Effective SMG range, Help grogs

[Georgie]

I would guess that most riflemen in the war fired their weapon "in fear" and when they were reacting out of fear they had to fall back on their training and unless they had extensive training in firing their rifle they didn't have much to fall back on. I don't think that most troops had extensive rifle training after the professional army was used up. Maybe 50 rounds and then qualify? Grogs? The assault rifle put more rounds in the air for , I guess suppression.

[JasonC]

Georgie - I can't answer for all armies, but in the US army (Marines were different too) right before WW II, there were two standard rifle "courses", the B for infantrymen in rifle companies and C for everyone else equipped with a rifle. The B course fired 120 practice and 50 qualification rounds at stationary targets from 200 to 500 yards, emphasizing all the different firing positions (prone supported, prone unsupported, sitting, kneeling, standing, in slow or rapid fire). The C course reduced the practice rounds to 90 and the ranges were just 200 and 300 yards, no 400 or 500 yard shots. (Marines also fired at 200, 300 and 500 yards, and were still firing out to 500 long after the post war army went down to 300 meters maximum, of course with M-16s rather than 30-06 by that point).

That was the training standard when the war broke out, but during the war standards changed repeatedly and chaotically, so don't assume everyone shot those courses. It still gives a good sense of the amount of firing involved and the training focus, which was more about familiarity in handling the weapon than anything else. It was meant to make a man feel comfortable using his rifle every which way, but that variety plus the small amount of ammo actually fired necessarily meant there wasn't a lot of time to get used to intricacies of sight picture or to progressively improve etc.

It is still better than some post Korea (mid 1950s) peace-time draft army standards, which sometimes had the men "qualify" with as little as 40 shots - one 8 round clip to zero the rifle, and 1 8 round clip each from 4 firing positions.

FWIW...

[winkelried]

JasonC/Georgie - even during the Cold War the ammo allocation for the individual weapons for the "average" soldier was very limited - i remember something of 100+ shots in basic training. when an army still trained large amounts of soldiers it was often a cost/production issue too - you had to multiply the ammo allocation with pretty big numbers.

Same was true btw for "real" ammo for LAW/ATGMs etc where the focus was on handling the weapons and correct tactical behaviour and eventually fired training ammo.

So in a ww2 context i wouldn't expect zook or shreck crews to have fired a lot of shots in training either - don't know even if there was training ammo. probably a lot of "training on the job" with a good part of "black swan effects".

Yes, as i mentioned a lot of holes in the air when you fire an automatic weapon - HMGs, LMGs, SMGs, assault rifles ... especially since the other side tends to return fire you try not to stay exposed for too long.