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Sturgeon's House

Overrated Allied Weaponry in World War II


LostCosmonaut

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I'm kind of glad this little thread got resurrected for at least a little bit, if only as a reminder how superior most of the American (and much of the Allied) equipment was compared to their Axis adversaries. And even if there is a debate over whether a weapon was "overrated" it wasn't necessarily bad, and was certainly better in most cases than contemporary Axis equipment, assuming the Axis even had anything that was contemporary to it to begin with.

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23 minutes ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

If we wanted to talk overrated ships, the Armored Deck Carriers the Brits made were overrated. They were also nearly useless without American Airplanes. 

Might be a little harsh, but a lot of stuff wouldn't have worked without the Americans as a whole, not only planes.

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Armoured decks make sense if you're expecting your carriers to get dogpiled by land based aircraft (which come in numbers way bigger than any carrier air wing, so if you squeeze as many AC as possible on board then they'll still outnumber you, and carry bigger bombs). The pacific is not the med, basically

 

 

A 500 lb bomb is a Very Bad Day for an unarmoured carrier (e.g. yorktown at the battle of the coral sea), whereas armoured carriers were surviving 2000 lb bombs regularly

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3 hours ago, Xlucine said:

Armoured decks make sense if you're expecting your carriers to get dogpiled by land based aircraft (which come in numbers way bigger than any carrier air wing, so if you squeeze as many AC as possible on board then they'll still outnumber you, and carry bigger bombs). The pacific is not the med, basically

 

 

A 500 lb bomb is a Very Bad Day for an unarmoured carrier (e.g. yorktown at the battle of the coral sea), whereas armoured carriers were surviving 2000 lb bombs regularly

You say that like the only place the RN operated was the Med.  They had a worldwide empire. 

 

With a bit of experience, the Yorky could have lived, and the US Navy changed A/C fuel handling on Carriers after the Coral Sea and Midway.  

 

US Carriers had an armored Deck below the flight deck, and ships like the Enterprise took bomb hits and kept operating, while not suffering permanent, unrepairable, structural damage. The Idea that the Armored flight deck carriers were Armored enough to defeat a determined air attack is laughable.  

 

I doubt a Brit Carrier would have lived through what the Franklin took under similar circumstances.  

 

You know what, the ENTIRE Royal Navy was overrated in WWII.

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1 hour ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

You say that like the only place the RN operated was the Med.  They had a worldwide empire. 

 

By far the most integral part of the BE was India and the path from London to Bombay ran through the Mediterranean where the Brits were probably the most vulnerable. Still, US carriers >UK carriers

 

 

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I think UK carriers suffered from battleship admiral syndrome really badly in the UK.

 

When all your high-ups can think of for a carrier to do is act as a spotter/fighter cover screen for the main gun line, then trying to make it as much like an armoured cruiser as possible makes sense. You don't need 70 planes for the job, after all.

 

You can see this in the fleet air arm carrier fighters - all of the ones the RN got a hand in designing ended up with 2-3 crew so the could do double duty as spotters.

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RE: Mosins. Mosins are a whole group of rifles, and any specific one is going to be different. If you're shooting a 1942 production gun, it's not going to be as nice as a 1944 production gun, for instance, and a 1944 one won't measure up to an actual sniper Mosin (not the drilled and tapped standard ones that are sold as "snipers" for three times the cost). 

 

RE: shitty Mausers. Soviet trials of a sniper Mauser showed a dispersion of 10 cm at 100 meters. In your imperialist measurements that's 4 MOA, give or take, which isn't what I would call amazing for a sniper rifle. I don't have comparable trials for a Mosin, unfortunatelyю

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3 hours ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

By far the most integral part of the BE was India and the path from London to Bombay ran through the Mediterranean where the Brits were probably the most vulnerable. Still, US carriers >UK carriers

 

 

 

Yeah, for the Illustrious class, they had an Air Group of 36 planes for 23,000 tons and 30 knots and a rather sad range of 10,000 miles at 10 knots.  Even if you're generous, and give them the late war, Americanesque deck parks, they only got to 56 planes.  

 

The Yorktown's are so much better and proved really tough.  On a Yorky you get, an Air group of 100 aircraft, though for 19,900 tons, and 32.5 knots and a range of 10,000 miles at 15 knots.   

 

There are some operational problems the Armored deck carriers had as well. They did not have as big of magazines and aviation fuel supplies as the American Carriers, and their lower rangers really hampered their usefulness against Japan.  I've read many US Navy officers opinions at the time, after operating with the Royal Navy off Japan, the British Carriers were almost more trouble than they were worth, since they barely bettered the CVE and CVLs int he US navy in A/C capacity, and were a pain in the ass to refuel and rearm at Sea. 

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Toxn said:

I think UK carriers suffered from battleship admiral syndrome really badly in the UK.

 

When all your high-ups can think of for a carrier to do is act as a spotter/fighter cover screen for the main gun line, then trying to make it as much like an armoured cruiser as possible makes sense. You don't need 70 planes for the job, after all.

 

You can see this in the fleet air arm carrier fighters - all of the ones the RN got a hand in designing ended up with 2-3 crew so the could do double duty as spotters.

 

Clearly, the UK and the Royal Navy had many poor thinkers on the future use of the Carrier. The Navy had them too, but an awful lot of the best and brightest int he US Navy learned to fly.   I think the operating in the Med, so we had to have small air groups and armor was a silly argument, and the aircraft Carriers they produced were garbage. The armor was only good for 500 pounds, and the ships took structural damage instead of lighter deck damage, permanently affecting at least one of them.  Putting the main structure deck like the Armored deck on Brit CVs that high on a ship of that size just compromised everything else about it, and didn't give it great damage resistance.  For an Armored deck like that, you need a Forestal class size ship or bigger to make it work, and some super secret to this day structure magic to make it work with deck edge elevators. 

 

I mean come on, you want to operate CVs in the med and you can choose 4 Yorktown or four Illustrious class ships?

 

92,000 tons and 144 planes For the  Illustrious versus 79600 and 400 planes for the Yorktown, granted there were not 4 Yorkies, but that's beside the point, you could do the job better with the three that did exist. 300 planes is an actual decent size strike force, capable of taking on land-based planes. 

 

This does not bother to take the Essex class into the comparison, because it was so much better than anything the Brits produced, by such a wide margin, it's just silly to do. 

 

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3 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

RE: Mosins. Mosins are a whole group of rifles, and any specific one is going to be different. If you're shooting a 1942 production gun, it's not going to be as nice as a 1944 production gun, for instance, and a 1944 one won't measure up to an actual sniper Mosin (not the drilled and tapped standard ones that are sold as "snipers" for three times the cost). 

 

RE: shitty Mausers. Soviet trials of a sniper Mauser showed a dispersion of 10 cm at 100 meters. In your imperialist measurements that's 4 MOA, give or take, which isn't what I would call amazing for a sniper rifle. I don't have comparable trials for a Mosin, unfortunatelyю

If Mausers are shitty what are those Mosins:

Spoiler

d7af97b56434.jpg

 

A whooping 15 for 100 meters.

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7 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:
11 hours ago, Xlucine said:

 

You say that like the only place the RN operated was the Med.  They had a worldwide empire. 

 

With a bit of experience, the Yorky could have lived, and the US Navy changed A/C fuel handling on Carriers after the Coral Sea and Midway.  

 

US Carriers had an armored Deck below the flight deck, and ships like the Enterprise took bomb hits and kept operating, while not suffering permanent, unrepairable, structural damage. The Idea that the Armored flight deck carriers were Armored enough to defeat a determined air attack is laughable.  

 

I doubt a Brit Carrier would have lived through what the Franklin took under similar circumstances.  

 

You know what, the ENTIRE Royal Navy was overrated in WWII.

 

The USS Franklin took two 500 lb bombs, and that resulted in the highest casualties by any fleet carrier that survived WW2. HMS Illustrious took 7 hits from 500-1000 lb bombs, and a 2000 lb bomb - and continued in service till 1955 (loads of permanent structural damage there!). Even after changing fuel handling systems on US ships, the Franklin still burnt badly in mid '45. Brit carriers were more survivable - find a US carrier that took 7 bomb hits and survived

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The USS Franklin took more than two "bomb hits" if you want to be honest about it. The ship was also not at battle stations, but just ignore the full hanger deck and deck park with fuel and armed planes, with bombs, rockets, and full fuel tanks... Nearly 100 of them.  That's going to count more than 7 bombs hits not all at once. Hell the Enterprise took three and kept on operating.  The Illustrious was out of action 10 months after a couple of her bomb hits. 

 

From Wiki, but good enough for this: 

 

Quote

Before dawn on 19 March 1945, Franklin, which had maneuvered to within 50 miles (80 km) of the Japanese mainland, closer than any other U.S. carrier during the war, launched a fighter sweep against Honshū and later a strike against shipping in Kobe Harbor. The Franklin crew had been called to battle stations twelve times within six hours that night and Gehres downgraded the alert status to Condition III, allowing his men freedom to eat or sleep, although gunnery crews remained at their stations.[9]

Suddenly, a single aircraft – possibly a Yokosuka D4Y "Judy" dive bomber, though other accounts suggest an Aichi D3A "Val", also a dive bomber – pierced the cloud cover and made a low level run on the ship to drop two semi-armor-piercing bombs. The damage analysis came to the conclusion that the bombs were 550 pounds (250 kg). Accounts differ as to whether the attacking aircraft escaped or was shot down.

One bomb struck the flight deck centerline, penetrating to the hangar deck, causing destruction and igniting fires through the second and third decks, and knocking out the Combat Information Center and air plot. The second hit aft, tearing through two decks. At the time she was struck, Franklin had 31 armed and fueled aircraft warming up on her flight deck. The hangar deck contained planes, of which 16 were fueled and five were armed. The forward gasoline system had been secured, but the aft system was operating. The explosion on the hangar deck ignited the fuel tanks on the aircraft, and gasoline vapor explosion devastated the deck. Only two crewmen survived the fire. The explosion also jumbled aircraft together on the flight deck above, causing further fires and explosions and detonating 12 "Tiny Tim" air-to-surface rockets. Franklin was dead in the water, without radio communications, and broiling in the heat from enveloping fires. On the bridge, Captain Gehres ordered Franklin's magazines flooded but this could not be carried out as the ship's water mains were destroyed by the explosions or fire. Admiral Ralph Davison transferred his flag to the destroyer USS Miller by breeches buoy and suggested abandoning ship, but Gehres refused to scuttle the Franklin as there were still many men alive below deck.

 

Besides, no one is saying they were not tough ships, sure they were tough, they could take some damage.  The Enterprise was still a more useful carrier after three bomb hits in the Solomon Islands.  But how did she operate without an armored flight deck after taking bombs right?

 

Let me spell it out one more time. The armored flight decks crippled them as useful carriers.  The idea that they needed that Armor was flawed, and having an actual usefully sized air group negates the need for the Armor.   I mean YAY, the Brits had tough, but nearly useless carriers, I guess.  I suppose they worked well enough against a second string naval power like Nazi's though. 

 

And having your max speed cut to 24 knots permanently by bomb damage counts as serious structural problems or another of the class taking permanent distortion to the hull. Granted the Brits were not as good at building and fixing ships, even US shipyards couldn't have economically repaired them. 

 

Edited by Jeeps_Guns_Tanks
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5 hours ago, Pascal said:

If Mausers are shitty what are those Mosins:

  Hide contents

d7af97b56434.jpg

 

A whooping 15 for 100 meters.

 

You're looking at the wrong column. 15 is the deviation of the group, which is something you can just adjust your sight for. Also these are tests of a scoped rifle, whereas the numbers I gave were for iron sights. If you want to compare dispersion obtained with a scope, let's do that.

 

100% group size in cm with scope:

Range

Mosin

Mauser

100

9.3-10.4

9.4

300

23.1-25.2

33.3

600

52.3

61.0

 

As you can see, the Mauser does better in exactly one test: 100 meters against a chest target. In literally every single other scenario, the Mosin performs better.

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2 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

 

You're looking at the wrong column. 15 is the deviation of the group, which is something you can just adjust your sight for. Also these are tests of a scoped rifle, whereas the numbers I gave were for iron sights. If you want to compare dispersion obtained with a scope, let's do that.

 

100% group size in cm with scope:

Range

Mosin

Mauser

100

9.3-10.4

9.4

300

23.1-25.2

33.3

600

52.3

61.0

 

As you can see, the Mauser does better in exactly one test: 100 meters against a chest target. In literally every single other scenario, the Mosin performs better.

 

I love how Pascal is brand spanking new here and literally every post I've seen from him has been retarded.

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42 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

I love how Pascal is brand spanking new here and literally every post I've seen from him has been retarded.

So, naive question: are these sorts of tests done with the weapon strapped to a bench, or by a prone shooter or something? Because a 9cm group size at 100m is well in the range of human ability with a modern scoped mauser when shooting from a bench.

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7 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

 

You're looking at the wrong column. 15 is the deviation of the group, which is something you can just adjust your sight for. Also these are tests of a scoped rifle, whereas the numbers I gave were for iron sights. If you want to compare dispersion obtained with a scope, let's do that.

 

100% group size in cm with scope:

Range

Mosin

Mauser

100

9.3-10.4

9.4

300

23.1-25.2

33.3

600

52.3

61.0

 

As you can see, the Mauser does better in exactly one test: 100 meters against a chest target. In literally every single other scenario, the Mosin performs better.

 

Nice that you don't mention that the mauser in that test wasn't even zeroed in, especially the scope.Always showing documents am i right?

"выверку не обеспечивает"

"После заводской подгонки немецкого прицела на винтовке никаких поправок в прицел в горизонтальной плоскости вводить нельзя".

 

7 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

 

You're looking at the wrong column. 15 is the deviation of the group.

 

No i am not looking at the wrong column, actually you somehow missed the stuff on the right considering the tables on the left are for prototype optics.

The tables at the right are for production optics for mosins and as you can see it's 14,6 (sorry that i rounded that to 15 like you rounded it up for the mauser "sniper" from 9,5 to 10) all right.

 

4 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

I love how Pascal is brand spanking new here and literally every post I've seen from him has been retarded.

Considering this latest post was about Ensign looking at the wrong column, the left table is for prototype optics not ones in production and even not realizing it, said that i was looking at the deviation group not at the radius, but he somehow didn't see the 14,6 (which i rounded to 15) on the tables at the right which represent the production scope on mosins.Plus no mention that the mauser in the test he posted wasn't zeroed.I will reserve the "retarded" for someone else.

 

3 hours ago, Toxn said:

So, naive question: are these sorts of tests done with the weapon strapped to a bench, or by a prone shooter or something? Because a 9cm group size at 100m is well in the range of human ability with a modern scoped mauser when shooting from a bench.

When the Garand,G41(w),SVT-40 was tested it was from a sitting position on a shooting bench, we can guess that these ones were too.

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3 hours ago, Toxn said:

So, naive question: are these sorts of tests done with the weapon strapped to a bench, or by a prone shooter or something? Because a 9cm group size at 100m is well in the range of human ability with a modern scoped mauser when shooting from a bench.

 

In my personal experience between the two, by a trained shooter off a bench or prone. For a historical test, depends on the test. When you look at period German accuracy standards, they verify the results I've gotten over and over with multiple Western/Central European Mausers and Mosin-Nagants, which is that they are either comparable in accuracy or the Mosin is very slightly more accurate. None of them were as accurate as any of the 3 Lee-Enfields I've owned (all of which were pretty solidly 2 minute or 3 minute guns).

 

Having worked on several surplus Mausers, I'm not in the least surprised that a modern commercial Mauser is more capable than those old guns, because the interwar and wartime guns simply weren't that well made from an accuracy perspective. They were often crafted with care, yet you'd see things like the action face gooned up with tool marks, which then had to be trued. The stocking on Mauser carbines is also almost always crap, and they are notoriously sensitive to warping (because of the fact that they didn't relieve the stock around the barrel - I bought a vz. 29 once for a gunsmithing project, and when I took it out of the stock the barrel took little flakes of stock with it).

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10 minutes ago, Pascal said:

 

Nice that you don't mention that the mauser in that test wasn't even zeroed in, especially the scope.Always showing documents am i right?

"выверку не обеспечивает"

 "После заводской подгонки немецкого прицела на винтовке никаких поправок в прицел в горизонтальной плоскости вводить нельзя".

 

 

No i am not looking at the wrong column, actually you somehow missed the stuff on the right considering the tables on the left are for prototype optics.

The tables at the right are for production optics for mosins and as you can see it's 14,6 (sorry that i rounded that to 15 like you rounded it up for the mauser "sniper" from 9,5 to 10) all right.

 

Considering this latest post was about Ensign looking at the wrong column, the left table is for prototype optics not ones in production and even not realizing it, said that i was looking at the deviation group not at the radius, but he somehow didn't see the 14,6 (which i rounded to 15) on the tables at the right which represent the production scope on mosins.Plus no mention that the mauser in the test he posted wasn't zeroed.I will reserve the "retarded" for someone else.

 

When the Garand,G41(w),SVT-40 was tested it was from a sitting position on a shooting bench, we can guess that these ones were too.

 

You vs. Ensign, hm, that's tough. Who to believe?

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Quote

Regarding shooting the 98k sniper rifle from a Schiessmaschine "The same goes for the demand that all five shots have to lie within the centric 70mm circle [at 100m]. Even rifles with very minimal dispersion rarely achieve such a target picture." Report of Director Holl of Mauser Werke GmbH, 17 June 1943 (70mm @ 100m is 2.5 MOA. Rarely achieved with a 98k sniper. For comparison, all No.4 Mk.1(T) rifles had to achieve 7 of 7 shots within 5" at 200 yds. Which is 2.5 MOA minimum standard, followed by a 6 of 7 shots into 10" at 400 yds, which is again 2.5 MOA allowing one flyer in 7 shots). Letter of 22 June 1943 from the Infanterieschule at Döberitz-Elagrund to the Chef der Heeresrüstung und Befehlshaber der Ersatzheeres-AHA/In2: "Experience gained from the sharpshooting training course has shown that dispersion of the ZF rifles is too large and too varied. Firing at distances of 100m showed dispersion to 15cm even though sighting shot ammunition was used..."

 

From Bloke.

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5 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

You vs. Ensign, hm, that's tough. Who to believe?

So he looked at the tables an said that i looked at the 15 deviation, while clearly on the table at the right shows production optics on mosins getting a 14,6 at 100.'

While also not mentioning that the mauser wasn't even zeroed.

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Just now, Pascal said:

So he looked at the tables an said that i looked at the 15 deviation, while clearly on the table at the right shows production optics on mosins getting a 14,6 at 100.

 

That was sarcasm. You have 13 posts, I have no idea who you are. At least you probably do read Russian and aren't just using Google Translate, since your IP traces to Moldova. But I still believe Ensign over you.

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This is the expected accuracy standard (not acceptance standard):
 

1522596115294-png.328788

 

1522596401493-png.328790

 

This means you can expect a brand new K98 shooting sS ball to print a group where 94% of shots hit an area 8cm high and 6cm wide at 100m. And for the record, German sniper rifles were just taken off the line, not selected for accuracy or anything!

 

So basically, these are 3-4 minute guns:

hq74gpj.jpg

 

"The figures represent average values shot with new rifles. It can not be demanded that every individidual rifle corresponds to these dispersions at every distance"

 

 

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3 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

That was sarcasm. You have 13 posts, I have no idea who you are. At least you probably do read Russian and aren't just using Google Translate, since your IP traces to Moldova. But I still believe Ensign over you.

Born and lived in Belarus, moved to Georgia and then back, some stuff to do in Moldova, pretty good internet here, home is better of course, hope to never come here again though.

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1 hour ago, Pascal said:

Born and lived in Belarus, moved to Georgia and then back, some stuff to do in Moldova, pretty good internet here, home is better of course, hope to never come here again though.

 

The forum etiquette is listed there in Open. We've told everyone what we want to see in a poster. You've got fourteen posts, none of them contain documents or sources. All you've done is argue with well-established members and sent in one spurious report, which is a serious pet peeve of mine. I would recommend not doing that.

 

If all that sounds onerous to you, then yeah, maybe this forum isn't a good fit.

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