'89 Schmidt rubin

[Daan Kemp]

Each WWII MG42 had about 6 men, IIRC - gunner, man with spare barrel and stuff, man with tripod, three with ammo. No LMG like the Bren.

Bren had gunner and one other with the spare barrel and mag box, although the rest of the section should have each carried two Bren mags IIRC. The Bren was part of the infantry section.
One up from there was the Vickers.

[Eaglelord17]

Actually its not, changing a magzine slows you down. In the case of a bolt action tht is sort of, hmm, but it does slow you down.

The Brits were into rapid fire and a well trained Infantryman prior to WWII could shoot a SMLE in the low end area of an M1 (realistically no - factually as your well trained Infantryman was taken out of action and replaced by a conscription that ability went by the wayside)

Still, the SMLE put out an amazing amount of fire for a bolt action. Slickest bolt of any gun I ever handled.

But it correct that there is a balance. Lots of stores out of Nam about being out gunned. But that 30 round mag on an AK-47 also meant you had to be raised up higher to shoot (along with the rim issue making it longer still).

The Bren was a good answer to the keep it low issue. The BAR would have benefited with that setup greatly and with a larger magazine.

A conscript army gets round envy. WWII infantry would have laughed (they went up against MG-42 with M1, but everyone had an M1, fire was spread out, a German squad with rifles was there to support the MG-42 gunner carrying extra ammo in belts for it and side support to avoid a flanking).

Now, the troops are trained to fire semi auto unless there is a reason for full auto, save ammo. The Mk-27 is an example of a change in though process back to a heavier barrel with sustained longer range accuracy and spread the fire around a squad better.

Rapid fire on a range at a fixed target and rapid fire on a battlefield with bolt action rifles are two different things. You still load just as many times with a 10rd Lee Enfield vs. a 5rd Mauser after the first 10rds. What matters more is how large your charger is and the ease of using it. A 6rd charger does load your rifle faster than a 5rd charger and adds a benefit as its still the same sequence of loading, just now your getting one extra round. These aren't semi-autos, your firepower isn't increasing because if your stupid enough to keep your head up long enough to rapid fire 10rds out of a Lee Enfield you won't have that problem for particularly long period of time. For a while I trained to do the Mad Minute with a P14, by the end I could do 22rds in a minute. That doesn't mean I think for a moment it would be even remotely practical on a battlefield. The Brits also used 20rd magazines in WWI as trench mags, but quickly abandoned them as there was no real benefit to it. I suspect they retained the 10rd magazines simply because it wasn't worth redesigning the magazine for them. Ultimately it doesn't really matter much which bolt action you have, provided they are all fed by a effective charger system they all provide similar amounts of firepower.

As to the point on the lessons from South Africa, the lesson was to drop the Lee Enfield and adopt a Mauser variant, the P13 which notably had a 5rd magazine. If it wasn't for WWI, the Lee Enfield would have been history.

[Daan Kemp]

If it wasn't for WWI, the Lee Enfield would have been history.

True.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The .276 Enfield in the P-13 is only a bit shy of a 7mm Rem Mag in capacity.

It was hampered by the obsession with CORDITE. Great (leade-burning) propellant in the modest .303, but an utter abomination in the much larger .276.

Burn rate was too high, burn temperature was WAY too high, muzzle flash and blast were ludicrous.

All to out-range the 7 x 57?

Bear in mind, all of the lead-up to the P-13 took place at the same time the Germans re-wrote the rules in 1904, with their s-ball spitzer bullet. By 1912, the Brit boffins had come up with an "answer", but the 150gn bullet was of more-or-less conventional design and thus, too short to function reliably in the service rifles and machine guns. So, they "stretched" the bullet design and added a little aluminium internal nose filler,, this resulted in a bullet of 174gn, but very importantly one that was the SAME length as the old MK Vl bullet and retained the same overall cartridge length. Thus, it would happily feed through all the belt, strip and drum / tray fed machine-guns in the system. It "mostly" worked in the rifles, bur the ultimate solution was to simply make new folded-steel Mk Vll-specific magazines that could be swapped into the fleet of rifles.

Anyone who has ever owned or worked on "wildcat" barreled Lee Enfields will be aware of how critical the correct position and form of the feed-lips can be. Think of all the "fun" to be had "adjusting" the body internals of a P-13 to function with the shorter, more-tapered, rimmed, .303 cartridge.

[bob q]

Just what rules did the Germans rewrite in 1904 ? The French already had their spitzer boat tail bullet in 1898 . The reason for the German S round was to give the same battle field zero as the 6.5mm's , without giving up the wound making capability of the 8mm . The German's developed the S round in 1896 as stated in their ordnance testing reports . I have seen a 1898 dated example and have a 1900 example . They just did not make the official change to the S round and the 400 meter zero until 1905 .