The Royal Armouries up my end has one on display, as well as a few extra weapons, if any needs a few snaps, message me, I will see what I can do (as its about 4 quid for the train to get there)

And this replaced the L1A1?!?! Somebody, somewhere has to love the procurement problem...just can't think of anyone!

I'm always amazed and proud to read the stories of the men who have earned the Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross. They truely are the best that their country has...

DIBS on the M13/40!!!

if anybody wants to zing a least favorite aircraft or warship...its a bad weapon

The first thought that popped into mind, is where can I get one...and if I loaded it with a solid round instead of shot, just how much armor could it penetrate? The second thought that popped up was if i every fired this, just how many sheriff's deputys would show up...wanting to borrow it?

That would be me. ;) I should use some of this to encourage players to put skill points into bayonet training, huh? Those don't jam.

Until the bayonet falls off or bends...I'll stick to a trench club, a few Mills Bombs and my trusty Webley .455 revolver!

I can't remember the movie, but the person goes to stab the bayonet target, and ends up throwing his rifle a good 15 feet beyond the target.

Don't know the movie, but Monty Python did do a skit about Trench Warfare...

In the movie All's Quiet on the Western Front, didn't the crusty NCP advise against using a bayonet as well because it got stuck in the stickee? I believe the sharpened e-tool was the weapon of choice. In the movie Passchendale, a Canadian soldier beats a German to death with a rock. Ah, the classics are always popular from stone-age times!

Tony

I think I remember reading something about advice for getting a stuck bayonet out of the target. It was just to fire a round off, to make the hole bigger, if I remember right...

Of course, it might have been in some silly movie, or be an urban myth.

Depends on the bayonet, if you are using a WWI pigsticker (the 1-2 foot blade lenght) then you can get away with firing a round. If you're using an M-16 bayonet, good chance that the muzzle may be in direct contact with the body, not a good idea to fire a round if the muzzle is blocked!

My ROTC instructor told me he saw that happen at least once at summer camp.

Fun fact of the day, the Russian word for bayonet is: Shtik.

Carry On Sgt?

That's what they taught us in Basic -- fire a round and simultaneously pull.

"They don't like it up 'em!"--Lance Corporal Jack Jones ("Dad's Army")

Here's another bad weapon. The M-4 Sherman medium tank. Now before the flaming starts, please consider the following:When the Sherman saw its first combat action at El Alamein, it was a match for the German MkIV in all respects except for firepower. But even the US Army admits that the Sherman was obscelent by 1943-44. When Shermans met Tigers and Panthers in the Italian and Normandy campaigns, the results were shattering of Allied forces. Our primary tank was undergunned, underarmored, and actually had worse cross-country mobility then the Germans. Only two things saved Allied armor; the fact that more Shermans were in the supply pipeline and that, compared to the German tanks, the Sherman was more reliable.

Now this is due more towards the idiotic doctrine that tanks will not fight tanks, this is the job of the tank destroyers. The tank destroyers get better guns, and improved ammunition while Army Ground Forces believed that the short barreled 75mm was all that was needed. From 1943 onward, tankers were begging for a larger tank with more armor and above all else, the 90mm gun.

Yeah, the Ronson was kinda <deleted> for its time, even the Pz IV could pop them easily at ranges, but not the sort of range the Pz V and Pz VI could, but the main thing about the Ronson was that we had numbers, and the British "Firefly" mod was really the only effective weapon against the Pz V and Pz VI, but that was if it got a lucky side or back shot at medium range, and not get spotted at 2000 yrds.

Still, I find the Sten and subsequent Sterling SMG variant to be well shit, my reason:

My father was on foot patrol in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, walked past an RUC officer asleep in a chair, about 10 minutes later they made it up the hill, a RUC "car" pulled up and blared its horn to wake up the sleeping copper, who stood up and the sterling fell to the floor from his lap, and emptied its clip down the road, ripping my father's good boots, which he had only just broken in.

However, the Japanese in WWII kinda made some really bad weapons, mostly small arms and rifles, go on, take a gander at some of them, and the mish-match of calibres.

What we did with the Shermans was basically mob the Germans with numbers instead of trying to match their technology. We could build them fast and cheap. But in the typical tank engagement, the US pretty much counted on losing four out of five Shermans for each Tiger or Panther they got. (That I got from my neighbor, Michael March, who was a Sherman tanker in World War 2.)

Sounds kind of like Soviet-style combat techniques.

The problem with both the Italians and Japanese in WWII was that neither nation was as heavily industralized as Germany was, in fact, the Italians had already reached their maximum production and were winding down before their economy failed. Add to this the pre-war decision to replace the standard caliber weapon with a new, larger caliber and their situation becomes even worse.

Even the Germans had this problem, when the MP-44 (Stu.44) assault rifle was developed, one of the main reasons why it was rejected was due to no one wanting to take responsibility for declearing 8 milliard (that's eight thousand million rounds) of standard 7.92mm ammunition as worthless.

I wonder how many of those World War 2 rounds are still on the market!

Indeed. Luckily for the Red Army, the T-34 was a fine medium tank. Many historians/military techies rate it as the finest of WWII (or #2 to the mid-production Panther). Unfortunately, tanker training early in the war was terrible and, as a result, attrition was high. Once the Soviets started installing radios in their tanks (besides command tanks), training techniques improved, and crews started surviving engagements and gaining experience, they were at least a match for their German opponents.

Contact shooting somebody with an M16 or M4 will work fine -- the flash suppressor provides venting, and even if it wasn't there the escaping propellant gas would just shred tissue on the target.

The problem I always had with the "shoot to disentangle your bayonet" idea was that if you have a round in the weapon why you ever using the bayonet in the first place? I think it was Rommel who noted in WWI that bayonet fights are usually won by the guy one with more ammo in his weapon. The development of the "shoot after you bayonet them" idea represents how vestigial bayonet use became in the 20th century.

Because you don't want to waste a bullet on a helpless civilian or soldier in an infirmary bed.

Anything that blocks a muzzle is never a good thing, even with a flash suppressor!

Have to agree, as long as you have ammunition, why take the time to stab. There are several personel histories dating from the Wellington's campaigns in Spain (back in the flintlock era) that talk about how few men were ever killed by the bayonet. One story in particular mentioned how amazed the soldiers were when they found the bodies of two men who had killed each other with bayonets. Its the threat of the bayonet, more than the use on one that dominates the other side.

Of course, when you see the Russians charging you with bayonets fixed, firing up the ole M-1A1 and chasing them down with the tank kinda defeats the purpose!

you can still get German 7.92mm, still in the original Heer cans on the surplus market so the answer would be quite a bit!

I first saw this book at the post library at Fort Knox, Kentucky and I finally managed to score a copy of it at a yard sale in Mississippi this weekend! The book is "Sherman" by R.P. Hunnicutt and it is considered to be the work on US tank design from 1921-1973.

Its all here! From the M1921 medium tank through the Israeli conversions of the M4 Sherman. Rare photos (B&W and color), stats on the major models in service, production data AND data on the performance of the tank cannons themselves!!!

And for only 20.00!!

Now I have to get a copy of Hunnicutt's "Pershing"!

That's simple. Because a bayonet isn't used JUST to stab. Used properly, a rifle and bayonet are employed more like a quarterstaff with both ends used. The blade, while certainly able to be used in a stabbing motion, is also devastating in a slash. The butt of a decent rifle can crush skulls with both a swing or a jab.

And what if one doesn't have the time to point the weapon then shoot? If you're within a metre or two it may be quicker, and more effective to step in swinging...

But if you're using a lightweight toy like an M16, then yes, you're better off taking a step or two back and trying to fire, or hope that somebody else has a clear shot.

I have a few thoughts here, the first deals with the Sterling SMG mentioned as being a shit weapon.
I agree that the Sten wasn't the best example of a good weapon but still, it worked well enough. However, to criticize the Sterling because dropping it would make it fire isn't particularly fair because many SMGs of that era all suffered from the same problem including the much vaunted Uzi. Even some rifles suffered the same problem including the M16 and M16A1 if dropped straight on their butt.

As for the bayonet, I recall an instructor mentioning that bayonet training was still carried out in the modern army not because they believed you would use it all that often but because it helped to instill aggression and the control of aggression in a soldier.

In regards to the MP44, I've read that it wasn't rejected because of the ammunition as the 7.92mm round would still have been the standard round for machineguns and sniper rifles. It went through a number of developments from the MP42 to the MP45 and it was kept largely hidden from Hitler because he wanted manufacture to concentrate on machineguns and SMGs instead of rifles. After impressing Hitler in demonstrations and the good reports coming back from combat testing on the Eastern Front, the MP44 was given the green light and he is alleged to have named it the SturmGewehr in praise.

From people who used the Sterling in British service, I am repeatedly told that the quality of ammunition supplied for it was so poor that you could almost see the rounds in flight, and that it would have trouble penetrating a car door.

As for bayonets, in my experience the British forces, specifically the infantry, place a lot of emphasis on the bayonet. Bayonet training is, as previously mentioned, an excellent way of developing aggression (especially since they run you ragged before you even pick one up), it's an essential part of being able to use the weapon system to it's greatest extent (after all, if you are issued with a rifle that can fit a bayonet, it might help to be able to use it), there's a psychological advantage to fitting them (it puts you in a certain frame of mind, and scares the crap out of the enemy), and because they actually have a practical purpose.

Our last bound checks when conducting attacks include fitting a bayonet just before assaulting the enemy position, because, as been mentioned, if you find yourself in a confined space with the enemy and pulling the trigger fails to produce a result, due to a stoppage, a quick thrust may be all it takes to save your life. British troops have used bayonets in combat in the Falklands, and in Iraq and Afghanistan. One incident was even picked up by the press as the first bayonet charge in decades or something, but it's a part of our infantry doctrine and we actually do it more than people think.

In fact, one of the few complaints about the introduction of the LMG/Minimi and UGL into service was that these weapons don't fit bayonets, and the reduction of the Section bayonet strength is something that is regarded as important. Indeed, rumour has it that proposed improvements to the LMG may include the ability fit an L85 bayonet.