twarr1
Member
Found this on a video about weapons disposal following World War 2. A lot of rifles!
Firearms post-WW2
- Thread starter twarr1
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Found this on a video about weapons disposal following World War 2. A lot of rifles!
jar
Contributing Member
Anyone want to guess whether or not at least one of those rifles still has a round chambered?
OP
OP
twarr1
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BreechFace
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Now where did I put serial #345902?
Dave DeLaurant
Member
I just made a rough estimate of the neatly stacked rifles in layers of 5. There's on the order of 10K rifles visible in this photo's foreground (assuming the crate with the Ark of the Covenant isn't buried under one of these piles.)
lysanderxiii
Member
Isn't that Sam Cummings' warehouse?
CapnMac
Member
He probably would have stacked them higher, to Bannerman levels
D.B. Cooper
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OH my gosh! There's a name I haven't heard in a LOOOOOONG time!He probably would have stacked them higher, to Bannerman levels
luv2safari
Member
That was my dream garage when I was 10 and reading all the gun rags, as well as Shooter's Bible.
tark
Member
Or Jimmy Hoffa... Sorry, Mods...I couldn't resist... Can anyone identify those rifles? I'm thinking Japanese Arisakas after the surrender...???
Sovblocgunfan
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Pretty sure I’ve seen this picture before, and I think those are k98’s. Lotta cupped buttplates, which Japanese rifles dont typically have. Also even tho the pic is grainy if you zoom in enough I think you can see where the rear sling mount goes on some of them, and a takedown disc or two.
The version i saw was clearer, and I want to say there was a German MG or two in the background.
lysanderxiii
Member
22250Rem
Member
Years ago I heard stories from WW2 vets of huge piles of K98's from when the German army laid down their arms. I imagine they all got picked up and put into some warehouse or storage facility. Could that be what we are seeing?
I'm reasonably sure that most of us that are reading this thread would also like to see this video. Got a link?
bangswitch
Member
tactikel
Member
The legacy of the Great War was that all major combatants stockpiled state of the art battle rifles, bolt actions. All major countries engages in WW II had between 2 and 8 million bolt action rifles in their armories. In 1945 all of these became obsolete. 45 MILLION rifles were deemed obsolete and sold by the ton! They were melted down by the millions. Some were sold off. I have two of these. A K-98 and. ‘03-A3. Both are more accurate than I am.
D.B. Cooper
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I would argue that they became obsolete in 1936 when the United States adopted the M1 Rifle.
ETA: The fact that no other nation adopted semi automatic battle rifles prior to WWII, especially after the "bad guys" came to power, baffles me.
I would say it was due to monetary reasons. Bolt guns worked, Armories were full of them in 1939, but the basis of the German and Japanese squads were light machine guns. The riflemen were more or less there to protect the light machine gunner.
The big money were spent on aircraft. All combatants spent about 50% of their defense budget on aircraft. The Navy was the second highest expenditure (the Soviets did not have much of a Navy). It was surprising to find that land groups had a lower funding priority than rockets.
plus I think that there was some of the old school military leaders that thought “those weapons worked very well before so they should work very well now” kinda thing.
OP
OP
twarr1
Member
Link to the original video;
What Really Happened To The Captured German Weapons After The War
For copyright matters, please contact: [email protected] to the Discoverize! Here, we dive into the most exciting and unbelievable things that ...
m.youtube.com
Jim Watson
Member
Here, the DCM sold excess weapons to citizens. Probably not a high percentage of those scrapped or given to our alleged allies, but something the foreigners did not do at all.
230RN
2A was "political" when it was first adopted.
"Can't have our subjects be armed. Too dangerous to our exclusive use of power. Those Americans are crazy, letting their subjects have guns."
Without retrieving my Hatcher's Notebook, wasn't that the approximate point where either Springfield Armory or Rock Island switched over to the new heat treatment for Springfield rifle receivers??
But I guess it's agreed that the OP photo showed German rifles anyway.
lysanderxiii
Member
Sam Cummings bought as many of the of the MG-42 he could get a hold of so he could sell them back to the Germans when they were allowed to rearm in 1957, brilliant!
Savage30L
Member
Ian McCollum released a video on this subject recently, comparing the s.a. battle rifle programs of the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet Union:
Short answer: Germany and the Soviets wanted to, but couldn't overcome the engineering, manufacturing, logistical, and training hurdles. (Also, Slamfire's comment about machine guns is correct. There were doctrinal differences which made the adoption of semiauto rifles less of a priority.)
There's a bunch of 'em! Looks to me like at least 8K in each of the two main piles (one "pile" in front of the guy, one behind him). The layers appear to me to be layers of 10 rifles because the rifles are alternated muzzle and butt, 5 laying each direction per layer. Then there looks to be about 20 layers per stack (layers alternate North/South and East/West) = 200/stack. Then there appears to be at least 10 stacks per row = 2000 rifles/row, and, 4 rows per pile = 8K/pile. Then there are more that we're not even trying to count, and who know how many that aren't in the photo.
