Is the M1 Carbine a More Effective Combat Weapon Than a Submachinegun?

[JHansenAK47]

I think even the Carbine in the hands of the Germans might have been enough of an improvement over the sub gun to give them the advantage.

I disagree. The MP38/40 was a great SMG. It had 32 rd mags standard and is noted for being controllable in full auto. Asserting that the M1 carbine is superior is silly when in the real world firefights the M1 carbine didn't out gun the MP38/40.
Having a semiauto instead of the bolt action K98 is a more practical point of focus IMO.

Seems like I've read accounts of German soldiers picking up M1 Carbines and ammo and using then when they could, because they were handy and effective.

It wasn't uncommon to use captured weapons. If you have a K98 any autoloading, higher capacity weapon is going to give a serious step up in firepower at close range.

 

[J_McLeod]

I think it's a more effective combat weapon, I don't think it would have turned the tide in WW2.
It amazes me how the M1 gets derided for power when it's as close in power as it is to the 5.56 and 7.62X39.

I was just thinking the same thing. Wikipedia lists it with almost identical ME to the 5.56mm.

I'm sure I'll get some dissent on this one, but here's my opinion of it. The Stg44 was adopted because the Germans did some studies and determined that they really only need a round that was effective out to about 300m. .30 Carbine is effective to what, 200m? I don't see why it couldn't make an effective battle rifle. I don't think that replacing the MP40 with an M1 would have made a difference, but replacing the k98 with the M1 Carbine could have made a huge difference. The MG34/42s and a few k98s per squad could have made up the difference until they got close enough. But now we're back into what would have happened if they'd gotten the Stg44 in 41 or 42. Better that they didn't.

 

[J_McLeod]

It wasn't uncommon to use captured weapons. If you have a K98 any autoloading, higher capacity weapon is going to give a serious step up in firepower at close range.

They also really liked SVT 40s and PPShs.

 

[Ash]

German tactical doctrine called for the rifleman to support the machine gun. With that philosophy, bolt guns weren't so bad. But small arms neither won nor lost the war for any side.

 

[Pete D.]

My first tour in Viet Nam as an Adviser, I was issued an M2 Carbine (the selective fire version.) It got wrapped around a tree. I borrowed an M1 rifle from the ARVN and carried that from then on.

I also scrounged up an M1 Thompson SMG and kept that in the jeep -- it wasn't worth the weight to carry in the field.

I am guessing that there is a story there worth hearing.
Pete

 

[Tommygunn]

We're talking aout the same M1 carbine that was derided during the Korean War for it's inability to penetrate the Chinese's quilted uniforms, right?

I've shot both an M1 carbine and an MP-40, and I'll take that sub-gun in a heartbeat.

:banghead:

Again the myth about it not penetrating the Korean soldiers' quilted overcoats.
This myth was dispelled during the Korean War. One commander, listening to soldiers complain about the gun's "lack" of energy took his squad out to a battlefield where he knew that the Americans had been using carbines. The dead Koreans there all had those quilted multilayered jackets.
He discovered corpse after corpse with a bullet hole in the overcoat, a penetrating body wound, and exit wound on the body, and a adjoining hole in the reverse side of the "magic bullet-proof quilted jacket" where the 110 grain round had gone through upon leaving the body.

It's true the MP-40 was a advanced design for a SMG at the time; it was more modern than the Thompson. It wasn't as powerful.
I haven't fired an MP-40 but I have handled them. They're OK as far as ergonomics but not as nice - handling as the carbine. The singular advantage of the MP-40 is it's full auto fire. In terms of power the .30 carbine out penetrates and outperforms the 9mm. every time.
Had the M-2 entered in the european theater then I think it would have outperformed the German subgun.

 

[Float Pilot]

I worked for a PD for a few years that had an old M2 carbine in inventory. It was oddly controllable during full auto burst. But then again so was the much, much heavier Thompson 1928 Navy model we also had.

My dad who was in the Pacific theater said that after a few months in the jungle the M1 carbine became super desirable due to its light weight and handy length. He was something like 175 pounds when he joined up , but was down to 130 pounds of bones and malaria, after a year of jungle fighting.

Wehrmacht doctrine at the time called for the belt feed machine gun to be the primary assault or defensive weapon with troops using rifles or sub guns to protect the machine gunners. There would have been no difference in the outcome. The German Army had the highest kill to loss ratio, yet they could never win.

 

[Phaedrus/69]

I think the M1 carbine was a no-brainer to replace the Thompson for the Army. No matter what they did to bring down costs the old Tommy Gun was very, very expensive to manufacture. IIRC they were time consuming to build and couldn't be produced cheaply enough to supply the military with the numbers they wanted.

As for the Germans having them, I doubt it would have made any difference. The die was cast when Hitler double crossed Stalin and invaded Russia. That was a war they couldn't win, not in winter and while engaged with the Allies as well. Stalin could throw as many bodies as he needed into the fight and absorb all the bullets the Germans could fire.

 

[benEzra]

We're talking aout the same M1 carbine that was derided during the Korean War for it's inability to penetrate the Chinese's quilted uniforms, right?

I've shot both an M1 carbine and an MP-40, and I'll take that sub-gun in a heartbeat.

.30 Carbine will penetrate anything a 9x19 MP-40 will, and a lot it won't.

I believe the "won't penetrate heavy winter clothing" was a misconception that arose as a result of shooting at skinny soldiers wearing bulky winter clothing during the Korean War; a lot of apparent hits on the clothing simply missed the occupant of said clothing, or produced only grazing wounds. But an M1 carbine could certainly shoot through a whole stack of such uniforms.

That's not to say the MP-40 isn't a great gun, though, just that it doesn't win on barrier penetration.

 

[scramasax]

I have four m1 carbines. I must be lucky.Three will print consistently 3" groups off the bench at 100yds. One will print 2" all day. This isn't great but it is better than I can shoot a pistol.

The carbine that shoots the best groups is also in a m1A1 stock.

As to the effectiveness of the ammo, we are not restricted to military ball. We used to make our own hollow points with soft tip ammo. Now there is very good quality SD ammo available.

As to the subgun vs Carbine I used a m2 for a while in SA and am considering getting a transferable for my collection this year. My dad has a 1928, good truck gun but we are both a little to old to carry it around the farm.
Cheers,

ts

 

[eastbank]

this dcm bought winchester rebuilt .30 m-1 carbine has been doing double duty for over 50 years at my house, protection and target pratice with out a wimper or complaint. a sub machine gun may do better but i don,t think so. eastbank.

 

[M2 Carbine]

I have a number of M1/M2 Carbines.

A friend has the MP40, UZI, etc.

Under 50 yards I'll take the MP40.
Past 40-50 yards I'd rather have the M1 Carbine.

Full auto, mostly I'd rather have the MP40 than the M2 Carbine.


A friend shooting my M2 Carbine.
click on picture



My friend's boy and I seeing who could empty our guns first. My 9mm MAC 10 was faster but the boy's MP40 is a whole lot more accurate.
The boy, first time shooting the MP40, could easily hit water jugs at 30-35 yards away full auto. The Germans had a heck of a gun.



At work, in front of my helicopter, doing my Sergeant Schultz impersonation with my friends MP40.

 

[theotherwaldo]

The M-1 Carbine is basically a long pistol, and it is more useful at shorter ranges. Korea tended toward longer-ranged confrontations, so the M-1 didn't get very popular in that war. Viet-Nam and the Pacific Islands were more likely to be short-range fights, so the little M-1 (and sub-guns, to a certain extent) really shone.

Submachine guns are really intended for urban house-to-house battles, trench-clearing, and massed shock tactics. The M-1 is better than a long gun in these arenas, but not as good as the hardware that was designed with these jobs in mind.

Use the right tool for the job.

 

[Ash]

How is that?

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Submachine guns are really intended for urban house-to-house battles, trench-clearing, and massed shock tactics.

That's partially right -- Thompson referred to his invention as a "trench broom."

But submachine guns were really intended to be cheap and easily mass produced. They were issued because the armies in question couldn't produce enough rifles fast enough.

 

[Sam1911]

But submachine guns were really intended to be cheap and easily mass produced.

Many were, but most of those came a bit later, I think. The early Beretta 1918 and VP guns, and the German, Austrian and Spanish guns all were pretty complex by mid-century gun standards.

We've been concentrating more on the Thompson here and none of its variants was cheap or easily mass-produced.

Going through history from the Italian and German guns, and Thompson's work, up until the high-water mark of their design with the MP-5, and of their popularity in the 1990s, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Some extremely simple and unrefined, some quite a bit less so.

Like a lot of other guns, I think what they were designed to be, and what developments they saw during their period of proliferation, weren't necessarily equivalent.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

That's true.

By and large, submachine guns are things of the past -- they didn't live up to the high expectations their designers had for them.

 

[Sam1911]

Yeah. Had a good run, and there are some really nifty twists and turns along the way, though.

Was your M1/M2 unreliable, or did you not trust the cartridge, not prefer the ergos, or what?

 

[Palehorseman]

As a rifle, the M1 Carbine makes a pretty good pistol ...

Just kidding. I love them, but IMO they're not a good replacement for submachine guns because full auto is needed for suppressive fire.

In close-quarters combat I can see them being better than the M1 Garand because they're more maneuverable and have more ammo capacity.

Ever fired an M2 carbine? I have, and they are very, very, fast on full auto. How fast? When issued the M2 was the fastest hand held full auto weapon in the US military.

 

[Palehorseman]

IMO, the very best made and most reliable submachine gun of WW2 era was the Finnish 9mm KP/31 Soumi. But with the intensive machine work, was very expensive to mfg. The Russians learned a hard lesson as taught by the Finns using the KP/31 in the Winter War of 1939-40 (one shooter and one magazine loader, more than once wiped out entire platoons of Soviet infantry) and came out with the PPSH-41 then followed with their PPS-43.

 

[barnbwt]

"But submachine guns were really intended to be cheap and easily mass produced."

On that Suomi M31; pretty much that entire receiver (the torch cut piece) was machined from a single massive forging. They bored out the interior of the tube with some crazy stepped reamer, machined the sides of the lower and the tube profile, turned the endcap threads and barrel shroud lugs, riveted on the stock tang and the front/rear faces of the magwell, polished everything to the point no tooling marks or rivets are visible, then oven-hardened the steel to something like 60 Rockwell before bluing them. The bolts were around 70 Rockwell.

For what was basically a piece of pipe, a lump of steel, a barrel, and a spring, the Finns really threw everything at it. But, they ran fantastically, would hold 10" groups at 20 meters on full auto, and contributed greatly to the upper body strength of the Finnish fighting force . To understand the appeal and history of the guns, you have to realize the Finns kicked the Russians' rears so decisively during the Winter War that the gun was cloned, the magazines directly copied, and the whole SMG concept thought to be the future of warfare for a solid 20 years by the entire planet*. Understanding the dynamics of that forgotten conflict may be interesting (I am ignorant of the details, other than it was SMG vs. bolt gun, plus a smattering of early LMGs on both sides, and that the Finns did a lot fewer idiotic mass-charges than the Russians)

TCB

*Maybe not the Japanese; did they ever make an SMG?

 

[barnbwt]

"Ever fired an M2 carbine? I have, and they are very, very, fast on full auto. How fast? When issued the M2 was the fastest hand held full auto weapon in the US military."

Interesting, I'd never heard that before. I wonder if a Skorpion-style rate reducer to bring the ROF down below 1000rpm would have made them a bit more practical? An even more stretched-out Suomi drum on the M2 holding 72rnds would have made them still more effective

TCB

 

[Palehorseman]

I have a number of M1/M2 Carbines.

A friend has the MP40, UZI, etc.

Under 50 yards I'll take the MP40.
Past 40-50 yards I'd rather have the M1 Carbine.

Full auto, mostly I'd rather have the MP40 than the M2 Carbine.


A friend shooting my M2 Carbine.
click on picture



My friend's boy and I seeing who could empty our guns first. My 9mm MAC 10 was faster but the boy's MP40 is a whole lot more accurate.
The boy, first time shooting the MP40, could easily hit water jugs at 30-35 yards away full auto. The Germans had a heck of a gun.



At work, in front of my helicopter, doing my Sergeant Schultz impersonation with my friends MP40.

I know the MP-40 was a very well designed SM. But OTOH, German troops on the Eastern Front, much preferred the Soviet PPSH-41 or PPS-43 to their own MP-40. Why? Because the close tolerances of the MP-40 made it subject to jamming under dirty battle field conditions.

 

[barnbwt]

I'll bet the armorers back West also supplied the Front with weapons that were thoughtfully pre-lubed with heavy oil and grease . I think the Soviets were just dousing them with diesel (or petrol, or whatever the Soviets used for light fuel then) if even that much. The PPSH also had a ridiculous rate of fire from the 7.62x25, and that paired with a large drum made them frightening suppressive and clearing weapons, whose rounds could probably penetrate many barriers in an urban environment like Stalingrad.

If the M1 could have been made faster and cheaper than the MP40 (and it may well be the case) and if the manufacturer could also create a new 8ft Aryan clone soldier to run the thing at the same time...

...then perhaps the M1 would have changed the outcome of the war

TCB

 

[Gun Master]

M-1 Carbine Over SMG ?

No, based on caliber alone. The 9mm is more powerful and knocks a bigger hole (M-1=.30 cal.; 9mm=.38 cal.). I knew a Korean War Vet who emptied a 30 rd. banana clip into an enemy soldier, who fell at his feet. After that, he carried an M-1 Rifle (.30-06 cal.).