Standard Military Gear circa WWII

[pinecone]

Re: Standard Military Gear circa WWII

 

Actually, despite what Hollywood shows, that "ting" only occurred when the ejected stripper clip hit something hard on the way down, like a rock or a concrete floor. It wasn't part of the action itself. It also isn't that loud.

And yes, it was faster. Didn't matter so much with aimed fire at range, but snap-shooting up close it could fire as quickly as you could pull the trigger, a trick no bolt-action could match.

Yeah, you can ignore it. Or you can use differences in equipment to add flavour and versimillitude, making the military forces into less cookie-cutter cannon-fodder and more real people for your characters to interact with.

 

Sure...it all comes down to "flava"....but US Infantry had no GP machine gun or a good light MG, unlike...well everyone else...

 

So are you going to integrate Equipment, Doctrine, and Training (The "holy trinity" of infantry function) Sure you can, but it's not nessisary at all.....again as I asked was the M-1 better? Sure Did it have drawbacks? again sure, was it so good it should have game modifiers? Thats not so clear, the extra fire power certainly helped to make up for the lack of a true squad automatic (the US used the BAR, an automatic rifle designed for individual use in WW1) But US training and Doctrine limited the BAR to the role of special issue (basicly as a squad automatic)

 

Doctrine and Training trump Equipmant anyway, after all we got rid the the M-60 (our version of the GP MG) and replaced it with the SAW....( basicly a modernised BAR in both use and funcionality)

 

So, if you like all that "gun" stuff...go for it! But if it seems a bit much, well, ignore it without guilt.

 

Lastly how does ignoring the differances in Guns, make People cardboard cut outs? Guns don't have personalitys.....

[Sundog]

Re: Standard Military Gear circa WWII

 

Guns don't have personalities, but their capabilities will influence the actions of those wielding them. For instance, in a close-combat situation, US officers were less likely to call for a bayonet to be fixed than Commonwealth forces were - for the reason that the M1 was more capable at close range than the Lee-Enfield was. Consider the effect of a group, previously having worked exclusively with American forces, when the first time they operate with a British unit they see them charge an opponent with cold steel...

[Markdoc]

Re: Standard Military Gear circa WWII

 

Guns don't have personalities' date=' but their capabilities will influence the actions of those wielding them. For instance, in a close-combat situation, US officers were less likely to call for a bayonet to be fixed than Commonwealth forces were - for the reason that the M1 was more capable at close range than the Lee-Enfield was. Consider the effect of a group, previously having worked exclusively with American forces, when the first time they operate with a British unit they see them charge an opponent with cold steel...[/quote']

 

I honestly doubt that had the slightest effect on the use of bayonets since the same is true of the many US troops who used Springfields. I think it's entirely a cultural artifact and a product of the different infantry doctrines. US infantry very infrequently engaged in bayonet charges on enemy positions in WW2, regardless of what they were armed with. Japanese forces did it as a matter of routine*. (Interestingly, two of the few large US bayonet charges in Europe were made by US nisei troops, who shouted "Banzai!" as they charged!). Commonwealth doctrine was somewhere in between - except for Sikhs, and Gurkhas, who loved getting stuck in almost as much as the Japanese. You can still see that today: there have been several instances of British troops bayonet-charging in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was frequently-used tactic in the Falklands. That's even though the troops were using bullpup-style assault rifles, which are handier in close combat than the US M16/M14s, so it's pretty clearly nothing to do with the rate of fire or size. It's pretty rare for US troops to fix bayonets and charge these days - indeed, the US army has entirely dropped bayonet training (the marines still do it, though).

 

The whole bayonet charge thing is cultural/psychological and only secondarily to do with equipment: with a few exceptions, hardly any people actually got killed by bayonets even in battles where intense close combat occurred.

 

Cheers, Mark

 

* I kid you not - they had bayonet mounts on some of their machine guns!