Posted on 07/01/2016 5:22:04 PM PDT by Drew68
And certainly, there might've been a few truckloads of the Sturmgewehrs hidden in that region since the 1940s... courtesy of the SS Handschar Division.
His name was Mikhail Kalishnakov.
No, you still have some of your rights. To get more, you must flee that Socialist Democrat stronghold and secure your rights once more.
Tell that major to go find his own.
Judge Hofheinz
And the Nazi party originally made the weapon - de facto. In fact, if I were you, I would leave the connotations alone. Many slave laborers where killed, starved to death, and horribly mistreated making those weapons for the Nazis. Some souvenir, eh? If you want play Revisionism then you are going to have to say German people did that also. At least calling things Nazi takes some of the stigma off of the German people since it has a tendency to put it in the past.
The Bolsheviks borrowed from the Browning designed Remington Model 8 as well.
But they still managed to put the AKs bolt carrier charging handle on the wrong side of the receiver.
11 lbs empty?
You are correct, it's the Kurz, or "short" Mauser rifle caliber round.
Many armies had studied the performance of their standard full powered rifle rounds over many years while also developing sub-machine guns using pistol rounds of much shorter range.
The Mauser Kurz round made the requirements of the weapon possible, a fully portable 1 man light machine gun capable of reaching out far beyond machine-pistols/sub machine guns but also scaled down so as to avoid the expense and weight penalty like the BAR had.
LMFAO, that’s hilarious!
I want one of her.
The purpose of the original weapon was to reduce costs to the German army and industry by 1942.
The Heereswaffenamt (German Army Weapons procurement office) sought a weapon lighter than a crew-served weapon but with tactical effectiveness superior to say the MP38 and 40, requiring a much less powerful round than standard bolt-action KAR 98 or heavy machine gun rifle caliber round.
2 companies submitted prototypes, Haenel and Henschel and the concept was greenlighted with all due speed, especially in light of the fact that the German self-loading rifles G41 and 43 were extremely expensive to manufacture and overly engineered for routine field service, leading to unreliability.
Same with the P38 Walther over the P01 Luger, the MG 42 over the MG 34. Less tooling, faster, cheaper to make.
I read somewhere that Hitler discouraged semi-auto rifles saying if the KAR 98 was good enuff for him ... and he diverted effort to jet bombers when guys like Galland demanded more jet fighters.
The Germans were bad about over-engineering while we churned out M4s as fast as we could, the Soviets, T-34s.
But the Panther transmission was defective.
(See how adroitly I try to turn this into a tread head thread?
“It’s like calling the M-16 a ‘’Republican rifle’’ or a “Democrat rifle’’ The subtext here is, to my way of looking at it, is the anyone who buys is some kind of gun -nut and a Nazi.”
The anti-gun factions, the chattering class and their wannabe media flacks aren’t shy about using “Nazi” on gun enthusiasts, no matter what they buy. Come to think, they’re quick to denigrate anyone they don’t like as a “Nazi” or a “fascist.” Drains the terms of meaning.
But it was very common during WWII and the aftermath for the Allies - Americans especially - to vilify anything German with the epithet “Nazi.” Included privates and commanding generals alike.
Attempting to paste a US political party name onto the M16 (or any DoD selected weapon system) is pushing moral equivalizing beyond any previous limit. Germany is nothing like the United States and it was just as true in the 1940s (and in 1914-1918). As descendants of the Allies who shouldered the burden back then, we would do well to remember that the Germans walked open-eyed into that special brand of Teutonic totalitarianism promised by NSDAP, and embraced it eagerly with both hands.
Haenel, Polte, Mauser, Walther and the like were never the equivalent of Colt, Remington or Winchester. Nor could the Third Reich boast any organization like US Army Ordnance, with its heritage as technical innovator and industrial leader, and its special relationship with industrial America.
Having noted that much, no nation could adapt battlefield lessons learned to small arms design/development/production as could the Germans.
But please set aside any fantasies about the StG44 as some magical combination of war-winning attributes. It is not much more than an expedient: nearly as heavy as the US M1918 BAR (original version), clumsy to handle (the late Jeff Cooper once opined that a Pennsylvania deer hunter toting a Winchester 94 would get the better of any soldat toting a Sturmgewehr). Better than a submachine gun, assuredly - as it was supposed to be.
I would venture the guess that few forum members have fired an original StG44. I have; they are as clunky as the dickens, nearly uncontrollable, nasty in recoil - strange outcomes given the massive weight of the arm and the tiny, low-speed bullet. As others noted, sights are terrible and they are not accurate.
The Kalashnikov is a sprightly sports car by comparison.
But neither is more than an inelegant compromise, made under the press of wartime emergency, adapted to the simplest mid-size cartridge that could be whipped up in a hurry.
But any modern rifle cartridge will outdo the 7.92x33 and the 7.62x39. Quite a few older rounds leave both in the dust also - think 300 Savage. Or 6mm Lee Navy.
Hitler was impressed by this rifle. He’s the one who gave it’s name.
First time I’ve heard that.
I read it was like pulling teeth getting him to approve; like a lot of practical things it was ‘too little, too late’ by 1944, because of course he micromanaged just about everything.
After he got up about noon.
“After he got up about noon’’. Just like Obama.
Wifey and I watched ‘The Longest Day’ (her first time) and she was surprised that Jodle refused to wake Sleeping Beauty though American and British landing craft were hitting the Normandy beaches.
You know, the Germans wanted panzers moved up. Of course some on the general staff went through that long day still thinking Normandy was a feint with the real invasion at Calais.
Adolf thought the SG44 would replace the MP 38. When he heard it was to replace the 98 8mm carbine, with a full-power cartridge, he almost killed the project in its crib. Uncharacteristically, proponents went ahead with it anyway and reports came back about how impressed the landsers were with the weapon: low recoil, lethality, rate of fire, and he got on board.
As to naming it, maybe he did and some nervous Germans breathed easier.
But there’s an apocryphal story about Hitler sitting in his Benz and a motorcyclist was soaking wet, shivering in the rain and he was supposed to have contacted Ferdinand Porsche and directed production of a Peoples Car.
Something tells me, as you recognize with our lazy pResident, that toadies were prolly quick to give him credit whether it was due or not.
By the end of ‘44, however, Germans were telling jokes like,
“The British planes are blue. The American’s planes are silver. In his wisdom, our Fuehrer has made our planes invisible!”
Just wait. The StG 44 came out in .22 a few years ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.