If semi-automatic rifles existed since the beginning of XX century, why had no military adopted any of them as their main weapon until about 1940?
If semi-automatic rifles existed since the beginning of XX century, why had no military adopted any of them as their main weapon until about 1940?
Military leadership didnt want them for reasons that troops would waste ammo, they were harder to train on, less reliable than bolt actions. But there were countries trying to make them standard issue since the 30slike france or russia with the avs 36. Also france issued thousands out to troops in the trenches during WW1 with the RSC 1917
basically, what is correct because ammo production was still relatively new, and you couldn't mass produce ammunition like you could until the 1930s.
Cost of rearming and retraining, inertia, a perception that rapid fire would lead to soldiers just wasting ammo in a panic.
Was about to post this. Always struck me as ironic that they were afraid of wasting ammo then during WW1 we saw iron curtain tactics with emplaced machineguns
It's honestly nuts to think about. For example, WWI era Lee Enfield rifles had a magazine cutoff. The idea was the solider would load the mag, then flip the cutoff switch effectively turning the gun into a single-shot. That was how the rifle was meant to be used most of the time, then in case of emergency the magazine cutoff could be flipped back and the magazine would now work. It seems completely bass-ackwards to me to develop a brand new high tech weapon, one of whose main benefits is the magazine, and then deliberately cuck that feature.
Fun fact: Brit soldiers were never issued spare mags for the Enfield; it was loaded with stripper clips. The reason the mag was removable was for cleaning and maintenance.
I heard they have one spare mag in case they broke their primary one.
Every soldier was issued one spare magazine. It was only to be used when the original was damaged. Original magazines were chained to the rifle so they wouldn't be misplaced.
Just prior to the SMLE being issued the spare magazines were returned to depot for armorer issue only. Cleaning rods were also returned at the same time.
Thank goodness collecting those cleaning rods cut down on base shooters.
Musketry Regulations Section 53 Para's 264 and 265 264. Troops armed with rifles fitted with safety catches will invariably set the catch to safety before movement. The use of the cut-off is to be confined in their case to occasions when they are not actually engaged with the enemy, when it may be employed for the purpose either of charging the magazine without inserting a cartridge in the chamber, or to unload the rifle while retaining cartridges in the magazine. It is never to be used to enable the rifle to be used as a single loader, and is not to supersede the use of the safety catch. 265. In the case of rifles which have no safety catches, the cut-off will be pressed in and the rifle unloaded on all occasions.
>rapid fire would lead to soldiers just wasting ammo in a panic
Which they still do to this day
>Cost
This
I posted a cost table the last time this thread came up about a week ago; it's cheaper to field a squad armed with bolt-action rifles and a machine-gun, than it is to field a squad armed entirely with semi-auto rifles, and chances are the MG-bolt squad is better than the semi-auto squad
overtly complicated systems or had other issues with feeding their desired rounds
France tried, but then WW1 happened.
the rsc-17
Right, the plan was to have every soldier armed with a semi auto rifle. If the war happened a little later, then they would have had them in time, but when the war happened, they had to switch back to bolt actions for costs, and what was available.
>heavier
>questionable reliability
>questionable ammo consistency (contributes to ^)
>typically used lower powered ammo (otherwise, Heavy)
>Seen as underpowered compared to the typical service rounds of the era
>Also seen as less reliable than the average service rifle
>Brass fuddery wanting to restrict soldier's ROF
>They just adopted these bolt actions, you expect them to almost immediately replace them?
The military is always a few decades behind the curve in technology.
Many reasons:
>Lack of reliability
New concepts that haven't yet been fully tested or perfected.
>Gas tube port
Makes the rifle slightly less accurate than a bolt action. The Germans had this as a disqualifier so Mauser made the complex but unreliable G41 which had a dirty gas assisted recoil system and didn't work very well. Walther said 'Screw the guidelines' and made the G43 which just had a direct impingement system. Which would you being somewhat adopted.
>Logistics
Often a new cartridge and magazines that need to be stocked.
>Costs
While some were fed from a stripper clip, others were magazine fed. Stamped clips are much cheaper than magazines.
>Concerns of quality of fire
Basically a lot of bigwigs thought that troops would just magdumo and be out of ammunition. And that the quantity of shots will increase without quality going up. This was the philosophy behind why the M1 Garand used an En-bloc clip instead of a BAR magazine.
>Non military cartridges
The Remington model 8 likely would have been perfect but the cartridges were not military standard. They likely would have underperformed.
Things might have been different if WW1 lasted into the 20s. The Pederson device was going to roll out into full manufacturing and become a fixture on the battlefield. The Germans were Embracing the MP18 and Semi-Automatic pistols aswell as having some Mondragoon rifles. Even in 1917 the first BAR rifles were deployed and those were a resounding success. Hell even the Thompson was only around a year from being completed. With it's first production coming in the 20s.
Also...
>tips Fedorov.
The G43 was piston driven. They just copied Tokarev's design from the SVT.
There's s thread in the catalogue right now full of people insisting that CAS using gun runs is still a viable tactic and that pgms are an overrated luxury.
That's why semi automatic rifles did not recieve widespread early adoption
because ammo production wasn't up to snuff, both in quality and in quantity. Without good quality ammo you're not getting necessary reliability and without mass production you need to preserve it. Look up how ammo production changed before during and after ww1.
Kids shit on military command but they weren't completely stupid and were working with the conditions they found themselves in.
going to add a little tangent that development and trials for the M1 happened earlier than the Gewehr 41 and SVT, and the US didn't deal with the same catastrophic losses of the Soviets in the early stages of the war, allowing them to keep making Garands instead of ditching them for older rifles like what happened with the SVT.
bolt actions were also being supplemented by the machine gun, and later the sub-machine gun. I imagine that people in charge figured why bother spending all this time and money engineering a new, potentially bogus infantry rifle when looking into improving the machine gun and the emerging SMG would be a better use of resources
machine gun was the ammo hog, and keeping it supplied was always the priority
SMGs were simple enough that they could use the existing manufacturing base and ammo well enough, while autoloading rifles were not. Also, SMGs were still secondary weapons to the bolt action rifles.
Reliability issues was a big one. Early designs required lubricated cartridges and crapped out as soon as any dirt or sand or whatever got into the thing.
They cost more than the improvement in military capability they provided. Cost is in purchase price, maintenance and ammo which they consume at a much higher rate than bolt actions