Worst Weapon?

[DRZinn]

The marine corps wants EZ interface programmable robots (insofar as grunts are concerned).

Unless the Corps has changed a lot since 2003, that's completely untrue.

 

[wideym]

The M9 bayonet is the worst. Snaps off at the hilt or breaks of at the wire cutter hole. Costs over a hundred dollars apiece for thick blade, dull edge, blunt tip POS. Should have never given up the M7.

 

[Neo-Luddite]

I'm sorry--one more.

uss. vesuvius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Vesuvius_(1888)

A 'Dynamite Cruiser' the concept was to propel dynamite via a pneumatic cannon.

 

[sixgunner455]

The .38 Colt worked -- the weapon fired, didn't break, the bullet made holes in targets. Bit anemic ammo, but really, pistols are anemic combat weapons anyway. M9 pistol vs 1911 is really a non-starter as well. None of these weapons has ever won a battle. They are for up-close personal defense, as per doctrine. Of the three, I'd take the M9 -- 45 rounds of poking little holes in people, as opposed to 21 little holes from the 1911, or slow reloads with the revolver. All of them work, and none are really candidates for "worst weapon of U.S. military history". I don't have a clue what that would be, but I would think that it would have to be something that didn't perform as designed, or put the user in as much or more danger than the enemy when employed as designed.

M9 bayonet? No thanks. Not a good knife, not a good stabbing weapon, too heavy, clumsy, and fragile for all of that. I kept my M7, and turned it over to a soldier who was going to Baghdad when I was heading back to Doha. Got another one as soon as I got home.

 

[kymarkh]

Another vote for the Dragon. Thing was heavy, bulky, noisy in the bush and bad news in general. I wasn't a Dragon gunner but often humped the thing when guys in our squad needed a break. Never got to set a live one off but did fire the subcal trainers many times. I know from personal experience that even a 'training Dragon' (an empty tube weighted to simulate a live round) slung around your neck is heavy enough to pull a half-asleep soldier out of a Blackhawk if it falls out while he is unbuckling his harness as the bird is landing

 

[Avenger]

oh, I don't know the designation of it but my vote goes to the rocket launching pistol. That thing was a peice of crap, the ammo would corkscrew if you were lucky, it more than likely wouldn't detonate on impact, and you could stop the projectile but putting your thumb over the barrel (think muzzle velocity slower than a bottle rocket)

You're thinking of the Gyrojet. It was never an issue weapon, but a couple troops carried them in Viet Nam. It didn't fire explosive rounds, they just used rocket fuel to accelerate, much like a bottle rocket. The corkscrewing was only a problem during development, as the initial model was a smoothbore, the thinking being that angling the rocket venturis would provide enough spin to stabilize the round. The production weapons were slightly rifled, just enough to impart an initial spin.
Muzzle velocity was around 500fps, so I wouldn't recommend putting your thumb over the muzzle.
There was a carbine version that was HIGHLY thought of by testers, but the pistols draw-backs had doomed the company. The carbine was light, accurate, and a HARD hitter at longer ranges.

My vote would go to the 80cm howitzer fielded by the Germans in WW2. An AWESOME weapon, firing a 10,000lbs GP shell to a range of 35 miles, and there was a 7,700lbs "bunker buster" that penetrated 50 FEET of reinforced concrete, AFTER going through 20 feet of rocky dirt.
The problem was that it was INCREDIBLY wasteful of men and material. The gun crew was 1,500 men and officers, plus a large anti-aircraft and guard section, all commanded by a major general. It took about a week to bring the gun into action, which required the use of a construction battalion. The rate of fire was slow, the best they ever managed was a 15 minute reload time, but 45 minutes to an hour was more usual.
The guns were only used a few times, the one that destroyed the bunker did so during the siege of Sebastopol, and another fired about 75 of the GP rounds into Warsaw during the ghetto uprising.
Throw in the huge logistical train required to support all of this, and the Germans would have been much better off using the money, material, and men to build and crew around 200 examples of their 120mm howitzer.

 

[bigdaddyb]

Has to be the Chauchat. Nothing like an open sided magazine for muddy trench warfare!

 

[Timthinker]

Pity the poor Canadians who carried the Ross rifle into World War I. The bolt-action system of this rifle literally seized up in trench conditions, making it a jam-o-matic. The problem was so bad that troops were rumored to have stuck the straight-pull bolt with their e-tools to unfreeze it.


Timthinker

 

[.45Guy]

MK 153 Mod 0 SMAW. Take a good idea, reusable launcher ala RPG, make it bulky as hell and add a worthless 9mm spotter rifle, then limit warhead diameter to 83mm.

 

[Gustav]

Does a torpedo count as a weapon?

If it does the WW II US MK XIV torpedo has to been on the list as it was for a long time a failure that was only fixed after allot of lost opportunities and dedicated problem solving by some creative individuals.

When our men and women go in harms way their weapons and gear should be the best and not something that risks lives needlessly.

 

[Pevey]

Ilmari Juutilainen, Finlands best ace, used the Brewster Buffalo (28 kills) and a Me-109 (54 kills) very well against the Russians during the Winter War and the Continuation War. Both were considered outclassed by Russian planes at the time.

He wound up with 94 total kills, never having lost a wingman and never having been hit by an enemy bullet. He was shot down once by friendly fire. He lived into his 90's. Sometimes its not the weapon but the man behind the weapon.

If the American Volunteer Group had buffalo's instead of P-40's, they may have gotten all the fame. Naaaa......

 

[Danus ex]

Ilmari Juutilainen, Finlands best ace, used the Brewster Buffalo (28 kills) and a Me-109 (54 kills) very well against the Russians during the Winter War and the Continuation War. Both were considered outclassed by Russian planes at the time.

He wound up with 94 total kills, never having lost a wingman and never having been hit by an enemy bullet. He was shot down once by friendly fire. He lived into his 90's. Sometimes its not the weapon but the man behind the weapon.

By then, hadn't the Finns recently invented the beginnings of modern air combat tactics? Obviously Juutilainen was a gifted hero, but I'd guess that the improved Finnish tactics and strategy more than made up for the performance of their aircraft.

 

[Elza]

F4 Phantom without guns. Not the plane but the armament. The Phantom was a great plane but the “guns not needed” idea really sucked. Missiles that were a total POS and no gun. Thank you Robert McNamara et al.

 

[1lostinspace]

F4 Phantom lot's of smoke to detect from miles away no guns and maneuvered
like brick.

 

[barman]

As a French citizen, let me apologize for the Chauchat! A true piece of crap by every standards.

When it comes to US firearms, maybe the worst was the Starr double action revolver, used in the Civil War. Apparently it kept jamming all the time, possibly because people weren't familiar at all with a double action design involving percussion caps. Soldiers who were issued this weapon couldn't stop asking for its inventor to be hanged.

 

[Deanimator]

As a French citizen, let me apologize for the Chauchat! A true piece of crap by every standards.

How about every French bomber between 1919 and 1938? They all looked like flying greenhouses, with poorer aerodynamics than some garden stores!

 

[Hutch]

I have no direct experience with the Dragon, but I've read that there was a lamentable tendency for the operator to over-correct for the recoil impulse, and point the muzzle toward the ground, causing the wire-guided missle to become a lawn-dart, about 60-80 yards in front of the shooter.

The Reising was terrible, by all accounts.

The TBD did NOT have twin 50's in the rear, it was usually a single .30-cal "Stinger", which is a modification to the M1919 that produced a higher rate of fire. After we lost almost all the TBD's we launched at Midway, the rest were used to teach hands-on firefighting at Navy schools in the US.

Now for a REAL digression. My late uncle (RIP) was an ordie on the Belleau Wood, a CVL in WW2. He got some flight time, and his logbook was signed by none other than Lt. George Gay, who (as an Ensign) was the only aircrewman in the entire TBD squadron off the Hornet (TB-8) to survive the attack at Midway.

 

[Ash]

But the French did have some good fighters at the beginning of WWII.

Ash

 

[41magsnub]

He wound up with 94 total kills, never having lost a wingman and never having been hit by an enemy bullet. He was shot down once by friendly fire. He lived into his 90's. Sometimes its not the weapon but the man behind the weapon.

If someone says "software, not hardware" I swear to god I'll do something unpleasant!

 

[Deanimator]

But the French did have some good fighters at the beginning of WWII.

The Dewoitine D520 was a beautiful little plane, and one of my favorite monoplane fighters. Most of them ended up as Luftwaffe advanced trainers.

The Moraine-Saulnier MS406 was mediocre.

It was all downhill from there.