Virdea

How about taking it one step forward.  Air Power as a tool and an enemy of the soldier on the ground.

You can't be rejected if you haven't tried.

Glad you edited that one.

Women count, right?

Not sure, I never have been rejected.  

TA's thing is more of a direct rebuttal to AH.com nerds, just FYI.

OK.  I get e-mails from alternate history from time to time, but we can always read it and see if it has legs.

I've used it and now I'm stuck with it, but I'm rapidly regretting the term "Light Rifle", because just about everyone has misunderstood what I meant. You're only the latest.

 

 

"Light Rifle" then means something similar to the neologism "battle rifle", e.g. M14, G3, FAL, etc.

That is the auto-ordnance definition.  Most terms for rifles in military service are wonky so I ignore them as much as I can.  One good thing though is that the ideals of a light rifle did in the end lead to the M16.

I'm, along with Sturgeon's help are writing an essay on the development of self loaders. Given that it's meant for internet audience I'm not sure if it's suitable for your book when it's done I'll pass it along.

Even if it is not perfect, it is the start of your publishing career.  Look at how many books and the like that I have published - but consider how many rejections I have.  You are not a real author until someone rejects you.

A relative told me a story.  Being young, naive, and just mustered into the 34ID, he was about to head to town with a group of farm boys just like him when they hit England.  The division was having difficulties that English women LOVED US farm boys.  So the division medical staff issued condoms with 5 page instruction books for the soldiers.  

The condoms on the first page had three bold sentences.  Always Keep This Device ON Your Person When Engaging in Fornication, Visually Inspect This Device to Assure It Is Not Torn, and the cryptic warning, Remember, One Device, One Soldier.  Never Share.

They looked at the device and could tell that the device looked like could be easily torn, being made with a wax paper and having a rubber circle on the inside.  They decided for safety that the best place to keep it during "fornications" was in their socks.  They also decided that they could not remove their socks when they fornicated.  Off they went.  It took nearly a month before a First Sergeant discovered what they were doing and held a course on how to use these devices properly.

My strongest areas so far are as follows:

-The M1 Garand and early selfloader development - ideally, this should be a section all its own. The two subjects are inextricably related. I have loads of reference material for this, and I have access to an actual Vickers-Pedersen for pictures.

-The AR-15 in Vietnam

 

-The M4 Carbine

 

-The AK rifle - probably strong enough in this area for the kind of book you're trying to write, and I can ask Max Popenker if I'm unsure of stuff.

-Light Rifle development - I am currently doing a series on this for TFB, so the research would already be done (I've finished my first go-through of all the relevant sources, about halfway through my second).

 

-The state of modern small arms

Several of these make perfect sense. The book will heavily favor weapons carried by individual soldiers and the tactics of the infantry (although of course the artillery, airplane, ship and tank is a key element of this). For example use the Garand as the star of a chapter we will entitle

"The Quest for the Self Loading Rifle"  

The Garand is the natural star for this chapter - I will help you lead in by mentioning the work done by the Russians and French, and then the Garand is center stage as we follow the weapons designer and the army as it tries to figure out what this all means.

"A Once and Future Arm: Quest for the Light Rifle"

Here is where you do the light rifle work, discuss carbines, then your natural focus is the M16 and AK74 as the direction that light rifles went.  Like most chapters we want the weapons and technology in the hands of soldiers rather than being theoretical, and we want to make connections.  This one would be great.

The limit for the book is 70,000 words, but the nice thing is if we go over, we end up with two books instead of one.

You are 100% correct.  The author of the article you quote read one section of one of Kevin's many books, then went crazy just because it says that SF soldiers like the AK47.

What he (Trevithick) does not mention is they also LOVED the BAR.  So did communist guerillas.  I was surprised to see him quote Kevin because Kevin is a fan of the M16 and was even a force behind trying to get the Army to drop the 9mm in favor of 5.7mm.  He was also an advocate of the Spitfire.  I know this from my personal conversations with Kevin more than a decade ago.  

Just because the SF groups in the field did not like the early M16 because of its lack of ammo and poor quality ammo does not mean they rejected it for quality.  They just choose the better weapon given the facts of the moment.

Also - college students if any on the board can get internship credit for this if they arrange it through their school.  

Oh - pictures are good if they are yours and high quality or you get a general release to use them.  Think of it this way - a section on the Garand should have one exploded, a picture of one being loaded, and a picture of one front to back.  Pictures are why my bayonet book will never make any money - the cost of the book to download is much higher with a book that has images of high quality and that cuts into profits.  This book is not suppose to make money - but to be cheap enough that it can help people learn the subject easily.

The book is a collection of essays that start with pre-historic humans and tracks changing technology to the modern era.  It may or may not be divided into sub works.  

For example, here is an early part of the book:

----------

Australopithecus

The story of human conflict actually predates the arrival of the human species by more than 3-million years.  In an article published in the journal Nature published in 2015 and written by a veritable battalion of researchers lead by Sonia Harmand of Stony Brook University, pre-human Australopithecines were almost certainly tool makers, and judging by the fracturing of animal bones, some of those tools had the quality of weapons. and could have been used against others of the same species.

Certainly Australopithecus was a hunting species.  All evidence shows that these early pre-humanoids ate a wide diet that included animal protein, and that their diet may have been similar to the modern great apes in some respects.  Tools though would have given them the ability to take larger animals including, as evidence shows for the later hominids, their own species.  Modern apes in Africa do eat meat, but their lack of stone tools limit them to smaller animals.  The ancient ancestors of both apes and mankind used tools to expand their diets to animals that were usually only hunted by predators.

The key ingredient that made the Australopithecines tool users was their upright stance.  While modern research has found other upright bipeds for whom there is no evidence of stone tool use: the earlier Ardipithecus walked upright but predated the earliest tool finds by a million years, still the connection between upright stance and the use of complex tools is hard to escape.  Charles Darwin stated in the Descent of Man “…the hands and arms could hardly have become perfect enough to have manufactured weapons, or to have hurled stones and spears with a true aim, as long as they were habitually used for locomotion" and many scientists still believe the same thing.

In terms of weapons, the earliest weapons are also the ones whose existence are the hardest to prove.  Most weapons require a certain amount of processing to make them useful, but impact weapons can often be found simply laying about nature.  There easy of adoption and use though makes them unlikely to be recognized as weapons millions of years later.  A stone used as a mace head looks like any other stone.  A staff made of plant matter is unlikely in the extreme to survive to the modern era unless its owner not only discarded it into a preservation medium (such as a bog) but also made sure it would be recognizable as a tool to later humans.  A sling is another round stone and a flap of leather.

An impact weapon, the classic examples of which are the staff and the stone, is one that uses blunt force to transmit energy into the body of a prey animal or adversary.  In essence the human body has been equipped with blunt force weapons in its feet and hands, and except for their use in constriction (a weapon type that has never found much use in organized human conflict and remains a tool of homicide rather than the organized manslaughter of warfare) the force that the hands and feet can bring to bear is relatively weak.  When the hands grasp a stone, whose weight multiplies the damage caused, or a staff, whose length multiplies the force of human muscle.

The main question that remains is not if Australopithecus used weapons, but how they were used.  Like many things in pre-history this is subject only to review by remaining forensic evidence in the form of fossils.  The fossil record though incomplete.  While later species of proto-humans, and humans themselves, would leave thousands of skeletons across the countryside, Australopithecus remains a rare find.

------

So here are examples:

The Tactics of Alexander the Great

Star Wars and Flower Wars: Mayan Warfare

A survey of the early use of steel in weapons

the Garand

the Mg42

the AK47

Agincourt and Crecy

Spottsylvenia and the Bloody Angle

The Pike and the Fall of Mercenary Armies.

Each article has to: 1) fit into the narrative of time being developed, 2) avoid internal contradictions by peer review, 3) be written in an authoritative non-scholarly method, with asides that get technical.  

Drawings are worth a thousand words.

No plagiarism.  

As most of you know I recently published a new book, the History of the French Bayonet, and have been writing a series of five other books.  One of them is called Poor Bloody Soldier and tells the story of the intersection of war technology, strategy, and the nature of human conflict from the dawn of time to the modern era.

I know and value the brains of the people in this forum and I want to offer the chance for people to add articles or art to the book.  

This is not an example of a chance at big money, but you will have a peer reviewed article edited by professionals made available to the public, which you can use on your resume, and if you have never published before then the experience is fun.  Their is no cost to you, and if your article is long enough / good enough I will even pay you for it.  The work will be edited by me, and I may post your work here for additional peer review.

The author is quoting a single section of Kevin's book on special operations, and fails to call Kevin up for a complete understanding of why he wrote what he wrote and what it meant.

For those of you who have never met Kevin, he is the KING of statistical understanding of firearms when applied to gaming, and he has for a long time had massive access to the special operations world, plus is in tight with a number of gun manufacturers.  I doubt the author of the article has ever spoken to Kevin.

Kevin's point from the article sourced by Trevithick was that the AK47 was a prestige capture for US Special Operation soldiers in the early 1960s.  In this era the Special Operations soldiers were issued weapons by the US Air Force.  This included the AR15 on an experimental bases starting in 1960, and the M16 in 1962-63.  Otherwise they got .45 SMGs, Carbines, Garands, or BARs.

The AK-47 was VERY rare in Vietnam prior to 1969, but the ammo for it was not.  When Special Operations soldiers could get the AK47 they jumped at them, discarding experimental and hated AR15s (which they could not get much ammo for), and the whole suite of WW2 weapons.  Here Kevin is on firm ground because it was true - the AK47 was beloved by advisors in the early 60s.

Trevithick however makes a serious mistake when he compares apples to oranges.  In Kevin's book he goes on to discuss in many cases where the M16A1 was a key asset of special operations arsenals to the point where they actually scrambled for a LMG to fire 5.56, adopting the Stoner 63 which they LOVED.  How does Trevithick square that one: that the M16A1 was so entrenched in special operations that they searched the entire world to find an LMG that fired the same ammo.  And then carried the 63 for a decade past Vietnam when money and resources existed to have anything they wanted.

A little knowledge...

A British strategic book written early in WW1 estimated that a Army General learned his job based on dead bodies, and created a model that demonstrated this advancement based on the equivalency to masonic orders.  At 15,000 casualties the General was near the middle of his advancement, the author termed this the "sweet spot" as the advance was a bell curve.  Sadly, my theory of Twinkie insertion for suboptimal thinking is broken by this author, as the Twinkie was invented in 1930.

In the next two decades the MAS series of rifles will skyrocket in price.  If you consider that there is an estimated million Garands in civilian hands and 350,000 M14s, and now there are 400,000 M16 variants (and maybe as many as 1 million rifles all told), then I expect these weapons will plateau and even come down in price - especially since each has the possibility of later manufacture.  The 40,000 MAS 49/56 and variants that came into the US are the last that will ever arrive - the MAS 44 itself is under 2000 weapons.  Some models of MAS 36 are also extremely constrained - the MAS 36/LG48 may be under 200 weapons in the entire US inventory - while the CR39 is in the double digits.

Sort of like the SVT or W43 rifles.  10,000 of each came in during the 1980s then that was it.  Now they are worth 10 times what they sold for IF you can find one for sale.

it deals with martial subjects no longer relevant to modern warfare.

Like the 6.8mm SPC?

I just last year ended a useless argument over the importance of logistic with a gentleman from Chicago who claimed that he taught "major strategy courses to Army people."

He made the following claim:  

1.  The word logistics is never used in Roman writing.

2.  Honor Harrington series demonstrates that logistics is not as important as good generalship.

3.  The Draka series demonstrates that even South Africa could be a world power if it ignored logistics and hired good generals.

4.  "You don't need logistics if your army looses the battle"

I claimed he had accidentally inserted a Twinkie in his rectum and its decay had ruined all chance of his evolution into a thinking being.

I still think the CAI issues were the result of hiring chimpanzees to work on weapons, and in fact disproved the infinite chimp theory.

I have been breaking down my spare 49/56 each go around and working out one issue at a time.  Right now I am about convinced the trigger is riding high.  A difficulty actually comes from how rugged the things are - it is obvious broken, but it just as obviously ALMOST works!  

Yes, a real F1 is 3000 bucks or so, but the wood is not impossible and a gunsmith can set the barrel.  The scope is mounted to the iron sights.

I do not currently fix weapons, I would need to re-establish a shop. If I can get the cash flow to do so, that might not be a bad idea. I take it that there is a substantial market for repairing French guns. Sadly, fixing that 49/56 was a rather intense job, and If I had to do it again, I would charge a lot more.

 

I am re-barreling that Type 38 for 7mm Mauser. It was the closest thing I could find to match the OAL and case head of the 6.5 Arisaka that is still common. That and it's just a classic cartridge. I've toyed with the idea of building an M76 in it.

The 49/56 has had a lot of streamline repairs - fixing the gas tube for the 308 version and fixing the problem with short stroke that came from CAI messed up repairs.

This is what I want to turn my butchered 308 into when I have enough money

Sadly, the Type 38 is a rescue rifle. Someone else attempted to turn down the bolt handle and drill it for a scope base. I've got my work cut out for me. I do have a 1944 Type 99 that has a more of less intact action, and intact chrysanthemum, but the barrel and stock where "sporterized".

 

Locking strength was also important back then because ammunition pressures where not terribly consistent, so you wanted your rifles to be able to handle the occasional over pressure round. That is less of a problem today because of improved quality control during manufacture, but there are plenty of other factors that can lead to an over pressure situation. It addition to locking strength, front locking bolts have a longer service life. It is a relatively common problem for rear locking action to go out of headspace much faster than front locking. From my understanding, this is why SMLEs have 4 different lengths of bolt heads, and why FALs have different sized locking shoulders that can be inserted into the receiver. I imagine that these where primarily designed in such a manner for easing mass production, but these rifles are both notorious for having their headspace open up and rates that would be completely unacceptable by today's standards.

 

As far as that 49/56 that I fixed it involved a completely new barrel turned from a blank. They still wanted it in .308 for ammunition reasons, though. I didn't copy the grenade launcher features into the barrel at the request of the owner, so that made my life easier. I had to get a new gas tube and a new forearm as well. After I got done that rifle ran rather well, especially considering that it was a caliber conversion using original magazines. I saved the old barrel as an example of century arms. They had put about an inch of "free bore" after the chamber. (quotes because it wasn't truly free, the rifling was very very faint, but still there) It looking like it had been done with a drill bit.

yeah, drunk monkey conversions. 

I learned a lot about good versus bad gunsmiths from working with smiths at fixing a wide range of weapons that were either "improved" by "idiots" or fixed by CAI.  There is a great PA gunsmith that pioneered the main fixes, but he is nearly a year behind in work.  

So I have a 308 MAS 36 butcher waiting for conversion to something else interesting, and a 49/56 that short strokes.  

If you fix French weapons I could post your name on my website and get you business galore.

Yeah, I meant Century, sorry. Also, I have no idea about ammo cross-over like that. It's something I'd like to read up on.

Century conversions were made by drunk monkeys.  In the 308 conversion they took the barrel and cut several centimeters off the back and rebored it to .308.  Then they hacked the wood, removing a vital metal connection point, and threw the weapon back together without test shooting them or resetting either elevation or windage.  The result was a weapon that was barely able to print on a sheet of typing paper at 10 feet.

The 49/56 conversions were worse, requiring careful repair to bring them back to being one of the easiest shooters every made.  

I was just about to post the bolt from my Type 38 that I am rebuilding.

 

I would disagree with you about the front locking lugs being a weakness. Yes, it makes the bolt stroke longer and puts more geometry in the feed path, but you have less bolt deformation occurring during firing. And also, Mauser style extractor for the win.

 

I did have to re-barrel a MAS 49/56 that Century Arms gooned up when they tried to convert it to .308, but failed horribly. It was a rather fun and challenging project, and I learned quite a bit about those rifles in the process. They have earned a place in my list of rifles to own someday soon.

You should post the bolt of the Type 38 anyway.  I really need to have very good high resolution photographs of a typical Ariska as well as a typical Enfield for a book I am doing.

The primary advantage I believe of the Mauser bolt is locking strength - with the lock occurring near the stress point there is less micro-setback during the travel phase when the bullet is leaving the barrel.  For a hunter with a heavy cartridge locking strength is everything.  In WW1 though the French discovered that for both autoloaders and bolt action rifles' front lugs were a major problem because of how they pushed mud into the chamber of the weapons equipped with them.  French weapons would drop front lugs because of this and move to rear lugs.  Bolt action rifles had their lugs based in part on how the Enfield locked.  The autoloaders based their locking on the Rossingol and its tilting bolt, removing rotary lugs all together.

French rifles are like pink shirts - it takes a real man to pull one off, but when you do....