I have a Springfield. My rifle even fought in both World Wars. Everyone keeps telling me not to fire it.
I think it's awesome you DO shoot it.
It's a low number RIA action. The warnings not to fire it are more about safety than historical value.
...what a f'k : it's a Springfield, NOT a carcano ! shoot it and be happy (both)I have a Springfield. My rifle even fought in both World Wars. Everyone keeps telling me not to fire it.
Sirhrmechanic,
You have truly earned some snobbiness from that post. It's as good as it gets.
I had to say as well, I've not seen a better personal set of pictures from that war. Thank you for sharing those!
On a somewhat different note, I do wonder as many of you do, as to why people (commanders) thought they can throw bodies in front of bullets and win? This happened a lot in the Civil War, WWI, and in some places WWII. Even Korea and Viet Nam. Yet it took forever, it seemed, to change the tactics.
At some point, someone needs to get the individual giving orders like that to step to the front and lead the men the way he wants it done! I guarantee you, a better solution is quickly found.
One of the books I listed above, Gallipoli, the end of the Myth, dissects the mess that was the Dardanelles campaign just brilliantly. First, the whole concept was flawed (threaten the Turks NOT to join the Central Powers...) Then the attack plan was arrived at through argument and compromise... it was basically the one plan that everyone didn't hate as much as the other plans. Then conduct a frontal assault on an elevated peninsula... drive your ships into a mined channel. It was an idiotic concept and the planning/execution was even worse. If you read only one book about Gallipoli... read Robin Prior.
The sad part (and this is part of the fascinating nature of WW1, which begat WW2) is that Churchill's constant pressure to invade Europe from its "Soft Underbelly" in WW2 was arguably his attempting to re-fight the Dardanelles and vindicate his WW1 plan which failed so badly. He was convinced his plan was the one way to end the war early... and thought that the same strategy would work in WW2. As much as I admire Mr. Churchill... he was dead wrong on the Dardanelles and repeating that approach in WW2 would have likely been a bloodbath.
Definitely need to keep this thread going! Cheers,
Sirhr
theres always talk of the ww2 generation being true hardcore warriors, and i agree they were some mean motherfuckers but the ww1 guys are almost getting forgotten it seems. Those guys truly went thru some of the most brutal face to face horror in warfare history, thrown wave after wave into the newly perfected machine gun at 200 yards and less etc etc. I side bit I find fascinating is the air war during ww1, such new technology at its infant stages. Those early airmen climbed in slow moving wood framed contraptions and flew around shooting each other with machine guns at close ranges comparitavley speaking. When not doing that they flew within rifle range above the the trenchlines and hand dropped grenades and what not.
Not first cousin, the ACTUAL same chemical, nitrocellulose. Same as film base.
Franz who?
When I become infected with a yen to blang away with something historical, I break out my 91-30's. More fun than a box of shaved and greased monkeys they are; cheap to shoot, and no harm done to the more priceless vintage relics.
My Garand is occasionally fired simply to ensure it is good to go when/if a Main Battle Implement needs to be advanced toward the sound of the gunfire.
In my view, nostalgia is a brief and only mildly harmful malady; best left to the more exuberant and wealthy. Would words like 'eccentric' apply here?
Relax, gents; for clearly I jest....
Greg
PS, Actually, some WWI Aircraft and Zeppelins were painted with a mixture of Iron Oxide and Alumina, over muslin that was doped with Nitrocellulose Lacquers. This produced a coating on the fabric surfaces that was chemically about identical to Gun Cotton and Thermite. When ignited, the fabric burned like a flare. Ever watch the Hindenburg fire?
Guncotton, dissolved at approximately 25% in acetone, forms a lacquer used in preliminary stages of wood finishing to develop a hard finish with a deep lustre.
The use of nitrocellulose film for motion pictures led to the requirement for fireproof projection rooms with wall coverings made of asbestos. The US Navy shot a training film for projectionists that included footage of a controlled ignition of a reel of nitrate film, which continued to burn when fully submerged in water. Unlike many other flammable materials, nitrocellulose does not need air to keep burning as the reaction produces oxygen. Once burning, it is extremely difficult to extinguish. Immersing burning film in water may not extinguish it, and could actually increase the amount of smoke produced.
Very bad combination there. Hydrogen AANND that incredibly flammable skin covering. All set off because it didn't get properly grounded when it came in to moor. Static electricity set that off.
ADDED:
Another little factoid about WWI aviation. Most of the external moving parts in an aircraft engine were greased, not oiled like in WWII and later. Castor oil was used for the pistons and 'splashed' on internal bearings. Later machining channeled oil internally to the bearings. And pumped it with positive pressure.
I 'm sitting here completely fascinated by a turning propeller. Go figure.
L
If any of you ever get to Kansas City MO, take a day and go the the National Word War One Museum, it is the Official national WW1 museum.
It is very cool, Opened Nov 11 1926, the outside of it is a huge carved stone fresco and the displays are amazing!
https://theworldwar.org/
For some more in-site about the war read the book "Misfire: The Story of How America's Small Arms Have Failed Our Military".
The title is a bit misleading, its about how the US Ordnance dept. tried to let soldiers die to save ammo, an interesting theme that carried from the first repeating firearm through the M16A2.
In 1900 or 1902 John Browning went to Springfield Armory and showed them what would become the M1917 and the BAR, the head of the Armory said that "They had no value on the modern battlefield", Maxim and Lewis would get the same answer and ultimately sell guns to all the other players of the Big One.
When I was a young man we would serve dinner to WW1 Vets on Armistice day at a local church, they were some neat old dudes.
I could read conversations between sandwarrior and sirhr for days.
By the way, for anyone that knows, I know the Vickers had a stated range of 2000yd, but what is the furthest distance a good crew could expect to hit a single enemy?
Also, sirhr, have you read "Out of Nowhere: History of Snipers"? There is a real good section in there on WW1. I thought it was pretty interesting that some Brits were known to bring in personal dangerous game rifles(ie .416 Rigby or one of the NE double rifles) and use those to punch through armor plates the Germans would use.
For some more in-site about the war read the book "Misfire: The Story of How America's Small Arms Have Failed Our Military".
The title is a bit misleading, its about how the US Ordnance dept. tried to let soldiers die to save ammo, an interesting theme that carried from the first repeating firearm through the M16A2.
Thanks for the compliment! It's a fun thread. And what I think separates SH from a lot of forums and what makes the Vintage section so interesting... there are some serious historians here whose stuff I love to read. It's not just for the tacticool... Many really first rate minds... some of whom also happen to be serious and accomplished marksmen. There's some amazing firearms that folks have shown on this thread from their collections ;-) Particularly some Schuetzen rifles and some interesting and rare precision rifles! For me, this is the best section on SH...
The Vickers could lob rounds a long way... If you want to spend some time studying the little gizmo below from my collection... this is a Vickers Machine Gunners Slide Rule. It works on the same general "vernier" slide principle as a Mil Dot Master. Designed to help set inclination, declination, deflection, wind, dropping rounds BLOS, etc. It's graduated out to 2800 yards, from what I can determine. Should give a good idea of the effective range of a Vickers in the hands of a crew that knew what they were doing. 2800 yds is well over a mile... And with a high rate of fire, one likely had some good hit probabilities out to those ranges.
This unit is WWII Australian. Would be for .303 Ball. It's steel over wood. It would not surprise me if the ballistics on this were pretty close to bolt-action Enfields. Just a neat thing I picked up and thought people might like to see. It goes with my Vickers Belt fed... currently undergoing restoration. And you thought firing a machine gun was easy...
For some great info on MG tactics in WW1, check out McBride's other book The EmmaGees . He walks through some deployment stories and really gets into the doctrine! There is some overlap with Rifleman went to War.... but it's an outstanding book as well. A WW1 classic.
Yes, I have a copy of Pegler's Out of Nowhere. Outstanding book! Been a few years since I read it, but if I remember, it goes all the way back to Morgan and may answer an earlier question in this thread about Morgans' Riflemen's capabilities in the Revolutionary War. Peglar really did a great job researching the history of military precision marksmanship. And in WW1 we find the roots of much in the way of modern military scout/sniper tactics. Lessons that were forgotten (and relearned) for WW2. And forgotten and relearned, again, in Vietnam. As I recall, Pegler also talks about the stigma of military sniper doctrine... and the prejudice against it by conventional military thinkers who think good tactics involves marching Private Cannon Fodder into machine guns in order to gain 10 feet of front. These folks seem to largely regard sniping as somehow unsporting and ungentlemanly. Balderdash...
Cheers,
Sirhr
Coyote: An interesting question, best answered in a roundabout way...
Military historians... at least most of the ones with PhD's... seem to despise anyone who has actually... succeeded. They want to live in an insular world of arcane papers, picking apart each others' Chicago Manual citations... conventions... and they seem to take pride in the fact that their books are so insular and badly-written that they are now selling for 99 cents on Amazon. As if the only "Serious" military history is only written for other PhD's. I think that may, however, be true for many historical subsets. I can't tell you how many times I have heard profs (of little repute) trashing Stephen Ambrose and Dolores Kearns Goodwin for writing "popular" history... as if its popularity makes it less valuable.
IMHO, if history isn't made approachable, popular and readable, there will be no funding for arcane academic history programs where "historians" debate Marxiant Feminist manifestos... and write papers that are as exciting as watching paint dry. People like Ambrose, Cornelius Ryan, Goodwin, Brinkley, Manchester and others... encourage the study of history by making it exciting. I mean, how many of us would appreciate history if we had not read books that made history exciting? So condemning 'interesting' historical texts that are both readable and accurate... as somehow unworthy is an utterly self-defeating concept.
So as for Clancy... he is a wonderful fiction writer. My second favorite in fact. He weaves history into some stories, especially his early ones. And he has some non-fiction books that are good as well... more on that below. Clancy, who I started reading in 1987, is probably my second favorite fiction writer after Frederick Forsythe. But I also like Jack Higgins, Stephen Hunter, Nelson DeMille... and lots of other novelists who are truly entertaining. So, in short, I think Clancy is awsome! But he is a fiction writer! One who keeps me up at night... and whose books I have read again and again. But he is not really a history writer. Nor is he truly an historical fiction writer... like Kenneth Roberts or C.S. Forester, whose fiction was based on really detailed historical events into which those authors inserted fictional protagonists who told the story. Instead, Clancy used broad historical contexts (the Cold War and, later, the GWOT) to create some fun fiction. One could argue that, for example, Red October had some basis in project Azorian and the attempted defection of Pleskys and the revolt on the Storozhevoy... but realistically, it was simply a wonderful yarn! Similarly, his fiction books like Rainbow Six which 'details' HRT tactics, etc... is amusing and great reading. But fiction.
So that's a long way of saying I love Clancy, but accept him for what he was... one of the best storytellers of our generation and one of my favorite thriller authors. But not an historian.
Cheers,
Sirhr
P.S. Anything Clancy wrote with 'other' authors, such as his Netforce, Op Center, Ghost X-Box, etc. fiction series and a few other later works... were utter tripe. I read a couple and simply tossed the books. Once the "Created by Tom Clancy" genre showed up... no interest in those series. Largely crap. But some of his "non-fiction" such as Shadow Warriors, Special Forces, Airborne, Carrier... were pretty well done as reportage. But were they the works of an historian, or a documentarian? IMHO, great primary sources for the next generation of historians ;-) But not history, per-se. More like imbedded reporting!
Pinecone,
It was the Ordnance Dept/Springfield Armory, from the Civil war till the M16A2, they constantly whinned about how fast the Soldiers could waste ammo.
We were given a rifle that had no fullauto but a 3 rd burst, instead of training.
Slightly off topic, but McArthur vetoed the DBM on the original M1 Garand. Can you imagine the changes that would have made to have had the M1A type rifle prior to WW11?