Garand clip 'ping' - cost many soldiers their lives in WWII

[nate45]

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.- When the Tigers broke free, Roger Waters

I've got to get one of those .455 Weblys.

[44 AMP]

Ok, you dodged the Panther/Tiger bullet by (after the fact) pointing out that you were talking about the first time our troops saw the Panther was at Anzio. And somehow neatly sidestepped the fact that the first time our troops saw the Tiger was in North Africa (Tunisia), months before Anzio.

Since we're playing this game let's see you describe where the 88's first gained notoriety as anti-tank guns in addition to being good anti-aircraft guns.

Are you talking about where the 88s first gained notoriety? or where they first gained notoriety among the Allies?

BTW the exact location of the first use of the 88's as tank killers was indeed in N. Africa at Halfaya Pass. It became know as the "Hellfire Pass" because of the effectiveness of the 88's on the Allied tanks. "They are tearing my tanks apart," was the last words heard on the radio from the Allied Commander.

This leads me to think you are again only talking about notoriety among the Allies, but the actual first place the 88s became noted for their anti-tank capacity was else where. AND it was against the Allies!

5/21/40
FRANCE:
The English attack the German advance near Araas. 6 and 8 DLI (Durham Light Infantry) with 4 and 7 RTR (Royal Tank Regiment) attack the SS division Totenkopf which is traveling behind the armored spearhead of the German advance. The attack is successful, at first, mainly owing to the thick armor of the English Matilda tanks, which is impervious to the German guns.
General Rommel personally organizes the German defense around a battery of 88mm FlaK guns, and uses them against the tanks. The 88mm is discovered to be an excellent anti-tank gun. The thick frontal armor of the Matilda is not impervious to the 88mm FlaK gun.

Although the 88mm FlaK guns had seen some limited ground combat in the Polish campaign, it was this battle in France that made their reputation as a tank cracker in the German Army. Rommel remembered this lesson and deliberately used 88s as anti tank guns later in North Africa.

I would love to continue this WWII Q&A (no doubt we can both learn a few things), but lets take it to PM (or e-mail) to save thread space, please. Anyone else who wants to join in, come on, lets have some fun, and talk WWII trivia!

[Mike Irwin]

As far as I know, the first recorded, recognized, and remarked upon use of the Flak 88 family of weapons against armor wasn't in France, it wasn't in Russia, and it wasn't in North Africa.

It was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Germany's Condor Legion used their 88s (most likely Flak 36s and 37s), which had originally been attached for use as antiaircraft guns, as general field artillery and as anti-tank guns against Soviet supplied BT-series tanks.

As for the 88's use as an anti-tank gun in Europe, Rommel's troops used their 88s to great effect against British and French heavy tanks. Their use as anti-tank guns in 1940 stopped cold a British attempt to break through the German lines at Arras.



"And the best anti-aircraft gun in the war? It was the American 90 mm Mark 1."

Read up on the 128 mm Flak 40.

[SpeciallyMadeBullet]

That would really all depend- it can't be extremely loud so if there up close and personal and can hear over the artilery then sure they might figure it out but really its hard to tell.

[Slamfire]

The clip "ping" is bogus.

Talked to one of the Gun Club's few remaining WWII Vets.

S. Ramon was an under age kid living in El Paso. He wanted to join the service so much that he convinced his parents to let him join the Navy, in Communications.

He left San Diego, to Pearl Harbor, and then participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was second wave in both of these invasions because his job was to relay the communications from the Island to the Command Ship offshore.

(I worked for a Boss who told me he knew he was going to die, because he had been assigned third wave in an island invasion. The guys assigned to the early waves, were understood to be, dead men.)

S.Ramon was wounded, probably on Iwo, woke up on a Hospital ship, but he won’t talk about it.

Anyway, I have gotten a few combat stories out of him, but you have to pry.

Today I asked him about the “ping” providing a sign. His overall reply was that any empty rifle would be reloaded so quickly that any Japanese exposing themselves would be dead in seconds. Essentially that. There were snorts and hand motions involved in the explaination. I had the overall idea that the firepower of a squad of Americans armed with carbines, Garands, BAR’s was such that any Japanese caught out in the open died very quickly.

In fact, based on one story of his, it seems that catching Japanese in the open would be a preferred event. Because the trip to the mouth of a cave, to roll a grenade down to the Japanese inside, was very dangerous.

He said the “ping” story, including people tossing clips to get a “ping”, were a myth, in his experience.

He mentioned he was very frustrated with the lack of accuracy with the M1 Carbine. He described a chance at a quick 200 yard shot, but he claimed the carbine was not accurate enough to hit moving Japanese at that distance. He told me that he had time to sight in his carbine before he embarked. He shot it, told the unit armorer where it shot, the unit armorer adjusted the sights until the carbine was zero'd.

He also mentioned slinging bandoliers of ammunition, to GI’s who were calling for ammo. Said if you did not catch the bandolier, it would hurt real bad when it landed…

[hank327]

My history prof. was a reporter from Stars And Stripes

I think this is the problem with your argument. Your history prof was a remf and in all probability never engaged in infantry combat himself. His observations were at best second hand and thus no more valid than any of ours. I can tell you that having served four years as an infantryman, the Army DOES NOT have a training program to accustom a soldier's ears to load noises. Any claims to the opposite are patently false.

[Tamara]

Originally Posted by Mike Irwin

As far as I know, the first recorded, recognized, and remarked upon use of the Flak 88 family of weapons against armor wasn't in France, it wasn't in Russia, and it wasn't in North Africa.

Yeah, but pop history usually has them making their anti-armor debut at Arras, no matter that the Condor Legion had been plinking Republican tanks with them years earlier. I'd never heard anyone claim they were very first ever deployed in a direct-fire role in Operation Battleaxe before. New one on me; I'm getting schooled left and right here. I should pay more attention during those History Channel documentaries...

[44 AMP]

Yep, no doubt they were there, and they got used. But an important difference was that the conventional anti tank guns of the time (37mm or the Two Pounder (40mm)) would also knock out Republican or Polish light tanks, just as they could take out the Panzer I, and IIs. Even the medium Panzer III and the "heavy" MK IV were vulnerable to some degree.

But when the Germans faced the 80mm frontal armor of the British Matilda MK IIs in France, the only commonly available gun that could stop them was the 88mm flak guns. This led to the decision to upgrade the regular AT and tank guns from 37mm to 50mm, but like a lot of things, when you are winning, improvements happen slowly. They were just beginning to make the changeover when they went into Russia. And they were still winning there, for a while. Then they began to meet the T-34 and the KV series tanks.

You can see this kind of thing over and over studying WWII equipment (and lots of other places in history if you look), when you are winning, you don't need better weapons, and when you are losing, it is real difficult to improve your equipment, even though there is a strong motivation to do so.

You can look at the "ping" of the Garand as a flaw, something that got GIs killed (but it is arguable, the significance of how many actually were killed as a result) but it is a small thing overall. How many did we lose because we had very poor performing torpedoes for the first half of the war? Or how many did we lose because none of the single engine fighter planes had supercharged engines in the early months of the war? Or how many did we lose because we deliberatly concentrated on the Sherman tank instead of a heavier better armed and armored design? Or any one of dozens of other decisions made about the equipment our boys used in that war.

Some of our equipment was inferior to that of our enemies. Some was superior. But all of it was built and used by those men and women that we have come to call our "Greatest Generation". They, quite literally, changed the world. Against that, I think a little "ping" doesn't matter all that much.

[King Ghidora]

Ok, you dodged the Panther/Tiger bullet by (after the fact) pointing out that you were talking about the first time our troops saw the Panther was at Anzio. And somehow neatly sidestepped the fact that the first time our troops saw the Tiger was in North Africa (Tunisia), months before Anzio.

I didn't "dodge" anything. I was talking about the Panther, which is NOT a Tiger tank despite you linking them together, and the first time the Allies saw them. We weren't discussing Tigers at all. We were discussing Panthers and the first time the Allies saw them was at Anzio. But since you mentioned the Tigers yes there were a very few of the Tiger I tanks in N. Africa. But the Tiger that did so much damage in the Battle Of The Bulge was the Tiger II which was also known as the King Tiger. The Tiger I was plagued with overheating problems and was incredibly unreliable. The early models of the Panther was actually plagued with overheating problems too. In fact many of them actually set themselves on fire because of it. One German commander said he was losing more tanks to the inability of his tank commanders to control the fire problems than he was to the Soviet army. And the King Tiger had problems of it's own not the least of which was a huge appetite for fuel because it was such a heavy tank. It could easily stand up to any other tank in the war but mechanical problems and the scarcity of fuel meant it wasn't nearly as effective as Hitler had hoped it would be. Plus there was the problem of experienced tank crews by then. Most tank commanders were just out of the Hitler youth by that point.

In fact the Panther was just a Panzer with sloping armour and an overhanging gun at first. It took quite a bit of development to make them capable of giving the T-34's a run for their money. But of course by that time the updated versions of the T-34, like the T-34-85, were already on the battlefield.

I think this is the problem with your argument. Your history prof was a remf and in all probability never engaged in infantry combat himself.

Sometimes I wonder why I post this stuff at all. Did you even read my posts? I clearly said he had combat experience. Do I have to continually repeat myself?

I can tell you that having served four years as an infantryman, the Army DOES NOT have a training program to accustom a soldier's ears to load noises.

Well like I said I heard it on the radio. I also said I didn't consider that a very reliable source of information.

[Art Eatman]

Ain't heard no Panzer Ping...

88s sounded like field-jacket zippers, according to Bill Mauldin. He wuz there; wuz you?

, Art