Well he could just get something shot off that makes it extremely unlikely there'd be any marriage in his future.
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A Better Rifle at Halloween
- Thread starter diesal
- Start date
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- Tags
- britwank rifles ww1 different
A Duchess thinks.
12th October 1914, Petrograd
Grand Duchess Olga was preparing for bed, she had just attended a dinner given in honour of the wounded soldiers of the Russian Army. It had been attended by many of the great and good of the city, in her own mind it would always be Saint Petersburg. She had been in receipt of regular letters from her father, he was spending most of his time at the front with the Stavka.
The war was proceeding better than she had feared, the Russian Army held Konigsburg under close siege and the Germans further west were passive, they conducted no major attacks seemingly content to hold Russia back whilst they sought to stem the tide of disaster in the west. The Tsar was urged by his ministers to attack to capitalise on these setbacks, but he was cautious, aware of the weaknesses that had been revealed in tthe Russian Army.
Her father had written of his willingness to allow the strength of the Army to grow, he had demonstrated that patience, when he had dismissed Radko Dimitriev from his post, after he had bungled the attack on the Fortress of Przemystl. His attempt at a lightning attack had failed, being called off after two days with the loss of tens of thousands of men. The fortress had fallen after another month of siege, the availability of more of the very heavy Japanese siege guns had helped smash the defences. The city had had fallen with the capture of over 100,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers including many senior officers.
The war was going disastrously for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they had been defeated by the Serbs and had lost all of Galicia up to the Carpathian Mountains. The Turks and Bulgarians had both read the writing on the wall and were maintaining conspicuous neutrality, it was too much to hope for a Russian Ottoman alliance, but shipping was moving freely through the straits helping preserve economic stability within the Empire.
The last months had been an emotional whipsaw, she had grieved the death of her brother with all her heart, but his death was not unexpected. Her mother’s collapse and entry into a monastery with the revelation of the treason of Rasputin had been more shocking. Rasputin had been executed recently, many had demanded his public execution, some even calling for his execution by one of the old methods. In her darker moments, Olga wished for the days of Ivan the Terrible and the impaling stake or the breaking wheel. She and her sister’s sense of betrayal by that man had only grown over the last months since her brother’s death.
Her mother was being held incommunicado she had suffered a total collapse and she blamed Rasputin for this as well. Although she was isolated from public sentiment by custom and the sheer scale of imperial bureaucracy, the Grand Duchess was aware of the public mood with regards to the death of Rasputin, it was viewed by rich and poor alike as a good thing. Her grandmother and Aunt had both spoken positively of it as had many of the courtiers and hangers on who thronged the palace. It was tied in part to a rising tide of anti-German sentiment, her mother was German born and that no doubt caused some people to suspect her loyalty. Perhaps symbolic changes would help a little with stemming that concern, but the best thing would be victory and peace, her entry into a monastery and consequential seclusion would help no end.
With her brother’s death, there was mounting pressure to change the law to allow her to inherit the throne, she was still unmarried and that would become an issue soon enough. Her uncle was currently the heir, but he had no desire to become Tsar, he was soon to go to the front with his division. Many Royal and Noble suitors had been proposed over the years, she had avoided them all but now with her brother’s death and the pressure of war a marriage of state would soon be demanded of her.
She was keeping up to date with the goings on in the world, given all of the uncertainty she had been able to brow beat the palace into giving her access to much more information, she had noticed the upsurge in violence in the United States and the rise of socialist and anarchist industrial disputes.
The Japanese were moving quickly to fill as many orders for arms and equipment as they could, seeking to use Russian gold to drive their industrial growth. Military stores of all types were being disgorged from Japanese stockpiles at a shocking pace, the Japanese had obviously not been idle in rearming after the war. Despite their successes in the war of 1905, they remained wary of Russia, and they did not want to antagonise the Tsar’s government by gouging their allies during this crisis. The British had given Japan a free hand in China and the North Pacific, Japan was busy moving against all the German possessions in that region. The Russian empire had little interest in pacific atolls, but they were unwilling to see their position in Northern China threatened, but that was not happening yet and would be unlikely to occur in the short term.
The situation in the ottoman empire was fraught with various factions fighting over the direction of that decaying edifice, the arrival of the German ships had initially swayed opinion of the Central powers, but the steady drum beat of victory in both east and west was unsettling the position of the Committee of Union and Progress with both Liberals and Conservatives attacking them. Several assassination attempts had been made on various high profile CUP members some of which had been successful. The British were heavily involved in the intrigue in the Ottoman Empire. They were funding various opposition groups and drawing constant attention to the failure of German arms, albeit at several removes, they did not want to drive the Ottomans into the Central powers via a badly executed plot. Churchill had recognised Turkish anger at the seizing of their ships from the builders and he had promised to return them as soon as possible after the war with Germany ended along with compensation for their seizure. This had done much to mollify Turkish anger and weaken the goodwill brought by the arrival of Goeben and Breslau.
Grand Duchess Olga was preparing for bed, she had just attended a dinner given in honour of the wounded soldiers of the Russian Army. It had been attended by many of the great and good of the city, in her own mind it would always be Saint Petersburg. She had been in receipt of regular letters from her father, he was spending most of his time at the front with the Stavka.
The war was proceeding better than she had feared, the Russian Army held Konigsburg under close siege and the Germans further west were passive, they conducted no major attacks seemingly content to hold Russia back whilst they sought to stem the tide of disaster in the west. The Tsar was urged by his ministers to attack to capitalise on these setbacks, but he was cautious, aware of the weaknesses that had been revealed in tthe Russian Army.
Her father had written of his willingness to allow the strength of the Army to grow, he had demonstrated that patience, when he had dismissed Radko Dimitriev from his post, after he had bungled the attack on the Fortress of Przemystl. His attempt at a lightning attack had failed, being called off after two days with the loss of tens of thousands of men. The fortress had fallen after another month of siege, the availability of more of the very heavy Japanese siege guns had helped smash the defences. The city had had fallen with the capture of over 100,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers including many senior officers.
The war was going disastrously for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they had been defeated by the Serbs and had lost all of Galicia up to the Carpathian Mountains. The Turks and Bulgarians had both read the writing on the wall and were maintaining conspicuous neutrality, it was too much to hope for a Russian Ottoman alliance, but shipping was moving freely through the straits helping preserve economic stability within the Empire.
The last months had been an emotional whipsaw, she had grieved the death of her brother with all her heart, but his death was not unexpected. Her mother’s collapse and entry into a monastery with the revelation of the treason of Rasputin had been more shocking. Rasputin had been executed recently, many had demanded his public execution, some even calling for his execution by one of the old methods. In her darker moments, Olga wished for the days of Ivan the Terrible and the impaling stake or the breaking wheel. She and her sister’s sense of betrayal by that man had only grown over the last months since her brother’s death.
Her mother was being held incommunicado she had suffered a total collapse and she blamed Rasputin for this as well. Although she was isolated from public sentiment by custom and the sheer scale of imperial bureaucracy, the Grand Duchess was aware of the public mood with regards to the death of Rasputin, it was viewed by rich and poor alike as a good thing. Her grandmother and Aunt had both spoken positively of it as had many of the courtiers and hangers on who thronged the palace. It was tied in part to a rising tide of anti-German sentiment, her mother was German born and that no doubt caused some people to suspect her loyalty. Perhaps symbolic changes would help a little with stemming that concern, but the best thing would be victory and peace, her entry into a monastery and consequential seclusion would help no end.
With her brother’s death, there was mounting pressure to change the law to allow her to inherit the throne, she was still unmarried and that would become an issue soon enough. Her uncle was currently the heir, but he had no desire to become Tsar, he was soon to go to the front with his division. Many Royal and Noble suitors had been proposed over the years, she had avoided them all but now with her brother’s death and the pressure of war a marriage of state would soon be demanded of her.
She was keeping up to date with the goings on in the world, given all of the uncertainty she had been able to brow beat the palace into giving her access to much more information, she had noticed the upsurge in violence in the United States and the rise of socialist and anarchist industrial disputes.
The Japanese were moving quickly to fill as many orders for arms and equipment as they could, seeking to use Russian gold to drive their industrial growth. Military stores of all types were being disgorged from Japanese stockpiles at a shocking pace, the Japanese had obviously not been idle in rearming after the war. Despite their successes in the war of 1905, they remained wary of Russia, and they did not want to antagonise the Tsar’s government by gouging their allies during this crisis. The British had given Japan a free hand in China and the North Pacific, Japan was busy moving against all the German possessions in that region. The Russian empire had little interest in pacific atolls, but they were unwilling to see their position in Northern China threatened, but that was not happening yet and would be unlikely to occur in the short term.
The situation in the ottoman empire was fraught with various factions fighting over the direction of that decaying edifice, the arrival of the German ships had initially swayed opinion of the Central powers, but the steady drum beat of victory in both east and west was unsettling the position of the Committee of Union and Progress with both Liberals and Conservatives attacking them. Several assassination attempts had been made on various high profile CUP members some of which had been successful. The British were heavily involved in the intrigue in the Ottoman Empire. They were funding various opposition groups and drawing constant attention to the failure of German arms, albeit at several removes, they did not want to drive the Ottomans into the Central powers via a badly executed plot. Churchill had recognised Turkish anger at the seizing of their ships from the builders and he had promised to return them as soon as possible after the war with Germany ended along with compensation for their seizure. This had done much to mollify Turkish anger and weaken the goodwill brought by the arrival of Goeben and Breslau.
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that's cool, the new Autocarbine will not be that small. I don't like open bolt firearms as a rule.
very likely, bullets going all over the place. no some sort of locked breach or short action.
open bolt weapons are cooler (physically) as a rule compared to closed bolt weapons. They need to be long enough to allow the bolt to cycle without striking the firer and long enough with a cooling jacket to act as a grip.
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The Lewis showed it can be a very effective operating mechanism. As does the Sten. Certainly it is not the best choice for all circumstances but I would say it has its place.
Sums up my opinions on machine pistols. Make them big enough to be controllable and they are too big to be a reasonable sidearm. I would be happier with almost any service pistol than that weapon. Better to make a decent sized SMG or carbine.
Excellent update!
Still, I think this should be "assassination" attempts... unless they had appointments to meet lovers in secret.
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But… how would you equip the army in reasonable time with a close bolt SMG?
Unfortunately he might just have been caught up in the siege of liege. Certainly he is unlikely to have made it to England as in OTL. So possibly no FN FAL, my favourite rifle.Dieudonné Saive would like a word.
There's nothing wrong with open bolt weapons, and for MG's and SMG's it aids cooling. They are heavier than their locked breach counterparts, but that can aid controllability. What you don't want are any variety of Fully Automatic Pistol. They are far too light to be controllable, and burn through their magazines at far too high a rate.
It has its points. I'm a Stg 57 man myself, with a sneaky regards for the M14. I own the former, and have shot the latter.
Lacking our hindsight (or even with it but needing something in a hurry), the idea of spraying a lot of bullets everywhere very quickly might well look like a sufficiently good idea that we'll have it now and the refinements can wait.
I'm sure there will be a flurry of reports along the lines of 'It's good, but...'
In the slomo footage near the end it looks like the bolt is just clipping the goggles of the man (not Ian) firing it. Very nasty.
Overall it looks really badly thought through, poorly made and hard to use safely. Even as a pistol it looks terrible.
An Austrian Recruit
12th October 1914 Linz
He had been returned from Germany at the outbreak of war, he had attempted to join the Royal Bavarian Army, but when they discovered he was an Austrian. His protests that he was a German and that he wanted to fight for Germany fell on deaf ears.
He was met at the border by an unsmiling Zugsfuhrer, he and the other returnees were held in a small room at the railway station. The men who had completed their conscript service were issued travel warrants and orders to rejoin their units, one man was led off in handcuffs by a Korporal, the whispered conversation indicated that he was a deserter who was wanted for assaulting an officer.
Once the trained men had been dispatched the Sergeant gathered up the rest of the men and detailed the escort he led them to a third-class rail car. Abreviated recruit training followed with others who had previously avoided service, the training staff were harsh. His fellow recruits were little better mocking him for his artistic pretensions when he had let slip his aspirations, some oaf had even stolen his paints and used them to graffiti the barracks wall.
The Sergeant who was the target of the graffiti hadn’t had him charged formally, that had come by accident. The Training Company officer had seen the graffiti before it could be removed, a sentence to three days in the cells followed despite his strident denials. Goldsmidt the Sergeant didn’t believe him either, or perhaps he did but didn’t care, the Sergeant and two of his fellows, a Czech and a Gallician made clear their dislike of German Nationalists. He was lucky to walk after that training experience, the bruises took weeks to heal, the hate and shame would never leave him.
He had been returned from Germany at the outbreak of war, he had attempted to join the Royal Bavarian Army, but when they discovered he was an Austrian. His protests that he was a German and that he wanted to fight for Germany fell on deaf ears.
He was met at the border by an unsmiling Zugsfuhrer, he and the other returnees were held in a small room at the railway station. The men who had completed their conscript service were issued travel warrants and orders to rejoin their units, one man was led off in handcuffs by a Korporal, the whispered conversation indicated that he was a deserter who was wanted for assaulting an officer.
Once the trained men had been dispatched the Sergeant gathered up the rest of the men and detailed the escort he led them to a third-class rail car. Abreviated recruit training followed with others who had previously avoided service, the training staff were harsh. His fellow recruits were little better mocking him for his artistic pretensions when he had let slip his aspirations, some oaf had even stolen his paints and used them to graffiti the barracks wall.
The Sergeant who was the target of the graffiti hadn’t had him charged formally, that had come by accident. The Training Company officer had seen the graffiti before it could be removed, a sentence to three days in the cells followed despite his strident denials. Goldsmidt the Sergeant didn’t believe him either, or perhaps he did but didn’t care, the Sergeant and two of his fellows, a Czech and a Gallician made clear their dislike of German Nationalists. He was lucky to walk after that training experience, the bruises took weeks to heal, the hate and shame would never leave him.
Is the poor little recruit not enjoying doing his patriotic duty to Emperor and Country?
Do the other recruits not like the failed artist?
Is the Sergeant mean to him?
Do the other recruits not like the failed artist?
Is the Sergeant mean to him?
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Here's Adolf! Seeing as he's in the Austro-Hungarian army ITTL, maybe the Serbs or Russians will have better luck than their western allies did IOTL.