In 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista ordered some 35,000 FAL rifles from FN, including both regular infantry rifles have heavy-barreled FALO light machine guns. Before any of them could arrive, however, Batista fled the country and his guns were delivered to Fidel Castro beginning in July 1959.
At this time, the FAL was still a fairly new rifle, having been first adopted by Venezuela in 1954 and Belgium in 1954/55. A few changes had been made by the time of the Cuban contract (like the slightly taller sights requested by the Germans), but these were still Type 1 receivers with early features.
The first consignment of rifles arrived from Belgium sun Havana July 9, 1959 and this consisted of 8,000 rifles and ten LMGs. A second shipment of 2,000 rifles arrived October 15th, and a third of 2,500 rifles and 500 LMGs on December 1st. The final ship bringing FALs to Cuba (the French freighter La Courbe) docked in Havana March 4th 1960, and suffered a pair of explosions while bring unloaded. Several hundred people were killed or injured, and Castro blamed the CIA for the event. In total, the Cubans received 12,500 FAL rifles and 510 FALO light machine guns.
The FALs were used, but many ended up being exported to other parties, as Cuba generally moved to Soviet bloc small arms starting in 1960 (when they began receiving weapons from the USSR and Czechoslovakia). These were often scrubbed of their Cuban markings before shipment, and can be found with a round hole milled in the magazine well where the Cuban crest originally was, similar to how some South African FALs were scrubbed before being sent to Rhodesia.
Thanks to Sellier & Bellot for giving me access to this pair of very scarce Cuban FALs to film for you!
Gotta advocate for hitting one of the links where the shooting videos are shown fully. Excellent visualization for just precisely why the idea of a full-auto 7.62 NATO individual weapon is, frankly, nuts.
https://playeur.com/v/JaPG13y-RMS
If that works, and won’t get Ian in trouble for having it here, I highly recommend a look at it.
Having fired an M14 on full (once), I can truthfully say that it instantly shows you the true meaning of Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
Of course, Woody Woodpecker found that out back in 1950.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaYQkV1n-wU
cheers
eon
@eon posted a 1950 Woody Woodpecker cartoon that must have exerted considerable influence on the U.S. scientists–rocket scientists at that!–who conceived of “Project Orion.” The gist of the concept was to build in outer space, using space stations and so on, a space ship that had an enormous heavy base-plate at one end. H-bombs would be shunted down a tube and detonate once they emerged on the far side of the plate, and these huge explosions would be the “put-put-put” of the “outboard motor” to propel the thing to scarcely conceivable speeds. A sort of “external combustion–or fusion anyway” motor, if you will. Probably the best use for all the H-bombs and “Tzsar bomba” and kindred nuclear weapons, but who is going to surrender theirs first for the purpose, eh?
“(…)who is going to surrender theirs first for the purpose(…)”
Keep calm, there was military variant of said machine, namely DOOMSDAY ORION
cutaway https://www.deviantart.com/william-black/art/Doomsday-Orion-504250808
size comparison to MINUTEMAN https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/z8pmsf/do_you_want_noncredible_weapons_i_give_you_the/
which would be used to delivery of doctor Teller’s bigger boom https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/ which would provide 10 Gt explosion (200 times more than Tsar-Bomba as deployed). Note that it would not be used to directly damage enemy installation but to delete part of atmosphere.
“(…) full-auto 7.62 NATO individual weapon(…)”
In defense of FN FAL creators it should be pointed they reworked their design for .280 cartridge, see 3rd image from top http://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/belgium-assault-rifles/fn-fal-l1a1-c1-slr-eng/ to 7.62×51 due to political pressure, rather than developed it from scratch in 7.62×51 NATO.
The first FN FAL prototype actually was made for the German 7.9 mm assault rifle cartridge. Several images can be found in literature and FN displayed it in the visitor’s center.
You can only wonder at what the intervening years might have made of the .280 British or the 7mm Liviano that the FAL was originally designed around. They all make a hell of a lot more sense than 7.62 NATO, which is a cartridge neither one thing nor the other… Too heavy for an individual weapon, too light for a support role. Remind anyone of anything, like say “NGSW”?
I’m going to remain convinced until my dying day that the entire concept behind the 7.62 NATO was delusionally flawed, and that we should have done something like either of the other two cartridges. If we had, I wager we’d still be using it.
The key thing is that you need to be able to count on the average soldier being able to control an individual weapon chambered in that round on full auto. Can’t do that? Then, you need something else. You don’t need full auto every day, but when you need it, you need to be able to use it effectively. Which isn’t anything in 7.62 NATO, in any of the various individual weapons chambered in that round. AR-10 comes kinda close, but… The rest are just like Ian shows us here: Militarily ineffective at ranges and with people you’re likely to find in actual combat. The usual exceptions to the rule exist, but you’d probably be able to find someone out there capable of actually firing an M2HB from the hip, too. There’d be one of him, and you’d likely pay a high price elsewhere with recruiting him, because a guy like that could surely make more money doing something besides soldiering…
At around 3200 joules of energy, the 7mm Liviano was a full power cartridge. It would have had the same problems of the 7.62 NATO.
The final .280 British, the one made to adress US critics, at over 2600 joules, was anyway a little more powerful than classic 6.5 rounds (as the 6.5 Carcano or 6.5 Arisaka), so, way better than 7.62 NATO, but not really optimal for full auto fire from the shoulder from a light rifle.
The original .280 British, at 2350 joules, was a tad more powerful than the 7.62X39 with better ballistic coefficient, so a really interesting round. It was like 6.8 SPC’s bigger brother. BUT it would have needed to retain 30-06 (or something similar) for MMGs / vehicular MGs
Our friend @eon has noted that there is a tendency for many cartridge designers to basically re-invent the 7x57mm. I think there’s something similar at play with the .30-40 Krag and its rimless cousin 7.65x53mm Argentine/Belgian Mauser? I mean .303 British, 7.7x58mm Arisaka, 7.5x54mm French, 7.62x54mm rimmed Russian, iterations of the Swiss 7.5mm cartridges, and probably some others…?
@ Dave
As for that, how many times the 6.5 Carcano had been reinvented?
6.5X54 MS and 6.5x53r were straight copies. The 6.5 Arisaka wasn’t, but ended up with equal performances, so did the military loads of the 6.5X55 Swedish, down to 6.5 Grendel, .264 USA and, last arrived, .264 LICC.
I can’t speak too much to the suitability of the actual loading for the 7mm Liviano, but I think it had “good bones”.
My cartridge design methodology for the individual weapon role would be pretty simple: Find something that works, like 7X57 Mauser or 6.5 Swedish, and then start backing off the load until you found a point where the ballistics and energy still allowed for the average soldier to control the thing sufficiently on fully automatic. At that point, check to ensure that you’ve still got sufficient lethality at 300-400m, redesign the cartridge case to fit the volume of powder, and call it good. Leave a little room for expansion, and you’re good.
The idiots in the US ordnance offices that wanted to have their cake and eat it with the cartridge design did not understand what they really needed, which was a light, handy carbine good out to maybe a max of 400m. They were unable to grasp that the role of mass volley fire that the “old days” mandated for infantry combat were gone, and that the cult of the “lone rifleman” never existed outside their imagination. The utility they saw in the heavy loads was no longer a “thing”, because that role was now being performed, properly, by the machinegun… Which did need those heavier calibers for range and penetration purposes.
The insane need to have “one cartridge to rule them all” is the bane of good design in this field. You can’t get away from the two-cartridge solution, because the necessities for the two roles are so damn different.
Maybe if you could some how have a two-stage powder that gave you more speed in a longer barrel, but then you’d have the sheer waste of every single round being capable of the long-range high-penetration requirement for the support weapon, which I see as an utter waste.
@Dogwalker: Yes, I think you’re right. First came the 1891 6.5x52mm with a .675/.680 10.5gram/ 162gr. bullet @ 700m/sn2300 fps, and then came all the other 6.5mm cartridges, many of those with rimmed cases: Mannlicher, Mannlicher-Schönauer, Arisaka, Swedish, Vergueiro, and “paths not taken” Daudeteau, the Chinese 6.7x57mm, etc. Is it the case that the “gain twist” rifling had something to do with excessive bore erosion from the propellant? This was a big problem for the USN/ USMC 6mm Lee cartridge (6.2×59.7mm or 6x60mm) .236.
@ dave
For the gain twist, it seems there were two orders of problem.
First of all the Italians (that had to change the issued rifle only few years after the introduction of the Vetterli a costly operation), wanted the individual rifles to last for the longest possible. For that IE the M91 had an unusual deep rifling (that would have been ideal to cause the overpressure problems that the Gew.88 experimented, with the extremely long bearing surface of the round nose bullet and a lot of material to displace to sit the bullet into the rifling. But the Italians avoided that by tapering the bullet for half of the lenght)
But the cartridges were loaded (as those of the Gew.88) with Ballistite, the second smokeless powder to be introduced, right after the Poudre B. Already the French noticed that the Ballistite was pretty erosive due to the high flame temperature, and it eroded mainly the first part of the barrel. The gain twist helped to have an uniform wear through the entire life of the barrel. Finally, in 1896, the Italians adopted the Solenite load, that reduced wear, due to the reduced nitroglicerine content.
Second problem was that the acceleration of the projectiles of the early smokeless rifles was something very “new”, and early 6.5X52mm FMJ bullets, due to construction problems, tended to lose the jacket into the barrel. The gain twist avoided that also. But also this problem was quickly fixed.
In the end, within 5-6 years after the adoption of the rifle, the gain twist was no more needed. But at that point it had already been adopted like that, and they kept it.
“(…)Thanks to Sellier & Bellot(…)”
Wait, is that this well-known cartridges manufacturers? Do they maintain own collection of various fire-arms (which I presume they might use for ammunition testing)? Do others European cartridge manufacturers maintain own collections of odd fire-arms?
I would not call it a collection, because all guns have a limited lifespan when used for functional testing. But yes, in Central Europe serious functional testing beyond what the customer specification requires is done with the weapons the customer uses. Also for handguns.
Probably not all makers do it with the same thoroughness.
Fulgencio Batista’s regime was finally subject to a U.S. arms cut-off in March 1958. So between that date and his ouster 1 Jan. 1959 by the M-26-7 rebels, alternate sources of supply had to be found.
The British aircraft firm Hawker as contacted by Fidel Castro’s government and told that it would be preferred that they deliver Hawker Hunter jets, not the Sea Fury aircraft that had been ordered. Even though this is a fairly standard arms-trade practice, the UK deferred to the U.S. about the matter–revealing how the Atlantic Anglo-American alliance operated, as well as U.S. attitudes toward the sovereignty of nations in it’s putative “back yard.” Allen Dulles asserted that under no circumstances should Hawker Hunters be supplied. The British diplomats then mentioned that if Hunter jets were not shipped, then the new Cuban air force might, say, acquire MiGs. Dulles said that if that happened, that would be preferable, and noted that in the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, it had been a U.S. arms cut-off and provision of weapons by Czechoslovakia that occasioned “what was done,” i.e. “PBSUCCESS.” Of course, it was the Sea Fury aircraft that flew interdiction missions against the CIA’s flotilla at the Bay of Pigs/ Playa Giron in April 1961…
The decision of the Czechoslovak communist party to send vz52 she 7.62x45mm rifles and lmgs, as well as 9x19mm samopal 23 and 25 SMGs to the revolutionary state is declassifed and available here:
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/communist-party-czechoslovakia-cpcz-politburo-resolution-enclosures-arms-transfers-cuba
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/report-czechoslovak-politburo-regarding-military-assistance-cuban-government-16-may-1960
Quite a compressed time-frame: From May 1960 until April 1961 for the bulk of the MNR’s small arms, as well as the quad-DShK AA machine guns and other Czechoslovak weapons. Soviet SU-100’s, T-34/85s, artillery assets, mortars and very, very many Shpagin 7.62x25mm SMGs arrived during the same time frame, along with Hispano-Soviet officers, including relics from the Spanish Civil War like Enrique Lister.
Cuba’s conversion to the Soviet suite of small arms was not completed unril the late 1960s/ early 1970s. The first MiG 15bis aircraft did arrive the month after the Bay of Pigs, in May 1961.
The best solution would have been, to do what the french have done with the 7.5mm X 54 and adopted a one case two bullet design. For the rifle you have a 120 gr. bullet loaded to match the 7.62X39 in recoil force. For the meduim machinegun a 150 gr round loaded to higher pessure. The .276 Peterson was probably the best the USA come to a univeral cartridge.
That’s not the case with French 7.5x54mm Mle. 1929 cartridge. It used a 9.0 gram/ 139gr. spitzer bullet at 820 m/s/ 2700 fps. and 3,026 joules/ 2232 ft.lbs. of energy. Ballistics-wise it’s pretty identical to 7.62x51mm Nato, so why Nato didn’t just adopt it, or for that matter, the hoary old 7.65x53mm Belgian/Argentine Mauser cartridge, I don’t understand… Except that they had to have an alternative that wasn’t British and was just a tad smaller than the old .30-06 cartridge, which inherited much from 7.92x57mm Mauser…
If you’re looking for national militaries that had different loads–at least initially–within the same cartridge, I can think of two: Spain and Japan.
The Type 64 7.62x51mm used a cartridge approximately 10 percent less powerful than the full-house cartridge in an attempt to make it more controllable:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/rifles/howa-type-64/
JGSDF personnel I talked to decades ago told me it was a great rifle, but that unfortunately, being Japanese-made, it had “too many small parts.” Direct quote.
The Spaniards had brought in German technicians to help them with rifles intended for the 7.92x33mm kurzpatrone. There was initially a 7.92x41mm CETME cartridge with a long aluminum bullet, but in the end, when the CETME roller-locked rifle was developed, a 7.62x51mm cartridge using a 113gr. bullet at 790 m/s/ 2600 fps. and with 2299 joules/ 1700 ft.lbs. of energy was used. When Franco died and Spain overtly joined Nato, then the Nato cartridge was adopted as well, which had been in use by neighboring Portugal for quite some time.
Dave, the French had for both their infantry rifle calibers an additional machine gun load with a heavier bullet. In 7.5 mm it was the Mle 33D with a 12.35 g bullet. In addition, the machine guns had an 235 mm twist of rifling, compared to 270 mm for the MAS 36 rifle.
In 8 mm it was the Mle 32N bullet of 15 g weight. It was for this bullet that all rifles had to be re-reamed in the case neck area (and marked N). Just like the Germans had done in 1903/05 for the larger diameter S bullet.) The smart trick used by the balle D (98D) bullet (8.3 mm diameter outside the case, 8.1 mm inside) could not be used with the conventional jacketed 8.3 mm lead core 32N. 8.3 mm has always been the groove diameter of the French 8 mm barrels.
I see. thank you for the correction. I forgot about the “balle lourde” for the Reibel MGs, and thought only of the Mle. 1929 7.5x54mm for the Mle. 1936, FM Mle. 1924/29, FSA Mle. 1940 and later FSA Mle. 1944 and 1949. I tend to think of the M1914 Hotchkiss as the heavy MG, overlooking the Reibel. You are correct, that heavier ball ammo was provided. The USSR did something similar, as you know, with the 147-gr. Model 1908 7.62x54mm rimmed Russian cartridge, but also 182gr. bullets for Maxim guns and the Goryunov, etc.
I’m going to come in on the side of “No” when it comes to having the only difference be a “heavy” vs. “light” load.
Point the first… You don’t save a damn thing on cartridge case material or weight when you do this.
Point the second… You have completely lost the benefit of a smaller, lighter cartridges for your individual weapon, plus added on the complications that will stem from having the propellant load likely needing fillers. Logistically, this isn’t at all a minor thing… Compare the volumes of 5.56mm vs. 7.62mm, along with the magazine sized.
No, I’m going to say that any such attempts are bad ideas, likely to founder on the rocks and shoals of physics and logistics. Not worth the effort, TBH.
And, it’s illusory, anyway. You are going to want your support weapon in a belt-fed configuration, for the mass of firepower that enables, and trying to say that you’re really saving anything by having one weapon fed by stripper clips and magazines and the other by belts? You’re going to be issuing two different ammunition stock-keeping units regardless, so why not take advantage of that and go for a lighter, smaller cartridge for the individual weapon in the first place? And, since the belt-fed weapon is going to be bigger and longer-ranged, why not make that one decently powerful?
This “one cartridge(case) to rule them all” thing is just nuts, when you sit down and analyze it. The “desire path” in tactics and operations has been bending towards a two-cartridge solution since WWII, and trying to deny that fact is murderous on any effort to provide a truly effective small arms suite.
@Kirk–
This is often raised about the .276 Pedersen (7x51mm) cartridge raised by @Lallie in this thread above. The Garand rifle would have been lighter, better balanced (arguably), and been like the Savage 1907: “Ten shots quick” instead of an 8-shot and fairly heavy self-loading rifle. The “any-side up” en bloc clip would have held ten rounds instead of 8. There may have been little need to develop the “light rifle” in the form of the M-1 carbine development project… Maybe.
Instead, as students of Forgotten Weapons and small arms more broadly know, Douglas MacArthur scotched the idea since all of the MGs were in .30-06, and a huge quantity of .30 cal. ammo had been built up as a strategic reserve. Once WWII rolled around–“worst. sequel. ever.”– the U.S. sold off fully a quarter of that reserve of cartridges to the beleaguered post-Dunkirk UK, along with all the Lewis guns and aircraft guns and rather a lot of M1917 “American Enfields” to arm the post-LDV Home Guard, leaving the rimmed .303″ guns for the regular army… And all of this pre-Lend Lease, mind you.
Fast forward a few more months, and the U.S. entered the war with .45 acp pistols and SMGs (Thompson and Reising, with other designs under consideration and “in the wokrs”), followed by the M-1 carbine in .30 cal. caarbine (based on the old Winchester .32 SL that munitions plants in the USA could produce–and noncorrosive too…), and .30-06 ammo packed at the factory on 5-rd. chargers/stripper clips for the M1917s in training use or being shipped to allies, and for the M1903 and M1903A3 rifles being trained on, issued out, and shipped to allies, or on 8-round “en-bloc” clips for the Garand rifle, or supplied as loose cartridges, or on belts for the various iterations of the Browning MGs… “Three cartridges to rule them all” if you will… On the other hand, the German enemy came to something of a similar dilemma, no? Beginning the war with 9x19mm pistols and SMGs and the 7.92x57mm cartridge for bolt-action rifles and the first GPMGs, but later opting–mostly theoretically–for 9x19mm pistols and stolen Italian SMGs and legacy German SMGs, 7.9257mm for a handful of self-loading rifles and a much greater preponderance of bolt-action rifles, and the “Hitler’s buzz saw” MG42 GPMG, but also the 7.92x33mm kurzpatrone slated to replace or supplant the former two–in theory, and given time that the “1000 year Reich” simply didn’t have.
It seems that the first iteration of “intermediate cartridges” were developed mostly by minor powers/ smaller militaries, and that these efforts did not gain traction. Major powers stumbled upon them in periods of duress, and even then, these escaped notice apart from notable exceptions: Belgium (a minor power), Britain (formerly a great power, pre-and-post WWII downwardly mobile), and the USSR.
The first real intermediate cartridges to be developed were by the Soviet Union and the Germans; hardly minor players.
I think part of the problem that led to all the major powers retaining the oversize cartridges stems from the “installed base”, if you will. It was kind of a QWERTY deal; you had your vast procurement systems set to produce all the big cartridges, and were thus stuck with them. The smaller powers were able to pick and choose because they didn’t have the installed base, and were buying new. So… For them, the equivalent of the Dvorak keyboard made more sense.
What’s astounding is just how often people keep coming up with these “ideal cartridge” ideas, how close they match each other… And, their utter failure to be adopted by any major powers. You have to look at that with a certain amount of wonder, and start thinking of these things in terms of farce, rather than serious endeavor.
The long line of failed “Perfect Cartridge” candidates is thought-provoking; it’s like it’s impossible to do the right thing.
The first intermediate cartriges to be issued had been developed by Soviet Union ad Germany.
As far as I know, the first to be conceived especially as intermediate cartridge, to make personal controlled automatic fire from a lightweight rifle possible, had been the french 8X35mm Ribeyrolles, followed by the Italian 7.65x32mm of the Terni 1921 and the Swiss 7.65x35mm of the Furrer rifle (this last one was for a semiauto rifle, the goal was to allow the soldier to carry the most cartriges possible, as WWI demonstrated that rifle exchanges happened only at short distance. This was also part of the reasoning for the Italian 7.65X32mm).
As for the US, as said, to me they had the almost perfect candidate for semiauto rifle/SAW already in production, the .30 Remington.
Notice too that the Soviet track in the Fëderov and Degtyarev 1920s was looking at 6.5mm cartridges, which were totally eliminated from consideration by the 1930s, even if one student of Fëderov’s argued that the “perfect candidate” for a select-fire “Avtomat” was to be had in the .25 Remington. When the Soviets returned to the idea, influenced by German developments of the kurzpatrone, there emerged the 7.62x41mm, later the 7.62×39. For the U.S., what with the so-called “pig board” tests and so on, the Pedersen .276 was mighty close to adoption, and was then entirely forgotten about post-WWII.
The .351 Winchester-based 8x35mm uh, erm, “court-cartouche” truly prefigured the German WWII 7.9x33mm kurz and the Soviet 7.62x39mm “improved SMG” rounds, no? Italy’s Terni 1921, the Swiss endeavors, and the Danish 1932 7x44mm Danrif for the Weibel automatic rifle were innovations by minor powers that largely escaped notice.
“(…)6.5mm cartridges, which were totally eliminated from consideration by the 1930s(…)”
This is not true. In 1936 6.5 mm cartridge (see 2nd image from top)
https://www.kalashnikov.ru/operedivshij-vremya-eksperimentalnyj-sovetskij-avtomat-karabin-1936-g/
@ Daweo
I’ve to say I’m usually more impressed by what the Soviets come up with.
In this case the round is a slightly shorter, rimless, 6.5 Arisaka firing a pretty light projectile. The rifle… The Breda PG seems to have come out better.
I do not have exact figure, but 0.276 Pederson cartridge with a 120 grain bullet will weight about 30 percent heavier than a 7.62X39mm m43. For a 200 round load, you have 50 rounds less rounds for Pederson. About two 25 round magazines. You can lower the bullet to 100 gr and still preform better than a 7.62X39mm. The heaver 150 grain while outperform the 7.62 Nato because of simple better ballistic coefficient. The rifle may not preform optimal in machinegun and vice versa, but you never have to fit a 7.62 in a 5.56 chamber.
@Kirk,
I agree. If you start with a Mauser-class cartridge (and x54 is actually fatter!) you have the exact same issues as 7.62N. A common NATO loadout is 7 30rd magazines at 1lb each. 20rd 7.62 mags are 1.5lb each (and roughly the same height), so five of them weigh more). Cutting bullet weight by a few grains would probably make the weight similar to 7 5.56, but you still have less than half the ammo!
I’ve thought about doing something similar starting at the intermediate-cartridge end (probably possible with modern / NGSW tech), but ultimately the compromises required to achieve decimal-dust cost savings (in a world of $13B carriers) are completely unjustified.
@Mike
Bring back the Sten. For same weight jou can carry 500 9 mm parabellem vs 300 5.56X45. Beyond 80 m you can not penetrate body armor with a steel core 5.56 bullet. Beyond 80 m a 5.56X45mm do not have more value than nuisance. If you do not believe me hier is the article: Projectile for a New Intermediate Cartridge. Here is the authors: Krzysztof PIASTA, Przemysław KUPIDURA, Grzegorz LEŚNIK
Sorry, that makes no sense. 300 M193 cartridges weigh the same as 500 115gr bullets (NATO 9mm bullets alone weigh 124gr, and of course the cartridges also include cases, primers, and powder) Loaded 9mm and 5.56 weights are almost identical, though SMGs use heavier mags.
Those three guys are entitled to their opinion, and millions of Coalition soldiers are entitled to disagree with them.
9mm vs. 5.56mm NATO is such a silly proposition that it’s not even funny. Does nobody recognize the thoroughness with which the MP5 has been supplanted by the various teeny-tiny 5.56mm carbines in both military and paramilitary roles?
9mm is an edge-case cartridge for pistols; it’s just barely big enough to be useful. Nearly everyone is looking at ways to improve it or replace it; the Russians have their 9X21 Gyurza, and there are a bunch of Western attempts at the same thing.
The idea of a 9mm anything substituting for 5.56mm reminds me of those nutty ideas about belt-fed .25 Autos… If you can’t win with an accurate shot, why we’ll just hose them down.
5.56mm M 193 total weight 182gr. 9mm 115gr total weight. Read the article. 5.56X45 mm is obsolete. And body armor make it obsolete.
A typical 7.62
NATO assault rifle with 100 rounds in
magazines weighs approximately 8.4kg. At the
same weight a 5.56 NATO assault rifle allows
for up to three times more ammunition to be
carried.
A submachine gun weighing 3kg chambered for
9×19 Parabellum will allow even more rounds
to be carried, owing to the lighter weight of the
weapon
@ Lallie
115gr (7.45g) is the low end of the weight of the 9mm NATO BULLET.
The round is the bullet plus the case and the powder.
A 9mm round loaded with a 115gr bullet weights 12g (185gr).
A 5.56 NATO round weights about the same.
It was a result of WW1 thinking, when about everyone expected the next war would see long range indirect machine gun fire as an important factor.
Armies that had 6.5 mm infantry rifles (Sweden, Norway, Italy, Netherlands), adopted new, high powered 8 mm machine gun cartridges.
Those with already quite powerful cartridges made a heavy, boattailed bullet the standard load for rifle and machine gun: US .30 M1 and German 7.9 mm sS.
And others, like France as mentioned, but also the UK (Mk. VIII) and the Soviet Union (D, which erroneously is often seen as sniper load, while the dispersion requirement was actually larger than that of the ordinary L) decided to use different loads.
In the end, all had equipped themselves for the last war. WW2 very rarely saw indirect machine gun fire, because the mortar turned out to be much more effective.
Overall, I agree.
But (you knew there was one coming, I’m certain) I disagree that the mortar was why there was less indirect MG fire… If that was really even the case.
They were certainly still training on indirect MG fire in all the armies I’ve researched, but the thing was, there was less scope for it than in WWI because “Mobility”. The Germans loved them some indirect, and used it whenever they could.
The sticking point for everyone was this idea that they had wherein the individual weapon was supposed to be capable of long-range volley fire. They didn’t come out and say so, but all the damn procurement criteria they set indicate that it was still a major concern and desire… Never mind that there was this machinegun thing doing that job for the infantry, and doing it a hell of a lot better. Imagine being the guy trying to direct the manpower equivalent of a standard beltfed MG… How many men would that be, for volley fire at range out to around a 1000m? Would that be roughly a company, or so…? How spread out would they be, how hard would you have to work in order to control that many men over that much space?
Compare to the single MG system on a tripod, with you merely having to tell the gunner “UP 300, LEFT 20, troops in the open, fire for effect…”
See the critical difference, the simplification of it all? Because the MG team was now doing your volley fire for you, you could now transition your riflemen to doing that which they were best suited for, the up-close and personal business out to about 3-400m.
Unfortunately, I fear that the idea of “We gotta have long-range volley capability…” remained ingrained in the subconscious of the procurement decision-makers like MacArthur, and here we are.
There’s a price to be paid for a lack of clarity and vision, which we’ve been paying since WWI. I suspect we’re going to make the same damn mistakes all over again, what with this new inflection point in military affairs we’re seeing play out in Ukraine.
It had not been a surprise. All those cartridges had been developed with a combined system in mind. The MG provides suppression fire, to keep the enemies behind shelters (that’s why those MGs had fairly low rates of fire), and the mortar provides the lethal effect.
The Germans developed something different also because the WWI peace treaty limited the number of both MGs and mortars they could have. So they developed a “light/heavy MG” (so to have more MGs for any role with the allowed number) that could provide the lethal effect directly, working as a “long range shotgun” in the few moments the enemy was visible.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t as directly related to Versailles as you say.
Firstly, the development of German MG doctrine came straight out of WWI Sturmtruppen doctrine. They developed a completely different outlook on the purpose and utility of the MG during that period; they just didn’t have the time to perfect a weapon to match their theory and doctrine. When they did, it became the MG34/42 family.
All of that was going on before WWI even finished. Versailles limitations made the whole thing imperative because the Germans knew that the next war would likely start without them having the time or ability to develop the depth of trained manpower that conscription had afforded them; thus, the shift towards centralizing firepower and its control to the MG team rather than the individual soldier. It wasn’t something they went to because of limited numbers of MGs, but because the reserves of trained manpower weren’t going to be there.
Classical WWII-era German MG doctrine envisaged the MG as the central pillar of firepower and combat action, along with the mortar. They did not hold with the idea that the MG was there to “support” the rifleman, the way that the Allies did. The MG was the whole point of the squad, because that was concentrated firepower directly under the control of the leadership, rather than the daffy ideas held by most allied armies about diffuse firepower wielded by expert Sergeant York-alikes. The US was particularly bad about this, with the Brits being close seconds. The myth of the Battle of Mons, with the “Old Contemptibles” mimicking machineguns with their “mad minute” fires… Just about as bad as the Daniel Boone/Davey Crockett fantasies in the US. All of which served to warp the perceptions of what actually went on in combat during that era.
Other than by driving the train on manpower/training, I fear that Versailles had very limited influence on German MG doctrine. The limitations on numbers of guns were unimportant; von Seeckt behaved very much as though industry would provide, when they needed it. As well, there was a hell of a lot of subversion of the treaty requirements going on, which they took into account.
The real basis for the difference was entirely philosophical and doctrinal, going back to the Sturmtruppen concepts they adopted late in the war. It worked then, it worked in WWII, and it’d still work better than what we’re doing up to the present day. I don’t know about going forward, as I really can’t evaluate what I haven’t personally experienced happening in Ukraine and other locales, but I suspect that the facts on the ground will continue to favor German MG concepts as working better than the ones wherein you use your guns to shoot your infantry onto the objective in frontal attacks. Those have always been wasteful, and I suspect they’re going to be even more wasteful going forward, once you add in the ability to observe with UAV assets. Integrate those with a good gun and crew, plus an effective tripod? Yeesh… I can’t see a way through the defenses, so long as the attacker’s own drones are suppressed effectively.
As a philosophy, the British one was similar. Already the 1938 manual stated that the Bren was the central weapon of the rifle section. In the British section of 10 men the Bren was under the direct control of the section 2iC. Other than the magazines carried by the Bren group (gunner, loader and 2iC) every private of the rifle group carried two magazines for the weapon. Every British private was supposed to be instructed in using the Bren, and the last man standing of the section was supposed to use the Bren.
Again… The difference between Allied and German doctrine was that the Allies saw the MG as a “support” for the infantry section/squad. The German view was that the MG team was the very center of the section/squad, it’s reason for existing; the way the Germans saw it, the riflemen supported the MG team by scouting, carrying ammo, and providing the team security.
The difference is not in who carried the ammo, but in how the guns were used, and what the tactics were. Often, you’d find that the Allied idea was to “shoot their way onto the objective”, and they used their guns to enable the riflemen to perform the primary tactical purpose. The Germans did the diametric opposite; you didn’t “shoot your way onto the objective”, unless you wanted an ass-chewing and disciplinary action. They saw the MG team as being the tool they used to avoid those manpower-costly frontal assaults the Allied infantry saw as the only way forward; the MG team was supposed to be the primary point of focus, and the idea was that instead of using it to help with the frontal assault, the leadership was supposed to use the riflemen to find “surfaces and gaps” in the defenses such that you could work your MG team in behind or parallel to the strongpoint they were attacking, render it untenable, and then take the enemy under fire as they withdrew. The German mentality regarded a frontal assault as a measure of desperation, only to be used when there was no other choice. The Allies looked at frontal assault as the whole point of the infantry section/squad, with the MG team as an aid to the whole suicidal enterprise.
Bluntly put, the Allied doctrine was basically a game of checkers; the German side was playing chess or go.
In late 1980’s and 1990’s they developed all this sexy PDW cartridge to defeat level IIIA body amour at 200 m. The most successful is probably 5.7X28 mm and 4.6X30 mm. The question is why the did they not dug up 9 mm sub machine gun like Uzi or Sterling or MP 5 from storage and gave the sex new name like personal defence weapon. There is 9 mm parabellum cartridge, MEN M91, that can not only penetrate level IIIA but also rifle standard level III.
Fast forward to 2022. Our distinguished polish academic, Krzysztof PIASTA , Przemysław KUPIDURA, and Grzegorz LEŚNIK from the Military University of Technology in Warsaw tell use the following : If you want to reach out and touch Mr. Lee ( from PRC not ROC) in his brand new level IV body amour suit, in meaningful way, you need to put energy into it. If want to keep Mr. Lee at distance of 100 m (and note this is half of 200m) you can fire the different size of bullet at specific speed to penetrate Mr. Lee suit. At 900m/s 5.56mm, 6 mm and 6.5mm will not be effective, but 6.8 and 7 mm will. At 1000m/s 6mm, 6.5 mm 6.8 mm and 7mm will penetrate level 4 body armour at 100 m. What you need to do is to translate a 1000m/s velocity in to approximate commercial cartridge size. This will be: 243 Winchester, 260 Remington, 270 Winchester, 280 Remington. Those that are unfamiliar with the rounds this is based on 308 or 30-06. The 0.473 Mauser rim diameter. This cartage is all big boy Mauser pants rounds. To defeat level IV body armour with a 5.56m round you need 1826.76 J of energy. From M4 carbine you delivering less than 1500 J at point blank. Even at point blank a M4 carbine will not penetrate level IV. Because 5,56X45 mm have so little energy, it have nearly zero behind armour effect. The effect with a M4 carbine will be similar to that soldier in the Korea War with M1 carbine experienced. Firing at point blank range with no effect on level IV armour
An Uzi will not penetrate level 4 body armour. The point I am trying to make is if you equip with ineffective M4 you can equip with equal ineffective sub machineguns. The post-cold war standard for body armour was low. To visualise the change in energy between level IIIA to level IV you need to look 5.7x28mm. This is cartridge with little energy than a 0.22 rimfire magnum. Compare this with a 30-06 round. Here is full citation :Piasta, K., Kupidura, P. and Leśnik, G., 2022. Projectile for a new intermediate cartridge.Problems of Mechatronics. Armament, Aviation, Safety Engineering,13(4), pp.123-136.
If disagree you can write to the magazine. Millions of Coalition soldiers would have valid option if they have fought massive of Chinese storm troopers in level IV body armour. Unfortunately, they did not.