The video makes clear that these small arms represent a small minority of the weapons in use, and are primarily issued to the lowest echelon of reserve troops.
My question is, presupposing the weapons are in serviceable condition, would they really be that vastly inferior to the modern small arms currently in use?
A smoothbore musket is as capable of killing someone today as it was 200 years ago, however, a musket would be outclassed in about every category you can name: weight, rate of fire, accuracy and range. The same would not be true, however, of most semi-automatic service rifles from the WW2 era. How do modern machine guns stack up against those of 80 years ago? (it occurs to me the M2 .50 cal is STILL in use)
Having said that, I would prefer a modern weapon – especially if the enemy uses the same one – for logistical purposes. It helps when more ammunition is available. Still, they’re all lethal. The Tokarev pistol at the beginning is similar to the Colt 1911 or 1911A1, a sidearm that a lot of people miss. The WWII battle rifles, both semiautomatic and bolt action, might not be great in a firefight, but they can ‘reach out and touch someone’. 800 metres is a long way for an assault rifle, but quite doable for a WWII battle rifle. I would not like drum or ‘pancake’ magazines. I’ve never actually used one, but my impression is that they might be slow to reload. And of course, the venerable Browning M-2 ‘Ma Deuce’ is still in use by our own military.
It seems to me that these old weapons could be very effective when used properly. Start taking out the enemy at long range with the battle rifles. Open up with the heavy machine guns and light machine guns as they get closer. Use the submachine guns for street sweeping. I think that using the weapons effectively might take more tactical training than for unites that all have the same, modern weapons; but I wouldn’t want to be on the business end of the old ones.
I thought one of the reasons for adopting assault rifles rather than battle rifles was that combat in WWII did not occur at long range. Germany kept using battle rifles while trying to change everyone over to sturmgewehr 44s. Given the industrial state if Germany in 1943, this was impossible.
I heard that the switch to .556x45 mm was because most firefights took place at under 100 yards. I have not heard that armies wanted the change during WWII. (NB: Just because I hadn’t heard it doesn’t mean it’s not true.) Every side in WWII used ‘full-sized’ battle rifles. The U.S. used the M1 Garand, and Germany used the Kar-98. Certainly the StG 44 would have been useful in later fighting, but my perception is that encounters were at longer ranges at least earlier in the war.
The intermediate cartridge used in most assault rifles is, as all things, a compromise. It doesn’t have the range of the major WW2 era rounds, but allows for a larger base of fire in terms of rounds to mass ratio. Combined with the perceived advantage of more sustainable automatic fire (which we have moved away from in individual weapons in the modern era, but was a strong point at the late/post WW2 era), it has a lot of advantages. As pointed out, most engagements do occur at shorter range, which means the trade-offs are small. Longer range fire, at distances short of artillery or targeted munitions, have largely moved into the hands of specialists with appropriate gear.
Having said all of that, if I was a partisan working on taking out unmounted Russian troops that were dispersed, I’d prefer an ‘older’ round such as 7.62 NATO. I’d want to hit them from outside their own range and run away to live another day, rather than get caught up in a short range spray and pray.
So to answer the OP’s question, they are by no means “vastly” inferior to modern small arms, and in some situations, a better fit to the type of battle. However, given the choice, I’d use a modern assault platform in the vast majority of combat roles.
Still the strongest point remains what was mentioned upthread, something is better than nothing. So if all you have is grandpa’s old WW2 era rifle, it beats being unarmed when an invading army comes knocking and you and yours are at risk.
Thank you for posting that. I was going to mention it in my previous post, but I wanted to stick to ‘full power’ battle rifles vs. modern assault rifles. The intermediate cartridges (7.62x51 mm NATO and 7.62x39 mm Russian) do deserve a mention.
I think assault rifles came later. The US military continued to use the M14 as it’s primary weapon until it was replaced by the M16 in Vietnam. The M14 is still used as a sniper/designated marksman rifle.
The Germans found the Stg 44 very good on the Eastern front. They could not build enough of them to replace their other arms.
The USA argued quite a while to keep the 30.06 until they finally agreed to the smaller NATO round.
Watching Fury, with Brad Pitt and his sturmweger, I had to look up how plausible that would have been. It seems army and the GIs were happier to have M1 carbines.
James Jones drew upon his experience in the Pacific to write The Thin Red Line and The Pistol, where GIs steal or finagle to get a M1911 as the best weapon against a banzai charge.
It seems to me that the primary consideration is that you want a gun that uses the ammunition you have, and you want the ammunition that’s used by the gun you have. Sure, it simplifies logistics if your entire army all uses the same gun and the same ammunition, but if they’re running low on whatever their first choice of gun is, they might also be running low on the ammo for it. If all the ammo that’s left is WWII stuff, then the guy with the WWII gun has the advantage.
Like said above, anything is better than nothing. Bolt action .30-06? You have yourself a sniper rifle. 100 year old double barrel shotgun? You have yourself a personal defense weapon, or a way to slow down an approaching enemy and make them take cover.
Also, I think it’s important to note that an AR/AK style rifle, is going to be lighter. The ammunition especially so. So you can carry more.
Bolt action rifles used by a regular rifleman (and not as a sniper/designated marksman weapon) would be a significant limitation and would be very awkward for a regular front line soldier to be equipped with. Semi-automatic rifles like an SVT-40 would not be the equal of modern rifles (mostly magazine size limitations and handling in cramped situations) but they’d be fine enough on the modern battlefield. Submachine guns are inferior to assault rifles in general due to limited range, penetrative power, and versatility, but they’d definitely find a useful role on the battlefield.
Machine guns would work well enough. Most of the advances in machine guns have been ergonomic/weight related so that they’re more mobile, but they’re pretty close otherwise with their WW2 counterparts. Even big, immobile machine guns on a tripod would still be very useful in a lot of situations.
Pistols it doesn’t really matter. They’re not serious battlefield weapons and for the purposes they serve pretty much any one made in the last century will do.
I’m surprised anyone would have to use weapons this old - the Soviet bloc was known for huge stockpiles of weapons and I find it hard to believe they don’t have big old piles of assault rifles somewhere - even the ones from the 1970s would be fine. They’re in the first month of the war and we’re not even really seeing full mobilization (closer on the Ukraine side, obviously). I guess Ukraine either wasn’t the storage place of those old Soviet weapons caches, or they sold it all off at some point.
I do remember sometime around 2000-2004 that a lot of old weapon stockpiles were opened up and sold on the commercial markets. It was a great time to buy old WW2 rifles (and some more modern ones) and surplus ammo. But even then that was all older stuff - I’m surprised there would be a shortage on something as common and overproduced as small arms.
Firsthand accounts from GIs and captured enemy weapons, an MP-40 would have made more sense than an STG in Fury as a tankers sidearm since it was smaller and used ammo they could actually obtain easily (9mm). Also the STG had a fairly poor reputation at the time among Allied testers for being too fragile (which is to be expected for a weapon being made by slave labor with poor materials) and I can’t see it being banged around inside a tank being too good for it.
A tanker would have been just fine with a standard issue M1 Carbine or M3 Grease Gun, they only got the reputation of being “poor weapons” during the Korean War when engagement ranges got much further.
I have both a Garand and a carbine, I prefer the garand for distance stand hunting and carbine for foot slogging around looking for bambi. Well, actually I prefer the Moisin Nagant 91/30 rigged for sniper for stand hunting, better accuracy at roughly the same distance though heavier. I have not gotten to use the sniper geared Garand though, I probably should try and get to try one out for the best comparison. I would be comfortable hanging back and sniping with either WW2 weapon. One would have to turkey shoot a column of walking soldiers for best effect however. I would be that babushia who served them the poisoned pastries [little amanita mushroom in the pyrizhkys? or dosed all my booze with enough colchicine to give a squad cascading organ failure =)
My EDC is the 1937 first gen Sauer 38H Dad brought back [and yes I still have the paperwork that allowed him to bring it back.]
In short, my answer is no WWII weapon for me on the modern battlefield. Russia produced over 100 million AKs over the decades since WWII and practically gave them away to SovBloc countries and anyone else that hinted they were leaning communist. They are cheap and easily found, especially used, on the arms market.
The bullet may travel 800 meters, but the chance of it hitting anyone was pretty low. Just think what a enemy soldier would look like from almost nine football fields away. Most people wouldn’t even be able to single out a target from the background at that distance over iron sights.
I also recall this study that changed the way infantry was trained to fight.
The results were consistently the same: Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide—in many cases they were willing to risk greater danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages.
After new training, 60% fired their weapons in Korea and 95% fired them in Vietnam.
You have to keep in mind that a lot of rifle fire is used to keep the enemies heads down so another element on your side can maneuver closer to the enemy. In WWII it took 40,000 bullets fired to kill one enemy. In Vietnam it was 50,000.
I believe that most casualties in war are still from explosives. Artillery, rockets, mines and IEDs.
I agree with @mordecaiB in that it generally requires a skilled user, whether from military or hunting, to make use of iron or even ladder sights to achieve a solid hit at range, there are still viable weapons from the WW2 era that I’d be more than willing to use in the Ukraine.
In the existing thread on technicals, the argument is to what extend modern small arms are effective in taking out the vehicle. The empahsis being on something that doesn’t expose you to counter fire for length of time but disables the vehicle. And while high rate of fire weapons would be great, the efficacy of the common 5.56 would be an issue in terms of shorter term stopping power.
Here, something like an old fashioned BAR could make a welcome appearance, in that you have a WW2 era weapon (fully deployed after 1938), chambered in what would be considered full power battle rifle ammunition (30-06), with automatic fire fed from a removable magazine.
Again, it would not be ideal in many circumstances, but would have advantages over modern weapons in a few, although (and again true for most weapons considered in this thread) having enough of an ammo supply in Ukraine seems unlikely to make it effective for any length of time.
It does lead back to mordecaiB’s point though - we increasingly use small arms for suppressing fire and/or attacks on other dismounted troops - the killers are drones, artillery, guided munitions and the like. It’s a luxury of a rich, well equipped army, but one that, if the war continues, may not be fully applicable to that of the Ukraine if the political will to continue support wanes.