During World War Two, the Swiss had adopted Adolf Furrer’s toggle-locked MP41 submachine gun, and they found it too fragile, complex, and expensive. Looking for an alternative, one easy choice was the Finnish Suomi. Used and appreciated by the Finns, Danes, and Swedes it was reliable and available. It was adopted into service in the fastest set of trials in Swiss military history, and a batch was purchased from Tikkakoski along with a license to produce them at Hispano-Suiza in Geneva.
The initial Finnish-made guns were designated MP43, and the Swiss-made ones were the MP43/44. A total of 5200 MP43s were imported and MP43/44 production resulted in another 22,468 made between 1944 and 1951. The Swiss-made guns have a few distinctive features including an aluminum buttplate, two-position notch sights (100m/200m), and after the first few thousand, a bayonet lug to fit the standard Swiss K31 bayonet.
OT, there has been some discussion here of Russian casualties during the current Ukraine War.
The best Info I have come across is from MediaZona, part of the antiwar/antiputin movement.
Their numbers come from OSINT, aggregating death notices from news sources across the Russian Federation.
The low estimate is 88,000, High estimate 120,000.
This does not include Chechens.
Other indications are consistent reports from Western Media that Russsia has had a 10-1 advantage in Artillery.
Also exchanges of dead after Bakhmut by Western media show 5 AFU dead exchanged for 1 Russian dead.
Not surprising when you learn that AFU soldiers have been sent to the front with as little as 4 hours of training.
Not a typo, 4 hours of training.
In every war of Russia’s it has been reliably reported one of whatever enemy could beat ten Russians. There will be a Russia long after you Amis have descended into a version of diverse and vibrant Zimbabwe. You’re already about 40% of the way there. And still you export cultural poison…
It’s worth noting that the vast majority of “cultural poisoning” which you speak of…? Originated in, oddly enough, Europe. Frankfurt School, anyone?
I don’t think Russia is going to survive Putin, and if it does, it will be as an extremely diminished rump remnant of what it was. Odds are excellent that they’re never, ever going to pull out of the demographic death spiral started back during the Communists, and the end state will be a Chinese Siberia (what’s Mandarin for that region, I wonder…?), and the rest of the prisoner-nations of the “Russian Penitentiary of Nations” splitting off and going their own ways. I suspect that at some point before 2100, it will all be down to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, inhabited by some plutocrat descendant of Putin’s.
The problem with your thesis about “cultural poison” is that we’re merely the reservoir for it, after having been infected from the original source of contamination, Europe. The US has a much better track record for self-renewal, and will likely come out of the fever-dreamworld of the Left much better off than the remnants in Europe who can’t even remember being free, let alone regain their self-mastery. You keep trusting the “elites”, instead of recognizing them for what they are… Parasites and thieves, descendants of those old decadent aristos that ruined the place centuries ago. You can trace a straight line from the “ancien regime” through to today’s Brussels-sprouts bureaucratic aristocracy, and they’re still doing to the peasantry what they were doing back after Rome fell. Europe is likely to die, choking on its own sclerotic excess.
As it is early days yet, the United States may yet succumb to the corruption. Or, maybe not… I don’t see anyone in Europe rising to the occasion, however. In all likelihood, we are witnessing another Islamic conquest of Europe, this one without anyone bothering to defend the place.
Anyone citing “cultural poison” in American public life would do well to remember exactly where the majority of that “poison” originated. It wasn’t here.
50% actually, and the rest will be concluded in a few short decades. I hope you guys can fare better.
Bayonets make sense on a submachine gun. Room clearing with a gun that uses 1930s-reliability magazines makes having another force option immediately available pretty attractive.
The main reason is weapon retention when going through doorways.
An enemy grabbing the barrel of your weapon is a problem for you.
An enemy grabbing a foot or so of razor-sharp steel is a problem for himself.
clear ether
eon
Well, now I finally have an explanation for the Uzi Bayonet-mount-adapter I remember seeing once
we had bayonets on our mossberg 590’s in the US navy on security…not for stabbing, but as a “don’t grab my gun”. our instructor put it like this..not many people have been shot, so they’re not afraid of it. however, most people have been cut. they know what that is.
Done it a lot have you?
It’s long been my thesis that the bayonet exists more as a sop to the fantasies of the senior leadership than as an actual weapon. Any damn fool affixing a bayonet to something like an Uzi is going to get exactly what they deserve, the minute they go to close-quarters combat.
As for “razor-sharp”? eon, have you ever been inside a functioning military arms room? People don’t have “razor-sharp” anythings near the junior enlisted, out of enlightened self-interest. Good Christ, the number of injuries I witnessed being self-inflicted by those moronic “M-9 Multi-Purpose Bayonet System” excrescencies would likely nauseate Jeffrey Dahmer.
Based on experience, I’d suspect that adding a bayonet onto an Uzi would serve the enemy rather better than the guy carrying it. After all, most bayonets being duller than butterknives, by fixing the damn things and going to close quarters, you’ve just offered up a really convenient grasping point to anyone looking to take control of the weapon.
You’re way better off going in with a full magazine, and then using it. I’m uncertain about the potential for cowing civilians or prisoners, but even there…? It’s a tyro move; you want control of a crowd? Demonstrate the willingness to shoot a few of them, they’ll get the point far more emphatically.
I think we can agree that the bayonet is more a psychological weapon, these days. And, has been, for a couple of generations… Anyone really putting a lot of time into fitting a submachinegun or an automatic rifle/LMG with one has totally missed the boat, when it comes to that entire idea.
And, frankly? Knife bayonets? Plainly insane, on the face of it all… You can’t pack that many contradictions in purpose onto a device without it imploding into a black hole of stupidity and uselessness, which is exactly what happened to the M9. It’s either a knife or it’s a bayonet; trying to be both is just embarrassing.
If someone were to have put something like a modernized Lebel “Rosalie” spike on their rifles, and then offered up a secondary use as a mine-probe? Something like that might make a bit of sense; the usual wire-cutter-cum-sticker? Nope, nope, and nope yet again.
Quick sanity test for anyone considering a bayonet: Actually try sticking one through a suitable ribcage, and then twist it good and hard before trying to withdraw it. If you’ve still got your firearm in hand at the end of that exercise, you’ve done better than 90% your peers likely will. Odds are excellent, however, that you’ll either break your fragile firearm or the bayonet itself, leaving you in a situation you don’t want to be in, under fire.
Do note the rather interesting lack of bayonet combat in Ukraine, these days. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not down to the stupidity of the involved parties, either.
Bayonets. That’s how you know the people involved aren’t actually serious about warfare, at any level.
No arguments with anything you said. I was just referring to what I learned in a very narrow specialty.
The nearest I ever came was a NG armory. And I do remember that the bayonets (for M1 Garands and Carbines) were dull enough that you could use them to scratch an itch with no problems.
That said, all the Sgts. said that the first thing you needed to do before a deployment was sharpen the bayonet. How much of that was practical and how much purely “motivational” I couldn’t tell you. But since the bayonet then and now is more of a utility tool than a weapon, it makes sense in at least that context.
I do get a laugh out of the “survival experts” who insist that Their Favorite Knife can be used for all sorts of heavy-duty camp-chore cutting, like “batoning” the knife to cut firewood for instance. Having cut my share of it in my time, I maintain that if you’re not using at least a single-bit axe, or better yet a splitting maul, you can’t get there from here. (Especially here in SE OH.)
I agree most bayonets suck. Sticking a latch on a utility knife to attach it to a rifle doesn’t make it a bayonet; it’s just a misappropriated sheath knife.
There have been very few properly-designed bayonets for the simple reason that most armies never got around to figuring out exactly how to use a bayonet in CQB. The “pikeman drill”, used to inculcate “aggression” (whateverthehell that is) is not a good way to use a bayonet “for real”, unless you really want to get shot.
Yes, the bayonet needs to be sharp, and its proper use needs to be drilled in. Once somebody gets around to doing the research to determine exactly what that proper use is. Then design a damned bayonet to do that when on the front end of the rifle.
And sorry to state, ain’t nobody gonna learn that from watching chop-socky “ninja” movies.
cheers
eon
There are two entirely separate realities in any organization or military force. There’s the idealized one that exists mostly in the minds of the senior leadership cadre, and then there’s the one that actually exists out in the real world, that interacts with objective reality.
The two very rarely ever actually meet, and when they do, it’s usually disastrous for all concerned.
Case in point: I once worked for a man who believed that if he wrote something down, and made it “policy”, then it would happen. Me? I believe in observing the effects of what I do and taking those effects into account when I go on to do other things.
My boss believed that if he just mandated enough checks on things during off-duty hours, then nobody would get in trouble and nothing bad would happen down where our equipment was stored. I believed that if you made your requirements so onerous and contradictory, then none of those things would happen, and you’d have the negative side-effect of teaching your people to lie to you and condition them to do so…
Long-haul, I observed that my take on that whole situation was far more accurate than his. It was interesting to watch, in terms of unexpected second- and third-order effects, particularly with regard to what we might term “leader integrity”. Seems that there are some predictable follow-ons to training people to lie to you on official documents like logs and security registers, ones that leave you with a lot of ugly explanations needing to be made in front of the commander…
All of that said, there’s a lot of military “culture” that boils down to the old joke about boiling water when the woman goes into labor: “Why do we boil the water, again?” “Dunno; that’s just what we do…”
I’ll note a couple of things about bayonets: When we went to roll out to Iraq in 2003, some bright light decided we needed to issue the goddamn things, and sharpen them before doing so. Which was a disaster of truly epic proportions, mostly due to the lack of knife-sharpening knowledge in the ranks, total non-existence of the tools to do a mass-sharpening exercise, and a whole lot of beaten-up and unserviceable bayonets.
It was my recommendation that we leave the ‘effing things in with the rest of the gear we put into storage, and just ignore their existence. This was not the course we followed, which led to a surfeit of property loss paperwork and statements of charges for the lower enlisted, many of whom couldn’t put their hands on their bayonets to save their lives six months in. It was just something else they put on the sensitive items reports, and since everyone had gotten complacent, then put the useless POS things into storage in their gear…? Yeah; near universal lies on the reports, and ohbytheway, loss of said bayonet because someone forgot where they stuck them.
Or, the sheaths broke, leaving a nice souvenir for whoever found the damn thing after it was lost. Dummy cords were quite popular with the line troops, with predictable consequences for actually being able to use said useless object for its intended purpose…
You want my opinion on bayonets in the 21st Century? If you must issue one, make it a nice cruciform spike, and build it into your weapon the way the French did with the MAS 36. Make it out of titanium or some other non-magnetic metal, and use it as a mine probe when you have to. That way, everyone has one with them, all the damn time, and I can about guarantee you that the majority of the use that tool gets will be as “mine probe”.
That’s the “objective reality” position on bayonets; the “delusional fruitcake living in the 19th Century and wanting to play live-action dress-up with his subordinates” view is that the traditional bayonet is an essential weapon on the modern battlefield, and we should spend huge amounts of time and money ensuring we have something sexy to march around with…
Me being a practical sort, it is my humble opinion that there’s no situation in modern war that a bayonet is really suitable for, and you may as well just shoot the stupid bastards with some of that ammo load you’re hauling around. Of course, the new XM-7 with its reduced load-out and presumably sturdier build may make that calculation obsolete, soooo… I’ll hedge my bets on the whole thing. We may need bayonets, once we run out of ammo and the barrels on those things are fully shot-out.
@ Kirk;
The big mistake is trying to use a utility sheath knife as a bayonet. “East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet” as Kipling said.
One of my ancestors who was in the 1st Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1862 wrote a letter that was published in the old Athens OH Messenger newspaper.
In it, he advised volunteers to supply themselves with the following;
1. A sturdy single-edged sheath knife with a six or seven-inch blade, preferably with a single-bevel “skinning” edge;
2. An equally sturdy jack-knife, one or two-blade, for fine work, like sharpening your pencil or getting a splinter out of your finger;
3. And a camper’s type fork and spoon for eating.
Note that the Union Army did not issues “mess kits” in those days.
He also noted that while the epee’ pattern bayonet looked fearsome on the muzzle of the rifle-musket, it was rarely used because the .58 Minie’ ball tended to settle things before it got to that…point.
The sheath knife, however, was a necessity because the epee’ bayonet was entirely useless for the plebeian camp chores for which a sturdy, sharp knife is indispensable.
He stated that in camp, the epee’ bayonet was only useful for three jobs. As a roasting spit, a candle holder, or to allow the rifle-musket to be used as a tent pole.
I think this still holds true today. for actually “sticking” somebody, get an epee’ bayonet about a foot and a half long, and put it on the business end of a rifle at least five and a half feet in overall length.
For any other purpose, get a $29.95 camper’s knife at Meijer.
cheers
eon
@eon,
I’m right there with you, but I have to question the wisdom of “clipping the sticker” on anything that’s currently on issue around the world. About the smallest truly effective rifle/bayonet combo on general issue was the SKS, particularly with the Chinese cruciform spike bayonet. Everything else? Too short, too small, and too damn fragile. The FN FAL wasn’t entirely a disaster, but I do not like most of the bayonets they made for it. The G3 was suitable for use as a club, and I suspect that you could have used it to bludgeon elephants to death with.
The rest of the world’s weapons? LOL… Lemme tell you what: You want to see “questionable design decisions having been made”, with regards to bayonet fighting? Have a look at any M16 or something close to that in design, and examine the receiver pins after a few iterations of bayonet fighting “for reals”. Guarantee you that the only saving grace is that the weapon and the soldier attempting to use it are gonna be hors de combat after the first engagement anyway, and it won’t matter that the receivers are now shake-apart due to the pins and holes being bent the f*ck out of rational belief.
They took some of my weapons out to an actual bayonet range, once upon a time. What I got back went to Third Shop, and most of them were coded out. Now, I’ll grant you ahead of the discussion that most of those were rather shopworn examples of the M16A1 variety, but they were put in their graves trying to play at being hosts for bayonets. And, those were the old M7 variants, that actually stood a chance of “not sticking” in the targets. The M9s of later years? You didn’t dare try sticking them in one of the old-school rubber targets; you’d break them.
I would suspect that there’d be a statistically significant breakage rate for any unit set of weapons wherein they did an actual bayonet attack, and it wouldn’t be anything less than about 30%. Two bayonet attacks? Probably 80% or higher. The leverage you can get using a pistol grip on an M16, twisting the bayonet out of someone’s thoracic cavity? More than enough to break those cute little towers that the receiver pins go through on the uppers. Especially worn ones.
There are reasons they prefer to use the “rubber duck” inert trainers for bayonet training, and that’s mostly down to the anguished cries of the involved armorers and property book managers. You code out a rifle, someone has to pay for the replacement… And, that’s rarely cheap.
@ Kirk,
Ah, yes, I remember well the time one so-called “unarmed combat” expert tried to teach us dumb “coppers” how to use the longarm non-lethally in a riot scrum. As in, the legendary butt-stroke…. with the M16. (Original Colt 602, open-end flash suppressor, no FWB.)
He demonstrated on a college football tackling dummy, I kid you not.
One butt-stroke to a “non-critical” area and…he was staring at the two-thirds of a rifle in his hands, with the buttstock, buffer and etc. lying about where they’d landed when they separated, and the no-longer retained buffer and spring went SPRONNNGG, launching themselves into the air.
Then he asked if he could “borrow” my M1897 Winchester 12-gauge trench gun to show how to do it “correctly”.
The look I gave him rather emphatically said “No, I don’t think so”.
Most “bayonet fighting” and etc. is a load of horse dung. Our ancestors seemed to have had a better “handle” on that sort of thing than we do.
Like the Preacher said in Pale Rider (1985), sometimes there’s nothing quite like a nice piece of hickory.
cheers
eon
Kirk:
Strangely, the British seem to have got it right with the spike bayonet for the No. 4 Lee Enfield. But as soon as the war was over, these were replaced with bladed bayonets. I imagine the spike bayonets didn’t look right, although they were far more practical.
The spike’s main use was on the end of a three-foot piece of hickory dowel, probing for land mines. It was too short to be an effective bayonet and had no cutting edge, so it as useless as a utility knife.
Its replacement had a weak connection to the Rifle No. 4 (that swiveling pommel broke off pretty quick under stress), but at least it was otherwise a decent sheath knife.
I remember when you could buy No. 4 spikes made in Canada for a quarter each in surplus stores. Sold as tent pegs.
clear ether
eon
The bladed bayonets were there because they looked better on parade. As knives, they sucked, and as bayonets? Sucked some more.
I think it’d be a valuable winnowing tool, were one to assess the level of “thrill” going up the legs of any potential senior leaders when they’re offered up the opportunity to decide uniform matters. If they’re all tingly and erect at the prospect? Nope; fire ’em. Preferably out of a cannon. If they sigh and say, “Well, I guess someone has to do it…”, you might be on the right track with your selection/promotion process.
Way too many of these characters are all hot and bothered about the uniform appurtenances and accessories; you find someone who wants to wear, for example, a “boat cloak”? You’ve likely got a closeted homosexual on your hands, and they belong as far away from troops as humanly possible. Those are going to be the morons demanding you procure for said troops a cap with earflaps for cold weather… Which they will then ban from anyone ever actually, y’know… Deploying in cold weather. They’ll also be the ones selecting and issuing boonie caps for hot weather, and then deciding that such things are sloppy and not to be seen.
Meanwhile, skin cancer rates for career soldiers will go through the roof, thanks to them never being able to protect the backs of their necks.
Bayonets and uniform items… They obsess on them? Fire them; you leave them in place, they’ll set you up the bomb the way the French General Staff did for the Republic, back in 1940.
@Kirk2,
My vote for dumbest headgear ever? The shako.
When Nixon was POTUS, somebody decided that the Capitol Police (run by the Secret Service at the time) needed a new dress uniform. Somehow, they concluded that black jodhpurs, a white double-breasted tunic with gold buttons and etc., and a black shako was Just The Thing. The shako even had a gold double-headed eagle on it- very Prussian.
The whole thing made the cops on dress parade look like extras in a big-budget production of The Scarlet Pimpernel. More Ruritanian than Ruritania.
Nixon got the blame for this (as usual) but reportedly when he saw the results, “Tricky Dick” swore for five minutes straight and never repeated himself once. The Secret Service had a new director shortly thereafter.
If your chain of command is OCD about dress uniforms, you need a new chain of command.
cheers
eon
Eon:
Every British soldier was issued with a folding jack knife for any practical jobs. The spike bayonet was perfectly good as a bayonet, but it did not look “smart” enough for the post war army.
I must say modern rifles which pivot open seem most unsuitable for use a clubs in combat. Mt grandfather told me he once had to buttstroke someone with a Lee Enfield during the war, and it worked very well. I can’t see an SA80 ever being put to the same use.
@eon, JohnK, and anyone else still reading this thread…
Personally, I think that the current procurement process is missing a major test area for the individual weapon: How good a club is it, and how well does it still work after having been used as one…?
I’m actually against bayonets for a reason I haven’t really articulated, before: The modern assault rifle simply isn’t robust enough to go mano-y-mano in hand-to-hand combat.
There’s a lot to be said for the virtues of dimensional lumber, when it comes down to beating another human being to death. If your individual weapon cannot sustain use as a substitute for a handy chunk of 2X4, weeeeeeellll… Maybe you oughtn’t be issuing gear that requires that it do so? Like, ya know… The sainted and holy BAYONET!!!!
Never mind all the fragile and easily broken bits like the take-your-breath-away-expensive optics…
Look, I get that the bayonet is traditional and a wunnerful, wunnerful psychological weapon. However, comma… Let’s have some ‘effing common sense applied, here: If you no longer want to issue a rifle that’s appropriate for “clippin’ the sticker” onto the end of it, maybe, just maaaaaybee… You ought to think carefully about eschewing said open invitation to weapon destruction. I mean, after all, we have given up on the lance, and no longer expect the modern military vehicle to emulate the knights of yore. Maybe give some thought to similarly modernizing your views on “The BAYONET!!!”?
Like I said, the last weapon that really made sense to even try bayonet fighting with was probably the SKS, and we saw how swiftly that was supplanted by our friend, Mr. AK-47. Which, while durable, ain’t exactly best suited for using in the traditional parry-slash-thrust-block mode of yore. Even AK-series rifles will break, or bend, or do something else untoward when some largish ape-like sort goes after the owner with something stick-like.
I seem to remember a tale of hand-to-hand horror, related to me by a medically retired Marine infantryman, who described what it was like trying to subdue a potential prisoner that was armed with a sledgehammer, going against three Marines with bayonet-affixed and fixated Marine enthusiasm. Couple of broken arms and legs, three inoperable rifles, followed by escaping capture target… Who promptly ran into a burst of fire from one of those “too heavy” M249 thingys. Wasn’t a lot left to try and interrogate.
On today’s battlefield? Individual weapons and their sights have gotten so specialized that trying to use one as a club or spear in hand-to-hand is just staggeringly stupid. Not to mention, expensive… Those three Marines from the above incident? All three went off the books for the unit’s manpower for several weeks, and a part of that was because they’d run through their stocks of spare weapons and sights, which was a consideration in why they sent two of them out-of-theater: They couldn’t arm them, any more. Not in any timely manner…
Which is yet another consideration and black mark agin’ the ol’ bayonette…
@eon, who said:
My vote for dumbest headgear ever? The shako.
See, here’s the thing… In its milieu, all that crap like the shako and the bishop’s mitres they stuck on top of the grenadiers weren’t really stupid, per se. All of them had their justifications; make the soldier taller and more intimidating under the conditions of 18th Century combat, ease identification for both the enemy and friendly forces, and not the least significant reason, bolster morale of the wearers.
A shako looks incredibly stupid on any post-Russo-Japanese War battlefield. Probably just as stupid on a Civil War one, but that’s a bit more arguable.
One has to remember that nothing like that expensive uniform crap gets done without a solid reason… If they could have gotten away with armed mobs wearing their own clothes a la what the old peasant levies used during the Middle Ages, then they’d have continued to do so. The uniform fripperies that we see made sense back when, and the real problem we have is the failure to adapt to modern conditions.
Every engagement, every action in every war, ought to begin with a simple statement: Teach me. You have to go in with open eyes and zero preconceptions, in order to learn from the enemy and the environment resulting from your actions, the enemy actions, and all environmental factors outside human action. That includes the technology, the terrain, the weather, and literally everything else. It’s all a learning opportunity, and if you fail to learn… Well, you’re almost certainly the losing side.
The uniforms are a pretty good indicator, for all that… The old rule of thumb about “Who has the most elaborate and decorative uniforms loses…” is a truth that sits upon an abstraction layer, an indicator that the underlying organization has ossified and is no longer capable of adaptational pro-active learning.
For examples, see the US Army’s ongoing obsession with dress uniforms, which they’ve now replaced entirely since I retired, juxtaposed against the fact that they studiously ignored the implications of mine/IED warfare as demonstrated in southern Africa’s military campaigns going back to the early 1970s. They were literally more concerned with dress uniforms than in properly preparing for IED warfare and rear-area combat…
@Kirk & JohnK,
It seems to me that everybody in procurement has forgotten (or maybe never knew) why the bayonet was conceived to begin with, back in the late 17th Century AD. After some of the lessons of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and English Civil War (1642-1647) had been absorbed and processed.
Simply put, it was to get rid of the pikeman, whose job up to that “point” was looking after the arquebusier in a scrum.
By making every arquebus basically a short pike (shorter than an English bill, in fact), the bayonet theoretically allowed every arquebusier to take care of himself in the furball. (This was well explained in March to the Sea, the second “Prince Roger” novel by John Ringo and David Weber.)
And it was probably a valid concept as long as the PBI were using single-shot muskets, rifle-muskets, and even early breechloaders.
Once the repeating rifle showed up, it became questionable. You don’t have to believe everything about Plevna 1877 to grok that the Winchester repeater, used en masse, could make an unholy mess out of any “classic” infantry assault in the Napoleonic style. (This factor also showed up in that novel.)
Repeating rifles turned the “organic machine gun” concept, born of Sir John Churchill and the Brown Bess, into an industrial meat-processing plant with mobility.
The handwriting was on the wall at least as early as Antietam in 1862, but as usual nobody was bothering to read the broadsides. Gettysburg should have been the end of the “classic” school even with rifle-muskets, but again nobody was paying attention.
Trench warfare in WW1 may have obscured the facts a bit, although from the postwar accounts from survivors I’ve read, actual trench fights were fairly rare. Mostly, they happened on the rare occasion that a night probe, let alone the whole “over the top and the best of luck” thing, wasn’t met by machine-gun fire due to the MG crew being asleep, or getting coffee, or using the loo or whatever.
The bayonet might still have been a valid idea as long as the rifle was essentially an arquebus with a higher education- and a solid wood stock. I remember that my old boss stated that in the Pacific in WW2, the Arisaka Type 99 rifle was a decent bayonet mount due to its length, but a buttstroke with it generally snapped the stock in two at the wrist. (Yes, that surprised Japanese soldiers as much as it did ours.)
But once the rifle became a high rate-of-fire, lightweight item intended to generate a sustained firescreen like those old Winchesters, except shooting a lot faster, the bayonet pretty much became a quaint leftover from a “more civilized”(?) era.
The one grunt on the modern battlefield who probably actually needs a bayonet? Whoever the poor doofus is who gets stuck with a shotgun, supposedly for drone interdiction.
It’s a dumb idea, but like most such, the PTB now believe in it.
The PBI stuck with that job probably should have a bayonet stuck on the business end of the shotgun. It can’t hurt, and since he’s the guy most likely to run out of rounds in a CQB, it’s probably better than breaking the scattergun over some other guy’s head.
And with the modern crop of “combat shotguns”, if you whack somebody upside the head with one, I guarantee you it’s going to break.
cheers
eon
Kirk:
It’s a fair point, rifles these days are rather fragile, especially if they are made to swing open on a hinge. You might get away with buttstroking someone with a G3, less so with a FAL or AR15. The Lee Enfield was up to the job for sure.
“(…)Adolf Furrer’s toggle-locked(…)submachine gun, and they found it too fragile, complex, and expensive(…)”
And yet and same time its’ weight was 5,2 kg unloaded according to https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/switzerland-submachine-guns/wf-lmg-pist-4144-eng/ which make it probably fattest service sub-machine gun used in numbers in history. It is more than M1928 Thompson or even M1 rifle. To be more precise they 1st attempted to upgrade it, which resulted W+F Lmg.Pist 41/44 but clearly was not sufficient.
Well made like, nice finish; Adolfs…
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the-ww2-double-magazine-mp40-i/ That might have been ok with this, given; well the Swiss weren’t using it, much… As such. Anyway, it looks like they thought the quad stack thing was better than a drum; less rounds, but more reliable… Possibly. Or less bulky/or both. The Brit Lsw could have done with something along these lines; for it’s full auto use, but automatically activated or pump action via the rear pistol grip. Anyway, by the bye. Is that gun painted, as oppose blued or something? If I was Swiss I would have slapped someome for that “It should have a lovely finish” that everyone would say oh thats so Swiss in future. Bet Adolf furrer got Adolf furher jokes at school eh…
Ar shooters might like a double mag auto feed thing… Modified Ar, ok it’s not hard to change a mag; but maybe a semi auto, thing. Some sort of gadget to sell…
“Ar shooters (…)”
Who is that?
Americans, you know “Overweight folk” with guns, who live over the sea that way; west.
“(…)looks like they thought the quad stack thing was better than a drum(…)”
Coffin magazine was more user-friendly in that you loaded it like stick magazine, rather than drum requiring placing rounds carefully at track, see 15th image from top at https://www.jaegerplatoon.net/MACHINEPISTOLS1.htm for explanation.
Cheers.
Thats a very detailed explanation, thank you.
Thinking how you would do the auto switch thing with a folding stock activating it; I went Sterling, varient gravity lark “Side eh” have a feature on the stock were you via a (Wee spring) over unfold the stock in the shoulder, and it pulls a rod back which activates it… Ar, spring thing; an extra, sprung thing behind the buffer to do it I.e. Via extended rod type, but push forward. Be away; disengage switch, what would be full auto selecter. Something. If worth it, might not be. Might be, actually… Wonder if you could (Bump fire it thus also) anyway meh. Wars eh, far to many folk die; best avoided. Humans keep walking into them, though eh. Too easily in my opinion; if you look at the damage caused.
And I say that as a British person, who feels his country prior was to keen to resort to warfare; just because it had guns per se or thought it could make enough, etc. Too keen on it.
A wee trigger “Knocker” on the Ar, rod thing as above… Have to be a spring that would “Just, just” allow it to function as per; then we try to allow a wee bit more movenent to cheat and load the next mag and/or bump fire it. Sneaky wee spring.
Mag hold open thing, activates, selector… To do, stuff. Be away.
“Mag hold open thing(…)”
Please define clearly when magazine is closed and when opened.
Er… Well the mag has a stop on it, doesn’t it, so… Bolt back, wee lever up via that, converts to back (Somehow, need to draw it etc) then, ping; spring release, thus pop… Action, stuff. Said stuff. What are we doing? Oh yes, that… Pop! And shit happens, see. Chop, chop, get scribbling.
“(…)Chop, chop(…)”
Wait, how is said 1940s comic hero https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Chop_Chop_(Quality_Universe) for definition which I requested?
In English “Chop, chop” means get cracking! Think maybe 5.56mm mags might be too heavy, but Sterling mags; once sent to Australia probably come back like \ whats not to like 64 rnds; take zat German zombie army. Burp.
Gravity aided… Sterling… Actually I am sticking with the Sterling for that design, idea. Aided, he he.
A modified mp40 twin mag well; too… It being more Sterling mag design, some rollers. Try and address the wonky’ness, of side loading. Reliabilty. Wants to be firing the fecker, aye; then, overfold the stock in shoulder a bit “Resisted by spring” next mag drops/pulled a bit down by mechanism. Stuck? Send it to Australia, they can Owen gun it. Worth it? Aye, if it works; simples.
I must warn you that said contraption was stop-gap measure and today it is not problem to craft 9×19 mm magazine with capacity equal or greater than 64. See for example https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/sweden-submachine-guns/cbj-ms-pdw-eng/
Not having that, the Sterling was used in Star Wars. Longer barrel, shoot in bollocks. Star wars; the future, Fact.
“(…) Longer barrel,(…)”
Maybe, but keep in mind CBJ MS might be arranged to fire from closed bolt (to improve 1st shot accuracy) and from beginning designed to be used with optical sights, therefore making sight radius moot.
Personally I would then say, lets switch it to 7.62x25mm and up the fire rate to 1,200rpm. “Why?” so we can shoot them in the bollocks with it Admiral and avoid body armour. Anyway, the 500rpm at 64 rnds might still be usefull, if cheap/simple.
The Frogs are sending out survival manuals apparently; 6 litres of water! Vodka, more like.