Machine Guns by Summer '98?

Right now it's March/April 897 and the Charisian Empire is starting the switch to brass cartridge ammunition. IIRC it's currently still black powder based with plans to switch to smokeless nitrates in the nearish future, while keeping the same cartridge.

Now that they are starting to get cartridge based ammo, when do they develop machine guns? And what type? They can field a Gatling gun of some sort with the existing ammo and tech base. Do they go for a water cooled maxim style and make it light artillery? Something man portable that a support squad has to carry? A .30 Browning is just about doable.

I'm a bit surprised they haven't developed something Gatling like for the upcoming campaign.

The Church will be throwing a lot of bodies at the ICA and letting them run into well prepared machine gun positions would help.

Defending against Harchong serf human waves in ground of their own choosing is how I see the ICA winning and a good machine gun could help a lot.

Fubar wrote:Right now it's March/April 897 and the Charisian Empire is starting the switch to brass cartridge ammunition. IIRC it's currently still black powder based with plans to switch to smokeless nitrates in the nearish future, while keeping the same cartridge.

Now that they are starting to get cartridge based ammo, when do they develop machine guns? And what type? They can field a Gatling gun of some sort with the existing ammo and tech base. Do they go for a water cooled maxim style and make it light artillery? Something man portable that a support squad has to carry? A .30 Browning is just about doable.

I'm a bit surprised they haven't developed something Gatling like for the upcoming campaign.

The Church will be throwing a lot of bodies at the ICA and letting them run into well prepared machine gun positions would help.

Defending against Harchong serf human waves in ground of their own choosing is how I see the ICA winning and a good machine gun could help a lot.

You're correct in noting that early machine guns were considered "light artillery", and that is EXACTLY what the black-powder Gatling guns represented. You CANNOT utilize single-barrel, gas-operated actions (true "machine guns") until you have low-residue "smokeless powder" readily available (due to the effect of black powder fouling on the action).

Once smokeless powder is available? Then it's up to MWW (via Merlin, OWL, & etc)

The BIG advantage of having a library computer available is that various historical missteps can be avoided. Why waste time trying to force the complicated, unreliable, water-cooled Maxim design to work, when you can go directly to the simpler, faster, more reliable MG42 design? Or getting away from the machine-gun-as-light-artillery model, the British STEN gun was a cheap, easily made submachine gun that would be perfect for Charisian units needing easily-carried, heavy RoF, but short-range fire. Its construction is simple enough that on Terra (during WW2), French resistance units built these weapons in garden workshops throughout Occupied France.

The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these.

Fubar wrote:Right now it's March/April 897 and the Charisian Empire is starting the switch to brass cartridge ammunition. IIRC it's currently still black powder based with plans to switch to smokeless nitrates in the nearish future, while keeping the same cartridge.

Now that they are starting to get cartridge based ammo, when do they develop machine guns? And what type? They can field a Gatling gun of some sort with the existing ammo and tech base. Do they go for a water cooled maxim style and make it light artillery? Something man portable that a support squad has to carry? A .30 Browning is just about doable.

I'm a bit surprised they haven't developed something Gatling like for the upcoming campaign.

The Church will be throwing a lot of bodies at the ICA and letting them run into well prepared machine gun positions would help.

Defending against Harchong serf human waves in ground of their own choosing is how I see the ICA winning and a good machine gun could help a lot.

Hi Fubar,

Welcome to the forums. You are cordially invited to the virtual bar to have the virtual drink of your choice on the house. We hope you enjoy yourself on the forums.

As for machine guns, there is no real advance in tech required over what Housmyn is already doing. The issue would be developing the blueprint, retooling, and organizing the production side of things.

At this point in the story line, the EOC's problem is that it is straining every muscle to provide at least rifles for the soldiers they can recruit. That along with producing ironclads, cannon, and on it goes.

So machine guns...yes, but probably for the next war.

Don

ColonialBoy wrote:The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these.

I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Last time it was discussed the Forum was very dubious about the EoC's ability to even produce enough cartridge ammo to keep the M96s firing. For that reason alone a machine gun this year is very hard to credit.

Randomiser wrote:

ColonialBoy wrote:The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these.

I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Last time it was discussed the Forum was very dubious about the EoC's ability to even produce enough cartridge ammo to keep the M96s firing. For that reason alone a machine gun this year is very hard to credit.

I understand that the Maxim was not adopted by some country's pre ww1 due to their "wasteful" rate of fire. The same was said by some for the clip fed and semi auto rifles.

da bear" quote="Randomiser wrote:

ColonialBoy wrote:The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these.

I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Last time it was discussed the Forum was very dubious about the EoC's ability to even produce enough cartridge ammo to keep the M96s firing. For that reason alone a machine gun this year is very hard to credit.

I understand that the Maxim was not adopted by some country's pre ww1 due to their "wasteful" rate of fire. The same was said by some for the clip fed and semi auto rifles.[/quote]


Politco's have been saying that crap since the invention of firearms. They said it during the ACW about the Sharps, Spencer and Henry rifles. They said it during the Indian Wars in the 1870-80's when they refused to issue Winchester's and Remington's to the U.S. Army. Remember at Little Big Horn the Indians were better equipped than Custer's troops were.


Personally I would like to see the Hotckiss 37mm gatling cannon.

ColonialBoy wrote:
Personally I would like to see the Hotckiss 37mm gatling cannon.

While the 37mm would be impressive, I thought a standard gatling using the standard M96 rifle ammo would be the idea. Something anti-personnel oriented.

Again I don't think it will be ready for the upcoming fighting season in '97 due to ammo issues and development time. However I do think that by Spring of '98 they should have the ammo situation under control and if that is the case, the time to start development of the weapon would be now.

Even if they haven't switched over to a smokeless nitrate by '98, they could do a black powder gatling gun by then.

While I agree going for something like a MG42 would be nice, I am one for simplifying your ammo needs and think the machine gun should work off the existing ammo they have. Again this depends of when they go to a nitate based propellant. If that is in common use and large quantity by '98 then yes, go for it. However if they are still using black powder for the rifle rounds, gatling it is.

As I mentioned, I'm worried about the ICA just being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Harchong Serfs being thrown into the fight and am looking at what might work in fighting that.

So whatever weapon system they decide on, I'm thinking they need to start the development now, in the Spring of '97, so they have something to roll out for the Spring/Summer of '98

A few characters have made comments about the Army of God not lasting that much longer but honestly I'm not seeing the land war ending by the end of the year.

While the Army of God might be at the tech level of the American Civil War, I'm looking at the ICA to get up to WWI levels and using what tools that war (machine guns, wire, nitrate explosives and propellants, breech loading artillery, etc) made it even more deadly.

Fubar wrote:While the Army of God might be at the tech level of the American Civil War, I'm looking at the ICA to get up to WWI levels and using what tools that war (machine guns, wire, nitrate explosives and propellants, breech loading artillery, etc) made it even more deadly.

The bottleneck isn't tech levels, it's cartridge and smokeless powder production.

Charis has more than sufficient technical ability to make an AK derivative or any of several WWII era sub-machine guns or Hotchkiss/Gatling derivatives of almost any caliber (especially for Naval applications.) An M1 Garand or BAR clone is probably within their ability, depending on how close they've managed to make machining tolerances and would be the logical next extension/conversion of M96 rifles.

It is possible -- but IMHO, Improbable -- that Charis will have a debugged design for some sort of man-portable automatic or self-loading rifle by the summer of '98. I think it would be highly unlikely to make it into general, or even limited service by the end of this war.

I would not deny the value of machine guns. However the allies already have what is probably a more efficient way of dealing with massed human wave attacks; the long range and shorter range angle guns which we saw used by DE against Kaitswyth on the Daivyn River. With those they can already create a fire zone that would be almost impossible to cross.

My second comment here has to do with the numerical odds the allies face. I realize that 1.7 million men sounds formidable. And it is. But consider. On the Daivyn, DE with 13 thousand men not only defeated Kaitwryth with his approx 140,000 men but forced him to retreat almost 100 miles. Better than 10 to 1 odds. Then at Ft. Tairys, Along with Sympkyn, EHM and the Siddarmarkans, DE not merely defeated but utterly destroyed an army of about 250,000 men with, so far as I can determine, about 125,000 men. Alverez's escapees are really all that's left. The odds have dropped to about 2 to 1.

Now it is basicly up to the Harchongese. My own guess by this time is that the alliance will field approx 800,000 men against the Harchongians, with every man being armed with at minimum of a rifle. I would expect the ammo production issues to be resolved by then without even discussing the steadily increasing allied superiority in all manner of artillery.

The Harchongese, on the other hand, will field a bit less than 600,000 rifles, somewhere under 15% of which are the breech loading St Klymans along with respectable numbers of out ranged muzzle loading cannon. After that, the rest of their 1.7 million men are armed with arbelests, horse bows and of all things...rock throwers! To borrow a delightful phrase from the Empire of Man universe, "basik to the atul!" They just as well slaughter almost half their army themselves. The actual numerical odds here will be about 2 to 1 in favor of the Harchongese, but that doesn't really mean much. In fact, the allies will actually bring more firearms to the party than the Harchongese.

There are other issues that the Harchongese face such as lack of experienced, competent leadership, increasingly stretched out and vulnerable logistics and the list can go on.

The point being I'm not overly worried about human wave attacks. If they try that tactic, they will merely be lining their men up for the allies to kill them faster and more efficiently.

Don

Hi Saber964,

It was the Chinese empire that said it couldn't afford the Maxim, which by the standards of the 1880's was very reliable, modified only slightly by the Brits into the Vickers, which wasn't all that reliable by American or German standards even if the British Army kept it until 1967, but the RAF had to adopt the far more reliable Browning .30 as the .303 for the wing guns in the Hurricane and Spitfire [where the pilot couldn't bash them to get them working again-the British idea of 'reliable'], although they should have gone to the .50 M2/3 or the 20mm or some other far better weapon if they were as smart as they thought they were, rather than simply taking the bureaucratic easy road by sticking with the same caliber, but that's Whitehall narrow mindedness for you.

Howsmyn and Lywys expect to switch to cordite by summer, M96 magazine rifles, the vast artillery advantage NTM mortars can overwhelm the Harchong in so many ways, machine guns aren't really needed in this war.

October can't come soon enough!

L

saber964 wrote::idea: *quote="da bear"* quote="Randomiser"]*quote="ColonialBoy"*
The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these.

I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Last time it was discussed the Forum was very dubious about the EoC's ability to even produce enough cartridge ammo to keep the M96s firing. For that reason alone a machine gun this year is very hard to credit.[/quote]

I understand that the Maxim was not adopted by some country's pre ww1 due to their "wasteful" rate of fire. The same was said by some for the clip fed and semi auto rifles.[/quote]


Politco's have been saying that crap since the invention of firearms. They said it during the ACW about the Sharps, Spencer and Henry rifles. They said it during the Indian Wars in the 1870-80's when they refused to issue Winchester's and Remington's to the U.S. Army. Remember at Little Big Horn the Indians were better equipped than Custer's troops were.


Personally I would like to see the Hotckiss 37mm gatling cannon.[/quote]