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So lets say you had to equip a WW2 army...


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I know this is a bit silly, but lets do a game.  Lets say you have to equip a WW2 era army.  What infantry weapons would you pick?  You are limited to weapons that actually saw production and combat use.  Do take into account factors such as cost and ease of production.  The only unrealistic rule I will set is that you don't have to worry about ammo commonality, since that would pretty much limit people to one countries weapons.  The categories are:

 

Rifle

 

Carbine

 

Submachine gun

 

Light Machine gun

 

Heavy Machine gun

 

Anti-tank weapon

 

Pistol

 

can opener

 

 

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M1 Garand

 

M1 Carbine

 

M3 SMG

 

M1919 MG

 

DShK

 

Panzerfaust

 

FN Hi-Power

 

For can openers...

15940490377_f2ebf91c1d_b.jpg

The Ronson "Can-Do"even though its from the future. I'm pretty sure this is why the M4 was named Ronson because it "mixes, scrambles, blends, mashes, whips, sharpens" all the fascists. 

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I know this is a bit silly, but lets do a game.  Lets say you have to equip a WW2 era army.  What infantry weapons would you pick?  You are limited to weapons that actually saw production and combat use.  Do take into account factors such as cost and ease of production.  The only unrealistic rule I will set is that you don't have to worry about ammo commonality, since that would pretty much limit people to one countries weapons.  The categories are:

 

Rifle

 

Carbine

 

Submachine gun

 

Light Machine gun

 

Heavy Machine gun

 

Anti-tank weapon

 

Pistol

 

can opener

 

Ugh, Walt, are you gonna make me be THAT guy who kills the fun and points out how silly and meaningless this question is? >:D

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Rifle - PTRS with DGJ02 and DJE02 rounds from the future.

 

Carbine - PTRS with shorter barrel and adjustable stock.

 

Submachine gun - PTRS with an extended magazine, vertical foregrip and a shoestring.

 

Light Machine gun - Belt fed PTRS with an actual fire selector.

 

Heavy Machine gun - Belt fed PTRS with an actual fire selector and either a multi height tripod or a vehicle mount.

 

Anti-tank weapon ....Give me a second to think on this one.

 

Pistol - PTRS Obrez

 

can opener - Why the hell do I need a seperate can opener with THIS many PTRS rifles?!

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I was going to make a joke and go for maximum firepower.

 

The ShVAK in 12.7 is a perfectly acceptable heavy machine gun, right?

They're rather amusing to fire at night, I can say that.

Loads of sparks going both ways..

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Rifle - PTRS with DGJ02 and DJE02 rounds from the future.

 

Carbine - PTRS with shorter barrel and adjustable stock.

 

Submachine gun - PTRS with an extended magazine, vertical foregrip and a shoestring.

 

Light Machine gun - Belt fed PTRS with an actual fire selector.

 

Heavy Machine gun - Belt fed PTRS with an actual fire selector and either a multi height tripod or a vehicle mount.

 

Anti-tank weapon ....Give me a second to think on this one.

 

Pistol - PTRS Obrez

 

can opener - Why the hell do I need a seperate can opener with THIS many PTRS rifles?!

 

14.5x114: The Ultimate Gerrperrsherr.

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"Cost and ease of production" is an interesting proposition.  The details of production engineering varied from country to country.  So a weapon that would be suitable for one nation's industrial base might not work well for another's.

 

Don't get me wrong; there are some weapons that are poorly optimized for anyone's factories.  The insane Swiss Furrer SMGs come to mind.  Ain't nobody gonna have an easy time making those.

 

But some other weapons have production considerations that are specific to their country of origin.

 

The STG-44, for example, is an extremely complicated gun.  It has lots and lots of parts, and the process for attaching these parts to each other and for stamping the receiver is fairly involved.

 

If the STG-44 were made, say, in the US or USSR, I don't think it would be considered a particularly simple gun to produce.  There would have to be a lot of specialized multi-step stamping, a lot of machining of the many miscellaneous small parts, and in general a lot of production of a large number of different small parts that would then be built up into larger sub-assemblies.

 

For one of the big American or Soviet arms factories, where practically all the parts were made under the same roof, filling the factory floor with a bunch of disparate machines making simple parts would not be very efficient.  For them, a production-optimized design looks like a DPM machine gun.  The DPM receiver is a gigantic slab of steel with a lot of machining done to it.  However, the machine cuts are very simple, and it's easy to set up a serial arrangement of mills, each performing one or two operations before the part is sent to the next station and achieve good production flow.

 

A design like the DPM would be outrageously expensive for the Germans.  The receiver of a DPM needs to be made of good-quality ordnance-grade steel.  The Germans were short on high-quality steels, so one of the design objectives for the STG-44 (all the way back to the early K98K replacement programs in the 1930s) was to use as little high-quality steel as possible.  This is part of why the STG-44 is so goddamn heavy; it's made of shitty, weak steel, so to make it strong enough they just use more.

 

Furthermore, German industry largely consisted of a bunch of scattered, small factories.  They didn't have many of the large, centralized contractors who could bang out big, solid machined parts like the DPM uses.

 

So the STG-44, for the Germans, is just what the doctor ordered.  It's got a zillion small parts that can (and were) farmed out to a zillion subcontractors.  These small, "underutilized" industrial concerns could then contribute to the war effort, and as an added bonus the highly distributed nature of this production made it hard to completely stop production by strategic bombing (unless they hit the rail yards or the power plants, then they're pretty well fucked).

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Details schmetails Colli.

 

We all know the correct answer to my questions is:

 

Rifle STG44

 

Carbine  STG44

 

Submachine gun  STG44

 

Light Machine gun  STG44

 

Heavy Machine gun  Two STG44s strapped together

 

Anti-tank weapon  STG44 thrown into the tracks

 

Pistol  MP43

 

can opener  STG44

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I know this is a bit silly, but lets do a game.  Lets say you have to equip a WW2 era army.  What infantry weapons would you pick?  You are limited to weapons that actually saw production and combat use.  Do take into account factors such as cost and ease of production.  The only unrealistic rule I will set is that you don't have to worry about ammo commonality, since that would pretty much limit people to one countries weapons.  The categories are:

 

Rifle

 

Carbine

 

Submachine gun

 

Light Machine gun

 

Heavy Machine gun

 

Anti-tank weapon

 

Pistol

 

can opener

 

M1

 

M1

 

M1

 

M1(919)

 

M2

 

M1

 

M(1911)

 

M1 (bayonet)

 

My serious answer isn't too different. I'd swap in the PTRD as anti-tank, and either the TT-33 or P-38 as a pistol, and the US P-38 as a can opener.

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The rules are flexible, this is not a serious exercise.   

I NEED STRUCTURE TO PERFECT MY ART, WALT!

Alright, so I am sperging out pretty hard cross-examining the minutiae here. It's very clear that my Protestant/Dust Bowl ancestry prevents me from actually having fun with this or something. I'm going to make some assumptions that are more fun than realistic. For example, the nation in question has both the industry to accomplish a re-armament of this type, and also they have a textbook on WWII from the 1970s or something. So therefore this is a retrospective "best" and not really a realistic one. I am also going to take considerable liberties with the rules about what weapons we are and are not allowed to use.

Here goes:

 

Rifle - MAS 49/56 in 7.5x54mm French. No, it didn't serve in WWII, but the MAS 40 did, and the 49/56 is just an improved version. OK, highly improved. I wanted a rifle that could launch rifle grenades, giving the infantry a huge amount of capability over a wide variety of other units. Rifle grenades did see use in WWII, so there's no reason that the 49/56 couldn't have existed in the conflict, besides doctrinal and production limitations - both of which we're ignoring.
 
 
Carbine & Submachine gun - Sterling L2A3. Earlier versions were used in WWII under the "Patchett" name. The L2A3 is just the final variant of the Patchett. In high pressure 7.62x25 Tokarev, with a longer OAL and spitzer projectiles, since you explicitly said we don't have to worry about ammo.
 
 
Light Machine gun - Bren in 7.5x54mm with 30 round box mags. Make it select-fire, like the FM 24/29.
 
 
Heavy Machine gun - DShK. In a high pressure 20x94mm Ho-5 derivative with HE, smoke, API, observation, and AP ammunition.
 
 
Anti-tank weapon - M20 Super Bazooka.
 
 
Pistol - GP-35 in 7.62x25 Tokarev. Only accepts round-nosed ammunition, which work fine in the SMG as well, but are much lower performance than the spitzer rounds.
 
 
can opener - M1917 Bayonet, modified to fit the MAS 49/56.
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I know this is a bit silly, but lets do a game.  Lets say you have to equip a WW2 era army.  What infantry weapons would you pick?  You are limited to weapons that actually saw production and combat use.  Do take into account factors such as cost and ease of production.  The only unrealistic rule I will set is that you don't have to worry about ammo commonality, since that would pretty much limit people to one countries weapons.  The categories are:

 

Rifle

 

Carbine

 

Submachine gun

 

Light Machine gun

 

Heavy Machine gun

 

Anti-tank weapon

 

Pistol

 

can opener

 

What is the squad-level doctrine and how does it relate to army-level doctrine? Or is that up to the poster? (in which case, this poster needs a specific mission profile with which to select the appropriate doctrine - e.g. "This WW2 army will have to do a major amphibious landing and then engage an opponent with a proportion of tank and motorized infantry elements capable of engaging in mechanized warfare")

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Draft 2

 

Rifle -  Berthier Mle 1907/15-M16

 

Carbine - Carcano 1891 cavalry carbine.

 

Submachine gun - Type 100

 

Light Machine gun - Modello 1914

 

Heavy Machine gun - Type 92 HMG (Machine gun designation definitions were different back then.)

 

Anti-tank weapon - No. 74 Sticky Bomb slingshot.

 

Pistol - Nambu Type 94

 

Back up pistol - Liberator (It's much more polite then simply giving them a cyanide tabiet.)

 

can opener - A heavy, relatively sharp rock on one side.

 

532558d2aa7d8d98949ae7a35a7961ce.png

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Draft 2

 

Rifle -  Berthier Mle 1907/15-M16

 

Carbine - Carcano 1891 cavalry carbine.

 

Submachine gun - Type 100

 

Light Machine gun - Modello 1914

 

Heavy Machine gun - Type 92 HMG (Machine gun designation definitions were different back then.)

 

Anti-tank weapon - No. 74 Sticky Bomb slingshot.

 

Pistol - Nambu Type 94

 

Back up pistol - Liberator (It's much more polite then simply giving them a cyanide tabiet.)

 

can opener - A heavy, relatively sharp rock on one side.

 

532558d2aa7d8d98949ae7a35a7961ce.png

 

 

Naw, you should have picked these:

 

Rifle -  Dreyse

 

Carbine - Lebel M93-R35

 

Submachine gun - M50 Reising

 

Light Machine gun - Breda Model 30

 

Heavy Machine gun - St. Etienne Mle 1907 in 11mm Gras

 

Anti-tank weapon - Panzerfaust

 

Pistol - Nambu Type 14

 

Back up pistol - Liberator (It's much more polite then simply giving them a cyanide tabiet.)

 

can opener - A heavy, relatively sharp rock on one side.

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