Worst-Of WW2 Weapons:Common Bolt-Action Rifles.

With all the best-of friends, i thaught it would be cool to have a "Worst-Of" Thread!

I don't know the French MAS-36, but I'm sure that our Carcano '91 was one of the worst. Unreliable and often it gets stuck  :(

I picked the Japan one, very outdated for its time.

I picked the French one, France seems to have lost every war they were involved in, so their equipment gotta suck too.

Snug wrote:
I picked the French one, France seems to have lost every war they were involved in, so their equipment gotta suck too.

France had a rather bad high officer corps, before and after napoleon. Their equipment are generally good, except the artillery of franco-prussian war of 1870 ^^

The MAS-36 isnt that bad, but isnt the best rifle ever! But it has a nice thing: soldiers who are going to surrender can easily definitly broke the gun, making it useless for the ennemy  ;D ;D

Red_Stinger wrote:
But it has a nice thing: soldiers who are going to surrender can easily definitly broke the gun, making it useless for the ennemy  ;D ;D

Was that feature actually a part of design?  :o
I mean, it's rather strange to actually plan such things as surrender.

Last edited November 29, 2010 at 7:12 PM by IJoe

IJoe wrote:

Red_Stinger wrote:
But it has a nice thing: soldiers who are going to surrender can easily definitly broke the gun, making it useless for the ennemy  ;D ;D

Was that feature actually a part of design?  :o
I mean, it's rather strange to actually plan such things as surrender.

That feature was part of design: a soldier can neutralize 2 rifle by facing them. Then, he have to thread each gun in the baionet's tube (below the barrel) of the other one. It take about some second, useful if the ennemy is surrounding you.

But young conscript liked to broke all their gun by that way (  ;D ), so post-war rifles were issued with some small holes in baionet's receptacle, so military gunsmith can repare them.

No wander, that mr Coluche said that about the rooster.  ;D
Just kidding.

IJoe wrote:
No wander, that mr Coluche said that about the rooster.  ;D
Just kidding.

XD

I just lol'ed so hard.

i wonder who voted Kar-98k.
lol.

Actually, the MAS-36 was quite inovative. I'm not sure of its actually performance, but was designed from lessons learned from the Lebel and Berthier.

Bolt action rifles weren't to much important on the battlefield. In good armies the normal soldier is only needed as support and ammunition carrier for the machine gun. So in combat you have to only to prevent flanking and to provide ammunition to the machine guns which fire from the flanks.

maxi1991 wrote:
Bolt action rifles weren't to much important on the battlefield. In good armies the normal soldier is only needed as support and ammunition carrier for the machine gun. So in combat you have to only to prevent flanking and to provide ammunition to the machine guns which fire from the flanks.

One word, sniper...
And these guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaytsev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
If snipers weren't important and didn't make much of a difference, then I'm not sure what would. And they used bolt-actions (mostly)

HyperSniper999 wrote:

maxi1991 wrote:
Bolt action rifles weren't to much important on the battlefield. In good armies the normal soldier is only needed as support and ammunition carrier for the machine gun. So in combat you have to only to prevent flanking and to provide ammunition to the machine guns which fire from the flanks.

One word, sniper...

I wouldnt say that snipers are important in an army. US and UK armies had 2 men spotter squads instead. In an urban warfare and in most situations solidiers didnt need scopes, normal sights gave them enough accuracy.
"weren't to much important on the battlefield" - depends what do you call a battlefield. Snipers should actually stay away from big battles and shoot at the enemy when he least expects it.

Moonwalker wrote:
I don't know the French MAS-36, but I'm sure that our Carcano '91 was one of the worst. Unreliable and often it gets stuck  :(

I'm sure Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree, thats the rifle that killed Kennedy!

Griptonix wrote:

Moonwalker wrote:
I don't know the French MAS-36, but I'm sure that our Carcano '91 was one of the worst. Unreliable and often it gets stuck  :(

I'm sure Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree, thats the rifle that killed Kennedy!

Just mortally injured. ::) ;D :P

Last edited February 6, 2011 at 8:58 PM by Paciat

He could have a 1812 Musket, I mean seriously, what dose that prove?

Can't you read? someone was crapping all over the Carcano and I pointed out it was used expertly by a former Marine to kill a president. do you follow?

The Difference:

-He had lots of time to aim and Kenny wasn't moving that much

-It wasn't life threatening if it Jam

-He wasn't under heavy fire and no one was shooting back at him

I mean Seriously, lets go back to WW2.

Seeme wrote:
The Difference:

-He had lots of time to aim and Kenny wasn't moving that much

-It wasn't life threatening if it Jam

-He wasn't under heavy fire and no one was shooting back at him

I mean Seriously, lets go back to WW2.

You got two points Seeme, remeber to redeem them before the last day of the month ;)... let's go back to Bolt-Action rifles from WW2 discussion.

I have to put it as the Arisaka.

The rifle might have been outdated but it still worked, but... the Japanese had a major problem with their Logistics, as many of their weapons used different kind of ammunition.
Though the rifle was cheap and by that vurnerable to all kinds of problems.

I also voted for the Arisaka.  The thing was also too long, which made it hard to handle / carry, especially when the average height of Japanese soldiers back then was only around 5'3.

There's a documentary on Japanese weapons of WW2 on youtube.  I do believe that man for man, the individual Japanese soldier had far superior fighting spirit and will, but was sorely under-equipped and their officers used outdated tactics.  They didn't even have a reliable AT weapon during the whole war.  They would have to resort to suicide soldiers holding dynamite to try to blow the Shermans up.  Their tanks were also a joke; kinda like pitting a Hummer against a Honda lol

Fighting to the very last man honestly takes balls of steel.  Everyone talks about the bonzai charges behind their armchairs nowadays, but most people would piss in their pants if ordered to make a charge like that.  Its just too bad these guys committed a lot of war crimes and therefore fought for an unjust cause.

Shit,our Carcano was wonderful,have you ever tried it?

I think the Arisaka and the Carcano is bad.
Also, only a retard would say the Karabiner 98k and the Mosin Nagant are bad.

irik wrote:
I think the Arisaka and the Carcano is bad.
Also, only a retard would say the Karabiner 98k and the Mosin Nagant are bad.

I lol'ed when I saw some votes for the K98 and the mosin-nagant...  ;D

I would also vote for the Arisaka, mainly because it had to face the M1 Garand.

Red_Stinger wrote:
I lol'ed when I saw some votes for the K98 and the mosin-nagant...  ;D

Some people just won't grow up!  ;D

Arisaka seems to be the worst, yet I haven't tried it myself (same goes for french and italian rifles  :()

Mosin and kark (though I tried kark only about twice) are very good rifles. Even today these could be used for quite impressive effective long-range sniping (very high penetration, good precision, high damage, the only bad thing is recoil and bolt-action thing (compared with new specimens)), provided good optics.

Carcanos are not bad at all, but on the eastern front they froze easily and thus jammed quite a bit because of the shivering cold, and infact the rifles had to be held over fires just to get them loose enough to fire.

Everyone burns the Carcano. (and maybe because they have never fired one :D) It occasionally jams, yes, but it's fairly accurate if the line of sight is set up correctly. It's effective range is pretty good for a bolt action. I'd say it's on par with the Lee Enfield or even quite possible a Mosin-Nagant, but I guess that's a matter of opinion. (I'll take the Mosin-Nagant instead of the Carcano to the range if I had to choose for the sake of sheer accuracy, effective range, and firepower) Yes, it is known for jamming because the Italian army had blamed taking casualties on "Poor Equipment", but in reality they were a poorly trained army of folk-people who just wanted to go back home. (Sadly, the Italian army pushed all the way to Stalingrad!) Mussolini didn't want the world to know his army wasn't trained quite well, so he blamed it on the rifles and MGs. (Later the tanks, but in reality yes, those were NOT so great)

I vote the Arisaka. It had a formidible opponent (M1 Garand) and didn't have much to offer. It jammed quite often without reason. (Other than lack of mechanical design) I think the Japanese were just looking for a cheap, spammable weapon that they could hand to the army like candy.

Chancellor wrote:
Fighting to the very last man honestly takes balls of steel.  Everyone talks about the bonzai charges behind their armchairs nowadays, but most people would piss in their pants if ordered to make a charge like that.

Actually, Banzai charges were a sign of cowardice. A bizarre sign, but still a sign. Banzai charges were a way of ending your life with honour, and was a kind of "ideologically approved suicide". However, it was something cowardly to do when, for example, the commander of the Iwo Jima garrison ordered his troops to fight to the death, but always trying to kill as many Americans as possible from protected positions, rather than carry out futile charges that were quickly stopped in their tracks by machineguns and semi-automatic rifles, with heavy losses for little to no gain.

QuoteIts just too bad these guys committed a lot of war crimes and therefore fought for an unjust cause.

Actually, the cause comes before the war. It doesn´t matter how heroic a soldier is when it comes to justifying the war he is fighting in.