Here is something I've noticed often, but never understood. Since at least WWII, and probably before, the US Army has used the letter "M" followed by a number to designate a type of weapon. But the system seems to be crazy! There are so many different weapons with the same number. M1 light tank M1 medium tank M1 heavy tank M1 Combat Car M1 Abrams Tank, main battle, full-track, 105 mm gun, 58-ton [1] M1A1 Abrams Tank, main battle, full-track, 120 mm gun, 58-ton [2] M1A2 Abrams Tank, main battle, full-track, 120 mm gun w/2nd gun sight for TC [3] M1 truck M1 light tractor M1 medium tractor M1 heavy tractor M1 trailer M1 light motorcycle And that's just vehicles. Now it could be argued that these designations were used at different times. But that would be wrong -- for example M3 Medium Tank (Lee/Grant), 28-ton, 75 mm gun M3/M5 Stuart Tank, light, 12-ton, 37 mm gun These M3 tanks were in service at the same time. Even now, I think there is an M2 Bradley AFV and an M2 Browning .50 machine gun. Seriously, how did/does the American M-naming system work?
The 'M' in front of any weapon stands for 'Model' for example M1 Garand. 'Model-1 Garand'. M14 'Model 14' and so on. Hope this helps!
It does help ... so if the M numbers were only meant to refer to individual weapon models, not to be used as generic designations, that makes some sense.
Yeah, thats pretty much right. I guess you can refer it to how the Japanese call their weapons. For example: Type 99 LMG or Type 100 SMG Pretty much all the same as American's use for their weapons. Except we use M. 'M1'
Okay, I get it now. It's funny, but I've been reading about WWII weapons for years, and none of the authors ever explained this.
Haha, i understand. They might not say Model something something when their explaining one gun. But they might when they are trying to compare 2 different models of the same gun. You have to dig deep sometimes to get the information your wanting! Lol, Trust me, it sometimes gets on my nerves.
Yeah, I was wondering how it might work in practice. Suppose a platoon commander is on the radio in a battle: "Quick! I need an M3!" -- how would headquarters know which M3 he needed? How did this work in practice? Did they use codenames like "Lee", "Grant" and "Stuart" instead? These were British names for American tanks in the beginning, but it seems they were adopted by Americans eventually.
Sometimes they did. But most the time they wouldn't be talking about a gun, they usually need ammo. If its ammo they are wanting then they will usually say out the caliber. For example: M1 Garand. They call out. I need a Bandolier! or I need .30 ammo! M14: I need 7.62! and so on.. Yes they did use codenames sometimes
Seems to me a better designation other than the one used would have been much better. In WWI, it was M and the year the piece of equipment entered service, which is why there was the M1917 and M1919 machine guns. That made better sense to me.
Fully agree Most countries used either the date of introduction or a sequential number to classify most weapons, the later was more common for aircraft where it was common to have two planes for the same role with the same year of service introduction. The Brits were the notable exception as they named nearly all weapons. Note that the Japanese used a different calendar so a Type 99 would be 1939 and a Type 0 1940 and many others used only the last two digits from the year so a K98k was 1898 and a P08 1908 (evidently WW2 era military were not yet afraid of the Y2K bug and didn't expect a weapon system to be in service for over 50 years). The crazy thing about the US system is that in most documents they "drop" the weapon type so while a French will almost always say Char B2 we will find M4 rather than Medium Tank M4. When it comes to ammo, which IMO is the most critical element, the most rigid system was the soviet one see Fixed Ammunition - THE RUSSIAN BATTLEFIELD (side effect of centralized planning?) but they probably needed that to compensate for low training times. For most other countries I still believe it's a miracle any of the right ammo got to the troops considering the large number of similar caliber incompatible rounds that existed and the confusing designation systems. And BTW yelling "send some 7.62" is a bad idea the M1 carbine was still around during a lot of the M14 service life and used a completely different 7.62 cartridge though AFAIK the M1 Garrand, with yet another incompatible 7.62 round, was not, it was probably even worse for the Browning 7.62 MGs as the same weapon existed for both the WW2 and the NATO 7.62 round and there must have been a period when both were around.
TiredOldSoldier "send some 7.62" Like i said before, i was using examples. i wasn't really putting in WWII weapons
I had no idea the Japanese invented the abbreviations 'LMG' and 'SMG' I wonder if they were influenced by the German's with their "MG" series of weapons? Sarcasm.........
