To what extent did British troops use German weapons?

r have been reading Ambroses book Pegasus Bridge and have become annoyed with him constantly having a go at British firearms, but that is not what this thread is about. Towards the end he talks about when the Company in question was withdrawn from the line as 'by this point every man who could had picked up a schmeisser'. Now aside from calling the MP40 a schmeisser, I do not believe that every soldier would swap his Rifle or sten for an MP40. I have heared accounts of troops using German pistols but rarely ever SMG's. More to the point he also claims that Bren gunners picked up MG34's. I REALLY doubt this because the Bren was relatively reliable and the airbone blokes would not know how good the MG34 was, more to the point where would they get ammunition? It would have been a nightmare for every gunner to go and find sufficient ammunition to feed the MG34 (or indeed the MG42, which I suspect is what Ambrose meant for several reasons). The other thing is, he later claims that the British troops went out on 'fighting patrols' and a common activity was moving forward and 'sniping' at enemy positions, has he ever 'sniped' with an MP40? One further thing he is forgetting, where on earth would every man in the unit find an MP40? The units they were initially up against were not particularly good and likely to be armed mainly with rifles, SMG's being primarily for the NCO's and officers. It would not be possible for every man to pick up an MP40 IMHO. Does anyone else have any opinions on this or has anyone heared stories of British troops picking up German weapons?

That is the most annoying thing about Ambrose, technical inaccuracy. He claims soldiers were charging with bayonets on their Stens, now I was under impression that the only Sten that could take a bayonet and that it was introduced in mid 1944 but was first used in the Arnhem landings. In which case why would soldiers have had it on D-Day (this does assume they did not have the bayonets that were made for the Mk 2 and issued in small numbers, I do not reckon they would have had them).

 

Ambrose liked having a go at anything British not just firearms. It was him who came up with the phase "stopped the attack to drink tea"

This has some truth to it. The Sten while a successful weapon was not a highly popular one( it was a very cheap weapon to make, and sometimes it showed) while the MP40 was the one of the best SMG's of the war. Both British and US troops tended to take advantage of any they captured with ammo.
However, I have never heard of Bren gunners 'swapping' their Brens for MG34's, though I have heard of British units using MG34's to increase their firepower, while retaining their Brens(ie the MG34 as an extra MG, not instead of)

 

I know what you mean about the MP40 being quite good, but my point is that I doubt soldiers would swap a rifle for an MP40 given the choice, mainly because the accuracy and range of the rifle is far better. I know what you mean about 'borrowing' MG34s to boost their firepower, but from what I have read they would use it until the ammunition was used up then ditch it.

 

Really the only time I have heard of British troops taking German rifles was in Pegasus Bridge.
I mean many Allied Soldiers took Lugers and other German side-arms but I think they would have prefered a Lee Enfield Rifle to a Schmeisser (even though it was a good weapon). True the British firearms were not as good as they could have been, but large numbers of British soldiers dumping rifles in exchange for German weapons I think is just wrong and their is little fact behind it. For example I don't think there was 1 soldier involved in the attack on Pegasus Bridge saying in an interview that they picked up a German weapon in the book. Maybe you had the odd soldier picking up a German rifle, but certainly not huge numbers of men throwing away their riles.

[ 25. June 2003, 01:08 PM: Message edited by: Jet ]

 

Considering the inferiority of the K98 to the Enfield No.4 as a combat rifle, I cannot imagine why a British soldier would want one.

 

And then there is the ammunition thing...

 

SAS used german weapons in the desert, and its not hard to imagine soldiers of all sides simply picking up the enemies weapon and using it for that battle, although a weapon is down to personnl taste. PAratroopers would of, does this book say how long they held onto these weapons for, a Bren gunner may just grab an MG-42, spray off thousand bullets (thats 40 seconds ) and move on. Thats war for you.

 

The book implies they kept them as personal weapons until they left Normandy. My contention is that British paras would not all swap Lee Enfield rifles for MP40's for the rest of their campaign. I agree with what you say about troops picking up enemy weapons to use for a few minutes or if they had lost their own, but you do not ditch your personal weapon (which you will have to account for when you get back, though this is not a major concern) and pick up an enemy weapon for which you will not have a constant ammo supply. More over you do not pick up an enemy weapon that can not do the job you need your weapon for.

 

A bit late getting into this one but it's an interesting point.

The 'picking up' of an enemy weapon was ( and still is ) a great status symbol for any soldier. These fall into the 'trophy' category and include US soldiers in the Ardennes picking up MP44s, Waffen-SS at Arnhem with Mk V Stens, and of course Lugers and MP40s. These guns were usually kept until the ammo ran out, then discarded. An exception is the PPSh41 which was put to hard use by German troops on the Eastern Front.

To quote Brigadier Peter Young :
'In 3 Commando, which I commanded in Italy and Normandy, we were always glad to acquire Lugers or 'Schmeissers' and sometimes used the MG34. Nobody ever bothered to keep a K98...'

Not 'acquired' and 'used' - not 'replaced with'.

The only British weapon ( pistols excluded) which I have seen regular reference to being 'discarded' is the Sten, which was notorious for jamming solid in dusty or sandy conditions. Many accounts of Arnhem refer to this occurring, the weapon being 'thrown away' and replaced with MP40 or, more usually, K98. Ammunition was, of course, common to MP40 and Sten. ( Ironically, the discarded Stens were probably picked up as trophies by the Germans... ).

In trained hands, the Bren and Mk4 Enfield were superb infantry weapons and were cherished by British Army units. So I think that the late Mr Ambrose was 'over-egging' his argument a little.

 

The British at Arnhem had to use German weapons as they had a supply of ammo for them...

 

The K98s as well....?

 

In arnhem I guess u used whatever u could get..

 

I know i'm late with this one . . . but on the subject of captured weapons i know of at least 2 examples of the Panther being used by Churchill units who apparently prized it highly. The first was a tank name Cuckoo and was used by the 4th Battalion the Coldstream Guards of the 6th Guards Army Tank Brigade in NW Europe. Another one was used in Italy by another Churchill brigade, the 25th i think.

 

Good point, Mahross - this interesting point came up in the 'Quiz' a year ago and Popski posted a fascinating thread about the 'Cuckoo' - take a look at ; -

http://www.twenot.nl/cuckoo.htm