A fellow i know at work, whos into military stuff [as i used to be ] as his father was a sapper in the western desert ,was telling me when discussing German ''over'' engineering .That the British did a evaluation on a German mortar after ww2 and found it was ''unnecessarily accurate '' well i would love to own ''ANYTHING'' that was ''unnecessarily'' accurate ! made me laugh when he told me !

Yep, the Germans designed/ made some really great equipment. MG-42 & MG-38. Very impressive guns. And amazingly similar to the U.S.'s M-60.

mike

I agree the statement is a bit silly on its face...but I think they might have meant that considering that a mortar is an indirect, area fire weapon they don’t need to be made to provide pin point accuracy... and beyond a certain point, trying to make them that way is a waste of time, effort and money.

After all, a mortar is totally dependant upon the accuracy of the coordinates supplied by the observer calling them in, and in the days prior to GPS and laser designators those coordinates were not pin-points either.

quote:

Originally posted by cndrm:
Yep, the Germans designed/ made some really great equipment. MG-42 & MG-38. Very impressive guns. And amazingly similar to the U.S.'s M-60.

mike

Isn't the MG42 was the gun they had on the bench as a model as they designed the M60?

So the M60 wouldn't be "similar" but a decendant of the MG42.

Kinda like the AK47 was the same sort of "copy"
of an MP44?

Or the Springfield was a "copy" of a 98 Mauser...

AllanD

''unnecessarily accurate '' ???
Is that like a Woman too pretty?

quote:

Originally posted by Ohiosam:
''unnecessarily accurate '' ???
Is that like a Woman too pretty?

Yes, and both are possible! Remember that there are costs associated with accurate rifles AND beautiful women. I can make my .50 moa rifle into a .25 moa rifle at a cost of $1,500 but is this warranted given that I just want to hunt deer with it at ranges of under 250 yards? Similarly, I can decide tomorrow that I only want to marry a supermodel. It may be possible but it's gonna COST BIG TIME relative to the benefits derived!

JMHO,

John

Arms and munitions, rockets,jet planes,the panzer and tiger tanks,they almost had the atomic bomb first, the list goes on. They also had on the drawing table, a system similar to the space shuttle, to deliver bombs any where in the world.

quote:

Originally posted by kudu56:
Arms and munitions, rockets,jet planes,the panzer and tiger tanks,they almost had the atomic bomb first, the list goes on. They also had on the drawing table, a system similar to the space shuttle, to deliver bombs any where in the world.

Yeah, and all that great gear allowed them to win how many wars?

You reap what you sow. Germany sought to annihilate those east of her borders and it did not work out so well. They are lucky there is still such a place called Germany. I would have turned the whole place into a tire dump with a slow burn. Awful what happened there.

quote:

Originally posted by boucanier:
A fellow i know at work, whos into military stuff [as i used to be ] as his father was a sapper in the western desert ,was telling me when discussing German ''over'' engineering .That the British did a evaluation on a German mortar after ww2 and found it was ''unnecessarily accurate '' well i would love to own ''ANYTHING'' that was ''unnecessarily'' accurate ! made me laugh when he told me !

I assume that this means that, as an area weapon that depends on blast radius to spread its effects over the target area, that this particular mortar had a circular error probable of much less than the blast radius of its shells.

In US service, the very accurate, rifled, 4.2" mortar would probably fall into the same category, but the 81mm, which is a smoothbore firing finned projectiles, would definitely NOT!

quote:

Originally posted by kudu56:
Arms and munitions, rockets,jet planes,the panzer and tiger tanks,they almost had the atomic bomb first, the list goes on. They also had on the drawing table, a system similar to the space shuttle, to deliver bombs any where in the world.

Yep. And despite all this ability, the damn Russians built the best tank of WWII, and WE built the worst!! Thank God, that's not the case any more.

The U.S.A could have had the best tank in the world, had they listened to a fellow by the name of Christie ,who did alot of developmental work on tank chassis ,running gear etc ,evidently he approached the U.S Army with his ideas and was told to bugger off, as they didnt need civilian amateur ideas.The russian BT light tanks had the large road wheels etc of Christies designs ,which the T34 later had ! All the credit for the design of the T34 does not deserve to all go to the Russian designers but alot should go to Christie who was ahead of his time,but was not appreciated at the time .

The Bren light machine gun is a classic example of something to accurate.

When used as a platoon support weapon, the gunner has to make the conscious effort to 'spread' the rounds or they would literally punch through the same whole/chest/etc.

It's replacement, the GPMG was deliberately designed to be less accurate.......very disconcerting to use a machine gun where all the rounds hit the target!

I don’t think anyone was actually saying that accuracy was “bad†...but during a war when things need to get into the hands of the troops quickly there is no reason to slow the process down by insisting on a level of manufacture that gives more accuracy than is needed to do the job if lowering the accuracy requirement a bit can increase production and the time it takes to get the weapon to the troops.