proper LMG necessitated the power of a semi-auto rifle.

Another point on the BAR, its clip was only 20 rounds, not enough for an effective squad support weapon.

The thinking was the other way around, that because they had a semiautomatic rifle they didn't need a proper LMG which turned out to be a colossal mistake. With 2 BARs and ten M-1s a US rifle squad can do yeoman's service, but really that was a retroactive improvisation--they thought the rifle alone was enough, when it wasn't. The Americans somehow got it lucky. More than ten years of neglect in small arms put the US in the sad position of using WWI antiques for almost all of their automatic weapons. If not for the M-1 it would have been horrible for the troops! Only the Russians had more anachronistic machine guns.

Come on "Triple C", the Browning "anachronistic"? It is true that the basic design dated from WW1 but the M2 in .50 is still the benchmark for a heavy machine gun yet today in the US military. The .30 was updated in a couple of ways before and during WW2 including the outstanding .30 caliber M2 AN (Army-Navy) aircraft machine gun. The .30 in M2 AN Browning was widely adopted as both a fixed (offensive) and flexible (defensive) weapon on many aircraft, and the Brits used the weapon in the .303 caliber size. Perhaps they stayed with the .303 a bit too long, but when we all went to the NATO round the Browning action remained.

Aircraft machine guns required light weight, firepower, and reliability, and achieving all three goals proved a difficult challenge. The receiver walls and operating components of the .30 1928M2 were made thinner and lighter, and with air cooling provided by the speed of the aircraft, designers were able to reduce the barrel's weight and profile. As a result, the M2 weighed two-thirds that of the 1919A4, and the lightened mechanism gave it a rate of fire approaching 1,200 rpm! Not too shabby for an "oldie but a goodie" huh. There was also an M37 updated version, in the water-cooled only as far as I know, but really; if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

The Browning .30 caliber machine was around a long time, and for good reason, mostly owing to its reputation as a robust and reliable weapon. The Browning gas/blowback LMG design in .30 was in use with the US Military from WW1 until Viet Nam, a span of over fifty years. That a weapon designed in WW1 could serve so long and outlive so many other designs is a testament to the genius of John Browning.

The 1919A4 remained in service in developing countries until the end of the 20th century, and will be showing up in scattered use well into the 21st century. For fun pick up a copy of Hard Rain, by Frank Iannamico. Great resource book on Browning’s designs.

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Happy Trails,
Clint.

I don't see the .30 Browning as anachronistic at all. It is equal in utility to the British Vickers as an excellent medium machinegun. Being able to field it in an air cooled and water cooled version was good. In fact, having a water cooled version was smart for dedicated machinegun troops. This is far better than the German medium using an air cooled MG 34 even with barrel changes.

What the US lacked was a decent squad automatic weapon. The M1919A5 improvisation was largely a joke. But, on the plus side the US did give their infantry an excellent light mortar in the 60mm M1. It was far more effective than the 50mm / 2" mortars other nations chose having a truly effective bomb and a range of more than 1000 yds.
Given enough time to emplace their machineguns and mortars a US infantry company could be effective on the offense or defense. The mortars can be used to neutralize enemy machineguns without much fear of retribution as the Germans don't have an equivalent. The M1919 on a tripod could also be set to fire along fixed lines of fire and on predetermined positions, something the German light squad MG's couldn't do.

Let's also keep in mind governments hate "excess" ammo expenditure. MGs, due to their design, are exempt from that scorn. However, the bean counters can exert their mighty power on the lowly grunt. He's forced to deal with bolt Vs autoloader; semi-auto Vs full-auto; burst Vs full-auto. I'm sure lasers and lightsabers will face imposed restrictions so the troops don't use up too much power.

We also have to look at the era. WWI trench warfare, arty and MGs made war costlier in money and lives than ever before. New tactics were constantly bandied about. Economic realities left few countries that could actually field units to try them out (recall GIs with wooden MGs and vehicles painted "tank"). Of course Germany was able to do this at first in secret and later openly.

The sad fact of the US Army is that it trains to fight the last war fought. Late war use of the BAR and Pedersen deviceproduction kept the US Army focused on a semi-auto rifle. Only during war do training, tactics, and weapons development kick into high gear.

Also, I'd like to give a shout out to the Simonov 1916. It's numbers weren't as great as the StG44 but it did see service first.

Hard to find too many pictures from that theatre, but here are two:



Soldier with a springfield as denoted by the end of the barrel, M1s had a longer metal barrel which protruded from the wooden body, Springfields had a much shorter metal barrel protrusion.



In this one you see a mix, both Garands and Springfields as denoted by their respective metal barrel portrusions.

However the bottom picture does appear to possibly be rear echelon troops, see one MP in there, two other with white arm bands, and a whole lot of suitcases.

Hard to know for sure and I can't give ya a ratio of how many bolts to semi though at the time. The Combat Mission Afrika Corps has US troops using predominantly bolt actions, but at the same time German SS troops in Normandy get STG 44s which I have seen compelling evidence to suggest the weapon barely saw service, so I am not sure how much faith I would put in that.

Well the first picture is that of troops embarked during stateside training as the 45th did not reach the ETO until August 1945; so it is obvious that the picture was taken more than a year prior to their deployment.
The men are also wearing HBT coveralls and no socks.......does not appear like these men are preparing to go into combat.

The second picture has several Garands in it and the soldiers appear to be a mixed group of admin and rear echelon types. Note the type writer cases and the "Broadie" helmeted guy in the back of the boat.

I stand by my statement that the Army did not go into combat, as a whole, with the M-1903. Granted there may have been a few; but, they were no doubt the exception and not the rule.

Brad

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