Just wondering.....

[DaveHH]

About half way through WW2, the Army was faced with some serious logistic and manpower issues. The divisions were simply too large and training for deployment became a serious problem as the flow of new troops came in spurts and the existing members became stale after completing their training but awaited the division to come up to full strength. The Germans did the same thing: make the units smaller and more easy to deploy and ease the logistics overload by moving the training units out and into action sooner. Thus we see smaller TOE for a Battalion. A division still needed the same number of specialists, cooks, MPs, signal corps, heavy weapons units. Thus more carbines into the picture. Additionally, a guy laying wire, while technically a support troop was still up front with the Infantry and a BAR ammo bearer was there too, mortar men, you get the picture, so these bring carbines into the wartime front line photos. Follow this with the fact that a lot of men just preferred the light weight and 15 shot capability of the carbine and they became the most stolen weapon the the theater.

[imarangemaster]

Great video, thanks! Box of Truth did a test on the M1 Carbine with about the same results. A 30-06 BTFMJ will drill right through, but an M1 Carbine is flat based, and base heavy. It will tumble in the target. Yugo M67 7.62x39 ammo uses the same base heavy design to increase damage. If the deer I shot with it had been an enemy combatant, he would be just as dead, just as quick (ran 30 feet and died). That is why I carried it as an LEO trunk weapon, and is still my loaded, go to, house PDW.

[firstflabn]

Dave, glad to see somebody else interested in the logistics side, but I don't think the numbers support you entirely. If you're not already familiar with it, you might enjoy The Organization of Ground Combat Troops, one of the Army Green Books, that goes into great detail on the subject.

A table in the book shows the infantry division with 15,514 in '42. This was revised to 14,253 a year later (and stayed there until near the end of the war). That's about an 8% reduction, but most of that came outside of the rifle regiment. The infantry battalion went from 916 to 871 - about 5% fewer. This 45 was about evenly split among BN HQ, Heavy Weapons Co., and the three rifle companies (each of which fell by five). The division and the battalion fell again near the end of the war, but the change was miniscule - 216 and 11. At about the same time the armored division was whacked almost 35% - almost 4700 men (but only about 20% fewer tanks) and other combat units - like tank destroyers - also were reduced.

Lesley McNair, head of Army Ground Forces, recognized early that we could easily run out of manpower and looked under every rock to find ways to streamline. Delays in the buildup resulted from ever-changing circumstances - first it was the lack of equipment, then it became shipping space, then British port and rail capacity. Finally manpower shortages appeared - as McNair had foreseen, but it was mainly due to losses (both combat and other) and the fact that we were almost totally mobilized.

[DaveHH]

"The procurement and training of ground combat troops" when I read about these issues. It was not so much about numbers and percentages, just concepts and ideas. These books are funny as you probably know. Some put you to sleep, others are very well written. I am always interested in logistics, my favorite book being "Supplying War" by Martin Van Creveld. That little book will tell you more about why Hitler lost the war than any dozen others. His generals and staff knew the story and told him not to attack Russia, but he did it anyway and it doomed Germany from day 1. Everything they needed to prosecute the war in the east, he did not have; motor vehicles, fuel, ammunition, clothing, railroad stock of the proper gauge, and most of all men. 3M vs 14M, run the numbers. When he turned the panzers away from Moscow that first summer and sent them south, it was opportunity lost forever. The lure of oil and grain in the south was too strong to resist. Thanks for your clarification.

[firstflabn]

Try the two volume Logistical Suppoprt of the Armies (if you haven't already). It's about the effort in the ETO and all the challenges they faced. The army screws up often, but the decision to assign trained historians to write this series was a good one for us. Originally it was planned to be 99 volumes, but I suppose Truman's budget realities reduced it to, I don't know, maybe one fourth of that.

As unpleasant a task as it is to read a book on the internet, here's a link to the set:


U.S. Army in World War II Series - U.S. Army Center of Military History

[RobSmith]

It's just like any other weapon, it gets the job done as long as you stay within it's effective range. Worked well at close ranges, but not so well when trying to pick off an enemy on the next ridge 400 yds away.

[DaveHH]

I've got maybe 9 or more over the years. The books are priceless and can you imagine what they would have been like if done by S.L.A.M. the BS king of Army historians ? They are just very, very dry, but they reveal a lot about what really went on. It is hard to imagine that with maybe 8-10M men at arms they would run out of Infantry in 1944, but they did. They cancelled many of the pilot training programs, the flyboys became Infantry platoon leaders and lots of them got killed in the Bulge. Imagine what would have happened if we were forced to invade Japan?

[Mizzouboy]

Projectile energy expended on the far side of the target is pretty useless....

[campperrykid]

Here's some info on the M1 Carbine from the Terminal Ballistics subforum of M4carbine.net :

M1 Carbines - M4Carbine.net Forums

Covers things like typical wound profiles , role of the Carbine , ammo selection etc.
The typical .30 Carbine ball wound profile surprised me. I had no idea that the variable binary yaw ( tumble or bullet kicks sideways ) was such a significant factor for the Carbine.
The typical military ball Carbine wound profile is closer to what Massad Ayoob would call a hunters wound channel rather than a gunfighter's wound channel.
Look around the T.B. subforum and you will see pistol wound profiles that are more for frontal shots on opponent .

[firstflabn]

There seem to be two schools of thought on wound ballistics. They agree on the obvious point of major organ, weight-bearing bone and major nerve damage, but they take opposite positions on wound ballistics. The Fackler school believes the only source of damage is the wound channel itself and the other guys (mainly the husband and wife physicists whose name I can't recall at the moment - duh!) who add a shock wave theory to Fackler's wound channel. All are very smart, have lots of instrumentation, and other skills, but the controversy goes on.

I am a Fackler adherent. For those like me, if you assume complete (or almost complete) penetration, the wounding effect of the carbine compared to the 30.06 round is the difference in length of the two rounds (actually slightly different as it should be the areas of the slug at centerline, but close enough for this discussion). That length ratio between these two rounds is about 3:2, so the 30.06 would be expected to cause about 50% more damage - if each of these rounds hit the same spot - and if about the same tumbling occurred (almost impossible to design a test on this latter criteria). That's not a small diference, but, again, if you're a Facklerite, that's the total difference. if so, then GI field observations from combat would be correct in noting a difference, but maybe not nearly to the extent of the claims made (like the quilted ChiCom jackets in Korea - or another account that insisted the enemy solider (ETO, WWII?) was hit repeatedly with a carbine and he finally fell. When his body was examined they found all these slugs loose inside his clothing, but not penetrating. Total BS).

Have you looked at the math on so called "knockdown power?" By my calcs, if a 30.06 round transferred all its energy - at 2700 fps - to a 170 lb. body, and if that body was completely stiff (no flex of muscles, joints, etc.) and if there was no deformation of the slug and if there was no penetration and if there was no heat induced in the body (whew! that's alot of 'ands') in other words, all the energy of the projective was transferred to the victim - a scenario that is impossible in the real world - at what velocity would the body be pushed? Answer: about 4 inches per second. That's a bit slower than extending your hand to shake with someone; maybe closer to reaching up to scratch your nose. Knockdown power is almost totally dependent on hitting brain, spine, other major nerve, or load bearing bone. This requires the non-Facklerites to come up with some hidden effect to explain effectiveness.