FPS video games -- scavenging ammo, realistic?

Factual Questions
21

Umm, no. It’s not get the bullet diameter, it’s also the cartridge size and shape.

Here’s the Japanese round:

Here’s the 30.06:

Here’s the Brit .303

(*same *bullet size as the Arisaka)

Now, the Japanese likely copied the .303 for the 7.7 but I don’t know if the rounds were 100% interchangable. If they were, they’d be interchangable both ways.

And the more common Japanese round was the

As to scavanging ammo, you did that from your downed allies, not your enemies. Although the Allies usually had plenty of ammo, Paratroopers and rangers often had to scavenge from the bodies of dead buddies.

Allied troops were well known for scavaging handguns from the Axis, but as souveniers, not so much as useful weapons.

22

In WWI the Chauchat forced soliders to scavange for weapons.

It was so unreliable and prone to jamming that soliders would ditch it in favor of just about anything else.

23

:smiley:

24

In the book “The Alchemist” desert nomads used a similar trick with arrow slits, one side made theirs thinner and used thinner tethers on their bows, so they could reuse the enemies arrows while the enemy could not.

25

[hijack]
There have been a few comparisons of the M-16 and AK-47 in this thread.

The M-16 had a lot of problems initially, which led to it getting a bad reputation. The M-16 is designed to be an accurate weapon, so it has expensive, high tolerance parts. This is good for accuracy, but it makes the weapon more vulnerable to malfunctions due to dirt, crud, etc. The M-16 was actually issued to Vietnam without cleaning kits, and soldiers were told that cleaning the rifle wasn’t necessary. This was absolutely idiotic, and the soldiers learned really quickly that cleaning was in fact necessary. The M-16 had a few design flaws as well, but even though the mechanical design was fixed during the Vietnam era and proper cleaning practices were instituted, the M-16 still has a reputation for being a crappy weapon. Soldiers especially didn’t like the plastic stock. It was designed to make the weapon lighter, and therefore easier for the soldiers to carry around, but they saw it as a “cheap” weapon and often called it the rifle that was made by Mattel (the toy manufacturer).

The AK-47 has a completely different design philosophy. It’s parts are intentionally made cheap, and it was engineered with intentionally loose tolerances. This has a huge advantage when you are making enough of these for, say, the Russian Army. Would you rather have 10 guys armed with the more accurate M-16 or would you rather have 20 guys armed with less accurate AK-47’s? The old Russian philosophy was “quantity has a quality all its own” and they certainly followed this philosophy in the AK-47. The intentionally sloppy tolerances of the AK-47 not only make it cheap to manufacture, but they also give the AK-47 it’s legendary ability to survive getting dirty and still firing. This ability is often exaggerated, though. The AK-47 does jam less easily than an M-16, but the AK-47 isn’t some jam-proof super weapon. Get it dirty enough, and it will jam.

The AK-47’s cheap cost and ability to fire when dirty come at a cost. The sloppy tolerances mean that nothing fits tightly, and if you look at an AK-47 firing in slow motion you’ll see the end of the barrel just flopping all around. At close distances the AK-47 is reasonably accurate, but at longer distances you are reduced to spray and pray tactics.

The AK-47 does fire a heavier round. This was controversial when the M-16 was first produced. While at first this might seem like an advantage for the AK-47, it has a disadvantage too. In a video game, things are different. In the real world, logistics can win or lose battles. The lighter round of the M-16 is still quite deadly, and the increased accuracy of the M-16 means that you can use less ammo to get the job done. It also means that the soldier can carry more rounds. If you have the same number of supply trucks, the guys firing AK-47’s will run out of ammo long before the guys firing M-16’s will, and at that point the AK-47 becomes a club, and a club isn’t an effective weapon against an assault rifle.

Each weapon has its advantages and disadvantages. The M-16 is more accurate, but costs more. The AK-47 is cheap but you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with it (I’m exaggerating). The AK-47 packs more of a punch. The M-16 allows you to carry more ammo. There are pluses and minuses to both sides. They are two completely different weapons with two completely design philosophies.
[/hijack]

Getting back on topic, in the American Civil War soldiers very often scavenged off of the fallen soldiers on the battlefield. Both sides were using a mixture of old and new muskets, and weapons and ammo were both in short supply, especially at the beginning of the war. Weapons shortages affected the south more than the north, since the south had much more limited manufacturing capability. Many soldiers on both sides were using the older smooth bore muskets. In the movies, the skilled hero can hit things at amazing distances with a musket. In the real world, smooth bore muskets always fire curve balls. They are only accurate out to about 50 or 75 yards at the most. After that, you don’t know where that damn ball is going. The minie ball (which is a bullet shaped thing, not a ball) increased the range out to several hundred yards, so soldiers were darn quick to scoop up one of the newer weapons off of the battlefield if the chance arose. The more accurate rifled muskets were in use by both sides, and they both fired the same size ammunition (.58 cal minie ball), so if you managed to get a better weapon you didn’t have to worry about finding ammo for it.

Muskets have been found with several charges loaded into them. Some people have concluded that the soldiers were so terrified in battle that they continued to load their musket and hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t firing. What they were probably doing was intentionally stuffing up the barrel with charges (while retreating and abandoning weapons) so that the enemy couldn’t easily pick up the musket and use it against them in the battle. So, not only was scavenging will known during the civil war, but you actually had cases of anti-scavenging tactics being used.

Getting back to more modern times, I’ve heard of many soldiers taking AK-47’s in Iraq, but most of the cases I’m aware of they were taken for souvenirs. One guy I know shoved a bunch of AK-47’s into a truck tire and tried to smuggle them back to the U.S. I don’t know what his punishment was, but he got caught and didn’t end up with any AK-47’s. He didn’t mention spending time in a military prison or anything either.

In the heat of battle, I’ve heard of a few cases where there were mixed U.S. and Iraqi forces, with the U.S. guys armed with M-16’s and the Iraqi guys armed with AK-47’s. As the battles progressed, the M-16 guys would sometimes pick up AK-47’s off of the fallen Iraqis when the M-16’s ran out of ammo. This isn’t the same as running out into the battlefield and picking weapons up off of a dead guy while the shooting is still going on, though. The fallen Iraqis were in the same location as the guys with the M-16.

26

Is there any evidence for that?
Because it seems plausible to me that in the heat of battle a soldier might not notice a misfire. But it seems much less plausible that a soldier retreating in such a panic that he left his musket would take the time to stop and go through the long muzzle-loading process just to keep the enemy from immediately picking it up and firing it. I mean, a) the enemy already has weapons, or you wouldn’t be running away (to be explicit, running away in such a panic that you’re risking court-martial for abandoning your weapon), and b) to cover 200 yards or so, I bet it’s faster to carry the musket with you than to stop, load two rounds (including powder), then throw the musket down and resume running.

I admit that retreating troops regularly disabled cannons, but that’s because cannons can’t be carried while running. So leaving them was necessary, and the advancing troops won’t have cannons up there already anyway (of course the advancing troops will bring their muskets with them).

27

Not to mention those AKs probably aren’t the same cold war pieces of crap that the enemy is using but ones that have been checked out and taken care of.

28

There were three 7.7mm cartridges in service with the Japanese during WWII.

One of them was 7.7mm Arisaka, and was not interchangeable with .303 British. (but was nearly identical in ballistic performance). This was the cartridge used in the Type 99 rifle, aircraft machine-guns, and

The other was a 7.7mm Machine-gun round designed for use in Japanese copies of the Hotchkiss and Lewis guns, and that was interchangeable with the .303 British. The Japanese captured quantities of .303 calibre arms and ammunition during the early stages of the Pacific War and so having a calibre interchangeable with the British one wasn’t as silly as it sounded, especially once their supply lines started to become stretched when the Naval War ramped up.

The third was the Type 92 7.7mm Semi-Rimmed round, designed for use in Aircraft machine-guns. It was not interchangeable with 7.7mm Arisaka or the 7.7mm Machine-gun round.

So the Japanese actually had three different types of completely non-interchangeable 7.7mm ammunition in service during WWII. One can only imagine the supply headaches that caused Japanese quartermasters, especially later in the war when it was getting hard to get supplies.

29

Isn’t the whole point of the Kalashnikov design that it doesn’t need much, if any, maintenance? I think you’ll find the “Cold War pieces of crap” you’re deriding are still more than effective enough for their users.

30

A person receiving a direct hit with a 5.56mm round will either die or wish they had.

Speaking as a former soldier, soldiers are - bizarrely, it seems to me, but it is so - prone to believing myths and nonsense about weapons. The M-16 and its variants lacking “stopping power” is a pretty famous one, and it’s silly. Other popular myths included the Geneva Conventions making any number of things illegal, such as using large calibre weapons against human targets (in fact, the Geneva Convention says nothing of the sort) or the popular myth that a .50 round will kill you if it even passes close by you, which of course it will not. engineer_comp_geek mentions the old story about how the M-16 was supposedly manufactured by Mattel. Of course it wasn’t - it’s a Colt - but that myth, which started as a joke, persisted and became fact to many people, even up to the 1980s and 1990s when Canada adopted the C7 variant, which was in fact made by a Canadian machine shop called Diemaco, and still is, although it’s since been bought out by Colt.

Soldiers tend to be very conservative in nature - in practice, I mean, not politically - and will reject most new things. I was in the Canadian Forces when the Forces was switching from the FNC1, a semiauto 7.62mm rifle, to the C7, and some soldiers didn’t like that move, despite the plain fact that the C7 was a massively superior weapon and was to be upgraded to even cooler versions, as in fact it has been.

31

Depends what you’re doing with it. I’d rather have an FN-FAL (or L1A1 SLR) instead of an M-16/AR-15/C7 any day of the week, but I’m not in the military.

Fun fact: The Canadian Rangers are still being issued .303 calibre Lee-Enfield No 4 Mk I* rifles. They’ve been talking about phasing them out for years, but the Rangers are very fond of them and are quite happy with them, from what I’ve read.

32

It’s because bolt action is easier to operate and maintain at -40C, and .303 is better for dealing with polar bears that weigh up to 1500lbs than 5.56mm.

33

:eek:

Surely they are being issued for a sniping role? rather than as a general issue rifle? Please tell me it’s so.

Does anyone even manufacture new ones anymore?

34

There are plenty of cites for muskets with multiple charges loaded. For example, at Gettysburg, 35,000 muskets were found on the battlefield.

11,000 were unloaded
6,000 held one charge
12,000 held two charges
6,000 had from three to ten charges each
One had twenty-two charges

(statistics came from this web site: http://www.hackman-adams.com/guns/58musket.htm)

Finding a cite for the “why” part of this is a bit more difficult. Several books I’ve read say that panicked soldiers simply didn’t notice that the musket hadn’t fired and just loaded it again (“Guns of the Old West” By Charles Edward Chapel is one such book). The web site that I got the statistics from gave the alternate theory that a soldier in the rush of battle forgot to put the percussion cap on. When the weapon misfired, the soldier would toss it aside and pick up another. A second soldier would pick up the weapon and load it, then while loading it would find that there was already a charge in there (obvious because the ramrod won’t go down all the way). The second soldier would then also toss the weapon aside, and so on.

I can believe either theory for the ones that had one or two charges in them, but the ones with multiple charges really seem like they were intentionally buggered up to me. If you know you are going to be retreating, but you’ve got a few minutes and there are weapons around you that you don’t want your enemy to have (and too many of them to just carry away), I can picture a soldier intentionally shoving a few rounds in the barrel.

I agree that this isn’t something you’d do on the run.

I can’t find a good cite for it at the moment, though.

35

No, it’s a general issue rifle. The Canadian Rangers are a reserve, volunteer unit working in extremely remote areas (very, very cold remote areas) and for what they’re doing, the No. 4 Mk I* is perfect. The Canadian Government is looking for something more modern to replace the Lee-Enfield, but from what I’ve heard, the Rangers themselves are quite happy with the rifle and aren’t in any hurry to get rid of it.

Yes- Australian International Arms manufacture the No. 4 Mk IV rifle in .308 Winchester. They’re supposed to be very good, but they’re a bit pricey for me. (Link to the Canadian distributor’s website, for anyone who is interested.)

The Ishapore Arsenal in India are believed to still be making spare parts for SMLE Mk III* and Ishapore 2A1 rifles, which would indicate the ability to construct complete guns if they chose (SMLE Mk III* rifles have been discovered with late 1980s manufacture dates, FWIW, and Ishapore also make a rifle that is basically a sporterised SMLE but in .315 calibre. It’s one of the few rifles Indian civilians can legally own, I’m told.)

Pakistan Ordnance Factories also have the necessary dies, tools, and resources to make No. 4 Mk 2 Lee-Enfields, but they don’t appear to have been manufacturing the rifle since the 1960s.

Incidentally, Lee-Enfield rifles are still issued to police and reserve military units in India and several African countries; it’s the longest serving military rifle still in use.

36

During WW2, German soldiers on the East front would often ditch their MP-40s in favor of the Russian PPSh, because they jammed a lot less, packed close to triple the ammo to a clip and were generally superior. They even dubbed PPSh converted to use standard German 9mm parabellum ammo “MP-41®” (the r for Russian, to distinguish it from the “real” MP41, which was basically an MP-40 with a wooden body).

I doubt they did it in the middle of battles though, I suspect they more likely scavenged them from the dead after the fighting stopped.

37

I remember reading in Mark of the Lion that Charlie Upham (later Captain, VC and Bar) had a liking for the Schmeisser he picked up from a German paratrooper in Crete - the ANZACs didn’t have a comparable weapon, so he kept it running for as long as he could scavenge ammo for it. He probably wished he had it a while later when he had to deal with a couple of Germans close in when all he had was a bolt-action rifle and one functioning arm, but being Upham, he managed OK.

38

Heh, Germans were notoriously short of weapons and put to use everything they could lay their hands on. Not only on the East front. Even in the Western Europe they issued captured STEN guns and even some Tommyguns to their soldiers. As well as Czech and French machine guns, Polish and Russian AT-rifles, Norwegian pistols and… actually, almost everything else.

They did it in quite organized way though, with official gathering, evaluation and issue procedures.

39

By the time the Gotterdammerung came around, the Volkssturm who had guns tended to be armed with a plethora of captured rifles- French MAS-36s, British Lee-Enfields, Belgian Mausers, Norwegian Krag-Jørgensens Russian M91/30s, and various other odds and ends including Sten gun knockoffs (The MP-3008) and single-shot zip-guns (Volksgewehr).
Wikipedia has a pretty good list of the guns used by German in WWII, which includes most of the captured arms and their German military designations, FWIW.

40

The AK series does not have sloppy tolerances. It intentionally has larger clearances than are seen in the AR series. Tolerance and clearance are absolutely not the same thing. Clearance is the space around or between parts. The AK is legendarily reliable partly because its clearances make it tolerant of debris that would foul “tighter” guns. Tolerance is the allowable limit of variation in the dimensions of parts. Actual Soviet or Russian made AK’s use parts that are held to pretty tight tolerances.

Secondly, the idea that the"AK is a spray and pray gun" comes from the way it has been seen in use by untrained or poorly trained 3rd worlders. If you have ever seen the rifle used by trained troops from the many nations that issue variants, you’d recognize that cliche as basically false. I have family members who served in the Soviet Army and whose knowledge of firearms consists only of their military training. Any of them can still pick up an AK and make it do things the average American armchair expert would say is impossible.