American WWII Military Equipment

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This article is fucking 'Murican. Expect copious amounts of Freedom with an infrequent side of Awesome.

During WWII, The United States of America was able to leverage their enormous industrial advantage by creating one of the most effective armies during the war. While not every piece of equipment was the best in its class, the Americans were able to mass-produce them all in greater numbers, especially more advanced equipment such as semi-auto rifles, heavy machineguns, and all manner of ordnance. US military equipment could be categorized as follows:

• Cutting-edge technology that could be fielded in higher quantities than the other armies at the time.
• Suboptimal equipment that still worked but was not as good as what the other armies had, but they had a lot of them and they were good enough for the time being.
• Old surplus that was mainly given to rear-echelon troops or given away as Lend-Lease.
• Literal garbage early in the war as America had to rapidly get back on a war footing and use what they had NOW, until better equipment was more readily available.

Small Arms

Rifles and SMGs

• M1 Garand: Described by Patton as "The greatest battle implement ever devised," it was the best infantry rifle in the whole damn war, not having the janky problems of emergency build SVTs, the bolt action inferiority of pretty much everything else, and the logistics line complicating STG with its separate caliber at a time with no fuel to go around. The Americans had the advantage of adopting it well before WWII and figuring out all the teething problems with gas-operated rifles that everyone else was having. It feeds from an eight-round en-bloc clip, making it extremely fast to reload in the heat of battle. It makes a distinctive PING! when empty, which many soldiers believed might give away their position to the enemy, but realistically, the normal sound of battle would make such a sound hardly audible.
• Springfield Model 1903: it was and still is a solid bolt action rifle, but it was clearly on the way out of the line of battle. Did well in the early war at the Pacific before the Garands got sent out at numbers; after that, it served as an excellent sniper rifle and with the rifle grenadiers before the Garands got their rifle grenade launchers.
• M1 Carbine: the Carbine was not terrible, but the marines often complained it had insufficient stopping power, though the M1 Carbine had always been intended as a backup weapon for support troops, not a frontline weapon. It worked best in close combat for units that were not expecting infantry combat but still needed something better than a pistol. The M2 Carbine with automatic fire and M3 with night vision (variant of M2) paved the way for assault rifles along with the Garand's upgrade/replacement M14 battle rifle. The M1 and the M2/M3 approximately bridged the gap between rifles and submachine guns. They can be considered as something of a predecessor for the Personal Defense Weapon concept for when SMGs are too weak but Assault Rifles are too big.
• Johnson Model 1941: while it was adopted concurrently with the Garand, it was used almost exclusively by US Marine paratroopers. On the whole it operated almost the same as the M1 Garand, with a few notable differences; it has a ten round capacity and it takes stripper clips instead of en-blocs. The army refused to adopt it fully due to the inability to mount a bayonet and that the Garand was more mechanically reliable. It's more of a design oddity than anything else, as its rotating bolt would later be adopted into the Armalite AR-10 battle rifle and its numerous, numerous descendants.
• M1917 Enfield: A leftover from WWI, the M1917 Enfield was another bolt-action rifle that was used mainly with rear line troops or given away in lend-lease. It could hold one extra round as the Enfield was originally designed for rimmed .303 British cartridges, which took up more space than .30-06.
• M1 Thompson: The famous Thompson SMG adapted and simplified for military service. It was heavy, but a reliable weapon provided it wasn't equipped with a drum magazine (the M1, which also substituted the vertical foregrip of the original "Tommy Gun" with a simple plank, couldn't fit drum mags anyway). Not the match of the sheer firepower of the PPSh, but manufacturing and magazines were significantly superior. Not quite as controllable as the MP40, but fired faster. It's biggest problem though was that it was expensive, for something that spat bullet's about the same as a cheaper piece of junk. Part of that was because of the overcomplicated "Blish-lock" mechanism that didn't actually work and in practice was just a straight blowback gun, which is not ideal in a caliber like .45 ACP. The replacement M3 Grease Gun was a cheap and simple gun used by tankers and other crew-served far longer than it.
• M2 Hyde: The Thompson's original replacement plan, the Hyde was actually found to be superior to the Tommy Gun in all aspects and was cheaper to boot. Unfortunately for the M2, the Grease Gun was so cheap and fast that the M2 order got cancelled after only 400 were made. Speaking of the M3 Grease Gun...
• M3 Grease Gun: As soon as the war started, the demand for SMGs outstripped Auto-Ordnance's ability to make enough Thompsons. Looking to replace it with a simpler, cheaper gun anyways, they eventually settled on the M3 Grease Gun after the Hyde got out-economied. Borrowing from the Sten gun, its little more than a tube of stamped steel with a folding stock; many models didn't even have a charging handle, you just stuck your finger in the bolt. Despite the extreme lack of ergonomics, it was reliable, lighter, and more controllable than the Thompson.
• M55 Reising: The marines got stuck with this SMG early in the war due to early logistics issues. It was in theory superior to the M1 Thompson, as it was a closed bolt gun with more accurate fire, and a folding stock for easy storage. It had two main problems though; the charging hand was located inside the fore, so you could accidentally break your finger if it slipped inside or it would get dirt inside. Even worse than that, all Reisings were hand-fitted but someone had the bright idea to dissamble them all for transport, leading to countless mismatched parts that would cause the guns to malfunction. In the end the Marines dumped their guns in the water and waited for replacements to arrive. After the Marines were able to foist them off, the guns were used for Lend Lease aid and by stateside police and guard units, and was widely acquired post war by police departments. In these cases with access to better maintenance the guns were pretty good.
• United Defense M42: An oddball gun that was mainly used in lend-lease or given to partisans. The most unique feature was its magazine; two stick mags were welded together as standard, making it the first gun to use the "Jungle Mag" configuration seen later in the Cold War.

Pistols

• M1911A1: THE GUN THAT WON TWO WORLD WARS! CHAMBERED IN GOD'S CALIBER OF .45 ACP! Jokes aside, it was such a solid and reliable pistol that there's a reason why more than a hundred years later, its still being used by people. Sure its heavy and bulky by today's standards, but compared to contemporaries like the Luger, Nambu, or even the Mauser, the M1911 simply had its shit figured out much sooner than everyone else. It's not an accident that everyone else began copying Browning's designs and abandoning the extremely popular but obsolete designs of the early automatics of the 19th century.
• M1917 Revolver: Another leftover from WWI, this revolver chambered in .45 ACP was another rear-echelon/lend-lease gun for when M1911A1s were in short supply.
• Colt New Service: A popular revolver model, and one of the few that could chamber .357 Magnum when it was invented. Some officers would purchase them, some enlisted soldiers would receive them secretly in care packages from family and friends.
• Smith & Wesson Model 10: Another very popular revolver comparable to the Colt New Service.
• High Standard HDM: A .22 caliber, integrally suppressed pistol used mainly by the OSS.
• FP-45 Liberator: A single-shot pistol chambered in .45 ACP, this was designed mainly for partisan forces. This thing had such a pathetic range that it was mainly intended for shooting the enemy up close and steal their weapon. While huge numbers of these guns were made, very few had actually been dropped in Europe due to concerns about ongoing assassinations once the war wrapped up. However, their mere existence scared the pants off the krauts.

Shotguns

• Winchester Model 1897: John Browning's first attempt at a repeating shotgun after the lever-action 1887, this pump-action gun was adapted for battlefield conditions by the addition of a heat shroud and bayonet lug. It also could slam-fire, meaning it could fire rapidly so long as the user held down the trigger and quickly worked the action.
• Ithaca Model 37: A clone of the earlier Remington Model 10, this shotgun was unique for having its loading port and ejection port in the same hole underneath. Very reliable action, and was used up through Vietnam.
• Browning Auto-5: One of the earliest semi-auto shotguns, it was extremely popular internationally with many aftermarket conversions, such as the short-barreled "Whippit" version, or extended magazine riot conversions.

Machineguns

• M1917 Browning: Mainly used as a static gun, the M1917 was a traditional water-cooled gun that looks superficially like the Maxim, but operated differently. Compared to the M1919 it was more of a pain to move around, but much less likely to overheat in battle. Most famously was used by Marine Sergeant John Basilone on Guadalcanal in 1942, hefting the gun up without a tripod and firing thousands of rounds at the onrushing Japanese even while the overheating barrel burned his hands, earning him the Medal of Honor.
• M1918A2 BAR: The B.A.R was not the best LMG, though still better than the likes of the Type 11, Breda, or Type 99. Not necessarily because the BAR was bad mechanically like the Breda or the Type 99, (it was created by John Browning after all), but more so of its implementation as a squad LMG. When it was introduced in WWI it was. . .well arguably already out of date. The Bar was designed in ww1 to facilitate a tactic known as "Marching Fire", you basically shoot without aiming as you advance to suppress the enemy before you get into close quarters. Of course In WW1 the German's solved the solution of advancing against an enemy position via there Storm Trooper Tactics, so the BAR was arguably the best weapon at what it was designed to do: it just was a thing that was very good. The Panda of guns as it were. By WWII it was very outdated, and military thinkers failed to give it even basic design upgrades like a pistol grip, muzzle brake, or interchangeable barrel - features that plenty of foreign copies and non-military versions of the BAR all had. This was in large part because the Army spent most of its small arms budget on the Garand; since they couldn't make many BARs, any changes to the design had to fit the many 1918A2 pattern BARs in inventory. It was still highly valued by American G.I.s because come on, twenty automatic shots of .30-06 is awesome.
• M1919 Browning: The air-cooled version of the M1917. The design was solid, rugged, reliable, and could carry over 200 .30-06 rounds of pure American freedom. The design saw use on everything from fighters and bombers to tanks and warships for primarily anti-personnel/anti-aircraft duty. Some of the most recognized vehicles equipped with the M1919 were the Jeep and the Sherman, the latter of which had two of the things in addition to an M2. While the M1919 was far outclassed compared to the MG34/42, it was a far better crew mounted weapon than the Japanese equivalents, making it a particularly ruthless opponent for Japanese soldiers, who often favored madly charging at their enemies when they ran out of ammo. Later variants were so light that they could awkwardly, but feasibly hip fired by a single man as shown in some occasional footage, though contrary to the movies, this was not as common as you'd expect.

• AN/M2 "Stinger": Troops looking for a proper portable machine gun sometimes took matters into their own hands and made modified versions of the M1919; the most famous example was the so-called “Stinger” variant, an AN/M2 salvaged from aircraft with an M1 Garand buttstock, a BAR bipod and carry handle, and an insanely high rate of fire. Six of these were built for the battle of Iwo Jima, with one user posthumously given the Medal of Honor for his frankly insane but effective use of this frankengun in combat. Ultimately the army decided at first copy the German Idea of a universal machine gun and made the M60, but eventually they returned to this 'light man portable machinegun' concept with the M249 SAW, which also is a bit like the BAR in that it also shot the same ammo as the main infantry rifle in service at the time.

• M1941 Johnson LMG: not to be confused with the Johnson Rifle, but made with the same action. This gun was coincidentally the Americans' version of the FG42, in that is was a paratrooper gun with a side-loading magazine, and could operate in both open bolt and closed bolt. And like the FG42, this overcomplicated setup was less than ideal and eventually dropped.
• M2 Browning: Ma Deuce! Protecting Freedom since 1933, one half-inch at the time! The famous heavy machinegun chambered in .50 BMG, used on literally EVERY vehicle the Americans had. Intended mainly as an anti-aircraft gun, it was just as devastating against infantry and light armor. And its still being used today almost a hundred years later, just with fancier ammunition and some add-ons like remote turrets or optics. The only real improvement that it has seen since being made is better materials and a quick change barrel, and some electrically fired aircraft variants to shoot quicker. That's how good it is.

Anti-Tank Infantry Weapons

• Bazooka: The Bazooka was mediocre AT weapon and one of the first rocket launchers. While it performed well against bunkers and tanks, it struggled against the heavier armor that was deployed later in the war. Ironically, the Germans reverse engineered Bazookas and developed the Panzershreck as a result. The Upgraded M9 and M20 Super Bazookas were more effective, and remained in use up until Vietnam where they were replaced by the M72 LAW. The "Bazooka" name was informal one given by soldiers as the weapon resembled an instrument called a bazooka.

Misc

• M1 / M2 Flamethrower: The Americans use the flamethrower mainly in the jungles of the pacific or to clear out enemy bunkers. Using flamethrowers is mainly a pyschological weapon, as it takes a toll on the ones using it and scares the pants of the enemies who face it. That being said, the Japanese were oftentimes too stubborn to surrender, so using flamethrowers as a last resort to clear bunkers of enemy forces was not uncommon.
• M7 Grenade Launcher: A device that fitted onto the muzzle of the M1 Garand for firing rifle grenades. A clip of blank cartridges is inserted into the magazine, and an oversized grenade is fitted onto the M7 Device, and then fired. Unlike Bolt action rifles, the M1 needed a way to vent off excess gas to keep it from going back into the action and causing a malfunction, so vents were included on the device to prevent the M1 from cycling while in use. This means that the user had to manually work the bolt for each grenade shot. A similar version was made for the M1 Carbine called the M8, though that one cracked the stock after repeated usage and if the heavy charge was used so it was a last resort weapon in practice.
• C3 - Plastic explosive, first invented by the Brits, and would later be developed into C4. Used mainly in demolitions and shape-charges.

Artillery and AT Guns

The Americans used five sizes of artillery in the war. Most of these came in both gun (long) and howitzer (short) configurations. Self propelled versions of virtually everything were attempted, but only a few designs actually reached the field in WW2, although more would see action in Korea and Vietnam.

• 75mm: The 75mm field gun was an obsolete holdover from WW1, but it was still around at the start of the war. It was much more useful in its howitzer configuration, which was designed from the ground up for light infantry working in rough country. Both versions were pretty easy to mount on halftracks. The M8 (built on the M5 light tank design) used one of these as its main gun.

• 105mm: The main size for artillery that advanced with armor and infantry; the 105 was pretty much only used in the howitzer configuration, although long AT versions were tested. The normal configuration was a towed howitzer pulled by a halftrack, but a minimum weight version for gliders and jeeps was also made. The first self-propelled versions were halftracks but by the time of Normandy the main mobile version was the M7 Priest.

• 155mm: The working size for divarty. Confusingly, the US had four different 155mm systems, two each in howitzer and long gun configurations; the older two being knockoffs of French WW1 designs, and the newer pair being post-war redesigns. Most of these were were towed, but both long gun versions received self-propelled designs (M12 & M40) during the war. The army really wanted a mobile version of the howitzer, but after having accepted hasty, compromise designs like the M7, they wanted this one to be on the latest tank chassis (the Chaffee) which wasn't ready in time. The units that were made went on to serve in Korea.

• 203mm: The America's entry in the artillery dick-swinging contest, a cruiser sized naval gun on a trailer. Of the long gun configuration, only 139 were made, and they were kept together in dedicated battalions and sent wherever someone needed armored fortifications cracked. The howitzer was more common; about a thousand were made and were put in units alongside the 155mm. These were still serving into Vietnam and even had nuclear shells. The last spare 203mm barrels were converted into bombs and used in a last minute effort to hit Saddam's bunker in 1991. They were bored out to make bunker busters and when the planes had taken off the explosives inside hadn't even cooled yet, making this probably one of the fastest successful weapon tests in history. One was tested without explosives just a bit off the factory, one missed and exploded and the third one hit a bunker and killed everyone but Saddam was not there.

• 240mm: This monster howitzer was a relic of WW1, but the US made a few hundred new ones just because they still had plenty of shells... or rather, 350 pound bombs that don't need planes. Like the long 203's, the 240's were mostly kept together as independent battalions and sent wherever they could contribute. A dozen 240's were brought back for Korea until they ran out of shells. The first shot in Korea was fired at a highly fortified hill called the donut and was intended to be ceremonial, but instead directly impacted on an ammo dump and blew the top of the hill apart. Taiwan keeps them in service on some of the outlying islands to shell as many incoming PLA transports and troop concentrations until ammo goes out.

Vehicles

So going into WW2 nobody knew how this whole tank thing was going to work. It would be the Germans who got the closest to the best strategy and design but it was not until the war Ended and the British started to roll out the Centurion that the Current Main Battle Tank Era began. This does not except the Americans and going into the war US military doctrine worked a bit like this: the job of the tank was to support the infantry and exploit breakthroughs. The job of the tank destroyer is to engage enemy tanks. Therefore the tank destroyer would be behind the lines in the second line and when a tank or major armor attack was discovered the tank destroyers would rush forward to meet the threat. That's why compared to German tank destroyers American Tank destroyers are both turreted and faster: they had to respond to threats dynamically and rapidly. In practice: tanks fought tanks all the time so it was better to make the tank able to fight other tanks rather then be force to depend on a second element to do the job.

Tanks

• The Sherman Platform: You know how the Leman Russ tank has a billion variants all based on the same hull? The Sherman is the start of that trope. A lot of military's tried to do that but the Sherman is the embodiment of that concept. Depending on which Sherman your talking about you could be dealing with a 105mm howitzer building fucker, a 17 pounder tank fucker who has bad teeth, a extra thicc assaulting fucker, A tank destroyer to really fuck up tanks, a rocket projector system to fuck up you and all your friends, A swimming one if you needed to fuck up fish. If you needed to fuck something up, you could probably find something based on the Sherman hull that could and would do the job. Quick note about the name though: "Sherman" was name the British gave it, officially it was just the "M4 Medium Tank".
  • M4AX: Ok quick thing about that "AX", there should be a number there to denote which version of the Sherman your talking about, there are seven different standardize types, that range from M4 to M4A6. Practically though there all functionally the same so it's just a way to both acknowledge that and also ensure were talking about all of them. Got it? Good. Now the M4 is one of the 'big three' tanks of WW2 alongside the T-34 and the Tiger as the Tank Everybody Knows. And like those tanks there are arguments as to whether it was any good. The M4 medium was one of the best mass produced tanks of the war. Not quite reaching T-34's level of Zerg Rush but with much better quality control, which mattered since the things had to cross an ocean in either direction to get to any fighting. When the M4 was first introduced it was more then a match for the German standard tanks, but unexpectedly for the Americans the Germans double down and focused on their heavy tanks, leaving the M4 a bit out gunned. Not complexly, even if forced to fight M4's especially with the 76mm it could deal with a Tiger, if not easily at long range, but the Panther was a whole nother beast. The general superiority of the German heavy armor has lead to the myth that it took 5 M4's to match one tiger, what they fail to mention is that the M4 was attacking and so were always going to take more losses to a tiger, and they also don't mention that US tanks operate in 5 tank platoons. So if a tiger was seen you send a platoon of five tanks to the area, hence the myth. But more then any of that the Sherman's big advantage was being able to be mass produced, Sent Across an Ocean, and send to front line en-mass. That is a victory of logistics and design and not one to take lightly.
  • M4-105: Built for the same reason as the German Stug, the 105 m4's job was to drive up to fortification and put accurate 105mm high explosive shells right on top of them. Remember this was WW2 no drone spotting to correct your fire, best way to be accurate was to get reeeeeeal close to what you wanted to destroy.
  • M4A3E2: You ever notice that the US is the only nation in WW2 to never actually use a heavy tank? Brits had the Churchill, Soviets had the KV and IS, Germans had the big cats, but the yanks had nothing. When you remember that Shermans had to be carried across the ocean it does make sense. . .that and the m6 project failed. Better use of the cargo space to have more tanks after all. But The M4A3E2, the Sherman Jumbo as it would be called post war, is the answer to the heavy tank niche. While not numerous, the Jumbos were built with Extra armor to make them much more resilient against anti tank guns including the infamed 88mm and fixed fortifcations, and as they were built with the 75mm gun and it's good HE shell originally it was a job the Jumbo could do well.

Half-Tracks and Armored Cars

• M3 Scout Car: This ugly looking uparmored pickup truck was the ancestor of a big ugly, confusing family of vehicles. A family which began with...
• M2 Artillery Tractor: "Hey, this scout car is great; could you give it tracks so it can go offroad while pulling a cannon?"
  • M3 Halftrack: "Hey, this artillery tractor is great; could you make it big enough to carry a squad?"
    • T19 Howitzer Motor Carriage: "Forget the squad, can it carry a big fucking gun?"
      • M13 Halftrack: "What about two machine guns in an AA turret?."
        • M15 Combination Gun Motor Carriage: "Any chance you could squeeze an autocannon in there too?"
          • M16 Halftrack: "Forget the autocannon, let's do four machine guns."
    • M5 Halftrack: "Hmmmm... we need a lot more of these halftracks, what would we have to change to make them in combine harvester factories?"
      • M9 Halftrack: "Oh, and we need some more artillery tractors too."
      • M17 Halftrack: "Wait, four guns? Gimme some of that."

High level, halftracks can be divided into three major families; the M2, the M3, and the M5. The M2 and M3 were made by White Motor Company and are mechanically similar but the M3's chassis is longer. The M5 family was produced by International Harvester, but their factories were set up to make farm equipment. The M5's frame is narrower than the M2 & M3, making most of the suspension and transmission components incompatible. The M5s were mostly used for lend-lease, but enough of them were in the US forces to cause logistics headaches.

Ships

The American Navy was and remains the greatest force to sail the seas and World War 2 was when this got confirmed as Japan got a massive beatdown.

Misc

• Mark 14 torpedo: Yah this thing gets its own entry. You could make half hour long videos on this pile of utter utter shit (Drachinifel gets a shout out), but to be brief: it had four issue, 1) it ran too deep due a bunch of reasons, 2) it's magnetic detonator was too sensitive. The earth's magnetic field is not the same everywhere so if you have your detonator calibrated to work where you are, it might not work where the torpdeo is going to be. 3) it's back up contact detonator didn't work either. 4) it's gyro didn't work all the time and sometimes it would run in a circle rather then in a line and so would sometimes. . .return to sender. These issues were obvious but because the Navy in the depression had no money there was never any testing done to figure the issues out and when the war started they refused to acknowledge there was a problem with this Abaddon reincarnated as a torpedo shaped disaster. Needless to say, it almost never worked without the crews cutting it up and fixing it or using absurd workarounds until Admiral King, who already had a bone to pick with the Bureau of Ordnance, got informed personally and had a few words with the arrogant bastards, and even then it took the navy shop people replacing the firing pins by hand to get it to work: but work it did. After 1943 it turned out that it was a functional torpedo after all and Japanese ships started to sink properly and by the war half of all Japanese shipping had been sunk by Submarine, with the Mark 14. In fact during the war so many mark 14's were made they didn't end up officially leave service for almost 40 years.

Airplanes

Fighters

• Curtiss P40 Warhawk:
• Brewster F2A Buffalo: The US made many exceptional planes during WWII, the Brewster Buffulo is not one of them. Overweight and slow, it got it's butt kicked by the A6M Zero.
• North American P51 Mustang: The poster boy of American Fighters.

Misc

WWII Topics
History:	The World Wars
Allied Powers:	United States of America(Equipment) - British Empire (Equipment) - Soviet Union (Equipment)
Axis Powers:	Nazi Germany (Equipment) - Fascist Italy (Equipment) - Empire of Japan (Equipment)
Minor Powers:	China - Ethiopia - Finland - France - Hungary - Norway - Poland - Romania
Games:	Advanced Squad Leader - Axis & Allies - Bolt Action - Flames of War - Ostfront