After Action Report

[Jim Tarleton]

That is the AAR for the 4th Regiment, not the 4th Division. It is complete as it is posted at 100 pages as downloaded from a USMC website. I posted the AAR because I think others might find it interesting. The only comment I made was that the T/O for snipers did not change, which is true. Please indicate where in my post I said the sniper rifles were "... common on Iwo".

It was established, by others, long ago, that the 1903 Unertl sniper rifles were unsuitable for combat. You are beating a dead horse.

They were in combat, the weapons were lost in combat, unless you expect us to believe a Marine sniper just misplaced his rifle on the way to the front. Please give the source of your definition of "lost".

Where did I state all the nonsense you posted? Exactly, what is the purpose of your posts?

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[cplstevennorton]

That is the AAR for the 4th Regiment, not the 4th Division. It is complete as it is posted at 100 pages

As I said it is very hard to look at data when it is incomplete. This is part of a report that is over a thousand pages, if not several thousand pages at the Archives.

Jim has confused this info again. This is part of the report of the 4th Marine Division. Not the 4th Marines (Regiment) as Jim just stated.

Jim has confused the 4th Marine Regiment with the 4th Marine Division.

The 4th Marines (Regiment) were never on Iwo Jima. You can google this... The 4th Marine Divison was. But he is missing large portions of this report that puts this info in context. So I can understand how he can get confused. Especially if you don't know the battle of Iwo Jima.

His response that the Unertl rifle was unsuitable for combat is equally wrong. The Unertl rifle was praised on the islands of Saipan and Okinawa which the terraign allowed a 1000 yard 8x sniper rifle to show how effective it could be used. But on islands where there was jungle and shots at less than a 100 yards, the m1 was more effective.

You have to remember they cancelled the whole program in Feb 1944 because of the Raider report above. But they later determined the Raider Report that damned the Unertl was probably talking about the WRA A5 sniper rifles. So the Unertl program was re-instated in 1945. The Marines realized they made a mistake after Okinawa.

The Unertl received high praise the rest of its service until the end of Korea.

Again it's very hard to make statements without being able to see all the data

[cplstevennorton]

Please indicate where in my post I said the sniper rifles were "... common on Iwo".

Where did I state all the nonsense you posted? Exactly, what is the purpose of your posts?

This is a continuation of this discussion. https://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=76988&page=1

On post #26 he told me that my claim that WWII Snipers were not common was baseless. This is a screenshot.

https://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=76988&page=1




This is where he references it again at the beginning of this post. So I posted the actual numbers which show WWII Snipers were not common, exactly as I stated.

[cplstevennorton]

They were in combat, the weapons were lost in combat, unless you expect us to believe a Marine sniper just misplaced his rifle on the way to the front. Please give the source of your definition of "lost".

Again someone has to read a lot of these to understand what is going on. A "Lost" weapon means it was lost to that organization. It was one less weapon. It doesn't always mean it was left out in the field or completely blown up. It just means for whatever reason that unit can no longer use that weapon, so it was a "loss." The Marines did not keep track of serials, only quantity, so the "loss" means they have one less functional weapon.

Almost always a "lost" weapon was turned back into Supply, or it was picked up by "Salvage." "Salvage" were Marines who were assigned to try to scrounge anything that was unserviceable and return these lost weapons back into service.

If salvage or the Armorers could get them serviceable again, many times they did not go back to the Unit who "lost" them. They were just turned over to whatever unit needed them. So at the end of a battle you see Marine Regiments/ Divisions detail what they "lost", but you also see what they "Acquired."

It's actually very uncommon that weapons were just completely gone.

Even the (18) M1903's that were "lost" on Iwo, that report was put together right at the end of fighting. It's likely a good portion of those 18 rifles were fixed after the battle was over by either the Salvage Marines or Armorers and returned to service somewhere.

For instance you see many comments like this, this is from that Iwo Report where it says 99% of "lost" weapons were turned back into Supply or Salvage to be fixed.




You also see this a lot, there was always an influx of weapons going back and forth between "lost", destroyed, then they were salvaged, and then reissued.

Many of the weapons that were detailed as "lost" were later detailed as returned to service in a later report.