Posted on 04/20/2017 9:56:37 AM PDT by w1n1
My son is an investigator with Federal Protective Service, which is now part of Homeland Security. I got to shoot his .40cal Glock generation 4 service weapon over Easter. That experience gave me a good lesson in the difference between the average pistols and ammunition we see at a gun store and what people in a federal agency carry. The firing was very smooth, without the snappiness of a regular .40cal. The ammunition was a sub-sonic, expanding bullet at $1.50 per round. He is required to fire the same round in practice as he uses when on duty. At 60 feet, he fired several magazines and put 90% of his rounds into an old 20lb propane canister. Of course he is a former Marine.
I don’t imagine I will ever live in that rarified air. In the interim, I’ll settle for a 1911 or Glock 36 single stack; both in .45cal.
After that reply I would tell you the same thing the Colonel did.
I think someone here on FR said that the Russians lost something like 5000 soldiers a day for the entire war. I did the calculations and darn if he wasn’t right.
I am no fan of the Germans but their army was efficient in both WWs.
For later.
For an old man who doesn’t want to carry a big pistol around, a High Standard 22 magnum derringer delivering two shots up close is just about right. Everyone here cringes upon thinking about getting shot with .22 mag up close. Yes, dead is dead, but a .22 mag bouncing around inside of you would make you want to be dead more quickly.
When I look at WWII weapons from all the countries involved it always grabs me that the word ‘weapon’ doesn’t correctly describe German equipment, what they designed were killing machines.
I once owned a High Standard .22 mag derringer.
They are very popular with cops but I have no idea why. The trigger pull was awful. A huge muzzle blast but in those short barrels the energy has to be low, and I mean really low.
The Germans weren't anything to admire - and you shouldn't. The atrocities committed during both world wars will forever stain their reputation. Killing vast numbers of innocent people is all that they were really proficient at. Read Third Reich at War by Evans.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I suspect you don’t either.
I recall reading your posts in other threads tho and always liked what you said. May have to change my mind.
Agreed. Lethality has a lot more to do with placement than size of the hole. That said, I prefer .45 because I like my 1911 better than my Glock 9mm. The 9mm is considerably cheaper to shoot.
Hate to say it, but yard dog as you on this.
Up through about about December of 1944, the Germans inflicted 3 battle casualties on the US Army for every 2 they took, or so says the US Army in their studies in the late 1970s. All documented in General Dupoy’s books (Numbers Predictions and War; one other, the title of which I forget).
Of course by March of 1945 it was more like 2 German casualties for every one the Americans took. We kept getting better, they got worse.
Marines did far better against the Japanese, but strangely as the war went along their kill ration got worse from early 1944 (3.4 to 1) to fall of 1945, as the Japs got a little more intelligent at Iwo Jima (~1:1 causality ratio) and Okinawa (not sure but not as good as at Iwo).
Ammo technology has been the one of the biggest advancements in firearms in the past couple decades; almost makes the caliber debate moot.
The most accurate one.
I love those cowboy guns.
Your analysis of casualties with the Marines in the Pacific leaves out important factors. At Betio and Iwo, the Japanese had very well-designed defensive positions and they were real meat grinders. Training and weapons and guts won but at an enormous cost. Okinawa was also horrific, again because the Japanese had learned to stop using mass charges and stick to layered defenses. The Sugar Loaf near Shuri was assaulted and taken - then retaken - eight times because the enemy had a system of tunnels from nearby positions to allow fresh troops to reassault and hold the same positions over and over.
Lastly, the "1:1 casualty ratio" you cite for Iwo is sort of correct but misleading: we had 25,000 casualties, of which 6,000 were killed. All but a handful of 25,000 Japanese died.
Semper Fi.
The Russian Army suffered greatly under Stalin’s purges and the the use of political officers to “ensure loyalty”. They had performed horribly in the Russo-Finish War. While Russia did take half of Finland the Finn’s small 100000 man army inflicted huge casualties on the Soviets at a relatively small cost. It was this abysmal performance by the Red Army that emboldened Hitler. If not for Stalin I don’t think the Germans would have had quite as easy of a time in Russia as they did early on.
Your call, Yarddog.
Chainmail,
Ahhh...3 to 2 casualties was both is attack and defense, or so says US army research published by Dupoy. It was not the defense, but a whole range of ways the Germans were efficient at operations and low level combat that made the difference. That said if you include the many surrendered Germans at the encircles ports and the Falaise pocket, the US comes out pretty good overall with a third more casualties on the German side than the American (roughly speaking as the differentiation between Brit inflicted and US become problematic) Of course that analysis included a lot of organization TODT and rear service losses (reichbann, Ost battalions) while ignoring the US Army Air Corp losses, which are accounted for separately. Include them in and it does not look that favorable. Depending on how you do the accounting you can make either side look good or bad, but the fact remains at the basic fighting level, the Germans were pretty good through late 1944 in the west. Even over the course of the battle of the Bulge, both offensive stage (16-24 Dec and defensive stage 25 Dec - 12 Jan) they inflicted parity losses on the US, despite the many disadvantages they were at. They fell to pieces after mid January of 1945 and from there on in the US seems to have shown increasing combat efficiency across the board.
US Army is like that, Just gets better with time, kind of reminds you for northern VA in 1864~65. The Army of Northern Virginia was very good in May of 1864 capable of inflicting more casualties on the Union they took. Lot of areas they excelled at but by February of 1865 it was fought to a frazzle and in the spring of 1865 the Union army facing tore it apart. No doubt by February of 1865 the Army of the Potomac was a much better, more efficient fighting force than Lees rag-tag force in pretty much every way.
As for Iwo, I think it had more effect on the bomb drop than one might think. Considering that the japs inflicted 1 casualty for every Jap man killed, when they were surrounded and the firepower ratio favored the US so overwhelmingly, it would have given anyone pause considering the Japs had at least 2 million men under arms on the mainland of Japan.
With the 9 you get to shoot him twice, thus twice the fun.
Afghanistan or Berkeley.
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