Right. The originally quoted statistic IIRC was that an M14 with 100 rounds weighed the same as an M16 with 400 rounds. That’s the US Army rifle adopted in 1957, a development of the WWII M1 in relatively similar caliber (7.62mm NATO v US .30 cal) and size v. first generation M16’s.
The implied standard of M1 rifle equipped US infantry in WWII assumed they carried a 10 pocket cartridge belt with an 8 round clip in each pocket so 88 rounds assuming one clip in the rifle. With the same outfit and M1903 rifle (as some US WWII infantry still had, or pre WWII) two five round clips would fit in each pocket so 105. However soldiers might carry in addition one or two six pocket bandoliers so 136 or 184 in M1 case, which you sometimes see in photo’s and accounts. And as in later times, that was not an absolute upper limit either.
The official standard for bolt action rifle infantry in other armies mid century (British, Germans, Japanese, North Koreans etc) was often more like 50-65 rounds for the riflemen.
And in any of those cases the riflemen might carry extra ammo in a form immediately usable by their squad’s automatic weapon(s), not necessarily loads of extra clipped up ammo for their own rifles, especially bolt action ones. The German squad for example, give or take its increasingly common 9mm sub-machinegun(s) as the war went on, generally had low firepower bolt action carbines and a very high fire power belt fed quick change barrel machine gun. Extra carrying capacity was more likely to be used to bring more 7.92mm rounds in belts for the MG rather than bringing loads of the extra 7.92mm rounds in carbine clips.
The book “We were soldiers once . . . and young” about the Battle of Ia Drack talks about having the choppers bring in more ammo for the several day fight.
When the TOE/MTOE (Table of Organization and Equipment / Modified TOE) dictates it for your duty position is the primary reason. For example as an Armor officer when assigned to duty positions actually on a tank I carried a pistol and only a pistol. In my staff positions the MTOE directed a rifle so I carried and qualified with that. In my second Company command we were undergoing transition from a Tank Company in an Armor Battalion to become the Dismounted Reconnaissance Troop of a RSTA Squadron. That organization directed dual carry for a lot of the leaders in the unit.
The other reason I saw late in my career was Commander’s stating an operational need for a deployment for certain slots on the DMD (Deployment Manning Document) with the equipment being put on the MEEL (Mission Essential Equipment List). My Deployment to Bosnia was actually a good example of adjusting for the needs of the mission. During preparation I was the S4 of a battalion task force. By MTOE in a tank battalion that meant my primary weapon was a rifle and I was not dual carry. Given the nature of the environment the staff generally got adjusted from rifles to pistols only. When our task force got cut 2 1/2 weeks before deployment a smattering of us got sucked up into other positions on the overall rotation DMD based on building the best team. Since all the folks from my unit were already assigned pistols, higher didn’t think to dictate a change in the last minute chaos, and my Commander was okay with it we took pistols to the mob station. By the time anyone realized it was way late to make changes without a ton of hassle.
“Hey why do you guys get to carry pistols when I’m lugging around this rifle?!?”
“They let me plan it.”
The downside was I ended up as the training officer in the G3 section for the deployment. There were extra pistols already pre-positioned in theater. Guess who got stuck with scheduling qualification ranges so they could issue pistols to the people that probably should have had them in the first place? :smack:
The Germans widely utilized one of the fastest firing machine guns of all time, the MG-42, nicknamed “Hitler’s Buzzsaw” by Allied troops. Elements of its design were taken by the US to make the sensibly slower M60 machine gun that saw a lot of use in Vietnam.
Or in France. Not every bakery in France had been destroyed. Well it’s just a movie. The grain of truth in the idea is that some portion of the US logistics train would have to be devoted to it. And in the fall of 1944 the big bottleneck was actually in transport across France in trucks, since so much of the rail system was destroyed, and no ports closer than the beachheads in Normandy captured and cleared of mines. That was the big picture reason the Allied Armies were still on the German border in December 1944, where they’d been basically since September, rather than the war being over (similarly in the east, the Soviets made huge gains in the summer but stalled on too long supply lines in the fall). However by December the situation was on its way to be solved since convoys began coming into Antwerp at the end of November, short cutting the long overland route from Normandy (maybe including cakes from England in the following weeks), Antwerp being the objective of the Ardennes Counteroffensive.
In the movie, it was a birthday cake in a box with a post date. So someone on the homefront sent the cake by mail to an APO, which then got delivered to private snuffy. The german officer that aquired the cake, noted the difference between the date sent and the present day and concluded that it would have to come by air mail.
Any other military might call that waste, the amount of space that a cake would take up might go to something more useful, which is when he came to the realization that the two countries were fighting two separate levels of war.
Yes, you’re right. It is Ia Drang. Knew that and typed with a “k.”
The French simple gave up that area because they couldn’t resupply via truck. Too dangerous. It was the ability to use choppers which allowed the US to fight in that area.
However, both sides finished that battle with the idea that they could win the war. The US believed that the NVA couldn’t keep up with the number of casualties and the North understood that they could get close to the Americans then the artillery and bombs couldn’t be utilized.
I met someone who had been a NVA regular. He spent the war fighting in the jungle. They didn’t get to go home until the war ended. Nice guy and obviously didn’t want to talk about it very much.
If I am reading this right, the irony is strong considering the ensuing years: “the US cannot keep up [tolerate] high casualties” post-Vietnam was the watchword of our military adversaries, great and small.
