Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull
It part of the reason why back in WWII it was common to find BAR, rifle/carbine, and SMG in the same squad.
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For US squads, the BAR, Garand and Springfield used the same ammo and the Colt and Thompson (or Grease Gun) used the same ammo. Only the M-1 carbine didn't share ammo with anything else*.
The US also loved rifle grenades, so you can count them too, although the Springfield was a better firing platform than the Garand early in the war (the Garand damn near had to be disabled to fire rifle grenades**).
Squad-level snipers were just marksmen with standard rifles without a scope. Even true snipers just used standard rifles with standard ammo with low-power scopes.
* At one point there was an attempt to chamber a revolver to use .30 carbine ammo for airborne forces to simplify logistics, but while the .30-cal is low-powered as a rifle round, it's very potent as a pistol round. The average paratrooper had too much trouble with the recoil of was was basically an Uber-.357 magnum
** the gas port had to be fiddled with so that the Garand could no longer fire semi-auto, which had to be refiddled with to use the rifle as a semi-auto again. Plus hand-loading the blank ammo.