Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons"
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@michaels5210 Despite the existence of people that take them as gospel, these clips are amateur works, and I take them as that.
The "shifting zero" is the classic example of a problem invented because you "know" that the weapon is bad, and so you feel to have to illustrate some "problem".
The MG42/MG3 has the front sight on the barrel shroud exactly like the Breda 30. None ever noticed that being a problem in 80 years of use of the weapon.
The DP-27, despite having a fixed barrel, and so it could have had the front sight on the barrel, had the front sight on the barrel shroud exactly like the Breda 30. None noticed it being a problem for all the decades of use of the MG.
Every modern MG has an optic fixed to the receiver that doesn't compensate for the barrel change. None noticed that being a problem to this day.
We are used to movies where weapons always works, but that was not the case in WWII. Then an automatic weapon jamming was not a problem of "if" nor a problem of "when". It was a problem of "how often". At that time it was a REAL problem to manufacture magazines that were so well built to not have feeding issues and so cheap to be discarded on the field. Even the Brits experimented tilting magazines with the BREN (they didn't adopt them in the end, but they were much more awkward than that of the Breda, and you needed two clips to fill one). It was still a felt problem for the NATO countries in the '50s. Have you ever wondered why the M14 has a stripper clip guide? This is the stripper clip of a Canadian FAL, does this remind you something? Only that you need TWO of them to fill a magazine ( https://i1.wp.com/www.forgottenweapons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-02-at-8.59.38-AM-copy.png?fit=684%2C738&ssl=1&w=640 )
"large gaps to allow gunk to get into ammo" is another "harmchair problem". A minor issue that harmchair "experts" inflates to gigantic proportions "that gun will jam at the slightest sign of dirt!" Ironically the same people seem to came over belt feeding. Were belts closed?
I said BOLT. Bolt body, extractor, striker, striker spring, four parts. Do you want to add the locking ring despite it not being really part of the bolt? Make five. A BREN BOLT ASSEMBLY IS MADE OF 30 PARTS.
All in all the Breda 30 was an unsatisfactory weapon for several reasons, but the difference between the best and the worst WWII LMG is a question of nuances.
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@michaels5210 When used as LMGs, the MG42 and MG34 used a 50 rounds belt can (that the MG eats in 2.5 seconds). Had you ever seen a MG42 gunner trying to change it? It's MUCH quicker to change two or three magazines, even reload the Breda 30 two or three times.
It's not by chance that the concept of GPMG took decades to impose itself (It practically needed them to be almost always carried by trucks) and it's not a definitive victory. The General Dynamics NGSW doesn't have a belt-fed option. And you can see how to change some magazine is infact faster than changing the short belts of the other bids.
The rate of fire of the Breda is NEVER mentioned as a problem of the weapon in Allied reports. Instead Allied reports indicates that the Breda was more apt than the BREN exactly to be used by a single man, infact a single gunner, with the BREDA, can both reload and change barrel without changing his position, or the position of the weapon. They indicate as issues instead the lack of a carrying handle and that of a dedicated fixed tripod (BUT NOT THE RELOAD OR THE RATE OF FIRE). See how the people that REALLY used the weapons back then gave importance to COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS than what modern harmchair "experts" tend to do?
IE, Ian just reviewed the DP-27.
It has a quick exchange barrel, right? Not really. Hypotetically, by moving the weapon out of line and grabbing the scorching hot muzzle, you could change the barrel, but in reality, no spare barrels were provided to the gunner.
The pan magazine was a good solution, right? Not really. You can't really change magazine without looking at what you are doing, so exposing your head over the weapon. A thing that can easily have lethal consequences.
The M1 Garand with its pencil, not quick change, barrel could provide a laughable volume of fire in respect to the Breda 30, or any other real LMG.
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@michaels5210 The BAR, with its pencil, not quick change, barrel could provide a laughable volume of fire in respect to the Breda 30, or any other real LMG. At the start of the war the Breda 30 was issued with two spare barrels. After the first battles, it was deemed to be insufficient, and the provision was rised to four. That means there was the real problem to fire more than 600 rounds in quick succession with the Breda 30. Good luck to do anything close with the BAR.
The lone MG operator in WWII exists only in Hollywood. A US B-team (the one with the BAR) was composed of gunner, assistant gunner, ammo bearer. At least three people. The mag change of the BREN was made by the assistant. To operate any WWII belt fed MG without someone holding the belt meant to be in search of stoppages.
As for practical volume of fire, the BREN manual allowed the operator to fire ONE MAG FOR MINUTE in normal circumstances. In exceptional circumstances that volume of fire could be enhanced to four mags for minute. Keeping in mind that, at that pace, the barrel had to be changed after 10 mags, and the entire provision of the squad was of 20 magazines. Battles tend to last for more than 5 minutes. The allied reports on the Breda 30 NEVER mention volume of fire as a problem of the weapon.
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No.
The 6.5 Carcano is not "whimpy" (it's more powerful than the 5.56 NATO and in the same range of the 6.5 Grendel and 6.8 SPC). The problem of short recoil actions with rifle cartridges is that, when the barrel stops, and the bolt keeps on moving, the cartridge, in respect to che chamber, accelerates fron "0" to the max speed instantly, and that can cause a too harsh extraction and a case rupture (the problem was not that the MG didn't extract, but that it ripped the base of the cartridge from the side) .That doesn't cause problems with pistol cartridges, because they are short (so there is not much surface of the case attached to the chamber) and low pressure. But already with shotgun ammos, Browning invented the complicated long recoil action to give the cartridges all the time in the world to shrink down and be extracted at slow speed.
All the short recoil rifle action that don't use oil or fluted chamber use a "cam" system that starts to extract the cartridge when the barrel is still moving (Fiat 1914, Browning 1919, MG42...).
BTW, the Hispano Suiza HS404 20mm cannon, and all its derivates in use still nowadays, uses oiled cartridges.
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DOUG HEINS The Brits not only used the captured ones, but printed manual in English for the British gunners issued with them. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/11720886/breda-model-30-manualpdf-forgotten-weapons
For the Allied opinion on the Breda 30, see Tactical and Technical Trends (the magazine of US intelligence), No. 7, Sept. 10, 1942, "Use of Captured Italian Weapons": "The Breda light machine gun is similar to the British Bren gun. It is mechanically superior to the Bren gun under dusty conditions. It requires only one man to service it as compared to several for the Bren gun. It has a slightly higher rate of fire than the British weapon. Its disadvantages are that it has no carrying handle, cannot be fired on fixed lines, and has no tripod mounting."
For that matter the 6.5x52 Carcano has 43% more muzzle energy than 5.56 NATO, 22% more than 7.62X39 and 6.8 SPC and about the same of 6.5 Grendel. If you don't consider that adequate, is only your problem.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw Making appreciations on your interlocutor isn't doing you any favour.
Fact is that armours for the water jackets had been made, armours for barrels haven't. Heavy water jackets had been replaced with heavy metal barrels in MMGs after WWI. A water jacket is a way bigger target than a barrel, it's way easier to damage, and, if you have a quick exchange barrel damaged, you can simply replace it. It's quite obvious that any piece of equipment can be moved. But MMGs are not made for that, and so to try to use them like that had limits.
Both LMGs and MMGs had a role in WWII. Soviets had the DP-28 and the Goryunov. Italians had the Breda 30 and Breda 37. Japanese had the Type 99 and Type 92. It's not that the US were special in this regard.
Weapons are designed for a role, and the role the BAR had been designed for was marching fire from the hip. It shown its limits in every other use (it's not that it doesn't work. It's that it could have been made better for any other role). Unfortunately marching fire from hte hip had shown to be impractical already in WWI.
The way the Marines used the weapon was the way they worked around the problem, thanks to the fact they could have more of the weapons. But more of good weapons would have worked better anyway.
Simply M1919 barrels were not changed on the field during battles. It was an armorer's job. Squads had not spare barrels, and they were not supposed to dismantle a scorching hot weapon under fire with small parts lying on the ground. If you have to dismantle a weapon under fire, something went wrong.
Overheated closed bolt MGs cook off belts because of their very same mechanics.The fact that other kind of failures can cause the same problem doesn't change this fact. If you burnt out you barrel, something went wrong either. Equipment in general is not intended to be damaged. To intentionally damage it was a way to work around the problem, while a quick exchange barrel would have solved it.
See "working around the problem". Yes, people in the army tend to know how to use the tools they were given. Being them LMGs without quick exchange barrels, or LMGs with clip-fed magazines.
See "logistics". FN modified The BAR it into a viable LMG in 1932, but the US Army preferred to keep it as it was for the sake of interchangeability of parts. The limitations of the BAR became evident only once they had been used in combat, and, at that point, it was too late. You can change the engine in an already designed airframe (the P-51 had been designed for the V-1710), not the action of an already designed MG.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw They had two, one to use, and a spare in case the first one was damaged. The magazine was normally loaded with the stripper clips while attached to the weapon. Fact is that to load them that way "wasn't a problem" at all. The magazine didn't limit the practical ROF in respect to other LMGs.
The BAR had been originally designed for walking fire. That kind of fire proved to be impractical already in WWI. In WWII a LMG was needed, but the BAR was what was in the US Army inventory, so they used it. FN modified it into a viable LMG, but the US Army preferred to keep it as it was for the sake of interchangeability of parts. The weapon was unfit for the task, and there were reports about BAR gunners often taken out of action, waiting for their weapon to cool off but, as said the US could simply throw more BAR to the problem. It's obvious that having 50% more weapons solves a lot of problems, but having 50% more good weapons would have solved more.
The M1917 was an HMG (47 kg with the tripod). It was not portable. It was heavier than a Breda 37 with tripod. Also, as noticed during WWI, water jackets were prone to be pierced by bullets and splinters or damaged otherwise (especially using short recoil actions, that requires the barrel to move). That's one of the reasons none designed new water cooled MGs after WWI, but they had been replaced by quick exchange barrels. obviously, if all you have is a water-cooled MG, you use what you have.
As said, If you didn't want to overheat the M1919, your ROF was limited to 60 rounds a minute. 450-500 rpm was the cyclic ROF, and yes it was regulated to be like that, like for any rifle caliber MG in WWII. There is no problem to obtain a cyclic ROF of around 1000 RPM in a rifle caliber MG. It's more difficult to limit it and, to obtain that, several "tricks" were used (heavier bolts, longer travel of the bolt, machanical rate reducers...). The long travel of the striker of the Breda 30 is meant to reduce the ROF to what was deemed as optimal too.
The M1919 couldn't be intentionally overheated because it fired from a closed bolt, so the moment it overheated, it cooked off an entire belt if the gunner didnt' intentionally jam it (notice that the Brits modified their M1919s, used in flexible mountings on aircrafts, to fire from an open bolt, the US Army never did it). Equipment in general is not intended to be damaged. To intentionally damage it was a way to work around the problem, while a quick exchange barrel would have solved it. As said, if the US had a problem with their weapons, they could throw more weapons to the problem. Others were not so lucky and so, to use subpar equipment, was more damaging for them. To change the barrels of BARs and M1919 was an armorer's job. It wasn't done on the field. It would have required to completely disassemble the weapon while scorching hot.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw I saw that clip. But I read wartime reports as well. The Allied ones. So the ones that could compare the Breda 30 to the Allied weapons their soldiers were used to. The Brits reused the captured Breda 30, wrote manuals for the Allied gunners issued with them, and wrote intelligence reports.
The magazine had never been mentioned as a problem, and not even as a curiosity. At all. The reason is the one i mentioned. The magazine didn't limit the practical ROF in respect to other LMGs (real LMGs, better to not even talk of the BAR, forced into a LMG role without even having a detachable barrel. Mind what Ian mentioned. After the first battles the provision of spare barrels of the Breda 30 was enhanced from 2 to 4. That meant that the Breda faced the real problem to fire more than 600 rounds continuously in battle). You could fire 6 Breda 30 magazines (so 120 rounds) in a minute reloading the magazine while it was attached to the weapon (the practical ROF was actually indicated in 150 RPM). And that practical ROF was needed only in dire emergency. Because the squad had not enough ammunitions to sustain it for long anyway. Battles don't last five minutes.
BTW, the M1919 had the same problem of the BAR. If you didn't want to overheat it, your ROF was limited to 60 rounds a minute. The faster you decided to shoot, the sooner you'll have to stop to cool-off the weapon. simply, if the US had a problem with their weapons, they could throw more weapons to the problem.
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the MG42 is a recoil operated weapon, but is not a purely recoil operated weapon, like a semiauto pistol, where there is a single piece bolt that recoils at the same speed of the barrel until the barrel stops and the bolt continues snatching the case out of the chamber.
The wedge that pushes out the roller is both part of the striker and of the bolt carrier, as the bolt carrier is in direct contact with it during recoil and, when the wedge shaped part recoils in respect to the bolt head , pushed by the rollers it pushes back the bolt carrier too.
The iternal spring around the striker (bolt catch) wasn't generally present in wartime MG42s, it had been introduced very late in the war only to adress cases of out of battery shots caused by the rebound of the bolt carrier. It only serves to provide to the bolt carrier a "soft landing" when the action closes. There are several models of it, some of them doesn't load the locking wedge at all (so working purely by inertia).
As for the Breda 30, I would not have adopted it. It was not that poor of a design, but it was not easily improvable, and there were better designs to start from, transfering in them the good features of the M30 (essentially, the quick exchange barrel). IE the Brixia 1920 (a rather unfortunate HMG, but a good base for a LMG), or the SIA 1918 (a scaled up Villar Perosa, but a good base for a lever delayed LMG, it already had a two piece bolt with the rear one recoiling faster due to inclined surfaces, but the rear bolt-striker was really too light compared to the front part). Waiting a couple of years, they could have adopted a gas operated LMG based on the Breda PG instead.
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And what I'm saying is that the Breda 30 had been adopted in 1930. The MG 34 did non exist then.
In 1930, the only LMG design that was demonstrabily better than the Breda 30 was the ZB vz. 26.
In the subsequent years, some other better design was introduced, but the armies usually don't replace the weapons they adopted after only few years, only cause something that could be better had been introduced somewere.
Think, for example, that the US soldiers fought in Korea with a semiauto rifle, six years after the adoption of the AK47 and ten years after the adoption of the STG44. Shouldn't the US have copied and produced a weapon such as the STG44 or the AK47, instead of providing his army with an obsolete weapon?
And, in 1959, ten years after the adoption of the AK47, and 15 after the adoption of the STG44, the M1 rifle had been replaced with a battle rifle that was already obsolete the moment it had been adopted.
Cause sometimes armies keep on designing weapons based on obsolete ideas until those proved to be obsolete on the field.
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The front sight on the barrel shroud, or the rattling barrel, are those problems that exist only in tabletop reviews, when the reviewer knows that the weapon is "bad" and has to find some reason for it to be bad. None noticed them being problems in 60 years of use of the MG42/MG3. ALL Modern general-purpose machineguns have a single optic, mounted on the receiver, how do they cope with barrel change? https://blog.1800gunsandammo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/fn-762-minimi-4.jpg
The oiler was a minus. but it wasn't strictly needed, and many gunnenrs didnt' use it. Simply, already during WWI, it was noticed that, whit automatic weapons, it was all peaches and dandelions until you could use brass cased ammos but when, due to war shortages, you had to use steel cased ammos, extraction was a lot less granted. However, despite the oiler, allied reports praised the behaviour of the weapon, compared to the BREN, in dusty conditions. The heavy bolt, so with a greater inertia, star-shaped to give the dirt somewere to go instead of locking the mechanism, were plusses.
To use more than 20-25 rounds for magazine in WWII meant to be in search of problems, and it was a REAL problem to manufacture magazines that were, at one time, so cheap to be discarded on the field and so consistently manufactured to not have feeding issues (it was a problem still for the US in the '50s, that's why the M14 has the stripper-clip rail, and that was the US Army). Even the Brits tried a fixed tilting magazine for the BREN (it had not been adopted in the end, but it was much more awkward than the Breda one). The reduced volume of fire was not really a problem. A BREN gun was supposed to fire a magazine a minute in normal battle conditions. At the start of the war it was allowed an "emergency" rof of seven magazines/minute. during the war, due to battel experiences, that was reduced to four magazines/minute, and advertising the gunners that, in those conditions, the barrel had to be changed after ten magazines, and the entire provision of the squad was of just 20 magazines.
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Both the MG34 and MG42 are mainly delayed blowback actions, with a secondary help by the short recoiling barrel, and the Vickers unlocks the barrel from the bolt way before the barrels stops, allowing the bolt and the barrel to start to separate slowly.
None of them is a pure short recoil design. Like that of an handgun, or that of the Breda M30. They have a short recoiling barrel, a bolt, AND some other system (two piece bolt with the parts recoiling at different speed, toggle, ecc...)
That's revealing in itself. A pure short recoil action is simpler than the systems used in MG34, MG42, Vickers and so on. Why had they to complicate the designs, if a pure short recoil action can work flawlessly?
Cause it doesn't work so flawlessly, so you have to invent something to make it work.
Obviously gas operated MGs can have extraction issues, and lever delayed blowback can have them, and simple blowbacks can have too. The fact that pure short recoil actions and long bottleneck cartridges doesn't match well doesn't mean that only short recoil actions can have extraction issues. But in those cases is really question of bad tuning.
The HS 404 is a "gas unlocked recoil operated" design. The gas doesn't cycle the action, but simply unlocks the bolt, and then the residual pressure of the gasses in the barrel cycle the action. It's not impossible to make a similar design work without oiling the cartridges (The Scotti action worked the same way, only with the bolt rotating instead of tilting, and only the Mod. X rifle required oiling, while all the MGs didn't), but to find the perfect timing to open the action (when there is enough pressure in the barrel to cycle the action and not enough to damage the cases) is more difficult than in a straight gas-operated weapon.
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