I always had weird day dreams in class about time travel to the past with todays technology. Especially after seeing the “Final Countdown”.
Anyway so I was wondering if I would have been zapped to the past would me a AK-47 and three thousand rounds already preloaded in clips would we(me and the rest of the Texans whooped that cross dressing Santa Anna dude ? Or would it take a more AK 47s to be stragically placed around the mission?
I know if I had the machine gun that the black dude had in “Predator”, the battle would have been over in about 30 seconds. What kind of machine gun was that killer piece of equipment anyway and just how many rounds will it shoot a second?
General Electric M134 minigun, six-barrel 7.62mm electrically-rotated machine gun. Predator exaggerated; I don’t believe that it’s ever been available as a man-portable weapon (with the generator and ammo drum, you’d be lucky to stand up with it). It’s often found on helicopters as a door gun.
The M134 comes in 7.62mm and 5.56mm versions (.30 cal and .223 cal), and fires 2000 rounds per minute on LOW, 4000 rounds per minute of HIGH. I have read the PREDATOR gun was the 5.56mm version. Weight without batteries and extra junk is 35#, but you need three heavy duty 12V truck batteries to power the thing, or alternately you need a 28V 115 Amp power cable. Effective range of 1500 meters, but more fun when you can see the rounds impact.
In combat situations, on in a hundred rounds hits a target. If you happen to be John Fucking Wayne, you might get twice that. Assuming a disabling wound for every hit, you got sixty guys out of Santa Anna’s entire army on the ground. After that, you’re fucked, the AK doesn’t even have a Bayonet attachment.
You would be much better off with half a dozen good bolt action sniper rifles, with scopes, to keep the other army out of their own range for the stand off. The odds you are talking about pretty much would require a Bradley, for a single additional combatant to swing the ballance over to a victory. You can’t charge an army of riflemen, even with a hand held mini-gun. (not to mention the half ton of ammuniton you have to carry with you.)
And the standoff at the Alamo only made the history books because the Mexican High command was to stupid to go around them, and let them starve to death. Even your mini-gun would not change that.
According to this site, there were 189 Texas combatants (190 with you there) and approx 2000 of Santa Anna’s guys. Dead were counted at 189 men (some non-combatants spared) for Texas, and 1600 for Santa Anna. If these numbers are even close, (8 Mexicans killed for every Texan) one guy with an AK-47 and 3000 rounds may have made quite the impact on that one day.
Trisk, I’ll agree with those numbers for normal battles, but defending a fort with the bad guys on open ground evens it up a bit. An automatic rifle may not be a Bradley, but spraying rounds at an advancing hoarde of assaulting folks can certainly knock enough down to get the other ones thinking pretty hard. The semi-auto feature would enable “shoot-new target-shoot” firing and make an impact, at least that’s MY opinion.
If you want an interesting book on this sort of thing, check out ‘The Guns of the South’ by Harry Turtledove. Postulates what would happen if the South had AK-47s. IT doesn’t read as goofy as it sounds.
Miniguns can manage 6000 rounds a minute. The physics-inclined can do the recoil math. Additionally, at that kind of rate they rely on the airflow that a fast-flying craft provides to cool the barrels.
I’m pretty sure AK-47s did, at some point in the production run, have bayonet lugs. But rather than wish for AK-47’s, wish for a couple hundred more regular infantry and artillery. That would make the difference a lot more easily than a single automatic rifle.
You know, I suppose there would be a rather large “Voo Doo Mo Jo” factor to consider. If you made best tactical use of the rate of fire, and had an expert rifleman (Which we assume Bill is, for the sake of argument) with a very cool head, you could really make those two thousand troops think hard about that second assault charge.
As an unknown, and unpredictable tactical variable, it could make enough difference to make the battle untenable for the Mexicans. But of course, that would have made them move on, which was the strategically correct choice all along. Hmmmmmmm.
I have to say, though, even in a fortified position, more than two hundred kills for a single rifle would make even the aforementioned John F. Wayne sit up and take notice. The emotional effect might make the difference, but the true military force effect is less. The comments about the “Confederates with AK’s” implies an entire force of soldiers with high power modern firepower. That is a far different kettle of fish than one guy doing a Schwartzenegger on an whole army.
Santa Anna committed approximately 1,850 men to the final battle, in which he suffered approximately 550 casualties. By military strategy, an assault unit can expect to lose up to one-third of its force, Santa Anna did just that. On the other hand whether the defenders numbered 189 or, more likely, 250, they lost on a 1 to 2 ratio, which is not bad.
How close did Santa Ana get to the fort? I read a paper on the use of machine guns for assassination and you have high chances of getting a kill if you fire a certain number of rounds into the area your target is occupying, really good for long-range kills where you don’t need to pick up and move your weaponry immediately after. Take something bigger than an assault rifle, see if the Mexican Army is willing to continue fighting after their leader is shredded in his tent by .50 caliber machine gun rounds from half a mile away.
And if he got closer (I’m not sure about the tactics they would have used) a good sniper rifle would work well.
Let me get this straight? You are at the Alamo on the pre-dawn of Sunday, March 6, 1836? You are inside the converted mission with 183 expatriate Americans and local national rebels. Outside is an army of Mexican regulars of some 5000 men? Command of your force is divided or shared between a hothead backcountry lawyer from Alabama, a defeated Tennessee congressman and cornpone humorist and a dying expatriate land speculator? After a siege of 11 days during which your force has suffered few, if any, casualties but has also gotten very little sleep, the Mexican Army is ready to assault? Your force has a perimeter of about 440 yards to defend? Your force can defend the perimeter with a density of about one man to each eight feet of wall? Right?
In the event, the Mexicans attacked with four battalion size columns just before first light, before the sky was gray. Despite an initial repulse, the north wall of the compound was quickly overrun, then the temporary stockade on the south near the chapel. Within a half hour the whole place had been captured and those not killed in the initial assault or the mopping up, rounded up for execution shortly afterwards.
It is your supposition that one defender, you, is armed not with a muzzle loading, flint lock musket or rifle, but with an AK-47 and that you have 3000 rounds loaded into magazines (and presumably a donkey to carry your ammo for you). Would this, you wonder, change the outcome of the siege?
Simple answer: no.
Comment and observation: Man, you have way too much time on your hands.
Santa Anna was fighting under Napoleonic rules of warefare which meant his troops were bunched together. I bet any halfway decent rifleman would be able to do much better then 1 in a 100 in that case. Especially considering the effective range on the AK47 was much better then the .55 caliber rifles they were using in the Mexican Army.
One thing you’re not considering is the psychological affect a fully automatic rifle would have had on the Mexicans. If you’re used to firing 1-2 bullets a minute how do you think you’d feel if the enemy were able to fire 30 or more in less than 10 seconds?
And I believe it is possible to put a bayonet onto an AK-47. My M-1 Carbine doesn’t have a bayonet attachment but I’ve seen pictures of them in WWII with bayonets attached.
I don’t think one Ak-47 would have made victory possible. They had so many troops and artillery that they probably would have won anyway.
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Certainly. You’d be able to pick off all their officers, maybe even Santa Anna, from half a mile.
Texas joke that will probably get me in trouble: What did Davy Crockett say to Colonel Travis when he saw 5,000 Mexicans rushing towards the wall of the Alamo?
Screw AK-47s. Give me an M-16 or M-4 carbine and I’d be happier. M-16s are more accurate, and if you have an A1, you’ll still have full auto capabilities. Also, a few anti-tank weapons, like AT-4s would help put a dent into their ranks too, and if it didn’t, it would certainly scare the hell out of them. An M-60 or a SAW placed strategically on the top of the fort could do the most damage, though.
One guy with an AK47 wouldn’t have done jack-shit against 2000 men because he can only be in one place at any given time. 2000 men armed with rakes and pitchforks could eventually overrun him.
Tanks or aircraft (like in the Final Countdown) are a different story.
If you wnet back in time with a single fully armed M1A2 Abrahms tank (and its crew), you could probably mess some shit up (at least until you ran out of fuel/ammo or threw a track). It would be a pretty good laugh listening to Santa Anna’s cannon balls bounce off the hull.