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| Seen in Los Alamos. Pretty, innit? |
While not a Broomhandle C96, the tangent-sighted and shoulder-stocked "artillery" Luger filled much the same ecological niche:
It is the ambition of the average
Continental officer to possess a Mauser pistol; ideas of stopping-power
do not worry him in the least, and he has little use or need for a good fighting weapon;
what catches his fancy is a high-speed, long-range arm that he can
carry on his belt with ease - and the Mauser fills this bill exactly. -R.K. Wilson, Textbook of Automatic Pistols
Looks like Rube Goldberg designed it.
ReplyDeleteI can kind of see the idea of lobbing 32 rnds of 9mm at the Kings Own Cannon Fodder regiment and seeing how many Brodie helmets you can ring. (I mean, if nothing else it must have alleviated the tedium of war.) But I've always wondered what the effect was on a body of men at 800 metres with those things. In my head it's like Homer vs the wasps: "Ah! AAH! They're defending themselves somehow!"
ReplyDeleteThe KOCF Regiment (The Old Rumbustibles) would always place their lines a given number of yards from the Jerries', causing the German weapons, which were sighted in metric, to fall short or go long.
ReplyDelete"Who cares if it works in battle, I want a shiny badge of rank!"
ReplyDeleteOr something.
@Tam: Genius! Suddenly, so much of the Great War makes sense...
ReplyDeleteIn the KOCF trenches:
"Blast! The Jerries have set up at 218.7 yards again. Isn't it just like the cowardly Hun to hide between range settings? Send the men forward another 18.7 yards, Lieutenant..."
Meanwhile, in the WKBA (WunderKriegsBratwurstAbteilung) lines:
"Ach! Ze Tommies have moved forward to 182.8 metres. Again! I mean, zeriously? Vhy do they insist on fighting at inconvenient distances? Ah vell, move ze men back to 200 metres, Herr Oberleutnant. Unt jah, I know ve have been here before..."
Thus explaining why there were so few casualties from rifle-fire in the Great War, and why they kept fighting over the same 25 yards of mud for 4 years. Do you want to email Gordon Corrigan, or should I?
Clearly the problem of TactiCool goes back even farther than we thought.
ReplyDeleteJust to be a PITA, I realized that this is the second GGP #73. I had to scroll down and make sure that it wasn't a running gag that I'd been missing until now. :P
ReplyDeleteD'oh! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteMicki Mahoney,
ReplyDelete"Thus explaining why there were so few casualties from rifle-fire in the Great War, and why they kept fighting over the same 25 yards of mud for 4 years. Do you want to email Gordon Corrigan, or should I?"
There's definitely a thesis (and maybe grant money!) in here someplace...
While not designed with this in mind, I'm sure a fair number of Jerrys appreciated a short, fast-shooting carbine when Tommy came calling on a midnight trench-raid, esp. w/a 32round drum. It was called an "Artillery Luger" cuz it allowed cannon-cockers to not have to lug a G-98 and still have a little reach, small arms wise. But of course Tam knows all this....
ReplyDeleteAccording to "On Killing" author LTC Dave Grossman, the relatively low death rate from small arms in the Great War was from the common soldiers' decisions (on both sides) not to kill despite what those officers ordered them to do. When small arms were fired, many times they were aimed at something other than someone on the opposing side. With artillery, crew served weapons and grenades a different mind set that allowed less guilt from killing was in effect.
ReplyDeleteGrossman's treatment of S.L.A. Marshal as a credible source torpedoes his credibility across the board.
ReplyDeleteKOFC, The Old Rumbustibles, motto: Fore and Aft, Lads!
ReplyDeleteDid you see this new Jerry magazine?
*Hrumph!* Can't approve. Too wasteful of the ammunition!
Bloody right! Not cricket at all. Dratted privates would just frighten the cattle with all of that.
I can just imagine the effectiveness of that piece while volley-firing with the rest of the regiment at 1800 yards ...
ReplyDeleteOh well. At least the magazines worked in the MP-18.
Mahoney et al are closer than they may realize.
ReplyDeleteIn the waning days of the war - by which I mean the last one or two - there was more than one attempt to order assaults for no better reason than to clear a salient or gain a few yards.
Most of these were resisted with a firmness which would likely have got the commander cashiered a month or two previous. Responses to the effect of "not going to waste a single soldier's life just to tidy up a line on a map" were not unheard of.
gvi
Tam,
ReplyDeleteI've encountered various diatribes against Marshall, but nothing substantiating their opposition. Can you point me toward some data on the subject?
Tam and Miki, plus such a thesis has the advantage of all people who have actual first hand, hands-on experience are now safely dead and cannot contradict your learned phD candidate opinions supported with tables and multiple regression analyses of questionable statistics.
ReplyDeletethe WV is "75 Aramont" -- Wasn't that an airplane in the "war to end all wars"?
Will,
ReplyDelete"I've encountered various diatribes against Marshall, but nothing substantiating their opposition. Can you point me toward some data on the subject?"
Nothing one would call "data", but then all of Marshal's stuff is (or claims to be) anecdata, so I weigh the opposing anecdata with equal credibility. The most damning, of course, are Hackworth's claims in About Face, although I am aware that he is not an uncontroversial figure himself.
Eye candy. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWindy, the 75 Aramont was a lesser known predecessor of the Modèle 1897 Howitzer. It didn't last long in initial service due to a problem with the prototype leaflet rounds, which were built from repurposed chlorine gas shells. Unlike later models that carried hundreds of flyers each, these had one large banner wound around a central rod. The problem was a defective time fuze and a failure at the arsenal to completely clean the previous contents out of the shells. They would detonate as the shell was leaving the muzzle, wedging it there. The spin from the rifling would unfurl the banner, which had been bleached white by the chlorine. As a result, the first time they tried to use them to fire a propaganda fire mission the entire artillery regiment surrendered, much to everyone's surprise.
ReplyDeleteWill, apparently Mr. Grossman's assertions (on a variety of topics) are not universally accepted in the training community.
ReplyDeleteI ran across the following debate a couple years ago that gives the flavor of the discussion:
http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/Main-R.htm
Right from the Wiki page on Marshall.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall
Professor Roger J. Spiller (Deputy Director of the Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College) demonstrated in his 1988 article "S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire" (RUSI Journal, Winter 1988, pages 63–71) that Marshall had not actually conducted the research upon which he based his ratio of fire theory. "The 'systematic collection of data' appears to have been an invention."[3] This revelation called into question the authenticity of some of Marshall's other books, and lent academic weight to doubts about his integrity that had been raised in military circles even decades earlier.[4]