Deadly Pistols

[SelfLoadingRifle]

I agree and I disagree

As I was trying to point out, for most people in that situation you are correct. But i also know there are those out there that do have ice running through their vains, Born Killers is one word for them. In situations like this there is no massive adrenaline rush. they can handle the situation and focus on doing what is needed to kill someone. For them that 10-15 yard shot is very makable and very high chance of success. And there is plenty of stories to prove there is such people out there.

But back to the game, it does not reflect that aspect at all So cannot be a direct factor of what to expect from the game.

I hear what you are saying. However I think that men in any army with both the nerve and the marksmanship abilities of Audie Murphy are rare as hens teeth.

SLR

[Dadekster88]

Just had a Sherman crew bail after their tank was KOed by a Japanese (modded British) demo charge (Breach) team (I deliberately had the Sherman NOT spot and kill the DC team, which it would otherwise quickly have done -- the test was whether the AI side will throw DCs at a moving tank of its own volition. They do)

Range is point blank; the Japanese have rifles and are in cover. Two crewmen fall at once; a third cowers. The last guy pulls his 45, kills one Japanese more or less immediately, moves a few meters left then pins and kills the other after about 6 shots. Seems not unreasonable for a motivated, hacked off tanker.

Intrigued, I swapped vehicles for a M7 Priest. Bailed the Veteran/High crew (8 pistols) and had them advance on a Japanese (British) rifle squad over a crest that let them close to within 20 meters before LOS gained. Result: the Earp brothers did hit 4 Japanese (Regular/Fanatic) during the shootout, but the squad Sten and Bren gun made fairly short work of them.... pinning and then killing. Done within about 30 seconds; no grenades used until the very end when it was already over. Again, not unreasonable under these unusual conditions. FWIW.

There will always be exceptions rather than the rule and as you state these are unusual conditions but I think results such as the above occur to often. There is no exact science to it and we can spend all day each showing examples from history to each other to support our respective sides but I think common sense indicates that guys bailing out of their vehicles armed with only pistols should definitely already be on the we are soooo screwed list. Hell, even if the enemy is on the opposite side of the map when their vehicle was taken out do you have any idea the ridicule these guys are gonna incur when they walk back to camp?

In both of the above cases I can see the first crew being gunned down as they bail out of their vehicles a much more common if less spectacular and drama filled ending, apologies to all those pixel crews that died that way. The second crew...will if you ordered me and 7 of my buddies to take on a rifle squad that I personally had no LOS of with just pistols I would have been tempted to test this whole pistol effective range thing right there and then.

[slysniper]

I hear what you are saying. However I think that men in any army with both the nerve and the marksmanship abilities of Audie Murphy are rare as hens teeth.

SLR

Well, that is the problem of the whole discussion. Too much of it is a matter of opinions instead of some type of known data.

So no matter what BF DID, SOMEONE will not like it.

At least in general, everyone agrees that some type of tweeking should be done to make this weapons not very accurate.

[LongLeftFlank]

There will always be exceptions rather than the rule and as you state these are unusual conditions but I think results such as the above occur to often.

I agree with your post above, and suspect the best "fix" would be behavioural rather than "nerfing" the pistols themselves. In other words, bailed crews might be Elite inside their vehicle but once bailed they're at best Regular troops, and at minimum Shaken... they can protect themselves if overrun but are unlikely to become gunslingers looking for a fight.

[Dadekster88]

I agree with your post above, and suspect the best "fix" would be behavioural rather than "nerfing" the pistols themselves. In other words, bailed crews might be Elite inside their vehicle but once bailed they're at best Regular troops, and at minimum Shaken... they can protect themselves if overrun but are unlikely to become gunslingers looking for a fight.

Yep, they aren't looking for a fight nor are they looking to walk anywhere...heaven forbid they might be mistaken for infantry!! :eek:

[acrashb]

Too much of it is a matter of opinions instead of some type of known data.

We have known data - police shootings. Start with that.

[Redwolf]

We have known data - police shootings. Start with that.

How is that useful? Entirely different terrain. Trained soldiers versus sloppy thugs?

What I learned from the Bundeswehr is that the last shot of the service pistol - throwing it - is almost as useful as shooting it.

Computer tech wise and politics wise the problem here is that the ballistics trackers in the current CMx2 engine comes out with these rather oddly shaped statistical outcomes from pistols and BFC isn't likely to simply toss that.

[womble]

How is that useful? Entirely different terrain. Trained soldiers versus sloppy thugs?

Which population are you calling trained, and which sloppy thugs. Even early 90s cops had more exposure (out of combat) to the weapon than your average tanker. Granted, experienced crews had more combat seasoning than the cops that contributed to those figures.

It's more useful than "finger in the air" assertions and speculation.

Computer tech wise and politics wise the problem here is that the ballistics trackers in the current CMx2 engine comes out with these rather oddly shaped statistical outcomes from pistols and BFC isn't likely to simply toss that.

So the inputs to those tracker algorithms for pistols need to be changed. And possibly the algorithms can be expanded, perhaps to accommodate the inherent instability of pistols, or whatever aspect of their use it is that isn't currently modelled and is causing those odd statistical outcomes.

[Redwolf]

So the inputs to those tracker algorithms for pistols need to be changed. And possibly the algorithms can be expanded, perhaps to accommodate the inherent instability of pistols, or whatever aspect of their use it is that isn't currently modelled and is causing those odd statistical outcomes.

You are preaching to the converted but BFC has been unwilling to react to the problem of high noon style pistol gunfighters so far.

[Cpl Steiner]

We have known data - police shootings. Start with that.

I do wonder if maybe the hit statistics for police shooting are low precisely because the ranges are typically so short. The target would only have to move slightly to the side and you would have to swing the pistol through a very large angle to keep on target compared to longer ranges.

As I've said in a previous post, we also don't know what conditions each police shoot out occurred in - meaning we just get an average for all conditions. A large number of such shootings were probably at night in urban terrain providing lots of cover and concealment.

It's the same when one looks at raw statistics for the number of rounds fired per hit in a war setting. It could run into the thousands per hit, but that includes suppression fire, blind firing over/around cover, or just hosing a house because you "suspect" the enemy may be using it for a firing position. Raw statistics can often be very misleading.

My suspicion is that in a war setting you would use a pistol on the rarest of occasions, when you are basically under attack, cornered, and have nothing else. If not cornered you would probably try to get as far away from the enemy as possible rather than trade shots using nothing more than a sidearm. The one exception to the above might be an officer who fires his pistol to encourage the men under his command to fire rather than for any meaningful offensive purpose.

As has been suggested, the solution might be to make pistol-armed troops more likely to cower or flee rather than fire their weapon, unless they are surrounded by more heavily-armed friendlies.

[acrashb]

I do wonder if maybe the hit statistics for police shooting are low precisely because the ranges are typically so short. The target would only have to move slightly to the side and you would have to swing the pistol through a very large angle to keep on target compared to longer ranges.

[...]

As I've said in a previous post, we also don't know what conditions each police shoot out occurred in - meaning we just get an average for all conditions. A large number of such shootings were probably at night in urban terrain providing lots of cover and concealment.

[...]

On the first one, to be frank my first thought was "what, is he nuts?" Then I realized that you simply have no experience of how things work with firearms and targets - which isn't a crime, but your best bet is to pay attention to the people that do. The hit statistics are low because of a) life-and-death stress and the difficulty in quickly, accurately using a handgun. This is well-established.

On the second: for starters, there is no better data set to work with - everything else presented here has been anecdote and hopeful hand-waiving. As for the police data we have, "an average for all conditions" is a good place to start with. And yes, most are going to be in dark conditions (although I don't know the percentage) - but cover / concealment is not a factor at the near-contact distance that most of these shootings take place. Even if it were, cover and concealment are also a feature, eagerly sought, of battlefields - so that cancels out.

The main difficulty in relative darkness - at close range - is not shooting a target, it is ensuring one is shooting at the _right_ target. I say relative because of course in near-total darkness everything is a big black mess - which is when the flashlights come out and the police use the Harries technique (or similar, or gun-mounted light) - but that will only be a small percentage of the studied shootings.

Someone else (on my ignore list, so I did not see it directly) made a comment about "Trained soldiers versus sloppy thugs". Assuming the "sloppy thugs" is in reference to the police, since those are the stats we are talking about:

- as repeatedly noted, "trained soldiers" aren't doing much training on pistols, particularly the "trained soldiers" under discussion: tankers, arty crews, and the like. Their training is largely on their most effective weapons systems.

- I am startled to hear someone (apparently) describe western police officers in that manner, but in any event it is incorrect. They don't get a lot of training, and the yearly re-qualification is not stringent (at least in the forces I am aware of), but they get about as much as most soldiers and so can't be considered, on the whole, as sloppy - or in context, materially worse-trained than "trained soldiers". And "thugs" is irrelevant to the discussion.

[JonS]

I agree with your post above, and suspect the best "fix" would be behavioural rather than "nerfing" the pistols themselves. In other words, bailed crews might be Elite inside their vehicle but once bailed they're at best Regular troops

That (changing experience based on current habitat) would be an overly complex solution to what is - really - a fairly simple and minor problem.

[John Kettler]

Cpl Steiner,

I made precisely that argument before earlier, but in a different form. Basically, I argued that the very nature of where police operate automatically constrained firing distances.for pistols. I did some further checking with the SpecWar types, and I learned 50 yard shooting is well within expected combat range for pistol firing. The standard is 2 hits, minimum, from fifty yards on a briefly appearing torso target, of 10 rounds fired. Even if we halve it, that's still 10% hits from 50 yards, rising dramatically as range drops. Bear in mind, EVERYONE in such a unit has to meet this "minimum 20%" standard! One person I spoke with, who has multiple war combat experience, considered the NYPD performance outside of the Empire State building "disgraceful," adding he wondered "whether they taught marksmanship at all any more in police departments" based on that fiasco.

So, for purposes of our discussion, I think 10% hits from 50 yards might be a reasonable upper bound for pistol performance in combat, and knowing what I now know, I would be rather reticent in drawing conclusions about military pistol combat performance based on artificially constrained police shooting reports. Granted, as the world becomes more urbanized, the average range will naturally drop for military handgun engagements. But we're not talking about now and the future, we're talking about back then. And while the average rounds per kill are indeed in the range you cite, there's an awful lot of spray and pray, cover fire, probing fire, recon by fire (Panzer bush syndrome), area fire on an unseen enemy firing from some ill defined location in there, completely distorting what ammo expenditure per kill is when you can actually see the target and engage it with aimed fire. For that, you need to look at, say, a Sgt. York, who was shooting Germans with only their heads visible, first with rifle, then M1911A!. You need to look at Private Robert Green, who dueled with a pillbox (12 men in it) which was firing an MG at him, and with a total of 1 M1 clip and and firing his .45 thereafter, suppressed the defenders enough that he was able to close assault the pillbox and grenade its occupants. In such cases, ammo expenditure is minuscule. York was under fire, yet hit and incapacitated or killed essentially one German for every shot fired! It was emphatically stressed to me that training, training and more training keeps men going when they should collapse from exhaustion and lets them keep their cool in battle. As Kipling put it "If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs...then you'll be a man, my son." I'd further observe that, while I take your point about small shifts up close by the target result in large, rapid angular changes, the Army's own study, cited in this thread, showed stressed firing was virtually identical in results to ordinary range firing out to well past what we're talking about. I believe it was around 80% at 50 yards.

Regards,

John Kettler

[c3k]

"briefly appearing" and "10 rounds fired" is interesting. At a minimum, I'd expect that to be 10 seconds of target in view. I really think it'd be more like 20-30 seconds. Shrug. "Spec Ops" types infers elite status. Compare that to the training of non-infantry types.

[Michael Emrys]

"Spec Ops" types infers elite status. Compare that to the training of non-infantry types.

Exactly. SEALS and the like are a long throw from your typical soldier, even your typical infantryman. You can assume that they are highly motivated, meaning that they actually closely attend to the mastery of every weapon they might use, instead of just learning well enough to pass the basic course. They are also more likely to maintain their concentration in a combat situation. I don't think we can generalize from their performance to that of the average soldier using a weapon that he has only a rudimentary familiarity with.

Michael

[John Kettler]

c3k, Michael Emrys,

You really need to pay attention to what I'm saying and how I say it. I quite clearly referred to the SpecWar types as representing the upper bound of combat pistol performance, NOT the norm! I further invite you to revisit the War Department training film Combat Pistol Firing. That training occurred only AFTER the standard training program for the M1911A1 was successfully completed. Weapon qualifications were and are mandatory for every GI.

I don't yet have the pistol course syllabus or any breakdowns of how much time was spent and on what, but any force which plans to use pistols in combat and devotes the resources to training huge numbers of men in Combat Pistol Firing MUST reasonably expect such a capability will be needed. If not, why waste all that time, money and resources? These are all scarce in war.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

c3k, Michael Emrys,

Here's something else to think about. The personal weapon of most tankers and other AFV crews WAS a pistol, NOT an SMG or a carbine. Therefore, it stands to reason that their weapon familiarity and proficiency should be high. It's also easier to maintain a weapon when you're in a tank or AFV, as opposed to being an infantryman trying to keep his weapon clean and properly lubed while fully exposed to the elements. It's also true the crews were trained to fight dismounted. Such a procedure is described, for example, in the M10 manual over at Lone Sentry, for which I earlier provided a link.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Cpl Steiner]

On the first one, to be frank my first thought was "what, is he nuts?" Then I realized that you simply have no experience of how things work with firearms and targets - which isn't a crime, but your best bet is to pay attention to the people that do.

Well, living as I do in a reasonably civilised country (the UK) which does not think ownership of lethal firearms is some sort of civil right, you are correct, I don't have direct experience of firearms other than low-powered air or gas operated ones (which I have fired).

On the second: for starters, there is no better data set to work with - everything else presented here has been anecdote and hopeful hand-waiving. As for the police data we have, "an average for all conditions" is a good place to start with.

My point was that the extremely short ranges typical of police shootouts are NOT typical of military engagement ranges, and could actually be misleading. I know you will probably ridicule what I am about to say next, but in any first-person-shooter computer games I have played I have found that being surprised by another player at point blank range is far more likely to make me miss than if the encounter is at a longer range. Ok, it's not real shooting experience, but psychologically I would imagine police officer's react in a similar, panicked fashion. Is this really the data we should draw our conclusions from?

[Brindlewolf]

c3k, Michael Emrys,

Here's something else to think about. The personal weapon of most tankers and other AFV crews WAS a pistol, NOT an SMG or a carbine. Therefore, it stands to reason that their weapon familiarity and proficiency should be high. It's also easier to maintain a weapon when you're in a tank or AFV, as opposed to being an infantryman trying to keep his weapon clean and properly lubed while fully exposed to the elements. It's also true the crews were trained to fight dismounted. Such a procedure is described, for example, in the M10 manual over at Lone Sentry, for which I earlier provided a link.

Regards,

John Kettler

Just some stats about American tankers:

The crew carried the M-1927 .45 Thompson submachine gun, later crews were issued the M-1 .45 Thompson or the M-1 .45 Grease gun, and the special model of the M-1 Garand

semi-auto, short-barreled .30-06 rifle known as the Tanker Model.

Tankers also carried the Mk I and Mk II hand gernades, known as the pineapple grenade and

smoke grenade. Every crew made sure they had plenty of ammo, food, water, fuel and oil and anything else that could be useful.

To get back to the original point.Gamewise i've had squads severely depleted or even completely taken out by these pistol bearing SOBs.If they were carrying the above,i could live with that but a couple of guys with handguns,gimme a break.Totally OP in the game,end of story.

[Cpl Steiner]

Here's an interesting article which tends to suggest "close quarters" shooting with a pistol is especially difficult due to the body's involuntary "fight or flight" responses to immediate danger. At the sorts of ranges typical of a police shootout, the sights of the pistol aren't even used. I don't think this would be the case at the longer ranges typical of the battlefield. In summary, I maintain what I said in my previous post, i.e. that police shootout statistics may be a misleading source of data for pistol shooting ranges found more typically on the battlefield.

http://www.pointshooting.com/1afails.htm

[LukeFF]

Just some stats about American tankers:

The crew carried the M-1927 .45 Thompson submachine gun, later crews were issued the M-1 .45 Thompson or the M-1 .45 Grease gun, and the special model of the M-1 Garand

semi-auto, short-barreled .30-06 rifle known as the Tanker Model.

There never was a military-issue "Tanker Garand." It was a post-war civilian marketing gimmick.

[John Kettler]

Cpl Steiner,

Speaking as someone who trained extensively in close quarters defensive pistol shooting, to the point where I could consistently put two in the chest, one in the head with, even with some aimpoint wander, my eyes closed, I get what you're saying. The U.S. Army taught point shooting for close shots and aimed firing for the rest. To rely on police stats for modeling combat pistol engagements in a more rural environment is most unwise, in my view.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Brindlewolf,

I think you're laboring under a misconception, easily fixable by a trip here.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13810463/S...log-1944-Vol-1

The crew weapons, which aren't pistols, are listed for every model of AFV in the linked doc. What you cite is, based on my research, a late war type weapon load. The AFV armament detail even goes into how many grenades were carried on the AFV and the split among the types. As the war ground on, the crew armament, over and above pistols, got heavier and heavier.

Regards,

John Kettler

[acrashb]

I know you will probably ridicule what I am about to say next

[...] but in any first-person-shooter computer games I have played I have found that being surprised by another player at point blank range is far more likely to make me miss than if the encounter is at a longer range.

[...]Ok, it's not real shooting experience, but psychologically I would imagine police officer's react in a similar, panicked fashion.

[...] Is this really the data we should draw our conclusions from?

1) that would be largely correct, because

2) an fps has as much to do with actual defensive shooting as Grand Theft Auto has to do with cutting a hot lap time around, say, Mosport. I understand that some people think there is a meaningful correlation - perhaps wishfully - but there isn't.

3) your note that it is not "real shooting experience [while in a life-threatening situation]" is the bottom line. Let's again reinforce that fps experience is not relevant: while playing, have you ever experienced auditory exclusion? Loss of fine motor skills? Gross narrowing of the visual field? Vasoconstriction? Tachipsychia? PTSD? Further, in the real world the "panicked fashion" you note applies at distances beyond contact, in the circumstance that real people are really trying to kill you.

4) as mentioned, yes. First because it is the data we have (nothing better has come up), and second because the stress reactions you have noted exist at beyond contact distance.

If you want an accessible slightly-real experience, maybe find a local paintball club (I assume such exist in the UK). It isn't life-and-death, but lots of people report similar stress symptoms anyway, at least at first.

Bringing this back, in the immortal (and possibly apocryphal) words of Jeff Cooper, "The purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle [or tank, or artillery piece, or field telephone] you never should have left in the first place."

[acrashb]

trained extensively in close quarters defensive pistol shooting, to the point where I could consistently put two in the chest, one in the head with, even with some aimpoint wander, my eyes closed,

John, nice shooting. I think the keyphrase here is "trained extensively". From observing training progression over more than a decade, this level of competency takes, as noted before, about 100 rounds of structured practice per week for about a year - some progress more quickly, but many will never get there at all. I do not think that WWII tankers / artillerymen did anything near this much pistol training.