Why couldn't the US develop a modern LMG/GPMG for WWII?

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>>33399447
Outdated automatic rifle also related

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Dunno

They made do with what they had tho

>>33399455
Who needs a flamethrower when you have a machine gun?

>>33399459
Combine it with tracers only, and party like its Berlin 1945

Why couldn't the rest of the fucking world issue a semi auto infantry rifle in 1938?

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Dear retarded OP the US had the father of the FN MAG in 1943. Developing and choosing to adopt aren't the same fucking thing.

http://ww2.rediscov.com/spring/VFPCGI.exe?IDCFile=/spring/DETAILS.IDC,SPECIFIC=11344,DATABASE=objects,

>>33399447
It's less of an issue when every single infantryman has atleast a semi-automatic weapon as standard (except for a while in the Pacific, I'm aware of that).
Also what this guy >>33400752 said.

>>33399447
>>33399454
They had decent guns developed, but for the most part we were putting out stop-gap measures since we really didn't plan on updating our army until we got involved in the war. When we got smacked by the Japs, we pulled had to pull our shit together, and by the end of the war we had pretty good gear.

Once a war the scope of WWII starts you dance with the one you brought. Small arms are a trivial matter in a World War. Neither the shitiness of Jap small arms nor the superority of German small arms really amounted to a hill of beans.

Artillery, air power and most importantly superior logistics won the war for the Western Allies. The Russians benefited from Western largess and logistics and threw mass numbers into the meat grinder.

The reason the US did not invest in LMG development is because it wasn't important.

I would have zero qualms taking a M1919A6 into combat today as long as we could drill and tap the receive to mount a length of picatinny rail.

>>33400829
>shitiness of Jap small arms
uhhh...

>>33399447
The US did not prioritize the LMG because their infantry doctrine made heavy use of self-loading rifles.

Except for the PJs, belt feds just weren't necessary.

>>33400971
The Japanese weapons were objectively of lower quality and quantity than western arms. Your love of anime and honoarbru jap culture doesn't matter. Like he said, in a meatgrinder world war in which thousands are lost every day, small arms don't matter that much.

>>33400752
The USSR had the SVT series, but rolled back to the Mosin after the invasion by Germany in 1941, because they needed a lot of decent rifles NOW instead of handfuls of great rifles later.

>>33400829
>superority of German small arms


yeah ...

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>>33400780
> An endeavor to develop stamping and brazing production methods for various parts of the gun, a feature greatly desired by the Technical Staff of the Ordnance Department, proved abortive when two of the leading companies of the United States working with stampings and brazings reported the parts of the T23 not adaptable to economical manufacture by these means.
> While the weapon tested well, the project was never seriously considered for adoption since they could not get the weight of the weapon under 26 lbs.

I'm assuming this is unloaded. I don't understand though. A 240 is about 25 pounds.

They couldn't mass produce it. Still looks bretty cool.

>>33399447
Between the M1917, M1918, M1919, and M2 Brownings, the US had the machine gun for almost every situation.

>>33401110
They still produced a shitload of SVTs
But yeah, different scales

>>33401131

The MG-42 is still in use today abet in 7.62x51mm.

The STG-44 was a first in its class novel new weapon.

K98 perfectly good bolt action infantry rifle.

Your argument is what exactly?

>>33400971

Late war guns was utter crap and gave all Jap small arms a bad reputation. Their Designs were serviceable but dated WWI era or weird Japanese weapon designs (HMGs fed with stripper clips).

Once US strategitic bombing began in mid 1944 the Japs were in dire straights as thier military industrial base was highly concentrated.

>>33400780
Its beautiful.

>>33401209

They could mass produce it. But not economically.

A lot cheaper to keep building and refining the production process of existing machine guns you are already fielding then to open up new production lines on a new weapon.

What is "best" is not always gets built. Cost and time are always a factor.

As was already postulated small arms just aren't that important in most wars.

>>33401642
Didnt the frenchies also have a machinegun that fed from a metal stripperclip?

>>33401863
Yes, In fact the jap machine gun was based on it. It was a hotchkiss machine gun. Interestingly the first one (of WWI fame) was made by an American, just like the maxim. You're welcome, Europe.

American leadership were dumbasses. We had very little real experience in WWI and didn't come to appreciate squad-level automatic fire until a ways into WWII, hence the backwards "every American a rifleman" motto and the outsourcing of our main SMG which ended up being a finicky expensive junker.
Eventually we pulled our head out of our ass with the BAR, but it was a half-measure

>>33401014
Quality at the start of the second Sino-Jap war and into mid WW2 wasn't too bad, they did the job as intended when you're shooting up masses of chinese peasants armed with fuck all but happy thoughts, late 1800's euro-milsurp (or older!) and kitchen implements for the most part.
I had a couple of the earlier era Nambu's my grandfather brought back and for the most part after I cleaned them up, gave them a look over and test fire, where reasonable pistols. They where weak as piss, would murder small animals and inflict severe misery on people shot by them, but that wasn't really a 'Jap thing', they just didn't really go for sidearm pistols for various reasons.

Rifles though, the Type 38 all through its production was a good bolt action rifle, accurate, mild recoil and quite over-engineered in terms of strength. The Type99 in its early production wasn't an awful gun either, but of course by 1942, things are starting to get a bit crazy as the japs decided to poke the yanks in the eye, the SEA campaign was having problems with supply, the Australians murdering them in the jungle and some factions in China managed to get their shit together long enough to bother them.

Late 1943 onwards, it all sucked and there wasn't enough of anything.

>>33401863
Three different ones actually. The St-Etienne M1907, the Hotchkiss M1914 which mostly replaced it, and the Hotchkiss M1909 which is more of a light machine gun. A bunch of them were later modified to accept belts. And yeah, the Type 3 machine gun is a straight up copy of the M1914.

>>33402036
Hotchkiss died in 1885, way before the M1914 was designed. What he did make was a Gatling style revolving gun.

>>33402090
The japanese manual of arms for the entirety of their history as a unified nation has been severely limited by the availability of quality resources with which to produce.
Nobody reasonable will argue the Japanese have not since their feudal period upheld a high level of arms development technology - it's just that all innovation is driven to making up for material shortcomings. When they get a shot at leveraging quality materials you get solid weapons like the Type 99 and Type 38s, but Japan has yet to hold onto a territory long enough to truly integrate natural resources into the standard manual of arms.

>>33402099
Shit, my bad. He at least founded the company haha. Thanks for the info.

>>33401573
>K98 perfectly good bolt action infantry rifle.
>bolt action

Very nice hunting rifle. Otherwise dead weight when a lighter weapon would allow more MG ammo to be carried.

>>33401642
>Once US strategitic bombing began in mid 1944 the Japs were in dire straights as thier military industrial base was highly concentrated.

Submarines rekt merchant shipping too, which fucked manufacturing in ways dispersal couldn't fix.

>>33401110
>great rifles

SVT is pretty shit in terms of reliability.

So was the G43.

>>33401573
Yea, most of the germans carried K98k's. Subjectively, Garand > K98k

>>33402068
We pulled the BAR out of our ass at the end of WW1. Also, machine guns aren't too important when every man has a semi-auto rifle.

>>33402332
This retard actually believes every squad should just carry MG ammo and nothing else.

Hey dipshit who protects the MG while it reloads, changes barrels, covers its flanks, picks off lone targets at far ranges, etc? NOT a bunch of guys with machinepistols

>>33402384
Except military doctrine prevented (or, at least discouraged) infantry from using Garands as suppressing fire, particularly early in the War. The idea was each of those 8 shots was on-target - not "wasting" rounds on indirect fire was.
The BAR was actually intended as a squad automatic weapon. Mainly for walking fire, but at least the bean counters got it through their head to use them as squad anchors around which the infantry pivots, advances and falls back. THIS was where we pulled our heads out of our asses.

>>33401863
Was that the mas 38

>>33402361
It was a lot better than the AVS-36 and both the G-43 and SVT 40 were probably the best they could be given the circumstances they were being produced in.

Besides, even if it does jam fairly frequently, a rifle squad with SVTs was likely a hell of a lot better off than the German riflemen with Kar98s who would have to fight them

>>33402252
For the time, Japan didn't really take off in terms of modernisation until about 1870... I think, fucking memory is sketchy
Before that you had shrieking manlets running around regularly still murdering each other with swords, old timey flintlock designs that probably fell off the back of a Portuguese trading vessel and rolling on horses like its 1499. In the span of 30 years they where able to muster enough modern warships to beast-fuck the Russians at sea (not exactly a hard task, but hey, someone's got to pick the low hanging fruit) and secured a 'bit' of the resources needed to properly modernise themselves, smack the crap out of Korea and Manchuria after WW1.

A lot of the big problems getting in the way of development was the simple fact that basically the navy and army didn't really want anything to do with one another and it was a constant bunfight for any kind of budget. 'Generally' the navy won out more than the army as they where seen as the bulwark of getting shit done- planes and big battleships aren't cheap!
Plus they're insular little cunts that might take an idea from someone they respect, but anyone else with a good idea isn't even going to get a listen in the ear of anyone that matters.

>>33402424
Political bullshittery obviously plays a part, but the history of Japan has been unquestionably shaped by availability of quality Iron or lack thereof. Japan has just never had the resources to produce quality weaponry en masse for extended periods. The U.S. embargo that ended their Pacific expansion was like throwing the country back into the Dark Ages.
It was totally justified, but from the Japanese nationalist perspective it must have been horrifying

>>33402453
Think a lot of it to Japanese eyes was to avoid going down the route that China ended up in- basically a huge bitch fight between European powers chopping them up. So they had to expand 'somewhere' and after 1850's when some Americans lobbed cannon shells and 'read my fucking letter you cunts!' happened it was the real wake up call that they couldn't sit on their arses forever in isolation.
Course, 'how' and why they did it incurred some errors along the way like sinking a US ship in China and then basically fucking everything up they could politically and diplomatically.

In terms of arms development, it was also different to western countries in so much that if you had a good idea for any weapons system, just roll up to the patent office, make it, send it off to be tested and you'd probably get a (mostly) fair hearing from the respective military. That didn't work so much in Japan because you really needed to know someone high up or be a higher up to get so much as a foot in the door. So if old General Wotsits in Japan has an idea for a gun, it might be shit, but it'll get tested and more than likely adopted, hence the masses of apparent crap they seemed to produce.
Later they started scrounging around for ideas to better small arms, even if it meant duplicating enemy ones, but by then it was all over and too little too late

>>33399447
FDR as with All abbreviated name democrats presidents and dems in general was a horrible war president. if it wasn't for our economic might and our oceans we would have lost 17 times over

>>33402332
>A very nice hunting rifle
Christ you're dumb. They had the same type of infantry weapon their peer forces had. Stop spouting fucking History channel memes.

>>33400829
>The Russians benefited from Western largess and logistics and threw mass numbers into the meat grinder.

Stop this fucking meme please.

>>33402402
>at least the bean counters got it through their head to use them as squad anchors around which the infantry pivots, advances and falls back. THIS was where we pulled our heads out of our asses.
No. Stop.

>>33400829
>The Russians benefited from Western largess and logistics and threw mass numbers into the meat grinder.
Enemy at the gates is not a documentary.

>>33402919
>US supplied 50% of Russian war materiels
>Russians lost 20-30 million soldiers
It's not a meme dude. Saying they benefited from the US supplying their military doesn't detract anything from what they did with that material.

>>33402945

Make a counter argument you dumb fuck.

>>33402919

>>33402945

Make a counter argument you dumb fuck. Russia undoubtably befitted from American lend lease.

>>33402983
Read a war memoir or two you fucking chimp.

USSR conscripted the shit out of their subjects including many Mongols and threw them into the war.

Many of their caches and corpses were found loaded with American chow, ammo and vehicles.

A passage from Blood Red Snow by Gunther K states that Soviet POWs would laugh and tell their captors for every 1 German there are 12 Reds on their side.

Sepp Allerberger's memoir stated the same.

And Leon Degrelle

And Fernand Kaisergruber

And Werner Kindler

Or were they all in cahoots together to make up this one lie?

>>33403003
Argue against what? That the guy thinks that bean counters determined squad level doctrine or that the BAR used for walking fire was dropped after WW1 and was used as he describes from the beginning of the war and there was no, "pulling our heads out of our asses" moment.
>>33403012
>>>33402945 (You)
>Make a counter argument you dumb fuck. Russia undoubtably befitted from American lend lease.
Wut? Wrong post dude.

>>33400829
Pure, unadulterated, weapons grade bullshit.

>>33401573
MG42 was too ammo hungry.
The Stg was novel, but produced in small numbers and was delicate.
The Kar 98 was a bolt action and therefore, along with all other bolt actions of the war, obsolete once the US got involved.

>>33402402
>Each of those shots was on target
So is suppressive fire moron. Not as if you purposefully aim over their heads.

American doctrine didn't place much emphasis on needing LMG's. The BAR was the substitute, as it filled the role of rifle, and LMG.

The U.S. simply didn't see a need to try and adopt something else to replace it. Between the U.S. having two of the few semi-automatic battle rifles (assuming the carbine counts as a BR), BAR's, Tommy Guns, and such, there simply wasn't much of a reason to try and shoehorn a LMG into a very aggressive war where armored vehicles with Heavy MG's (that could be detached and used like LMG'S), paratroopers, and effective riflemen were the main focus.

Would an LMG have been good? Sure. But why introduce a new gun into your military when the job is getting done and it would cost time and money that would be better spent in other places?

Lots of bad memes have been propagated through the years about it being shit, but the reality is the BAR was an extremely effective squad automatic weapon.

It fires from an open bolt, so while it doesn't have the Bren's ability to quickly swap barrels it really takes a LOT of shooting to overheat the barrel. 20 round mag also helps a lot with this. Besides carrying around extra barrels really only would have exacerbated its weight flaw, which was really the only problem with the gun in the first place.

Shoots an exquisite (albeit heavy cartridge), the ergonomics are really impressive for the weight, its ridiculously accurate until about 3 or 4 rounds in (the much maligned slow fire actually helps) and it beats the shit out of any of its contemporaries in walking fire. Also its durability is unquestioned. Automatics of that era were a definite improvement over dogshit like the Chauchat but they still had reliability quirks (feeding a mag into a Bren is a delicate affair even under no stress shooting), BAR was rock solid.

>>33404295
>20 mag round and slow rate of fire was helpful
cute

>>33404328
Tommy Gun was better than the alternative that allies in Yurop had. The Sten.

And the BAR was demonstratably helpful against Germans, Nips, and Italians armed with bolt action rifles.

Only the Germans had any advantages in technology as far as their weapons went. And their LMG was still largely used as a HMG because they were on the defense by the time the U.S became involved to any meaningful degree.

>>33400752
The only big militaries that didn't have advanced semi-auto rifle programs in 1938 were Germany and Great Britain + Commonwealth nations(they've had Lee enfield conversions, each of them more complicated than the other so none of them has seen any use).

French had what eventually became MAS40, 44 and 49/56.

Soviets had AVS(both select fire and semi-auto versions) and SVT--38(later 40). Italians had several prototypes but adoption of new 7.35 cartridge sabotaged any progress in actually getting them fielded. Japanese of all nations tried to tweak Petersen-like design into being usable(jumping to new cartridge also made it difficult). Czechoslovakia and Poland had functional semi-autos by the end of 1930's. It's just that the only two nations that ended up issuing them on large scale were US and USSR.

>>33401573
MG-42 is good design. 34 too

STG-44 was also nice but came too late.

The reality was that for majority of the war Germans had to rely on 3 designs. Mauser K98 - which was good bolt action rifle, but comparable to basically every design on earth. MP38/40 both of which were decent SMG's but had shitty magazine causing many reliability problems and even though, by the time of MP38 adoption they were super-simple weapons, STEN and M3 made them look like the gucci option, that gave at best questionable advantages over those two and MG34 which was great.

The semi-auto rifles they've had were either rube-goldberg machines or nothing exceptional, FG-42 looks epic but was sabotaged by re-chambering from 8mm kurz to 8mm mauser. STG as I've said came very late and there was enormous problem with ammo supply through its entire service.

One of the reason why they've never pushed for much more until very late in the war was that there was no need for this. Their infantry doctrine was centred around MG-34 or 42's so who cared about almost everything else being sub-par?

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>>33404366
>Tommy Gun was better than the alternative that allies in Yurop had. The Sten.

No, the Sten was an OK gun for it's price
heck, you could buy a m1919 with tripod for the same money as the Thompson back then

pic related
the Greaser was probebly the most modern firearm the US issued back in WW2

>>33404366
>Tommy Gun was better than anything
Lol.

It was heavy expensive unreliable piece of garbage.

>>33400829
>shitiness of Jap small arms
just stop posting

>>33401014
>The Japanese weapons were objectively of lower quality
you got a source to back that claim up?
because i dont remember any country besides Japan chrome lining the bores of their standard issue rifles.
Type 99 machine gun was fantastic
Nambus were meh but side arms are insignificant

>>33404081
supressive fire is meant to keep the enemy behind cover so your men can advance safely. of course you still try to hit the enemy, but try supressive fire with a bolt action rifle taking careful aim at individual soldiers. its not the same thing as letting off a burst at a group of guys, hopefully killing them but definitely making them go "o shit" and ducking for cover

>>33404794
Lucky you wouldn't be using a bolt action rifle in the US army then.

>>33404871
i think my point went completely over your head

>>33401014
You literally have no idea what you are talking about.
Read Japanese Rifles of World War II by Duncan McCollum and we will talk again.

>>33404295

You talk about memes propagating, but say the chauchat was bad? It was loved by troops who used the lebel version, only americans had a problem because they couldn't manufacture it properly.

>>33402848

>same type of infantry weapon their peer forces had

Not if all americans have at least a garand or carbine and 2/3rds of the russians have PPSh's and PPS'.You could kill someone to this day with a brown bess,doesnt mean there arent better options available.

>>33402587
You've mistakenly come to /k/ and not Twitter, Mr. Trump.

>>33404232
>there simply wasn't much of a reason to try and shoehorn a LMG into a very aggressive war where armored vehicles with Heavy MG's (that could be detached and used like LMG'S), paratroopers, and effective riflemen were the main focus.

It should be noted that the US had crew-served machine guns at the platoon and company levels, just not at the squad level like the Germans did.

>>33404295
I know what you've been watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyJs6expvT8

>>33404558
>the only big militaries that didn't have them were [every big military except the US]
The SVT wasn't produced in large enough quantities to be more than a footnote until 1946. The Gewehr 43 wasn't produced in large enough quantities to be more than a footnote EVER. The Brits, Japs, Austrians, French, Italians, and basically everybody else that had two privates to rub together didn't produce one period.

>>33399455
I'd like to think that guys nickname was mama duck

>>33406023
FDR was barring JFK and LBJ the worst war president we ever had. we were completely unprepared despite seeing it years away. Guy was a fucking talentless cripple retard who got by on ez mode policies carried out by superior subordinates

>>33404617
If I were to be issued anything back then I'd want this

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But they did.

>>33400829
>threw mass numbers into the meat grinder.
when will this meme end

>The Russians benefited from Western largess and logistics

Not near as much as Americans make it out to believe

>>33405285
you are missing the bigger picture, Each Army uses different tactics, The German was based around the MG not the individual rifleman numb nuts

>>33400829
This whole post is a joke, you're an idiot.

Difference in doctrine, mostly.

German: The MG34/MG42 is the lynchpin of the squad. Your riflemen are there to keep the gunner alive and shooting, as he is expected to be the most lethal person on the field. IIRC German infantrymen even carried extra belts and barrels for the MG42 even if they weren't actually involved in the operation of the gun.

American: The rifles are the backbone of the squad, and the BAR is a supporting element. BAR suppresses while the riflemen take aimed shots (which they can do faster than almost all of their contemporaries because lol semiauto). The MG element is less powerful, but the individual riflemen are more capable so it sort of balances out.

After the war, the US adopted certain elements of German infantry doctrine, which is why you would later see LMGs and GPMGs become a regular part of the average US infantry squad by Vietnam. The M60 even borrows a lot of design elements from the MG42, IIRC.

>>33409200

and look how it turned out

>>33409975
Massively in their favour and with a massively positive K/D?

>>33402388
Other MGs

>>33402587
>>33406023
We don't need Shareblue here right now. Please leave.

>>33399447
we did. the Johnson LMG. but it didnt monetarily benefit Springfield Armory so it never caught on.

>>33404617
and it was issued into the 1990s

>>33411507
>didnt monetarily benefit Springfield Armory

wat

>>33405285
And? The US were the only ones using semi autos as general issue. This has been established as something that makes them exceptional in this case. Literally everyone else had clip fed bolt actions as standard.

Are you really comparing service rifles to submachine guns, because you know the Germans had those too, right?

Stop being a fucking retard.