Happy Birthday, Trudy!
ION,
If I remember my "Engineering Disasters" documentaries from History Channel right, the US infantry actually didn't use the Springfield rifle during WWI due to some bonehead in Washington realizing that they were better than anything anyone else had, so if they were taken from a dead doughboy, they would lose technological advantage. As a result, the US sent the boys over there with a vastly inferior POS rifle that blew up in their faces more than fired effective bullets into the Germans.
You're thinking of a machine gun the US had but didn't use. There was a French machine gun that was given to US troops instead, that had an open magazine that tended to get dirt in and jam like you said.
The headline of this story is the best part:
Prosthetic leg stash found under floor
Plumbers who pulled up the floorboards at a Dorset, England home discovered a cache of hundreds of old artificial legs. Homeowner Mike Sutton told the Dorset Echo he thinks the previous owner "must have been a bit of a Del Boy character," referring to the silly scheming wheeler-dealer in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Sutton is investigating whether a charity might be interested in the prosthetics.
There was a French machine gun that was given to US troops instead, that had an open magazine that tended to get dirt in and jam like you said.
That's the gun I was thinking of--I forgot that it was French. Still, it was stupid not to use the perfectly good Springfields.
My new boss is obsessed with military archaeology. Half the office library is devoted to guns and battlefields. One of the sites produced a 17th century pistol a while ago and he's still printing pictures of it for he walls.
The US
did
use Springfields in WW1. The Springfield is not a machine gun. It was some other machine gun that the US had but didn't use.
Info on the Springfield: [link]
Happy Birthday Trudy!
Congrats on the house, Vortex!
Oh yeah - congrats on the house Vortex! I know it's been a long time in-process.
I am really tired. Kathy, I hope my last post didn't come across too surly....
