Category: War
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The Suez Crisis 1956
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From summer patriot, winter soldier
all indications are that Russian “offensive pushes” are falling apart amid appalling losses, very poor command, and no visible gains …..
russian soldiers and armor are pushed into battle without adequate training and support, and are being stopped before they really get started, and are suffering appalling losses. performance of troops is horrible. discipline is summary. troops are fighting among themselves, and there is no semblance of cooperation between troops from different regions, and different conscription campaigns.
command is a joke.
russian soldiers are dying by the droves.
for russia, it is a tragedy that will take many years, perhaps decades, to recover from.
for the western alliance, for n.a.t.o., it is a gift that no one anticipated just a short year ago ….. the destruction of the russian conventional military.
for china, … , who knows how this cuts, and the chinese are not saying. territorial gains in russia’s eastern regions, coming to the chinese? the chinese & russian partnership that some projected? for the chinese, however it turns out, it looks as though they will finance it; russia cannot be counted on to contribute much, as their spending will be directed towards rebuilding. at this point, russia would be best advised simply to attend to its survival as a state.
for the ukraine, it is the continued spilling of their life’s blood, and no one knows to what extent, as the ukrainians are not saying. war is never without costs, even in victory.
john jay @ 02.08.2023
1895 US Marines with Paris Lee Rifles
With the guns of the new system you go, gentlemen,
I felt how they are loaded, they always hit.
Luck is for white rifles, they bring death
Pay and I’ll show you what the Bear can do.
Rudyard Kipling, World War with a Bear, 1898
I felt how they are loaded, they always hit.
Luck is for white rifles, they bring death
Pay and I’ll show you what the Bear can do.
Rudyard Kipling, World War with a Bear, 1898
stories about weapons. It must have annoyed the army that the navy was now armed with bolt-action rifles while its soldiers were still running around with single-shot springfield bolt-action rifles. Therefore, in 1882, the army began new tests, opposing the Lee rifle to the Winchester-Hotchkiss and Chaffee-Reese rifles. All of them were five-shot caliber .45-70.
Schematic diagram of the breech mechanism on a Lee rifle from an 1894 US patent
Looking at the rifle that Lee submitted for testing, one can see that it had clear improvements over the first model of 1879. The rifle featured a comfortable bolt handle located behind the receiver, an improved locking system, and a redesigned magazine with longer cartridge jaws.
Interior view of the Lee rifle mechanism from an 1894 US patent
It was issued to more than 149 companies representing infantry, cavalry and artillery. “Lee” won the test unconditionally, but for inexplicable reasons, the head of the artillery department decided that “Spingfield” would remain.
And here is how this very mechanism turned out in metal. As you can see, there is a difference, and a considerable one. Noteworthy is the arrangement of the store. It is not removable, but permanent. It is loaded with a clip for 5 rounds, which is inserted into the magazine along with the cartridges and falls out of it after shooting the first two
Despite being defeated in military trials, the basic Lee military rifle, manufactured by Remington in .45-70 and .43 Spanish calibers of various models, was widely sold around the world. Based on it, the 1885 model was released, which was described in the previous material, but Lee did not calm down on this success. Moreover, in 1886 the first rifle chambered for cartridges equipped with smokeless powder had already appeared.
1895 Lee rifle. Right view. Photo liveauctioneers.com
The same rifle in the cut. View from the left. Photo liveauctioneers.com
By 1894 he had developed a new rifle chambered for smokeless powder, and he was on time. In the same year, the US Navy announced a competition for a new “naval” rifle for fleet. The competition was more than democratic and solid in terms of the number of participants. Van Patten, Dodeto, Briggs-Nyland, Miles, a Russell-Livermore repeating rifle, five Remington models (all with side magazines) and a Lee rifle with a “direct motion bolt” were tested.
Rifle Lee 1895. Left side view. Photo liveauctioneers.com
At the same time, the Navy emphasized that sailors would like to have a rifle loaded with clips, but
“because conditions of service may require the use of loose cartridges or may result in the magazine being disabled, it is desirable that small arms can be loaded with single cartridges.”
Lee’s rifle had a magazine loaded with clips, and fully met the task. By the way, she also had a caliber approved by sailors – 6 mm. Therefore, it was she who was chosen as the winner in repeated tests and adopted by the US Navy in 1895 under the name “Lee rifle, model 1895, caliber 6 mm”, also known as the M1895 Lee-Navy (that is, “Lee naval” ).
A page from the manual for Lee’s rifle
But the old Remington-Lee rifles were not removed from service after that and were used until the end of the 1890s, and they were replaced with the 6-mm Winchester-Lee rifle of 1895, in general, slowly. At the same time, even the Colt-Browning machine gun was created for the new caliber, so that the interchangeability of ammunition among shooters and machine gunners in the American Navy was achieved one hundred percent!
Remington-Lee sporting rifle. Photo remingtonsociety.org
The Remington company, in turn, released a model of the Lee sporting rifle, also in 6 mm (.236 Navy), but also in other calibers, such as: 7 × 57, 7,65 Belgian, .30-30, and .30- 40. But between 1899 and 1905, only about 1500 copies of Lee’s sporting rifle were sold, so it is unlikely that she made good money on it. Overall, though, the rifle was excellent. It is distinguished from combat rifles by a semi-pistol grip and a shortened forearm.
Marine with a Lee-Navi rifle
As is usually the case, a lot of the high combat qualities of the new rifle was the result of a new cartridge adopted in 1894. It was the first U.S. military cartridge designated in metric caliber, the first cartridge to be equally suitable for both rifles and machine guns, and the smallest caliber cartridge ever adopted until the advent of the 5,56×45mm NATO cartridge. in 1964. At first, the bullet had a steel jacket with a copper-nickel coating and developed a speed of 780 m / s. But then the shell was made purely copper, which increased the life of the barrel to 10 shots, in contrast to 000 with a steel shell.
Cartridge 6 mm
Interestingly, the new cartridge had significantly greater penetrating power than the US Army .30 (.30-40 Krag) cartridge, and could penetrate 58 cm of softwood at a distance of 640 m, and 9,5 mm thick boiler steel sheet from a distance at 30 m. A 7 mm thick chrome steel sheet (without a substrate) made its way from 50 m.
Lee rifle mechanism. Photo liveauctioneers.com
Rifle mechanism close-up. Right view. Photo liveauctioneers.com
Rifle mechanism close-up. View from the left. Photo liveauctioneers.com
Another important advantage of the new cartridge was the significantly reduced weight of the ammunition. So, 220 rounds weighed about the same as 160 rounds of .30. As a result, an 1898 US Marine carried 180 rounds of 6mm rounds packed in five-round clips and placed in black leather pouches. An army rifleman of the time who usually carried only 100 rounds of 30-caliber rounds in separate pockets of his bandolier.
Bolt handle and one combat stop. Photo forgottenweapons.com
But the main “highlight” of the design of this rifle was its unusual shutter, which had the form of a rectangular bar, which did not need to be rotated when loading. That is, where, in order to control a cylindrical bolt, it was necessary to first turn the bolt and only then move it back and forth, while with Lee’s rifle it did not rotate and only moved back and forth and that’s it. In addition, she had only one combat stop, which was very unusual. The bolt control handle first had to be raised at an upward angle and then pulled back sharply in order to eject and extract the spent cartridge case. By pressing the bolt handle forward, the cartridge from the magazine was fed into the chamber, and the drummer was cocked, and the rifle was ready to shoot. The rifle had a fuse located at the top of the receiver on the left, which was raised with the thumb.
The rifle was controlled by three levers: the first on the left is the fuse, which was discussed above, the second is the bolt lock, which released the bolt and allowed it to be removed from the rifle, and the inclined lever, pressing which raised the bolt up. Photo forgottenweapons.com
The extractor was very unusually arranged for this rifle. Firstly, it was very long and … was not attached to the shutter. Secondly, it had its own spring, and it could easily be separated from the shutter when the latter was removed. He simultaneously moved along the groove in the bolt and in the bolt frame and pulled out the sleeve, holding it by the groove, but at the same time he pulled himself out of the bolt. And then the compressed spring pressed on the long plate of the extractor, and it also worked as an ejector! By the way, it happened that the extractor was forgotten to be inserted during cleaning and even lost! Photo forgottenweapons.com
The rather strange “up and back” movement of the bolt was unusual for shooters at first, and besides, the slightly inclined stroke of the bolt opening proved inconvenient for some men when the rifle was held at the shoulder. But despite this, the chief of artillery of the Navy, apparently not without reason, said that the action of Lee’s rifle allows you to shoot “at a higher speed” than most rotary-action rifles adopted for service.
The sight allowed shooting at 2000 yards. Photo forgottenweapons.com
True, erosion of the Metford-rifled barrel was soon discovered, but nothing could be done about it, just like improving the quality of smokeless powder for 6-mm cartridges supplied to the USA from … Great Britain! In total, about 15 of these rifles were made.
Ammo feed plate. Photo forgottenweapons.com
U.S. Navy Lee rifle markings. Photo liveauctioneers.com
The rifle performed well in combat in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, during the suppression of the Boxer uprising in China and the Moro uprising in the southern Philippines. Its qualities such as flatness and accuracy of combat, as well as the ability to take a lot more cartridges with you, were noted everywhere. However, the presence of two calibers of small arms in one army turned out to be very inconvenient from a logistical point of view. Already in 1898, it was decided to stop at the 7,62-mm caliber for rifles of all branches of the US military, including the Marine Corps. Nevertheless, on the ships of the Navy, the decommissioned Lee rifles were preserved as training weapons until the 20s of the twentieth century.
- Author:
- Vyacheslav Shpakovsky
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Epic Military Blunders
THE Army has no heavy guns left in Britain after giving them all to Ukraine.
Defence chiefs are scrambling to buy replacements after pledging their 30 working AS90s to Kyiv.
Korean K9 Thunders and Swedish Archer guns are on a shortlist to replace them, if the Treasury unlocks cash.
Top Brass insist the AS90s are best used blasting Putin’s invaders.
A source said: “These guns were designed to fight Russian forces. No one needs them more than Ukraine.”
The self-propelled artillery pieces can blast targets 15 miles away with 155mm shells.
But the decision to give them away has stripped two Royal Artillery regiments, based on Salisbury Plain, Wilts, of all their working weapons.
An artillery source said: “If gunners don’t have guns we can’t fight, we can’t train.”
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace vowed to rush forward replacements with an £800million “mobile fires programme”.
But the new guns are not due until 2029, at the earliest.
Combat in Europe during World War II orbited around massive set-piece battles across expansive terrain. By contrast, the Pacific War was characterized by ferocious conflicts of extermination, typically fought over relatively small isolated pieces of dirt. The weapons used in the island hopping campaigns served in some of the most demanding environments in the history of warfare.
With few exceptions, troops in the Pacific carried the standard infantry weapons issued by their nations’ militaries serving elsewhere. Combat environments ranged from the fetid jungles of Guadalcanal to the frozen wastes of Attu and Kiska. Throughout it all, fighting men on both sides battled to the death for their particular ideologies.
United States
John Cantius Garand began design work on what was to become the M1 rifle in 1924. The U.S. Army adopted the weapon in 1936. It officially entered service a year later.
The M1 fired a full-sized 7.62x63mm/.30-06 round. The rifle fed from an eight-round en bloc clip that ejected automatically on the last round fired. The semi-automatic M1 was indeed the most capable battle rifle of the war. U.S. troops appreciated the M1’s penetration in heavy jungle foliage.
While the M1 was powerful, reliable, and mean, it also weighed 9.5 lbs. empty and was nearly 44″ long. As a result, in 1938 the Ordnance Department began development on a light rifle for use by truck drivers, mortarmen, radio operators, and the like. The resulting M1 Carbine weighed a paltry 5.8 lbs.
Those early semi-automatic carbines fed from 15-round detachable box magazines and fired a straight-walled 7.62x33mm cartridge. While the carbine has been denigrated for its performance when compared to the M1 Garand, that’s not really fair. The carbine was intended to supplant the handgun, not the rifle. As a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon), the carbine was indeed a prescient design. For close quarters applications in jungles, caves, and tunnels, the carbine excelled.
Commonwealth Forces
British Commonwealth troops first saw action in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. They fought alongside U.S. forces until the two atomic bombs ended the war. Standard infantry rifles across the Commonwealth forces were sundry variations of the bolt-action Lee-Enfield.
Variations of the Lee-Enfield served from 1895 until 1957. Despite firing an archaic rimmed .303 round, the rugged and fast Lee-Enfield action remained one of the most effective bolt-action designs of the war. The basic rifle evolved through several Marks.
The SMLE (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield) Mk III was the standard British infantry weapon of WW1. British Tommies affectionately referred to them as “Smellies.” All Lee-Enfield rifles fed from detachable 10-round box magazines. However, most loading was still undertaken via stripper clips from the top. Some versions even had their magazines affixed to the rifle with a short length of chain. Early WWI-vintage SMLE’s included a sliding magazine cutoff that effectively turned the rifle into a single-shot weapon. This feature was wisely deleted in short order.
The SMLE was a superb rifleman’s tool, but it was expensive. The subsequent No. 4 Mk I sported a simplified sighting system and redesigned barrel. The SMLE has a characteristic flat-nosed appearance, while the No. 4 Mk I sports a stubby bit of barrel out the front. Both weapons were comparably effective in action.
Though the No. 4 Mk I was the more recent design, many Commonwealth troops used the SMLE throughout the Pacific War. While British production focused on the later weapon, the Indians and Australians manufactured the SMLE throughout the war. Australia did not retire the SMLE until the late 1950’s.
Canadians first saw action during the battle for Hong Kong on December 8, 1941. 290 Canadians perished before the garrison surrendered on Christmas Day. 5,300 Canadians took part in the Aleutian campaign in August of 1943. Period photographs depict the Canadians involved in the operations on Attu and Kiska carrying No. 4 Mk I rifles.
BSA Shirley and ROF Fazakerley produced a total of around 250,000 No. 5 Mk I “Jungle Carbine” versions of the Lee-Enfield for use in the Pacific Theater. This short-barreled variant of the No. 4 Mk I used the same action but incorporated a conical flash suppressor. Recoil was fairly epic.
Japan
The Japanese began their 1930’s campaigns in China with Type 38 rifles chambered for the 6.5x50mm semi-rimmed cartridge. The Type 38 was designed in 1905 and produced until 1942. The subsequent shorter Type 99 shared a similar action but fired the heavier 7.7x58mm round. These weapons were frequently called “Arisakas” in reference to their primary designer Colonel Arisaka Nariakira. There were other rifles in Japanese service, but the Type 38 and Type 99 were by far the most common.
The safety was a big knob on the back of the receiver. To manipulate it you would press in with the palm and rotate the knob in the desired direction. Early safety knobs were heavily knurled to conjure a vaguely chrysanthemum vibe.
As the American B-29 Superfortresses pummeled Japanese industry, production quality for Type 99 rifles began to fall off. Where early guns sported complicated folding anti-aircraft sights, a collapsible monopod and a removable sheet steel action cover, the so-called “Last Ditch” late-war weapons were much simpler. Last ditch Arisakas had fixed peep sights, crude furniture, and a wooden buttplate held in place with three carpenter’s nails.
In post-war tests conducted by the NRA, the Arisaka was deemed to be the strongest bolt-action rifle of the war. These guns served everywhere the Japanese fought. Veterans brought these weapons home by the thousands as souvenirs. Most vet bring-back guns have had the emperor’s chrysanthemum mark on the receiver ring ground away.
China
The most common Chinese service rifle was the Hanyang 88, a near copy of the WWI-vintage German Gewehr 88 chambered for the 7.92x57mm round. The Chinese produced around a million copies before manufacture wrapped up in 1944. The Chinese Chiang Kai-Shek rifle was a local copy of the German Mauser 98k carbine.
Other Chinese weapons included the FN Model 1924, the Mosin-Nagant 1891 and the Italian Carcano 1891. The Chinese used American-supplied M1917 Enfields, M1903A3 Springfields, and M1 Carbines as well. Keeping those disparate calibers supplied in an austere environment must have been a Gordian chore.
Ruminations
The Russians joined the Pacific War just twenty-four days before the Japanese capitulation. In their defense, the Soviets were fighting for their very lives against the Nazis on the Eastern Front and were too preoccupied to put a whole lot of effort into the Pacific. The Soviets made widespread use of the Mosin-Nagant M1891 everywhere they fought.
The Pacific War spanned thousands of miles and ultimately claimed some 6.5 million combat troops. 27 million civilians perished. Troops wielding these weapons served from the West coast of the U.S. all the way into China, Burma and India. Cultural influences from that global war shape the geopolitics of our modern world even today.
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