Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons"
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@andyrihn1 Uh, no. In the service life test only the 92F and the H&K P7 reached the 7000 rounds threshold with all three pistols intact. The P226 cracked a frame at 6523 rounds fired, but was allowed to pass, since the requirement was just for a service life, on average, of over 5000 rounds.
the P226 failed the dry mud test, with only 79% reliability in those conditions. Being that significantly lower than the 1911 control weapon, it should have been eliminated due to the rules of the competition (notice that instead, in the XM17 trials, there was conveniently not a M9 control weapon around to be seen). It was allowed to keep on competing, because the Army wanted at least two manufacturers to compete on price, so it was simply decided that the dry mud test result was "not so important" and the result was simply not considered.
So, not counting the result of the tests were the 92F performed better than the P226, then the P226 performed better than the 92F.
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A shame Drachinifel contributed to spread that bogus info (he never stated the quality being "all over the place, generally trending towards bloody awful. Ocasionally in spec", but that's internet). Infortunately he does not read Italian, so he has to rely on what he finds in English. Second hand sources, wartime propaganda, etc... A common problem between self-made historians.
The only source for the problem with Italian naval shells was Adm. Iachino, that had to justify his fiasco at Gaudo / Cape Matapan, and had been debunked by other sources, (IE Adm. Emilio Brenta, or the same Fire Director Officer of the Vittorio Veneto ad Gaudo). Reality is that in the conditions of the clash at Gaudo, no WWII battleship would have hit anything.
As a matter of fact, the Italian 152mm and 203mm are the only Cruiser naval guns that obtained some +20km hits during WWII (even twice in the same battle, so it was not a fluke).
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For 1934 It was simple to make too. The BAR, BREN, MG34 and Type99 (and both the BREN and MG1934 had been selected in 1938, the Type99 in 1939) had more complex machining. Among the most used LMGs of the time, Only the DP28 could be considered simpler to manufacture.
But generally, though I like it, it seems like a promising prototype put in production before all the elements had been figured out throughly.
Very good and simple operating mechanism, barrel change mechanism, general ergonomy, controls, gas settings…
But three sets of lugs (it's a nightmare to match bolts and receivers)? That bipod (I’ve seen better in WWI)… no handle to grab a scorching hot barrel… And that magazine…
It could have easily been so MUCH better.
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+besternamedensgibtxd When the round is fired, in the barrel, between the bullet and the bottom of the case, that lay on the bolt, it develops a very high pressure, that locks the walls of the case against the chamber, so preventing the hot gasses to be driven back to the face of the shooter.
If the bolt begin to travel backwards too early, when the pressure in the barrel is still high, then the thin metal of the case is stretched between the chamber (since the walls of the case are still locked to it by the pressure) and the bolt that is travelling backwards. That way the case can break, and the hot gasses and brass splinters can hit the shooter's face, with unpleasant consequencies.
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This gun has never been designed to be an aircraft SMG. It only happened that the first 350 samples (of over 14.000 produced) had been given to the Air Force (that, at that time, was a branch of the Army) cause the Army wanted the weapon ready to be mass produced first to start to field it. The MGs used on the aircrafts had a different mounting, without the round plate and with normal aerial sights. The round plate was intended to be used on the field with the shield. When used with the shield, the plate was integral part of the protection, and the hole sight was the only opening in it.
Its rate of fire serves the same purpose of the 1200 rpm ROF of the MG-42. they both had not been designed for suppression fire (heavy MGs were intended for that role), but to cover obligatory passages (through the barbed wires, or the mountain trails) and fire only when you actually see the enemy. Since the enemy is no stupid, he is visible only for a brief time, and, for this, a huge ROF is required to hit him.
In 1916 Capt. Bassi, creator of the Arditi, begun to use it, without the shield, to clear the enemy trenches. A stretch ot trench is 20m long at best. With a single burst of the Villar Perosa you can saturate it without even seeing. That's useful, since the assaults were often performed at night.
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+Helghastdude Beretta 34, M91, MAB38, Breda PG, Breda 37, Breda 38, Breda SAFAT, Breda 20/65...
No really successful semiauto rifle had been designed until the end of the 30s. IE, until the end of the 20s John Garand wasted ten years playing with a quirky primer acutated blowback design, then switched to gas actuated, the rifle was adopted, after seven years of ironing out problems, in 1937, but the M1 became really reliable only with a last modification done three years after its introduction, in early 1940.
Probably this rifle is closer to be a good service rifle than a M1 prototype of the same year.
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The original Glisenti load was almost identical to the original 7.65 Parabellum load (since, like the 9mm Parabellum, it derived from that cartridge, but the designers of the MBT, differently from those of the DWM, didn't took advantage of the larger case to enhance the load), so, 1/4 less than the 9mm para load (literally, 3.3 grains Bullseye is a good 9mm glisenti load, and 4.4 grains Bullseye is a typical 9mm para load).
However, during WWI, 9mm Glisenti loads had been enhanced, since the cartridge was primarly used in the Villar Perosa SMG, and blowback SMGs are pretty strong actions. For example, USCco, during the war, made for the Italian Army a batch of 84 million Glisenti cartridges loaded with 4 grains bullseye, that's only 10% less than a typical 9mm para load.
Those "hot" cartridges were not especially marked, and were in the Army magazines, so, a 9mm Glisenti pistol made in the '20s had to be safe to shoot them too.
So, what happens if you tries to shoot a load that's 10% hotter than what the pistol is designed to handle? Nothing extraordinary. We are still in the safety margins of any pistol design. When the Beretta designers declared that the pistol could handle a 9mm para cartridge (obviously not +P or +P+, that didn't existed at that time), they were not mad or irresponsible. Simply YOU ARE PUTTING UNNECESSARY STRAIN IN AN ACTION THAT WAS DESIGNED FOR MILDER LOADS, and that is 90 years old too. In the long run, you'll almost surely have some damage in the action. Most likely in the slide. Moreover, if the recoil spring has weakened with time, you'll probably have some overpressure problem with the cases, and even some case head failure.
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+Adrian Larkins
First, there is brand power. Mauser was very good at selling his products, that were generally good, but sometimes not so exceptional, and the C96 is a sample of the latters.
Second, the C96 was a 1896 design, when semiauto pistols were in their infancy. In 1910 there were many other design to compete with.
Third, concauses. The C96 had not been really a success until WWI (it won contracts only for 7000 guns until then), but the fact that it had been round for 20 years (known design), the fact that Mauser had the capability to deliver them, and the hurry of the war made that the Austrian and German governments ordered 50.000 and 150.000 guns respectively in 1916. At that point the success of the broomhandle was secured, while in 1916, the Vitali 1910 was already a forgotten prototype.
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At the end of WWI the studies of the Italian Army concluded that the bolt action rifle was obsolete and almost useless. The submachinaguns demonstrated to be much more useful in trench warfare, so the suggestion was to replace the bolt action rifles with "moschetti automatici" ("automatic carabines") as soon as possible.
They first started to design a real assault rifle (Terni mod 21, 7.65X40mm intermediate cartridge, select fire, 25 round magazine), but the commission that tested it, probably mainly composed by traditionalists, found it unsaticfactory ("this weapon has all the inconvenient of the automatic weapons without having their advantages"). At that point they thought the semiauto rifle to be a good compromise between the bolt action and the automatic, so made the first concourse for a semiauto rifle, in the early '30 (Beretta M.31, MBT 29 and Scotti Mod. X). The Scotti Mod X won that, but, first that it could be officially adopted, the army decided to switch cartridge, from the 6.5X52 to the 7.35X51. Then they decided to have another concourse (Scotti Mod X, Beretta M37, Breda 1935 PG and Armaguerra 39) this time won by the Armaguerra.
At that point the war had already started, and it was too late to adopt a new main battle rifle (even the Soviets had to stop to produce the optmal SVT 40 and revert to the Moisin). "Better is the enemy of good."
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+burger1690 Cause the mistake was not in the rifle, but in the cartridge. It was clear from the start (and I mean the start, from the Federov Avtomat, if not from the Cei Rigotti) that "select fire", in a weapon with the weight of a rifle, required an intermediate round to make the burst controllable. For that reason the British, after the war, proposed the 7mm British as the universal NATO cartridge. But the US Army didn't accept a round less powerful then the 30-06, so the 7.62X51 was adopted instead. The British, discouraged, adopted the FAL in semiauto only, cause, with the 7.62X51, the possibility to control the burst was only theoretical. The Italians made the BM59, with a complex muzzle brake and an integral bipod, to make it's burst at least a bit controllable, and the US replaced the M14 as soon as they realized that the guy with the M14 was outgunned by the guy with the AK-47.
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***** Unfortunately there is an attitude between commentators of military equipements, being them "experts" or not, that could be described as "if there is something different to what we are used to, then there has to be something wrong in it". That "wrong" was rapidly "theoretically" identified, and then passed from a commentator to another as a "fact".
An example is the manlicher clip fed system for rifles. Almost every description of it's efficiency contains a statement like "the bottom opening for the discharge of the spent clips was prone to let debris and dirt enter in the mechanism".
Unfortunately, the only real-life comparative study of the efficiency of this system VS the closed magazine (the observations of Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov, the designer of the Fedorov Automat, on the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War), showed the exact opposite. On the winter battelfields, frozen mud and snow rapidly get stuck into the magazines of the Moisin Nagant, quickly rendering them single shooters, while the passage of the clips kept the action of the Steyr Manlicher clean and functional as repeaters.
All in all the Chauchat was an exceptional design. A design that permitted to produce 262,000 of them during the war in a partly invaded country, VS only 50.000 Lewis Gun produced in both UK and US. As a single soldier, maybe I would prefer to have a Lewis Gun in my hands, but as an army (and as a soldier too) I would greatly prefer to have five times more LMGs on the frontline.
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