It certainly makes sense. Experienced infantry troops know the sounds various weapons makes. Especially if they’ve been pinned down by one. The unique sound of the enemy’s gunfire is an easy way to identify them.
I recall in Bill Mauldin’s book that he mentions the easily identifiable BAR.
Sure, but this contributed heavily to German’s notorious logistical problems, with dozens of types of equipment all needing their own logistical tail of spare parts and ammo.
Thanks everyone. Ignorance fought.
True, although in some cases they were aided by the fact that other countries they’d captured a lot of weapons from used the German caliber for small arms. Pretty large numbers of Czech ZB 26 (or Yugoslav version) and Polish Wz.28 (a version of the BAR) light MG’s and those countries’ Mauser type rifles were used early in the war with Russia where German production of MG34 MG’s and Kar98k rifles hadn’t caught up with the expansion of the army. That was relatively transparent logistically because they all used the German 7.92x57 cartridge. Although it’s true in other cases it was more of a complication, and the Germans’ own weapons weren’t always as standardized as others’.
But the ‘very standardized’ US Army used four different small arms/MG cartridges pretty widely, the .30 cal ‘06’ type for full power rifles and MG’s, the quite different ‘.32 Winchester’ type for the .30 cal M1 carbine, .45 ACP for pistols and submachine guns and .50 for heavy/antiaircraft MG’s. A lot of the eventual superiority of US/Allied logistics was just a lot more US/Allied resources available to be brought to bear in that regard, as in every other regard. And the Germans on top of that did a relatively poor job fully mobilizing their economy for war till ca. 1944.
In one of the most famous photos (staged, as with many iconic WWII combat photos) from the Ardennes offensive of 1944 1st SS Panzer Division soldiers run past an abandoned 3" antitank gun of the US 820th Tank Destroyer Bn. The soldier closest to the camera carries a US M1 carbine.
The Germans made 10,000 copies of the STEN, then modified it into the MP-3008, of which another 3000+ were made:
Honorable mention goes to the Polish Radam ViS-35 pistol. The Radam factory was put back into limited production, and 300,000+ new pistols were made by the Nazis. Not actually parallel production, but a clear example of using other countries’ designs.
Really, pretty much every nation made use of captured enemy weapons and systems - From B-17 bombers, to Sherman and T-34 tanks, to MG-42s and MP-40s, and beyond.
1980s? They didn’t exactly get rid of them in the 1980s. What they did in the 1980s was take off their turrets, change their engines, add a rear hatch and some armor, and renamed them the Achzarit- which is still very much in service.
Basically a modern update of teh WWII “Kangaroo” APC - Take a tank, strip the turret, and stuff it full of infantry:
IIRC captured enemy equipment was more likely to be issued to rear echelon or occupation troops since they are less likely to need a continuous resupply of ammo and spare parts, etc.
Not necessarily. The whole “one man gets the rifle, the next man gets the bullets…” thing from Enemy At The Gates and Call of Duty really happened. There’s at least one incidence of a Soviet Commissar telling his troops who were pointing out they didn’t have guns or anything that “your weapons are in the hands of your enemies. Go and get them.”
Similarly, during WWI the Canadian Ross Rifle was so problematic and unreliable Canadian soldiers deliberately “lost” them in No Man’s Land and salvaged SMLE rifles from dead British/Empire soldiers instead, to the point where the Canadians stopped issuing the Ross and started using the SMLE like everyone else in the Commonwealth.
Both the Russians and the Canadians were on the winning side.
The destroyer USS Stewart was scuttled after being severely damaged early in the war. The Japanese raised her and made her into one of their ships. It was responsible for sinking the celebrated submarine USS Harder. The ship survived the war and again became an American ship.
X during the island wars of the Pacific I’ve read that it was common to find Japanese soldiers with American arms.Not only because they were running or if ammunition, but because the American weapons were semi automatic with high capacity magazines. One of the most prized finds for a Japanese soldier was the M1 carbine. 15 to 30 round magazine that could fire with every pull off the trigger sure beat the standard issue bolt action rifles your average Japanese was issued. Need more ammo? The was plenty just laying on the ground.
It’s true the IJN’s ‘Patrol Boat 102’, ex-Stewart, had an extensive combat career encountering numerous US subs and coming under air attack by the USN and USAAF as well, but survived. However, closer study of Japanese records has shown that PB102 was fairly nearby when Coast Defense Ship No. 22 sank USS Harder, but didn’t participate. See for example
http://www.combinedfleet.com/PB-102_t.htm
Indeed, the Germans made such heavy use of captured war materials out of necessity, not because it was their preferred choice. It didn’t just extend to weapons and ammunition, the logistical tail was chasing itself when it came to lack of standardization and the need for spare parts. The Germans were chronically short on trucks and other wheeled transport and in preparation for Barbarossa impressed wheeled vehicles of all sorts from every occupied nation in Europe as well as German civilian vehicles into service to cover some of the shortfall. The result was over a hundred different models of trucks, each needing their own spare parts.
Do you have any sort of cite for this apart from the movie or a video game? I have never seen any sort of credible source for this, and in my opinion it is Hollywood getting its war wrong. In WWI the Imperial Russian Army under the Tsar did have this problem, Russia couldn’t provide enough rifles for its soldiers. This was most certainly not the case of the Soviet Union in WW2, which out produced every other nation in the category of land warfare materials during WW2, the United States included. The idea that the Soviet Union wasn’t able to provide enough rifles for more than half of its men at Stalingrad at the end of 1942 at a time when it was issuing PPsH-41s like candy is patently absurd.
The guys from Forgotten Weapons do some great stuff, don’t they?
For what it’s worth, there’s plenty of contemporary evidence of issues with the Ross, although more of the “Jams and won’t fire” variety than “blows up on the user” type.
Also, there’s evidence the Canadians were given to ditching them and using Lee-Enfields from… indisposed British soldiers as well.
Here’s a 1915 newspaper story from New Zealand (story is from London, though) reporting on “Certain issues” arising with the Ross and some Canadian soldiers having them replaced with Lee-Enfield.
Here’s another story from 1917 relating to a White Paper from the UK discussing the issues with the Ross and Canadian soldiers taking Lee-Enfields from British Soldiers who had been “put out of action”.
The Ross is a fantastic target and hunting rifle - but terrible as a combat weapon.
I believe I read it in Antony Beevor’s book Stalingrad, in reference to the early days of Barbarossa when the Russians didn’t have enough weapons to go around. That had clearly changed by the Battle of Stalingrad, though.
I may be misremembering the source but I;ve seen the same assertion elsewhere reputable (ie, not Wikipedia)- there just weren’t enough guns to go around for the Soviets when the Nazis invaded and the solution was “Take them off dead Germans or other dead Russians”.
Good cites. 
And yeah, FW is one of my “must see” channels - one of the few I get notifications from.
C&Rrsenal have a couple ggood vids on the Ross MkIII, as well. One is rather long…
This is a “How it works” animation:
This is the full-length bit:
The Ross is on my list of “must-own” MilSurp rifles. After I finish my Mauser collection, anyway… 
I had a teacher in HS who had been in the Hungarian Army during WWII. He told us the following story–I can’t vouch for its truthfulness and it smells fishy:
During one engagement his unit only had enough rifles for half the soldiers. They were ordered to fire at the enemy and then hand their weapon to an unarmed soldier so he could take his turn. The Russians charged during the handover and wiped them out–leaving my teacher to survive, of course.
At the beginning of the ‘GPW’ the Soviets had a greater inventory of standard small arms relative to their field strength than the Germans did. As previously mentioned, it was fairly common in mid 1941 for German squads to lack MG34’s (the theoretical base of their firepower) but to use captured Czech/Yugo/Polish light machine guns instead which, fortunately, fired the same cartridge, though were a level below the firepower of the belt feld quick change barrel MG34. And they pretty widely used Mauser type bolt action rifles captured from those countries though those were pretty much identical to their own Kar98k’s.
The Soviets ran into a problem with small arms supply by late 1941 because of their extremely heavy losses in the opening campaign. Yet still I think some books are trying to make a generally valid point with a colorful anecdote about rifles. The most pressing shortages were in weapons like light machine guns, submachine guns, heavy infantry weapons and everything up from there. The Soviets had lost forces, and their weapons, in huge ‘pockets’ surrounded by the Germans, bigger than some other pretty major WWII armies ever had.
But by the time of Stalingrad Soviet war industry had done a good deal of its (remarkable) move to the east and was producing huge quantities of weapons. As several posts have agreed, such a story is more doubtful by then. Although, for forces at the end of a supply line there could always be shortages even if there was plenty of the item further back up the logistical pipeline.
It’s a documented fact though that Chinese formations early in their intervention in the Korean War often included a significant % of men in front line infantry companies who had no fire arms. Besides helping carry supplies, they would throw grenades, use improvised weapons of any kind, and wait for firearms from their own casualties or those captured from US/ROK forces to arm themselves. That wasn’t true later on as the Soviets rearmed the ‘Chinese People’s Volunteers’ in Korea. But initially the CPV used a staggering array of captured weapons. Most numerous were captured Japanese weapons, often via the Soviets from their August 1945 war v Japan; all manner of weapons captured from the Nationalists, manufactured or bought throughout the world from the 1910’s onward; and US weapons either captured from the Nationalists or in some cases provided directly by the US to the Communists during WWII. To which they added new captures from UN forces. The Germans were perhaps the champions of captured weapons use in WWII, but couldn’t hold a candle to the CPV of late 1950.
Thanks! I did some research into the Ross a while back and found some more comprehensive reports from the era - it really was quite a brouhaha and a lot of questions were asked about how such a manifestly unsuitable rifle was approved for general infantry use in combat.
Good luck tracking one down! I’ve only ever seen three - one in a museum, one which a re-enactor was carrying (and which had been rendered inoperable) and one which belonged to an acquaintance. I gather they’re easier to find in Canada though.