Sheesh - what a bunch of Germanophiles ;-)

[Abbott]

@Abott: Regarding the AK-47, I´ve heard different. True, it is cheap and maybe the ammunition ist not that reliable, but if the overall design had proven to be unefficient, it wouldn´t have been used as much, would it?

Ak 47’s are popular for two reasons. When introduced the rifle was a solid design, which was over 50 years ago. Secondly, they're popular because they’re cheap and have been given away by the millions. They have several disadvantages such as being heavy, strong recoil, inaccurate (at all but close range), the muzzle likes to climb, the safety is hard to operate (especially so if using a folding stock model), they are loud, they possess a large muzzle flash which can compromise your position and the ammo is known to be corrosive. They will be around for a long time to come just like rats and cockroaches. They are extensively used because they are readily available and much cheaper then higher quality rifles. After all “Quantity has a quality all it’s own”.

And I heard from a reliable source (a man who used during his military service) that the Ak-47 is able to shoot anything smaller than 7.62mm WP ammunition - so just take more reliable ammo from captured enemies, 5.56mm NATO rounds, for example...

“In the mid-60’s United States adopted the M16 with its high velocity ammunition. The Russians feared it might outrange their AK-47 too much and they also wanted a kinetic energy round. The fastest way to do that was to rechamber the AKM to a lighter bullet. The development of the 5.45mm started. To make the conversion easier the 5.45mm round was given a 39mm shell. The developed rifle was adopted in 1974 as the AK-74. A lot of people think an AK-47 is meant when they see or hear ‘AK-74’. If you see AK-74, it probably is correct, as most AK-47’s are out of service and replaced by AKM”.

Thus eliminating the AKM with its smaller diameter bore (5.45 verse 5.56).

Rifles have rifling (spiral groves) cut into the inside of the barrel; these grooves impart spin to the projectile as it travels thru the barrel. The spin is what provides the rifle bullets accuracy. The AK-47 fires a 7.62 round. Thus the bullet at its widest point, its base, is 7.62 millimeters in diameter. The M-16 rifle fires a 5.56mm bullet. Thus the base of the bullet is 5.56mm in diameter. Even if the AK’s action would feed the NATO cartridge the smaller bullet would wobble down the inside of the barrel failing to gather spin and leave the barrel without any accuracy.

Taking ammo off your enemies has no place in combat other then extreme circumstance.

Hitting anything with an AK-47 out past 100-150 meters is very dicey. An M-16 can be accurate out to 500 meters and I have seen soldiers who could hit silhouettes at 800 meters with open sights. AK-47’s are built for the untrained masses as effective close in automatic weapons (which they are). Professionals prefer a higher quality weapon.

[ June 15, 2005, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[Brent Pollock]

Well, no you have heard of it.

The RPG is just a panzerfaust after liposuction and some photoshopping to lengthen its gams to make it look sexier

Originally posted by Talk'scheap:

"The Germans also provided the world with that great Russian weapon, the RPG....or at least got them thinking about developing it themselves."

Never heard of this. Besides, the greatest Russian weapon was the will of her people. Go jump in a lake and take Earl with you.

[ June 16, 2005, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Brent Pollock ]

[Brent Pollock]

Sheesh - who'd a thunk this thread would run for 2 pages...not I.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Brent Pollock:

Well, no you have heard of it.

The RPG is just a panzerfuast after liposuction and some photoshopping to lengthen its gams to make it look sexier

RPG-1 was a direct copy of the PF.

[Earl Grey]

May I inquire as to why you propose such a daring feat like jumping into a lake? It would seem highly probable to me we have a misunderstanding here...

[Bigduke6]

Originally posted by Earl Grey:

[QB] @Bigduke6: But a Panther with a good crew is more than a match for your six T-34´s...

Maybe in rare cases. But not usually.

The Panther can handle the T-34s if:

1. The Panther is on hard defense

2. The Panther has more than one firing positions

3. Average fields of fire are, say, 500 meters and up.

4. The Panther's flanks are secure

5. The Panther does not have to move from its strong position, i.e., to attack or counterattack, which is a frequent mission for tanks.

If your definition of a great tank is a tank that is best as a defensive anti-armor weapon that doesn't move, then all I can say is that a concrete pillbox with an 88mm inside it is far batter than any other tank produced in WW2, including the Panther.

But if you want to see what six to one odds are like for a Panther in a "normal" tank battle of varied terrain and motion, I'll be glad to send you a PBEM turn, and give you a chance to prove me wrong!

[Bigduke6]

Heh. I knew the AK reference would bring them out of the woodwork. Some things are soooo easy. Michael Dorosh, apologies, but yer thread I is hijacked.

Abbot,

My personal opinion, a "professional" soldier first and foremost is the infantryman in the dirt. I won't bore you with repeats of all the stories of M-16s abandoned by U.S. infantrymen in Vietnam for the Kalashnikov. Instead, here are some Kalashnikov anecdotes, all from my personal experience.

1. The weapon is buried in a hole, after which the dirt is saturated with a hose. The Kalashnikov is then dug up an hour later, and without cleaning fires without a hitch, including on automatic.

2. The weapon on single shot hits a man-sized target at 250 meters 100 rounds straight.

3. The weapon on single shot at 50 meters in the hands of an experienced but by no means superior rifleman (me) groups 150 bullets (or so) in a 3-4" circle.

4. The weapon is run over by an armored personnel carrier, and fires normally.

5. The weapon fires 300 rounds on automatic without a hitch - absolutely dry, without any lubrication.

6. The weapon functions normally at temperatures lower than 30 degrees below, Centigrade.

7. The weapon fires over 3,000 rounds in a simulated firefight, and function is practically unchanged from when the weapon is cold. No cook off, though the barrel is a bit hot you can still hold the weapon just fine.

8. "Professional" soldiers armed with the Kalashnikov, almost without exception, say NATO small arms are impractical as they require an inordinate amount of babying. A Red Army sergeant once put it real well "If your soldiers are always cleaning their rifles, they're not doing something useful like digging in or training."

I have a goodly amount of experience firing the M-16, and I agree that on a firing range the M-16 is a more accurate weapon.

Wars however take place not on firing ranges but battlefields, and for that, the Kalashnikov is probably the best automatic rifle ever made. Sure you can find weapons a bit more accurate, but in a war volume of fire and reliability are the thing.

It is true lots of peacetime soldiers pooh-pooh the Kalashnikov as primitive. But if you talk to infantrymen with combat experience, especially in firefights, it's really hard to find one who'll tell you the Kalashnikov is an inferior weapon.

[Simon Fox]

Personally I prefer not to play the Axis side principally because I'm not comfortable with the homoerotic undertones of much of the German kit. The Soviet gear is a lot more "straight".

Of course I don't intend to be judgemental about those who lean the other way. In this enlightened day and age we try to be accepting of all sorts.

[Earl Grey]

@Bigduke6: If you take six T-34/85´s I think it may be rather bad odds. If we´re talking about the standard T-34 type, then the odds are in my favour.

But I managed a while ago a rather impressive number of kills with a Panther A: 3x T-34/85 M44´s, 2x SU-100´s, 4x T-43 M43´s, 2x SU-85´s, 1x T-34/85 M43. I WAS on the defensive though, but only because I couldn´t go into the offensive as 4 times my number in tanks came rushing at me... I have screenshot made, but I think you won´t believe me even if I sent to you...

[Soddball]

Originally posted by Earl Grey:

@Bigduke6: If you take six T-34/85´s I think it may be rather bad odds. If we´re talking about the standard T-34 type, then the odds are in my favour.

But I managed a while ago a rather impressive number of kills with a Panther A: 3x T-34/85 M44´s, 2x SU-100´s, 4x T-43 M43´s, 2x SU-85´s, 1x T-34/85 M43. I WAS on the defensive though, but only because I couldn´t go into the offensive as 4 times my number in tanks came rushing at me... I have screenshot made, but I think you won´t believe me even if I sent to you...

The point Mr Duke is making is that Soviet armour production was so far ahead of German armour production (in terms of volume) that a Panther would rarely be facing off against a single T-34. Fighting standard T-34s, you are clearly stacking the odds in your favour. Their 76mm guns cannot penetrate the Panther. Historically, under those circumstances, your lone Panther would probably be overwhelmed by a battalion of infantry and a huge artillery barrage.

[Bigduke6]

Earl Gray,

It was this remark of yours that confused me.

Originally posted by Earl Grey:

@Bigduke6: But a Panther with a good crew is more than a match for your six T-34´s...

I guess you were being ironic or funny.

No worries, I absolutely believe you killed all those Soviet tanks. Well done. Post the screen shot if you like, I am sure it is very impressive.

In the mean time, i you ever want to try a battle where I have:

3x T-34/85 M44´s,

2x SU-100´s,

4 x T-43 M43´s

2x SU-85´s

1x T-34/85 M43

And you have a single Panther A - well, I'll take those odds too! (And I bet I'm not alone.)

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally posted by Simon Fox:

Personally I prefer not to play the Axis side principally because I'm not comfortable with the homoerotic undertones of much of the German kit. The Soviet gear is a lot more "straight".

I'm pretty sure these uniforms turned into Hamburg

cabaret wear AFTER the war.

Barkhorn.

[Earl Grey]

@Soddball&Bigduke6: I had about a dozen panthers or so - but everyone of them fighting on different enemies. And I guess that score is one in a thousand. If I played the same scenario again, I surely would loose all my tanks. Don´t knwo why the Hand of Fate granted me such luck...

I agree that under the above mentioned circumstances my panther wouldn´t last long - but I just talked about tank vs. tank. Maybe I got a bit carried away - I´m a great Panther fan... sorry.

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Heh. I knew the AK reference

Abbot,

My personal opinion, a "professional" soldier first and foremost is the infantryman in the dirt. I won't bore you with repeats of all the stories of M-16s abandoned by U.S. infantrymen in Vietnam for the Kalashnikov. Instead, here are some Kalashnikov anecdotes, all from my personal experience. (snipped)..

,

The problems with the M-16 in Vietnam you speak of occurred when the rifle was first issued with the 556mm round being based on the Remington Arms sporting cartridge. The cartridge was the main cause of the rifles feeding problems. That problem was solved within the first year of the rifles issue, over 30 years ago. You should update your knowledge.

Russia is known for servicing the low-end small arms market. The weapons are rugged and cost little to build. They can be effective if you want to send many rounds down range on full-auto with little concern for accuracy. If you want to arm a lot of people or poorly trained troops inexpensively, AK’s are a good choice. The AK-47 will serve well with troops who have been trained to only maintain such crude devices and they will suffer form the weapons poor accuracy accordingly.

[Zimorodok]

I actually prefer playing Russians (could you tell by my moniker?). Early war armor battles? sometimes dicey...the tanks generally suck (unless they're KV-1's), but you often have more than a few, but any sort of defense or counter attack is always blessed by the AT guns (esp the big 76.2's...there's nothing in grey in 1941 that can shrug off a hit from one of them).

Around 42-43 it gets a little more even, but Soviet kit gets better, and you often have a 2:1 or 3:1 advantage in tanks. Ubercats (and 80mm stugs) are hard to kill, but you still can. And they are lots of PzIIIs that blow up when you hit them. And thin armored, short barreled PZ IV's.

Later in the war you have quantity vs quality. And I'm not talking "rivers of stupid soviets", but if you are going up against a true UberCat, you normally have plenty to try and kill them with (IL-2's, JS-2's, ISU-152's)

The pricing for King Tiger to T-34/85's is roughly 4:1 (i just ran a QB, 460pts for reg KT, 135pts for reg T34/85); if you're attacking (and what soviets weren't in 1944?) then you get a 3:1 advantage. So. If you had a KT vs T-34/85 matchup you get 2 KT's vs 12-14 T34/85. Sure the KT is very hard to penetrate, but 7 barrels of 85mm vs 1 of 88mm. I view it as the Lions vs Hyenas method of combat.

And, also simply put, there wasn't a King Tiger in every village. or a Panther either. Many times, if there were any tanks, they were Pz IVs, which, in my experience, have no survivability against 85mm shot. Stugs are better, but only to a degree. They still die from the sides. Even in a pitched battle, I always seem to end up with 2 T-34's left after the enemy anti-armor assets are destroyed. And 2 T-34's can put a hurting on (fleeing) infantry.

My favorite time, though, is mid-war. I love the effects of canister shot. And Flame. *shrug*

just my .02. I know its all stuff we've all heard or known about before.

Zimorodok

[Bigduke6]

Abbot me friend:

SNIP

The problems with the M-16 in Vietnam you speak of occurred when the rifle was first issued with the 556mm round being based on the Remington Arms sporting cartridge. The cartridge was the main cause of the rifles feeding problems. That problem was solved within the first year of the rifles issue, over 30 years ago. You should update your knowledge.

Well heck. I spent time in the U.S. infantry (regular army) in the 1980s, and goshdarn but every one of the Vietnam vets in the ranks told me the M16A1 jammed like nobody's business, if you're in the bush be safe, carry an AK.

What's more from my personal experience with both the A1 and the A2, I can tell you that those 'Nam vets sure did seem to be telling me the truth about the A1. I know it sort of blows your argument out of the water, but that thing really did jam like a sumbich. A2 was better but hey, if I fire max 3-round bursts w/ the A1 it jams less too.

So I am having a little trouble getting my head around your assertation the jamming problem was fixed one year after the M-16A1 was first issued, considering us regular army infantrymen were hassling with the thing jamming almost two decades later. Maybe we were just bad soldiers...

Nah. The A1 just jammed alot. If it looks cross-eyed a a grain of sand it will jam. You have to clean that thing in the field not daily, but basically all the time. Even when it's clean its tolerances are so tight that if you fire it fast and don't put a ton of lubricant on it, it's gonna lock up on you.

Remember SPORTS? The Soviets don't have something like that for the AK, there is no clever acronymn for teaching Red Army soldiers to clear the weapon. Why? The AK don't jam, that's why. You may call that primitive. I call that good engineering.

I think it's dumb to make an automatic rifle for the price of an M16, when you can make a better one for the price of an AK. Now if you're with Pentagon procurement, I could see how you wouldn't agree with that.

As to accuracy, like I say, I have fired both weapons and the M-16 seemed on a firing range to add about 200 meters to my personal ability to hit a man-size target. AK was good to about 300, and the M-16 to about 500, assuming I had been sober the night before.

But at ranges of 250 and under, my impression, no diff worth writing about. I repeat: I have fired something close to 150 rounds from the AK at 50 meters and put them all into a group about the size of a fist. That's plenty accurate enough for combat.

So as to "updating my knowledge," I'll go with my personal experience, thank you very much. See, when I was talking with those 'Nam vets one of the things they told me was that the worst part about being issued the A1 was that higher refused to accept the weapon jammed all the time.

It was always "the infantry isn't maintaining right" or "they're using dirty ammo" or "wrong lubricants" or "individual soldiers doing unauthorized repairs" or "magazines taped together place excess drag on the chamber" or "improper knowledge of SPORTS procudures" or "failing to close dust covers" or "overly frequent use of the weapon in bad weather". Just like your line about sporting cartidges.

It took the U.S. Army nearly two decades to get a weapon that didn't jam in combat so much - the A2 - into the hands of the infantry. How many lives of how many good men would have been saved, if the A2 had come out in say 1968?

Just my opinion. You're welcome to yours - for what it's worth.

[annihilate_this_week]

Abbot, shake Bigduke's hand and take the diploma, because it seems that you sir, were SCHOOLED.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

It was always "the infantry isn't maintaining right" or "they're using dirty ammo" or "wrong lubricants" or "individual soldiers doing unauthorized repairs" or "magazines taped together place excess drag on the chamber" or "improper knowledge of SPORTS procudures" or "failing to close dust covers" or "overly frequent use of the weapon in bad weather". Just like your line about sporting cartidges.

I do believe a lot of these reasons were given for the problems with the current British assault rifle as well.

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Just my opinion. You're welcome to yours - for what it's worth.

Big Duck,

I spent several years in what you call the field being fired at by those wielding the AK 47. I had my choice of (almost) any assault rifle or SMG available. The AK 47's were rugged but very sub-standard. I do like the new smaller 5.45mm soft-tipped cartridge that the Russian’s rushed into the field because of the superior quality of the NATO rifle. However I find the rifles firing the round to be of poor quality and of little value other then for their intended purpose. That purpose being the inexpensive arming of many poorly trained soldiers or people (s) with no training. Equipped to enable those mentioned to quickly fire many rounds down range with fully automatic fire.

See, when I was talking with those 'Nam vets

I do not base my opinion on what people told me but on my personal experience.

I think it's dumb to make an automatic rifle for the price of an M16, when you can make a better one for the price of an AK.

I find as usual, your opinion of anything Russian to be as inflated as your ego.

[ June 16, 2005, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Talk'scheap:

Abbot, shake Bigduke's hand and take the diploma, because it seems that you sir, were SCHOOLED.

Once again you have proven you chose your screen name wisely. Piggybacking someone else's post without knowing your subject.

[ June 16, 2005, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[annihilate_this_week]

I just wanted to try my line, i thought it was great hahahahaha and who to better try lines on then russian-bashers? ;-P

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Talk'scheap:

I just wanted to try my line, i thought it was great hahahahaha and who to better try lines on then russian-bashers? ;-P

I am not bashing Russians. I am saying that the AK 47 was a good rifle 50 years ago. I admit they are rugged but have always suffered from poor standards of quality. I find the AKM to be a better weapon but of little field value when there are a myriad of superior quality weapons available. I do admit that the weapons adequately fill their intended role. I also admit to liking the 5.45mm soft-tipped round. Which was fielded out of fear of being outpaced by the 5.56mm NATO round. Big Duck is claiming that because he spoke with people and fired a weapon on a range that he knows what is what. I dispute that claim and find it lacking, however not nearly as lacking as your cackling like a chicken around his and my conversation. He and I may not agree here but would likely find each other’s company interesting and maybe even enjoyable at the local Pub. You would be ignored like the child you are until you grew up.

[Michael Dorosh]

For what it is worth, I man the regimental small arms display every summer at the local fairgrounds. Those with actual operational experience (which does not include me) in the field generally tell people that the AK-47 is a "piece of junk" and I rather suspect they know what they are talking about. It is an easily recognized name - most civvies don't know the difference and ask if our C7s are in fact AKs. That's when they get the opinion of the AK, generally described by us as "well, that's the weapon our enemies tend to use."

[annihilate_this_week]

"I am not bashing Russians"

You're bashin' the piece, that's just as bad.

"You would be ignored like the child you are until you grew up."

Funny how you posting a half page comment is ignoring me. Besides, well duh, sorry gramps, I'm just a child, on a message board for a game what you want?

[Bigduke6]

Abbott,

Number one, you're not going to score any debating points by calling me names. See, I just politely called you Abbott, and I feel just fine.

Number two:

SNIP

However I find the rifles firing the round to be of poor quality and of little value other then for their intended purpose. That purpose being the inexpensive arming of many poorly trained soldiers or people (s) with no training. Equipped to enable those mentioned to quickly fire many rounds down range with fully automatic fire.