M1 Carbine accuracy

[DaveHH]

1st Infantry Division received carbines on 10 Jul 42, shortly before embarking for UK. Their 'thrusting' began in earnest on 8 Nov 42.
What 'wartime demands' are you referring to? 1st ID looks pretty 'front line' to me.

I just read the history of the landing and subsequent battles up into Italy, called "An Army At Dawn" by Rick Atkinson. It was a real eye opener, the fighting was much, much more intense and deadly as I was led to believe. Thousands of NG Battalions lost their lives being led by Bob the guy who owned the gas station and was the Lt Colonel. One of the few professional Regular Army units was the First Infantry Div. They were trained better than the NG units but still, lack of experience made the thing rough. Bad maps, drunk officers and fighting crack German units that had been fighting in Russia. The 1st loved their General Terry Allen and Ike sacked him which was total BS. Assistant Div CO was Theodore Roosevelt he was sacked too. He loved the new Carbine and shot a lot of Bedoins and rogue aux troops who were pillaging around after the Germans cleared the A.O.
If you are interested: "The British are Coming" by Rick Atkinson the real truth about the Minutemen and how those farmers and blacksmiths kick the living crap out of the Thin Red Line.

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[firstflabn]

You'll enjoy Volumes 2 and 3 then, Dave. Even knowing how the story comes out, while reading the first book it is difficult to see how Ike survives all the early SNAFUs. With Atkinson's novelist's eye for narrative and a great talent at research, I had to ration my reading of the trilogy so as not to use it all up too soon.

The 1st ID's 1 Aug 43 G-4 Report includes this: "After 5 months of continuous combat, the equipment of the Division, particularly motor vehicles, weapons and communications equipment required complete overhaul by 3rd and 4th echelon maintanance, during which a great quantity was salvaged and replaced."

Looks like those (presumably) 4 digit Inlands received in Jul 42 got used up or spread around pretty quick.

[Bruce McAskill]

The carbine was designed to have an effective range of 300 yards and hit a man sized target at that distance with the force of a .38 SPL has at the muzzle. That would equal about 250 lbs. of energy. Not a lot by todays standards but back in the day it was adequate. So accuracy was the ability of the carbine to hit a minute of bad guy at 300 yards and to take them out of the picture. Might only wound them but they are no longer in the fight. Today with a good soft point round the carbine is even much more deadly.

[DaveHH]

Read "Blackhawk Down" and hear what a failure the M16 was. The D Boys said that you could have multiple hits and the target would simply flinch and keep right on doing, to die later from the wounds. The M14 equipped D Boys would drop the bad guy with one shot every time..
The M16 was a killer in VN with the 55 grain bullet and 12/1 twist barrel. Add the green tip round and it just drilled holes in people. Undoubtedly hundreds of people shot with the M16 went down, but the overall impression was not good with the D Boys.

Step back with the carbine and thousands of enemy soldiers died after being shot with it. Audie Murphy used the carbine as his preferred weapon. He was a hunter of men and shot killing shots with that rifle. He liked 15 shots and the handy way the carbine could be used. On Iwo and Okinawa, the Marines used it to great effect and they were not rear area troops. It wasn't made as a replacement for the pistol, it was just another weapon, and a very popular weapon.

[lemaymiami]

That damned war dragged on and on... I didn't get there until 1971 - and by then it was pretty clear that it was winding down... Da Nang was the farthest south I ever got (after coming into Bien Hoa then getting stuffed into a Herky bird for the trip to the north... I was attached to 101Abn (no I was not a jumper) and the loneliest I ever felt was in the summer of 1971 up at a place called Dong Ha ... after the Marines had left... I was just a pencil pusher, not a combat type at all... Only took incoming once or twice -just enough to learn that I didn't like it at all... For those looking backward all these years later - the figure that I heard was seven to one... Seven troops in rear areas for every one guy out in the bush...

Terrible drug use, racial problems, discipline problems in rear areas back then (it mirrored what was going down back home...). When I returned and mustered out, I tried to tell my Dad about the bad things going on -and he didn't want to hear it (career Engineer officer, volunteered for the draft in 1942 then did it the hard way for 28 years...). You could tell it hurt him badly. I was a real Army brat - and grew up around the world back when service families followed their Dad's assignments everywhere. Going in the service myself was like growing up finally - and doing some payback for all of the life I'd led up until then. I was very lucky since my family stopped me from joining up right after high school - in 1966. Doubt I'd have survived back then...

With seven grandkids now I hope their generation is able to avoid war - but there are some things worth fighting for.... Vietnam was not one of them. If anyone had bothered to take a serious look at their history (more than 500 years of war.... and all of their cultural heroes were warriors - they fought everyone that tried to invade them and just never let up until they won... ) we should have run the other way before allowing ourselves to be sucked into that situation. To this day, all the countries around Vietnam are scared to death of them - for good cause...

[DaveHH]

The Vietnamese started out as so-so soldiers, against the French after Giap ran a few thousand through the mill at Dien Bien Phu they learned fast and died quietly. By the time we got around to our war with them, they were good, really good. The Viets were fighting the Chinese for centuries, they took over Cambodia for a while too. The Chinese are treated like 2nd class citizens by the Viets and by most people in the area. After we left, the Chinese would fake some border insult and then run their army in there to basically see how it would do, logistics, medical combat etc, They got their butts kicked every time. It was a sad showing and points out that the kid off the farm makes a way better soldier than the student. In my opinion, the Chinese army is very poor, nowhere near what people think they are. Check out the photos of the Indian Sikhs and their boys when they have some border incident with the Chinese Army. These large bearded smiling guys with giant knives and the Chinese Officers look like they are going to cry.

[lemaymiami]

A bit of additional history on the Viets.. (I did a year in language school before heading to my "senior trip"... guess what language...). Along with constant conflicts (mostly with the Chinese) for hundreds of years... there were elements in-country that fought the French off and on during the entire colonial period. That was actually when a French priest was the first to reduce Vietnamese to a written language - that's why to this day their language is written in the roman alphabet...

At any rate, whoever occupied that area (called Indochina for decades before "VietNam" came along) quickly learned that they'd never be free of very bad things happening until they left that part of the world. Along comes WW II and the Japanese conquer the entire region and found the Viet Minh to be a real problem (and of course we were supplying them...). Along with our supplies the Allies promised them their freedom. Of course after we won the war the French reneged on that promise and took over again... The guerrilla war started up all over again until the French were badly beaten in 1954 at Dienben Phu. As a last trick the French then established two countries instead of allowing them to have one country - and that was the seeds of what we stepped into all those years ago...

My Dad did two tours there -1965 in civvies, stationed in Saigon - then again in 1969 at Camh Ranh Bay... He said the only way to get out of that mess was to declare a victory - then run like hell for the airplanes -but make sure you had covering fire all the way to the planes since we'd be needing it...

[DaveHH]

Book: "Strange Ground: an Oral history of Americans in Vietnam" by Harry Maurer. The best book on the history of Vietnam I've ever read. It is a story that vets should read.

[mrclark303]

When I went to Vietnam first in the early 1990's, I flew into Tan Son Nhat (the airport was still bullet pock marked then and you taxied past derelict C130's etc on your way to the old terminal.

My first brush with Vietnamese semi officialdom was wondering around the periphery of Ton Son Nhat to the gates of the small museum that was on the air force side of the airfield.

No problems getting in for free, but it was different on leaving, I had a cocked Type 56 pointed at me and asked to 'donate' towards the museum, a $10 donation was made and everyone was happy...

Bureaucracy was stifling, everyone was considered a 'threat' to national security and generally followed around.

That said, the people in general, were nothing but friendly, very pro western in general and pro American.

My small group managed to get down into the delta, it was mainly off limits at the time due to cross border raids by the Kahmer Rouge...

I had a chat with some of the first US military personnel back in Vietnam in a Hanoi bar, they were mustering for their first MIA recovery missions, along with their Vietnamese colleagues.

We treked slowly north up country, mainly via Highway 1 and finally, over the border into China at Lang Son.

The Lang Son border was 'very' heavily armed, bristling with ZSU cannons, SAMs of every description, artillery and well dug in troops and tanks.

You had to walk through them, walking a half mile long dirt track while being watched by both sides, you got the impression a missplaced fart would have started a shooting war!

It's not surprising, the Chinese pushed through Lang Son in 79 heading towards Hanoi in massive numbers ... And had their *** handed to them by the Vietnamese.

I remember talking to a few Chinese veterans of the 79 campaign, they said it was absolutely horrendous and the Vietnamese fought like Tigers.

Today things have changed hugely, Vietnam is an up and coming country, very pro western and part of an international alliance keeping the Chinese in check.

[lemaymiami]

No better friend - no worse enemy... Where did I hear that said?

One other minor point my Dad made a point of - all those years ago... "Kid, we're killing ten of them for every one of ours.... At that rate we'll quit first"

That's exactly how it went down... Not an accident that Vietnamese refugees coming to the states with no English at all would have kids that became valedictorians at their high schools years later...