I am so surprised about the dislike of the HK roller bolt rifles as I think they are an excellent military rifle. Most of the dislikes center around preferences, primarily preferences about ergonomics.....
The ergonomics you dismiss so lightly can be life saving. Having your rifle inform you it is out of ammunition and it is time to reload is important and designing it to do is so easy and cheap it is ridiculous to cut that cost.
I got to talk to a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan about this issue. I asked him whether in the excitement of combat he could tell whether his rifle was empty, whether he could tell whether the bolt was locked back, which all lead to the issue of a quick magazine change. Speed was not something he was concerned about. I still remember the eyes of this Gent, looking at me, and his comment: “
Don’t you realize that I have 16 other Soldiers with me?” Well, no I did not. I don’t have a CIB, my combat tactics come from movies, video games, and combat courses. The hero in the movie only has one hour and a half to kill all the evil guys till the movie ends and of course, he kills a lot of evil guys, quick magazine changes and all, till his shirt tears off showing his fine muscular torso after which then, he is obligated to kung fu his way to the end of the movie. But, it is all about him. One hero actor against legions of bad guys. We have all played video games and there a slow reload will get you killed, which is a bother, because you have to go back to the spawning point . Wonderful thing about video games, you get to come back, and of course, it is you, only you, against legions of bad guys. The self defense courses, these are timed events. The shooter who clears the room fastest, by himself, of course, wins.
I am beginning to think, in real life, that these tactics might actually be suicidal. Trying to clear a room, building, by yourself, with your favorite thunderstick, and to do it as fast as possible, is probably a good way to get yourself killed. I can think of a number of better options. Pull back, let the heavy machinegun perforate the place, keeping the bad guys down, while someone shoots an AT4 through the front door. Or, call in artillery, or ask the friendly skies to drop some napalm and enjoy the barbeque. Who said real battles have to be over in an hour and half?. Racing against a clock can get you dead, and in the real world, when you are dead, you don’t come back to a spawn point.
I do like my bolt hold open in my Garands, M1a’s, and AR15’s. It allows me to shoot single shot, prone with a sling, during highpower matches. But I am beginning to think, that is why it is there. The US military used to shoot KD bullseye and every rifle since the Trapdoor has features best suited to the target shooting game. The Army used to think bull’s-eye represented combat training, but that sort of went away in the 60’s. I did take my PTR91 to a local reduced course, 100 yard, across the course (XTC) match and found that it is was totally unsuited to the game. I had to load my rapid fire magazines, 3 rounds and 7 rounds. You are required to make a RF reload. Cocking the PTR requires a huge shift of position, so for sitting RF and prone RF, I fired two rounds, put the safety on, inserted the seven round magazine, and fired till the gun was empty. It was impossible to shoot 20 rounds prone slow gun empty, single shot, without breaking position, so I got permission from the match director to shoot 20 rounds from a loaded magazine. The PTR91 design is definitely not the rifle to shoot in an XTC match. But XTC is a game, and I have had fellow shooters who were combat veterans, tell me that.
But back to that bolt hold open device, my WASR does not have one. I don’t have any others, nor have I handled all the variants of the AK 47, but I suspect none of the rifles has a bolt open device and the Kalashnikov seems to be a very popular battle rifle all things considered. So maybe, a bolt hold open device is just a nice to have, not all that important outside of movies, video games, and combat course games.
These decision makers also have to make the trade, is it better to have all the costly niceties and slow production rate down? There will be unlucky guys who don’t get a rifle and have to carry broom sticks.
The Germans were never going to run out of rifles in the 1960s as long as the United States had millions of M1 Garands in storage.
Well for a time we had a rifle shortage in the early 60’s. The DCM sold a number of M1’s that were rebuilt in the early 60’s, these rifles have a penciled location and date (like RRAD 6-63) on the receiver tang. The Army did not have enough M14’s around and was rebuilding M1 Garands just in case the balloon went up. I have a bud, who was in the 82 Airborne during the Cuban missile crisis. He was in active status (which meant within 24 hours they were ready to drop anywhere) and when given the notice to ready up , he traded his M1 carbine for a M1 Garand because, as he said, the
“M1 carbine was a nice gun to play solider”, but he did not want to drop on Cuba with one. His unit, in 1962, did not have M14’s, but was going to be one of the very first to be dropped in a war. His almost claim to fame was that it was going to be a race between him, and the guy on the other side of the plane, as to who would hit Cuba first. Later he found, the drop point was a killing zone for all things American. Still, I was very surprised that the first responders did not have M14’s. Given the lack of M14’s, I don’t know how many M1 Garands the US would have given up to an ally.
If you read this months "
Military History" and the article about what would have happened if Russia invaded the West, anything not already in Germany, would have arrived after the Russians captured the county.
They could probably make something like a 7.62 Nato AKM clone just as cheap.
Don’t know, but the AK and its round was a very pragmatically designed weapon, and a very good one. Not adopting the AK was truly an example of not invented here.