actual gun topic

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ilbob

ilbob

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Last night there was a show on one of the cable channels. Something like the ten greatest battle rifles.

I won't quibble with their rankings too much, or their reasons for the rankings. I did get a kick out of the nitwit from Sandhurst who said that the M16 is such a great rifle because the bullet tumbles when it hits a target.

from 10 to 1 (I think I got them in the right order here).

M14. Hard to argue it being in the top ten, but it had limited service in actual battles, so maybe #10 is a good spot for it. Perhaps as good a 308 battle rifle action as ever was made. Would have been better if it was a little shorter and had a plastic stock. Something like what SA is now making.

sturmgewehr. since it was the first true assault rifle, I can understand putting it on the list. it had limited battlefield use, but was a pattern of sorts for later developments.

1903 Springfield. one of my favorites.

aug. very limited battle experience. looks like a toy.

98k Mauser. almost took over the world. Mauser pattern rifles (including the '03) were the workhorses of more armies than any other rifle at one time or another.

fn fal. I am not real familiar with the fn fal, so no comment.

m1 Garand. g. Patton had it right.

SMLE. the show pointed out that trained riflemen could put out 30 aimed rounds a minute with this brute, and it served from one end of the world to the other as the primary weapon of the last 50 years of the British empire.

AR15/m16. hard to argue that it should not be #2.

ak47. i think a consensus choice for #1 from most of us.
 
Old show. Been shown many times. The only one I have an issue with is that the Mosin-Nagant should have been on the list rather than the M14 or the AUG. The Mosin is perhaps the most widely used battle rifle in history and how they left if off the list is beyond me.

I did get a kick out of the nitwit from Sandhurst who said that the M16 is such a great rifle because the bullet tumbles when it hits a target.
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Well, he was close. The 5.56mm doesn't tumble, it yaws and fragments in an unpredictable manner. It can cause a fairly clean through-and-through wound or a devastating fragmentation wound depending on how much yaw and breakup occurs.
 
I watched that last night too.

I would like to have seen somewhere on the list a rifle from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, or Civil War. In conflicts where muzzleloader types were predominant, rifles had a definite effect when used.
 
General George M.Patton on the M1 Garand

The M1 Garand, the rifle that General George Patton called "the greatest battle implement ever developed." I think this is what the referrence was to.
 
Patton would have changed his mind if he had lived long enough to see the M14 with a 20rnd detachable magazine.

And probably would have changed his mind again if he had seen the M16 with it's light weight and low recoil cartridges.

Patton was an innovator who didn't hesitate to adopt new technologies and methodologies. He was anything but a by-the-book kind of guy. He preferred to write his own book.
 
How are we defining "great"? What factors are we looking to?
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More or less subjective rankings of accuracy, handling, innovation, service life, and combat effectiveness.

Here are the videos:

No. 10, the M14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8pKd2Hn28

No. 9 Sturmgewehr 44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Xf0H-WkX0

No. 8 Springfield 1903
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y6nk9R1a3E

No. 7 Steyr AUG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UVsWgSX8dM

No. 6 Mauser 98K
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG6OeVnoQrc

No. 5 FN FAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSWpWi5eEs

No. 4 M1 Garand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSWpWi5eEs

No. 3 Lee-Enfield SMLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck66O0osLhQ

No. 2 M16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11rDdh8Kcq4

No. 1 AK-47
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvrG4T2K4sE
 
Patton would have changed his mind if he had lived long enough to see the M14 with a 20rnd detachable magazine.
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Agree!

And probably would have changed his mind again if he had seen the M16 with it's light weight and low recoil cartridges.
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Patton would have slapped another soldier or two if they had proposed the Mattel 16 to him!

Just because the M16 is light weight and the 5.56mm has light recoil does not make it a great battle rifle. Far from it! When I see people write and comment about the M16 it makes me wonder where they got their experience with the weapon. I don't think it was in the jungles of NAM! I can tell you if you took a vote of the ones who have first-hand experience you would find what the NAM vets think about it. In fact maybe we should start a poll on how the vets feel about it!

Patton was an innovator who didn't hesitate to adopt new technologies and methodologies. He was anything but a by-the-book kind of guy. He preferred to write his own book.
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Agree!
 
Just what do they mean by "greatest"? I prefer AKs to ARs myself, but that's because I'm a cheap SOB. ARs and their ammo cost twice their AK equivalents.

The AK is the "greatest" battle rifle in the way that the honda civic is the "greatest" car. It's cheap and reliable, and that's about all it has going for it. Most people would not rate it as the worlds "greatest" car however, and that should be the case with the AK. AK's are thought by a majority of people to be "great" because of media hype like this.

By this definition the "technical" (a toyota or nissan pickup with a machine gun on the back) is the "greatest" battle vehicle ever devised. I guess it doesn't matter that it gets its *** kicked practically every time it comes up against modern weapon systems, just like the AK.
 
STG's in Iraq? and Africa? I'd love to see pic/links/whatever.

Guy Sajer states in The Forgotten Soldier that it was a very effective weapon.

Regarding the Garand:

There's a quotation I've seen from early in WWII when the Garand had some of its first combat use in the Philippines. One of the first Japanese landings was repulsed by US and Filipino troops & the American soldiers used Garands. The general in charge radioed back to Washington on the rifle's effectiveness.

"The M1 Garand is a killing machine" was his statement.

I cannot find a reference for this quotation! I've looked and looked on the internet. I know I read it in a print book.

Can anyone help?
 
Aside from early use in Nam the M14 has been mostly relegated to the role of Sniper and designated marksman use.
Having fired both the Garand and a civilian Springfield version of the M14 and carried both through the woods for hours, I'd have to say that the M14 is not as handy or reliable as the M1 Garand. Its detachable box magazine allows low overbore scope mounting which makes the M14 the better choice as a sniper rifle but its weight and balance, plus fore end shape work against it compared to a well set up Garand when it comes to quick target aquisition and ease of extended carry.
The Garand I once owned had a much slimmer barrel than later models and with its light wood stock weighed at least a half pound less than most garands, probably nearly a pound less for than matter.
The Civilian version of the M14 I had the use of was heavier and awkward to carry. A friend usually used a shortened carry mag in this gun to make it handier.
Not saying the M14 is a bad rifle, as a Sniper Rifle it would be hard to beat, just saying its large mag capacity had its price to be paid in handling and reliability.
Never had a failure to feed with any of the half dozen or so Garands I've fired but the Springfield (M1A1?) did fail a few times, due to a couple of bad mags no doubt.
The Garand follower gets an extra boost from the recoil spring at every cycle no doubt contributing much to its reliability.
As a Battlefield Sniper weapon I'd go with the M14 , but for an everyday carry weapon I'd go with the Garand especially in the woods.

Also the 30/06 AP round can't be beat. The equivalent US manufactured 7.62 NATO AP round is a joke. Not enough weight to the projectile, nor enough velocity. The newer hyper velocity 7.62 round even with its very light projectile sounds interesting but I haven't heard how it does in the field.

I've read that a wealthy US Commander during desert Storm actually ordered 7.62 AP ammo from a Scandinavian commercial source for his troop's M-60's at his own expense because his machinegunners were having no success against Iraqi lightly armored vehicles using the standard US made AP rounds of the day.

PS
STG's in Iraq? and Africa? I'd love to see pic/links/whatever.
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Can't supply a photo just yet but might find it later.
I've seen photos from the Iran-Iraq War showing artillerymen carrying the STG44, I've read that these came to them from Syria who'd received a bunch of them from the Soviets who'd captured thousands of them in WW2.
 
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The whole show is flawed. Many of those weapons were just different designers views of a weapon to accomplish a particular job. Few of them were so innovative that they changed the way battles were fought. The show just pandered to the gunshow crowd because everyone would watch to see where his favorite rifle came out.

Small arms that really changed warfare:

1. The Matchlock. Changed the way that battles were fought by overcoming the protection of individual armor.

2. The flintlock musket. Increased the rate of fire an army was capable of greatly changing the tactics.

3. The rifled musket. Increased the effective range of the rifleman again changing tactics.

4. The breech loader. All the advantages of the rifled musket with an increased rate of fire that made it impossible for troops armed with muzzle loaders to close with the enemy after they fired their first volley.

5. The repeating rifle. Greatly increased the rate of fire. Troops armed with breech or muzzle loaders could not close with the enemy do stand toe to toe with them in a fight because of the time it took to load and fire.

6. Smokeless powder. Eliminated the tell tale signature of black powder.

7. The machine gun. So dominated the battlefield that it changed war from maneuver to one of static positions until other technology countered it.

8. The squad machine gun - didn't matter if it was the MG34/42 on the German side or the BAR or Bren gun on the allied side, there was now automatic firepower at the squad level. Tactics changed to allow the machine gun to support the maneuver element of the squad.

9. The semi-automatic repeating rifle. Increased the firepower of the squad.

10. The Assault rifle - started with the STG44 and has evolved through the AK and M16/M4 series.

One can honestly say that each one of those types of weapons changed warfare. You can't really say that about any particular small arm, unless it was the first of it's type to be fielded.

Jeff
 
1. The Matchlock. Changed the way that battles were fought by overcoming the protection of individual armor.
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It may well have been as much about the minimal training requirements as the armor defeating.

Prior to the firearm being invented, it took many years of training to get effective troops, especially using long bows. You could train a peasant conscript in a few weeks to effectively use the matchlock. They were also fairly easy to make in quantity.

While matchlocks were not real effective as weapons individually due to their many deficiencies, it was relatively cheap to employ them in large enough numbers to get some effective use of them.
 
It's been on the History Channel as well. All three pretty much parallel each other sometimes.
 
Found it; it's called Top Ten.
http://military.discovery.com/convergence/topten/topten.html
It's not supposed to be the ten most earth changing examples of the subject being discussed. They just choose a specific topic like tanks or combat rifles, then come up with a representation of ten of the most successful or influential designs in that area.
They base their rankings on about five criteria they identify as being crucial, so if you don't agree with their criteria, I guess you won't like their picks.
Most of the picks seem appropriate, though.
 
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