Hi There,
If you can to examine the US military as a whole, you will find that as late as 1939/40 that it was still stuck in it's WW1 thinking. It had virtually no armour and had disbanded it's armoured division and had a few light tanks which were of no use really. It's fighter aircraft were quite a way behind and it had no effective heavy bombers. All this had to be brought online, yes even the B-17 which the procurement folks had said that they didn't want at first. It was the Spainish civil wat which chnged a lot of military thinking around the world.
If you look at it factually even the Sherman tank was not very good however it's greatest assest was that is was easy to produce and as made in vast numbers. As one German 88 anti tank gun commander said:-
[quote) we ran of ammuntion, but the Americans didn't run out of tanks[/quote] This was after the German gun crew had knocked out sherman after sherman unti they literally ran out of shells allowing the US tanks to get past the corner, Oh this was in Europe after D-Day.
Now I suggest that you go and take a lok at early Springfields 03's, they have a tangent sight just similar to a Mauser and no aperture sight which didn't come along until the 03A4 I believe it was. I have a friend her who collect Springfields and when he found one with the Pedersen cut Iwa the one to try it out on the range at Bisley where the show was being held. he had forgotten his distance glasses
Can you expalain why the Modle of 1917 was used by the US during their stint in WW1? could it be that :-
1) they didn't have enough, and could not produce enough Springfields
2) they were having trouble with the recivers cracking on the springfields at this time until they adopted the "double heat treatment" on them
3) the P-17 as it came to be know was actually a better battle rifle.
Oh even the P-51 Mustang was a flop until it recieved an Allison built Rolls Royce Merlin engine, where upon it became one of the outstanding fighter aircraft of WW2 and even in it's latest form during WW2 the Sherman was still no match for the Panzer V, Tiger forget about them it had no hope unless there was about 5 shermans and they could get behind the Tiger. Luckily there were only about 300 or so Tiger tanks built during WW2. a model sherman was equipped with a long barrel british 17 pounder HV gun which made it capable of penetrating the Panzer V's armour and gave it a better chance of stopping a Tiger tank provideing it didn't brew up first. Even the Tank crews called it the "Ronson" because it light up on the first strike.
For your information the Sht Le and Le No4 rifles were and are far superior battle rifle than the 03 Springfield, WW1 prooved that after al the P-14/17 was a better battle rifle than the 03 and the Le's far outstipped them. the Garand also which used a Mannlicher packet loading system by the way
only held 8 rounds. Ask any Pacific vet about the Ping and how quick the Japs twigged it meant that the Marine was out of ammo!
Now as to squad automatic weapons, well there is the BREN LMG which carried far more ammo than the much vaunted BAR, the Sten gun whilst crude was far easier to carry and was made so that captured German ammo could be fired through it and it was lighter to carry too
Due to the same old fuddy duddies which killed Millions of our own troops in WW1 were still in chargeat the start of WW2 in a lot of cases. Semi Automatic weapons were not considered a cgood choice even though the Browning High Power pistol was issued to some troops in WW2.
Oh were you aware than BSA made lots of Thompsons during WW2?
Despite the fact that the British Empire cover about 1/3 of the globe, troops were trained in sighting alowance which meant that a rifle sighted in at Enfield Lock in England could and was used accurately in the Moutnains of Afganistan or on the Plains Africa, every troop had a little training book which showed the difference in trajectory fro the MkV11 cartridge which was loaded to a velocity of 2440 fps +/- 50 fps. Youseem to place a lot of pride on the Garand yet still an awful lot of US troops fought with the 03 during WW2 and a lot of the troops didn't want to be issued with the Garand.
There was a series of doucumentries about Tank development done by the Bovington Tank Museum with the Imperial war Museum and various tank warfare experts. It pulled apart the variuos tanks and their performances in battle around the world. The British tanks came in for some particular bad comments as they had adopted the Crusier policy of fast manoverable tanks light the Cruisr 80 which had guns fitted which were not man enough forn the job asked of them and were unable to fire HE rounds, later during the war the adoption of the 17PDR gun corrected that problem but their armour was still to light except for the Churchill tank which was a strange design harking back in Tank design fo a cross country tank. It carried 4" armour, the Sherman had at most 3" and it's high profile with it's ammo stored up top made it a easy target.
You seem to forget the America had an Isolationist policy right up to WW2. It was only concerned with border security but Germany and Japan split that policy wide open for you. America relied upon quantity not always quality in it's design. The M1 carbine was not developed untill WW2 was well under way, remember that the US didn't come into the fight untill 3 years after it had begun! Also the US was not bombed so production was a lot easier. In one night airraid by the Germans 5 acres of the BSA plant was destroyed, yet they still kept up production. The Triumph factory in Coventry was virtually wiped out in one raid. I wonder how US workers would have coped? It's something which fortunately and hopefully we will never know.
The other thing is that Americas losses in WW1 were tiny compared with Britains or our Empires. The Australia lost more men than the US did! This led to an dissarmement policy in Britain and the Empire despite warning from those such as the BSA board of directors and Churchill who were labeled "Sabre rattlers" and ignored for the most part. However they were prooved to be right in the end, perhaps if they had been listened to them the course of WW2 would have been very different.
Funny how things repeat themselvs now with Blair and his cronies cutting back our armed forces again I wonder how they expect them to do their jobs?
Oh as for the Mag cutoff, the Royal Navy never dropped the cut off and the dropping of it was a war time expediant, the Mk111* was dropped again after 1918 however due to the huge number of rifles on hand very little new production was made and the MkV was of course done in 1924 leading to the No4 in 1939. I recently looked over a batch on Mk111*'s which had the * canceled and the cut off fitted, sory to say that the rifles were in not very good condition so I passed.