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7.92K Ammo


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JonS,

It's fascinating to me how you could easily "say something righteous for a change" but invariably chose the direct or indirect slam at me instead. I know you're perfectly capable of making a real contribution in your posts, but when I'm involved, all efforts to advance the discussion end and you come baying after me, fangs bared. Curious!

Regards,

John Kettler

He's a reptoid plant. No not a plant form of reptoid. You know like a reptoid agent, saboteur, tinker, tailor, soldier... spy.

Is that a lizard tail in your pocket or are you just glad to see us?

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RockinHarry,

Thanks for this! How does this compare with the equivalent figures for 7.92 x 57mm? What I'm really looking for is some reasonable fraction that 7.92K made of the whole 7.92 cartridge production figures.

Regards,

John Kettler

Ok, here´s the figures from same source as given above:

7,92mm x 57

Stocks at beginning of war (in millions):

7377,84

including 588 with the Luftwaffe at this time.

Production figures (not incl. the B cartridge type):

1939: 880,5

1940: 2259,4

1941: 464

1942: 317,6

1943: 2200,1

1944: 3862,3

1945: 491,7 (until march 1945)

The sharp production decline in 1941/42 was a result of Hitlers planning behaviors, generally underestimating the needs for the ongoing war and large stocks yet available after the french campaign of 1940. My source has some lengthy explanation on more about this, but that´s actually it.

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RockinHarry,

So we have 2200.1 million 7.92 x 57 mm in 1943, vs. 23.4 million 7.92K (1%)

Then ups to 3862.3 million 7.92 x 57 mm in 1944,vs. 579.4 million 7.92K (15%)

Then falls to 491.7 million 7.92 x 57mm in 1945, vs. 209.5 million 7.92K (43%)

If I did the math right, this should give scenario designers, and maybe BFC, some idea as to 7.92K rarity.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Wouldn't it make more sense to divide the number of rounds produced by the number of weapons produced? Yes, that assumes perfect distribution and ignores the end-of-war effect, but I fail to see why the availability of different ammunition for a different weapon has any bearing on the availablility of MP44 ammn. You might as well compare it to 9mm ammn.

Rockinharry's figures give a total of 822.4M short rounds produced, and there were ~426k MP44 plus another fistful of ad hoc weapons that used the same round. Call it 450k total.

That averages out to around 1,830 rounds per weapon, or about 61 magazines-worth each. In other words; not scarce in any meaningful way.

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JonS,

The object of the game was to find out the relative scarcity of the 7.92K cartridge over time, and I got what seems a reasonable set of answers. Your suggestion is the logical next level of analysis. In any event, scenario designers and BFC now have a workable set of guidelines around which to structure scenarios employing the 7.92K.

Regards,

John Kettler

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The object of the game was to find out the relative scarcity of the 7.92K cartridge over time

I don't understand why that is interesting though. And if it is interesting, why not compare it to 9mm, instead of or as well as regular 7.92mm?

What interesting thing, that is relevant to CM, does comparing production quantities of completely different ammunition types tell us? That more regular 7.92mm was produced than 7.92mm short should be staggeringly unsurprising. But that isn't really interesting, is it?

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JonS,

People were complaining that 7.92K was hard to come by, and I set to out to find out why. Was it because it was legitimately uncommon or because BFC/scenario designers only thought it was? We now have some time-varying data and no longer need grossly speculate. I freely admit I didn't expect to see 7.92K making up such a big portion of 1945 German 7.92 ammo production (43% vs. 15% the year before). That was a surprise. All in all, I think the exercise was worthwhile.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Worth to remind, that given 1945 ammo production figures is just for january and february (as of march 1st) alone, while the others is the yearly output.

Some other interesting numbers (just rifles, MG, Sturmgewehr and related ammo):

Expenditure count for all of 1944:

Assault rifles (Stg44): 30.454

Ammo: 164.572.600

Rifles/Carbines: 1.457.012

MGs: 157.307

Ammo: 4.168.975.300

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For fun I ran down totals of Allied causalties in 1944 - there is some uncertainty on the Russian figure because the number I found included non battle casualties, but I can estimate their portion etc - and then make an assumption that 30% of those casualties are caused by bullets, assuming the other 70% are shells and artillery, as medical evidence from the allies themselves suggests.

The conclusion is that it took about 2000 rounds fired to cause one wound, maybe 2500.

Notice that one fellow calculated there were 1800 x39 rounds per rifle. Also notice and roughly half or a third were still on hand at the end of the war. This makes it likely that each issued MP44 wounded at most half of one allied soldier, if they did as well per bullet as the full powered rifle rounds.

This ends your OR moment...

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Not quite. That should be "... each built MP44 wounded at most ...". There is no reason to suppose that every MP44 built was issued.

Yep, in fact it´s way more complicated and deriving data for special purposes can just least to rough estimates. My book source gives hard data on production numbers, expenditure, losses, ect. in very good detail and the author Fritz Hahn, beeing former member of "Heereswaffenamt" (army weaponry department branch) yet had lots of original data from his wartime duties to his avail. No idea if it´s available in non german languages (I guess no), I highly reccomend this book:

http://www.amazon.de/Waffen-Geheimwaffen-deutschen-Heeres-1933-1945/dp/3763759158

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And the K round wasn't sprayed out of MG42s at a high rate, with no real expectation of causing any wound. Given the focus of the German squad was feeding its MGs, it's probably safe to say that the average bullets-per-kill for "full" 7.92 rounds was considerably higher, which would make the average for the K rounds somewhat lower.

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Keep in mind though that the StG44, or rather mP43 at that point, was not commonly used in Normandy. Both Photos and divisional status reports show that only a few division had been issued with it. The 12th SS Panzer for example reports several "Experimental rifles" which may or may not be MP43s and the 2nd SS Panzer reports 49 MP43s, to give you an idea of how rare it was even in supposed "elite" divisions. There is anecdotal and archeological evidence about it being used by the 6th FjG Regiment and I know of one photo showing one in the hands of an US soldier near St Lo (possibly Fallschirmjäger) and of one mud find near Villers Bocage. Considering these low numbers, I could imagine ammunition supply being an acute problem.

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womble - I think 0.5 per MP44 is being generous, yes. Most wounds are caused by shells, and most bullet wounds are caused by the full machineguns, by miles in both cases. Maybe 10% of overall wounds, if that, come from individual small arms.

Indeed, but rounds expended by full machineguns could (I don't know, and I'm at a loss as to how to analyse what numbers we have to say one way or the other) easily mean that their per-bullet "hit" ratio is significantly worse than individual weapons.

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@stikkypixie, re- your post #19 in this thread:

Bad news : at first attempt to test firing off his little remaining ammo, he burned through half the stock of another guy with an MP44 in an adjacent Action Spot.

More bad news : when I finally got him “isolated” and he fired off all his rounds, he didn’t switch to any other weapon. So I guess that means they trade rather than pick it up extra.

Worst news : once he was fully out of ammo, I hit on the “bright” idea of sending him off as medic to a fallen comrade with a rifle. I was really hoping that since he had no ammo left for his MP44, he’d pick up the rifle. He didn’t.

Good news (but not for him) : I’ve just found a volunteer for lead scout in the next mission of the campaign.

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