An American soldier examines an (ineffective) Nazi bent barrel attachment for the STG-44, WW2, sometime after 1943?
An American soldier examines an (ineffective) Nazi bent barrel attachment for the STG-44, WW2, sometime after 1943?
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Perhaps unpractical is a better word. It could do what it promised, just not for long. And it was a very niche tool for a failing state who needed resources for more important things.
Really a decent execution on a fairly stupid idea. Given the period I don't think they could've gotten much better for the solution to their mostly non-existent problem.
If memory serves, the bullets often disintegrated into shrapnel in the process of curving out of the barrel, which is probably a mite inconvenient in most situations.
It's neat, but I wouldn't want to bet my squad's survival on it, that's for damn sure.
For the intended purpose this was just fine:
The Krummlauf was designed out of necessity. Ferdinand Porsche had produced 90 chassis for the Panzerkampfwagen VI "Tiger", which was not built in his factory but by Henschel. In order to be able to use the chassis after all, they were used for a new tank destroyer and were given the name "Ferdinand", later "Elefant" with improvements such as an MG-34 in the front. As the "Ferdinand" had no machine guns for close range, Soviet infantrymen on the Eastern Front were able to approach and fight the tank destroyers relatively safely. Thus, the curved barrel was developed for the Sturmgewehr 44 so that the tank crews could fire through the hatches of the tank and thus better fend off approaching infantry; there were also versions for inserting into the gun barrel.
Due to the bend in the barrel, the fired projectiles were subjected to strong friction and heated up so much that they finally burst as they exited. This meant that the charge effectively corresponded to a shot load, which was no disadvantage in close firefights. The wear on these barrels was high. In order to be able to aim around the corner, a groove was required in the crook barrel (from the height of the actual muzzle of a normal 44 assault rifle), in which a mirror device (prism attachment) was attached.
From the German Wikipedia article, translated using DeepL, 1 correction.
wasn't it for tank crews to hose down the outside of their tanks without exposing themselves? I had assumed it functioned properly for that. I assume the bent MP40 performed better, since you're not dealing with a high velocity cartridge
It was, which would indeed be a highly niche use. A tank being swarmed with infantry literally on top of, and there being no friendly infantry or tanks around to help to the point of wanting a curved barrel is a situation that is so bad it probably can't be solved by just a curved barrel.
Some claymores on the outside of the tank would be far more effective. Or even just some short barrel machine guns on a gimbal.
Honestly it's something that should be solved by tactics not engineering. The Germans in WW2 seemed hyperfixated on engineering to chase some sort of ever shifting ideal instead of settling for a "good enough" in terms of a standard design or baseline and running with it in production. Excellent academic video on the subject.
Directional charges mounted on armor as an anti-infantry defense measure have never really been anything I'm aware of having been institutionally adopted. It's the kind of equipment that armor crews shouldn't be putting themselves in positions to use. (Yes, I'm aware of the M113 MCCM carrier- totally different application than defense of the vehicle in combat.)
I suppose they were hyperfixated on engineering perfection as part of their whole master race ideology. They were supposed to seek perfection in everything they did. That's one thing they had in common with the Japanese.
The impression I've gotten from both past reading, and the video is that they had not at that time shifted to a modern assembly line industrialized kind of mindset. America had things like it's automotive industry, which had pushed that earlier than in Germany.
Everything Germans made had a larger amount of handcrafting in it as a necessity of the workflow, and because of that handcrafting there was pride by the individual workers to make really fine quality. The "IDGAF, it meets spec, send it." mentality of an American lineworker who was running more automated systems or compartmentalized parts of the work was more suitable.
On top of that, in the Nazi government, individual military leaders were jockying and sending all their own requests for modifications right to the factories. The US had a centralized system for modification requests that prevented that. I don't think that was an intended feature by the Germans, but a situation that rose organically out of their lack of experience with production at scale.
That's wild if they didn't have modern assembly systems in place, because they had tons of tanks, airplanes, and other machines of war. They dominated the battlefield with their abundance of mechanization. From what I've read, they still had a lot of supplies and machines by the end of the war, but they ran out of people.
Watch the video, it goes in depth on their tank production methods, and specifically the inefficiencies within it.
They dominated the battlefield with their abundance of mechanization.
Germany strongly pushed that exact propaganda, especially at the beginning of the war. They wanted their military to be perceived as bleeding edge. That perception has stuck, but it simply wasn't true. Germany was not nearly as mechanized as it wanted to be perceived as. Any early advantage it had from stockpiles of pre-war production (of early war designs which were often outdated by mid or late war) were absolutely crushed by allied numbers, and America alone vastly outproduced for almost every year of the war.
Wow, the USA and Russia combined made over 50,000 tanks in a single year.
Nazis: "We have tanks at home"
USA and USSR: "TANKS, TANKS, TANKS"
