I have a plan, it is a good plan and I loves me some mad calibres, I used to have a rifle chambered in 204 ruger.
A Better Rifle at Halloween
- Thread starter diesal
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- britwank rifles ww1 different
Good, good.
I have a spare tail here to put on your plan should you ever feel the need for a weasel…
You would have to increase the weight of the bolt a lot to slow down the cyclic rate enough to make it a practical weapon. That is the main reason why this sort of thing rarely works. The Beretta 93r, which I shot quite a lot, fired its three round burst at a rate of 1100 rpm.
Parker Hale got their prototype Bushmaster, which I also shot, down to 180, which they reckoned was the highest controllable rate of fully automatic fire for a weapon to be fired in a single or two handed grip. They did it by getting the weapon to fire itself electronically in semi automatic mode while the trigger was depressed. Very cunning, very expensive and impracticable in 1914. Controllable, double-handed 3-4 round bursts into the black of a PL7 were possible at 25 yds.
I suppose someone might try it, find out it does not work, and webley get word of it leading to them starting work on a real sub machine gun.
Remember that OTL the SMG came out of the idea for a lighter machine gun, not a more powerful pistol.
The 32 scorpion idea is practicable, but not really a a front line combat weapon. .32 ACP is a fairly weedy proposition when one is used to .455. See Colonel Cooper's comments on SMGs! Better to start from scratch. .380, 9mm browning long etc are all good cartridges for a blowback sub machine gun.
Parker Hale got their prototype Bushmaster, which I also shot, down to 180, which they reckoned was the highest controllable rate of fully automatic fire for a weapon to be fired in a single or two handed grip. They did it by getting the weapon to fire itself electronically in semi automatic mode while the trigger was depressed. Very cunning, very expensive and impracticable in 1914. Controllable, double-handed 3-4 round bursts into the black of a PL7 were possible at 25 yds.
I suppose someone might try it, find out it does not work, and webley get word of it leading to them starting work on a real sub machine gun.
Remember that OTL the SMG came out of the idea for a lighter machine gun, not a more powerful pistol.
The 32 scorpion idea is practicable, but not really a a front line combat weapon. .32 ACP is a fairly weedy proposition when one is used to .455. See Colonel Cooper's comments on SMGs! Better to start from scratch. .380, 9mm browning long etc are all good cartridges for a blowback sub machine gun.
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I don't. Leaves you with an empty magazine after one trigger pull and sprays 265 grn bullets all over the environment and everywhere except on your target.
This conversation started with a fully auto Webley pistol, so it naturally took us to submachine guns. Pistol calibre rifles are quite another matter, and possibly a very good idea indeed if we ever get to trench warfare conditions. I can see the possibility of an American entrepreneur developing a trench rifle, in .44 special with a 20round box magazine. Or you could make it in a rimless 30/30....
See Col Cooper's Thumper concept.
The OTL MP18 and Villa Perosa etc. had the starting point of simple .32 blowback pistols with a heavy bolt replacing the slide as mass. Allowing the use of stronger cartridges impractical in a hand held pistol. With auto only fire you can simplify the fire control system and pop the whole thing on a short carbine size stock. The real engineering development is on the magazine to work reliably with a 30 or so capacity and to have it all for for mass production.
The Webley short recoil is a far more complex way to that end and it would be difficult to enlarge the slide mass enough to restrict the rate of fire to a controllable amount. I would guess an automatic Really there is nothing to stop a 1914 Sten gun other than doing a mass production reliable magazine.
The Webley short recoil is a far more complex way to that end and it would be difficult to enlarge the slide mass enough to restrict the rate of fire to a controllable amount. I would guess an automatic Really there is nothing to stop a 1914 Sten gun other than doing a mass production reliable magazine.
I, ahem, jumped the gun. A PCC would be a better option and the one that would be mass produced as it already is a known quantity.
However, I do suspect it won’t be long between squaddies receiving a Webley PCC and trying to fiddle it into being an SMG.
Of course, as @HPM pointed out it would be effectively unusable and frowned upon. But like toothpicks in SLRs, I suspect some would use it and the demand for a controllable SMG with a lower rate of fire would percolate up. How long it would take is another question.
Lever action?
I don’t want to turn this into a cartridge war, and 1914 is the only time that adding more chamberings make sense, but would someone please explain to me what’s up with rimmed cartridges and automatic fire. (Preferably without it being an ‘ad hominem’ explanation). The Russians still use it and I don’t hear people complaining the Vickers or Lewis were temperamental.
If you are using a box magazine and you have not been exact enough in its design then its possible to load rimmed ammunition in such a way that rims overlap and so cause jams. With belts its even simpler, rimless you can strip out by just pushing the round forward, rimmed you have to pull it out backwards then push it forwards. Not actually much of a problem if the gun is designed originally to be belt fed but if you are trying to convert a magazine loaded weapon to belt feed, can be an issue.
These led historically to a feeling that rimless rounds caused less hassle ( as stated with good design its not really much of a problem )
but that could be different in this TTL.
and there were historical precedent for it, as the Ak was build as a up gun smg, while the stg was build as a down caliber of a rifle, while both was also envision as a replace for most of the infantry equipment.
TLDR: different thinking can converge into the same idea, hech a smg as a result of up gunning pistols is more than possible. Although the smg might have to have some pistol linage visible on it.
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If you really are talking about house to house, you have a readily available firearm that the Belgians should know about, the Winchester Model 1897 Shot gun.
Scary, and in the short term useful but only marginally more effective than rifle. So… I guess good enough
You just need to have one or two per squad. It also helps to keep their heads down because even an inaccurate shot at a window might still put pellets on target. Even bird shot hitting someone is going to hurt them.
And if you wanted something that was produced in Belgium by FN, The Browning Auto 5.
This is all excellent, and much appreciated. You can safely assume we will have trench warfare in the western front the drivers haven’t changed it’s just that we are still in the race to the sea equivalent period. But also remember we have a large garrison in a big city so we are going to get some urban warfare to dig our teeth into. I am going to see if I can talk to my father about how they did house clearing in the late 50s not all of the technologies exist but it is a useful starting point. One thing we don’t have yet on the British side is any hand grenades the technological drivers for them are about to exist in a big way. I have a plan for a smg/ assault weapon . Arthur is already working on. A fh lmg concept so that’s another piece of the puzzle, the Lewis gun was already in production but not yet in massive volume.
British doctrine of the 1950s was essentially written around the experiences of the Battle of Ortona. It's very relevant, but also shows just how hard and bloody fighting in Brussels with a 1914 army would be, particularly for the civilian population.
The British Army of the Hundred Days could have done it and probably the French Army of 1918, just about, but nobody else in WW1 has the equipment or doctrine for it to be anything but a bloodbath.
The ANZACs would have handled it easily. The 1950s were full of examples from WWI and WWII. Typically, the best way to handle this sort of situation is to create a hole high on the 1st floor and then fight downwards taking a building from above. This upsets the typical defences which are designed to stop you from entering from below.