How would WWII personnel react?

[blkbrd666]

I'm sure the Americans on the battlefield during WWII would have welcomed some modern weapons. They picked up DA/SA handguns as spoils of war and take-homes when they were carrying SA autos...P38 vs. 1911. I wonder how many actually used them from that point?

 

[Duke of Doubt]

I've noticed that while a lot of us consider full-powered battle rifles like the .30-'06 Garand and Springfield '03A3 the preferred weapon of the old codgers who fought WWII, and that therefore they'd look on modern "wimpy" guns with disdain, in reality most vastly preferred the M1 Carbine, with its utterly inadequate .30 Carbine cartridge. To many of them, bullets were bullets, and at the ranges they seemed to find themselves fighting at in the Hurtgen Forest or the streets of Duisberg-Essen, it didn't really matter how big the bullet was or how much powder was behind it; probably you'd get killed by artillery anyway, and when the other guys came at you, you kept shooting at them until the dropped, ran away or surrendered. QUANTITY mattered. Lots of guys sending lots of lead into the woods where the Germans were, not one guy slow-firing his Garand. The most feared enemy round was the .25 Japanese, not the 8mm Mauser. Our imaginations can become skewed by groupthink. I think Willie and Joe would have loved the M16A2.

 

[Tommygunn]

... most vastly preferred the M1 Carbine, with its utterly inadequate .30 Carbine cartridge.

Ouch there, Duke. I wouldn't call the .30 Carbine "utterly inadequate," unless I'd just tried to take down a Bull Elephant on the other side of the savannah.
It did it's job within it's design parameters.

 

[Pulse]

Ouch there, Duke. I wouldn't call the .30 Carbine "utterly inadequate," unless I'd just tried to take down a Bull Elephant on the other side of the savannah.
It did it's job within it's design parameters.

ofcourse, the .30 carbine was a fine round for what it was intended to do, however, for someone that claims the 5.56 NATO round as 'wimpy weak toy', the .30 carbine must indeed be "utterly inadequate", otherwise i smell bias..

 

[rodregier]

Audie Murphy thought the M1 Carbine was just fine for what we now call urban warfare

There are M1 Carbine specific threads on THR...

 

[Tommygunn]

Well, I've heard stories of people who disdained the carbine because they tried to use it long ditance, and I have heard stories about soldiers who disliked the Garand because it was too heavy ... too much recoil, or other reasons.
To each his own I guess.
Given it's performance I think calling it "utterly inadequate" is hyperbole.
There's no way of course, that it will match the .30-'06 power wise.
I have always suspected that had it been refered to as something other than "M-1 ..." then that might have altered the opinions of some who disliked it, since it might be natural to compare it to the Garand.

I have also read stories of soldiers who had the chance to use the Carbine in the opening years of the VietNam War, and from what I've read, they generally seemed to think it worked atleast as well as the M-16 sans jamming.

I wonder how many people disdain the .22 rimfire for being "utterly inadequate" and who DON'T use it to hunt moose .... because it was never intended to be used on moose in the first place .....

 

[armedandsafe]

The bias against high ammo usage was not based only on pennies per round. It was based on supply restrictions. One can move only so much stuff up to the front. Increased ammo usage = reduced food or fuel or medical supplies or personnel or whatever.

They will always be with us.

Pops

 

[chuckusaret]

I was in Vietnam in the 60's and the M2 carbines were in use by our air crews and I rotated my last time in 1971 and there were crews still using M2carbines. My sidearm was a Ruger Blackhawk 7 1/2" .30 caliber which was about as useful as the chopped M2 carbines

 

[crebralfix]

I'd "wow" them with a Trijicon 4x ACOG on an AR-15 and what it can do at 300 yards.

Better yet, a short barreled FAL with some goodies like an ACOG.

For close in, an MP5 in 10mm and red dot.

 

[skoro]

My dad saw a lot of combat in NW Europe in WWII, and was horribly wounded in fighting along the border between France and Germany (the Siegfried Line near Saarbrucken). We've had some good discussions about infantry weapons. His primary was a Browning 30 cal MG and he carried a 1911 as his sidearm. He has high praise for the BMG, the M1903 and the Garand. Not so much for the BAR (froze up in cold weather) or the M1 carbine (popgun with no useful range). His primary concerns with any weapon were reliablility and accuracy at long range. But he also praised the M3 grease gun as a good room clearing weapon for in-town scrapes and said that's what they were often issued when house-to-house fighting was expected.

I think he'd probably be very interested in some of our modern day weaponry.

 

[servantofinari]

My dad is a die hard, old style person. He to this day says semi-auto handguns are evil things. But during his twenty years in the army he got to shoot the British SA80, a gun with many noted flaws. He loved the bullpup design immediately and wants to get an civilian AUG. A friend of mine who’s younger than me thinks anything made after Vietnam is useless junk. Guess you never know.

 

[jmr40]

The M-1 was quite popular in the Pacific where it was used at close range against 100 lb. Japanese soldiers wearing no jackets. It was much less popular in Europe where it was used against larger German soldiers at greater ranges wearing heavy winter coats.

My dad spent a year+ in Europe. From January 1945 to April 1946. He is quite impressed with the AR-15.

 

[Farnham]

I think you forget that those old codgers weren't old codgers at the time. They were young men, watching technology jump forward at an amazing rate (cavalry charges to atom bombs), and probably wouldn't have batted an eye at being issued an M-16 or SAW, as long as it was light enough to ease up on their shoe leather.

Some of them may have objected to the rollmarks, but as long as they were supplied with plenty of that German 9-em-em ammo, and that newfangled .223, they'd have used them all to great effect.

 

[Kurt_D]

The same as today. The majority would see the weapon (ex: M16) for what it is (improved control, greater load out, higher rate of fire, replacing 3 of their current weapons with 1) and be happy and use it to great effect. A few will b*tch it's not powerful enough, waste too much ammo, has to be cleaned more often, etc; and ask for the good ol' whatever back. A few others will b*tch it's too heavy, too powerful, doesn't have a high enough rate of fire and ask for "something better".

Some things have always been and always will be.