50 Weapons That Changed Warfare

by William Weir

  Naval historian Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that the two ships “would have inaugurated a new standard for battleship construction — as H.M.S Dreadnought had done 40 years earlier.”

  But that was not to be. This was, to a large extent, because of something the proud owners of these super ships did December 7, 1941.

  On that day, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku carried out the attack he had planned over the opposition of the Naval General Staff — a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Naval General Staff, the part of the Japanese navy responsible for plans, had no faith that mere airplanes could successfully cripple a whole battle fleet. But Yamamoto believed that immobile ships crowded into a harbor would make good targets. He called in specialists to develop shallow-running torpedoes, armor piercing bombs and tactics suitable for operations in a constricted space such as Pearl Harbor. Then he created the First Air Fleet — six aircraft carriers escorted by two battleships and a number of cruisers and destroyers.

  At the last moment, the Naval General Staff ordered Yamamoto to send three of his carriers to the naval force about to begin operations in Southeast Asia. Yamamoto said that if he had to do that, he and his whole staff would resign. The Naval General Staff backed down. The First Air Fleet sailed under the command of Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, an old battleship admiral who was not convinced he could accomplish his mission.

  Fortunately for the United States, all the aircraft carriers in its Pacific Fleet were elsewhere. Nagumo could hardly believe his success. His planes had sunk or crippled every battleship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet as well as many other smaller ships and a large number of land-based planes — most of them caught on the ground. From that day on, he was a fervent supporter of air power.

  The U.S. Pacific Fleet was suddenly at war without battleships. Admiral Ernest J. King, commander-in-chief of the United States fleet, was hoarding all the newest battleships in the Atlantic, in line with the official policy that major enemy was Germany. It only gradually dawned on King that battleships were useless against Germany but would be most helpful fighting Japan. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, and his staff had to improvise. They created a new tactical formation, the carrier task force. It was modeled on Yamamoto’s First Air Fleet. It was built around one or more carriers which were escorted by cruisers and destroyers.

  The new formation got its first big test in the Battle of the Coral Sea, when American and Japanese fleets slugged it out without ever coming to within sight of each other. All the action was done by airplanes. The battle was a tactical draw but a strategic U.S. victory, because it turned back an attempted Japanese invasion of the south coast of New Guinea, which would put Japanese troops in place for an invasion of Australia. The heaviest American loss was the end of “Lady Lex,” the big old U.S.S. Lexington.

  The second test was the Battle of Midway. This was Yamamoto’s attempt to finish off American power in the Pacific. The Japanese plan was complicated. A diversionary attack on the Aleutians was supposed to draw off the American ships. Meanwhile, a task force under Nagumo, which included all four of the large Japanese carriers now operational, would attack American forces on Midway Island. Then the main Japanese fleet, commanded by Yamamoto himself from his flagship, the enormous Yamato, would wipe out the American ships returning from the north and invade Hawaii.

  The Americans didn’t go to the Aleutians, because they had decoded enough of the Japanese radio transmissions to know that the Aleutians attack was a feint. They did not know, however, where the fleets of Nagumo and Yamamoto were. Scout planes then spotted Nagumo’s ships about the time they launched their first aerial attack on Midway. Admiral Raymond Spruance launched the planes from his carriers, Enterprise and Hornet, in an attempt to get the Japanese carriers while their planes were refueling. Meanwhile, Nagumo had changed his course. The American planes could not find the Japanese ships. While they were searching, the Japanese planes returned and refueled. Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown, launched his planes.

  Meanwhile, navy, marine, and army planes from Midway attacked Nagumo’s fleet and were shot down or driven off without causing damage. U.S.S. Nautilus, a submarine, launched a torpedo at a Japanese carrier that missed. Nautilus was driven off by depth charges. Then Hornet’s torpedo bombers spotted the Japanese. Every single plane was shot down. Enterprise’s torpedo squadron then appeared, the Japanese shot down 10 of the 14 planes. Yorktown’s torpedo planes attacked next and suffered the same fate.

  At this point (at 10:24 a.m.), on June 4, 1942, Nagumo’s carriers had defeated land-based air attacks and a submarine attack and shot down almost all of the Americans’ most formidable aircraft — their torpedo planes. It looked as if Yamamoto’s main fleet would have little to do.

  At 10:26, Lieutenant Commander Clarence McClusky, leading the two dive bomber squadrons from Enterprise back to the carrier after an unsuccessful search, saw the carriers Kaga and Akagi through a break in the clouds. He signaled one squadron to follow him, and dived on Kaga. His second-in-command, Lieutenant W.E. Gallaher, led the second squadron on Akagi. The Enterprise dive bombers arrived while the Japanese Zeros were at a low altitude where they had been shooting down torpedo planes. Kaga was soon burning from stem to stern. Akagi took a hit on the flight deck and the explosion blew off the planes that were trying to refuel. Another bomb exploded in the torpedo magazine. Nagumo moved his flag from Akagi to a destroyer and the Japanese abandoned the ship. A Japanese destroyer sent Akagi to the bottom. A third Japanese carrier, Soryu, moved up and prepared to launch its Zeros. Just then, some of Yorktown’s dive bombers under Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie appeared. They dived on Soryu, and three hits turned the Japanese carrier into an inferno. Then Nautilus reappeared and shot three torpedoes into Soryu. The ship broke in two and went down in a sizzling mass of steam.

  Nagumo had one carrier left: Hiryu. He sent its planes off to attack the American ships, wherever they were. They found Yorktown, which had just launched its remaining dive bombers. The Japanese planes crippled Yorktown, but, while they were doing that, Yorktown’s second set of dive bombers found Hiryu. They attacked, refueled on Enterprise, and then returned with Enterprise’s dive bombers. The crippled Hiryu began to sink and went to the bottom the next day.

  Nagumo signaled to Yamamoto what had happened and recommended he call off the expedition. Yamamoto was beside himself with rage and relieved Nagumo of his command. He refused to turn back. But after a short time, he realized that, without air cover, he would be heading for a disaster. He turned back.

  Yorktown, which had been severely damaged in the Coral Sea and hastily repaired, was towed back to Pearl Harbor for more repairs. But a Japanese submarine spotted her and her tow ship and sank them both. “Waltzing Matilda,” as her crew called her, was a big loss, but it was nothing compared to what the Japanese had suffered.

  In five minutes, with the destruction of Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, Nagumo went from complete triumph to utter defeat. Then the destruction of Hiryu wiped out all of Japan’s operational fleet carriers. Japan could never build enough carriers or train enough pilots to come near to matching the Americans.

  The Japanese tried, however. They turned what was to be a sister ship of Yamato and Musashi into an aircraft carrier. The new carrier, Sinano, became the biggest and most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, dwarfing the mighty old Saratoga. Sinano made her maiden voyage in November of 1944. On November 29, 1944, the U.S. submarine Archerfish sank Sinano before she could send a plane into combat.

  That may have been prophetic. Many naval analysts think that nuclear-powered submarines may really be the new capital ships. At the present, aircraft carriers have been invaluable in projecting American power to the far corners of the world. But the big, powerful, and highly vulnerable ships have not been used since World War II against a major naval or air power.

  Chapter 38

  A Machine Gun for Every Man: Submachine Guns and Assault
Rifles

  West Point Museum

  German machinenpistole 44 — really an assault rifle, rather than a submachine gun, because it uses a rifle cartridge. The designation was later changed to sturmgewehr, assault rifle.

  The landings of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the other paratroop outfits in Normandy on D day were nothing like what happened on maneuvers. Each landing was mass confusion — almost chaos. The troops landed at night, a pitch-black night, scattered over a strange countryside. Some spent hours trying find another paratrooper. Many were unable to join all their regular units for quite a while.

  Staff Sergeant Harrison Summers was at least able to join his battalion, the first battalion of the 502nd Regiment. Summers’s battalion commander, desperately short of men, gave the sergeant 15 strangers and told him to capture a German coast artillery barracks. Summers took his Thompson submachine gun, a basic load of ammunition, and the 15 strangers. Because the other men didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, Summers knew he’d have to lead them, not just tell them what to do.

  The “barracks” was actually a number of buildings, strung out over almost half a mile. Summers ran up to the first building, kicked in the door, and mowed down four of the defenders with his tommy gun. The rest dashed out the back door. Summers looked around and saw that he was alone. “His” men were hiding in a ditch. He left them there and charged the second building. The Germans there saw him coming and fled. That encouraged one of the 15, a machine gunner, to set up his weapon and fire on the third building, covering Summers’s next charge. The Germans in the third building opened fire on Summers. From somewhere, a lieutenant appeared and told Summers he would join him. The officer, though, was hit as he and Summers reached the door. Summers entered alone and sprayed the room with his submachine gun. He killed six Germans, and the rest fled.

  While Summers was catching his breath, a captain appeared and offered to join him on his attack on the next building. They set out, but the captain caught a bullet in his heart. Once again, Summers broke into a building with his tommy gun blazing. He killed six Germans, and the rest surrendered. Summers’s scratch platoon had moved up cautiously, and one of them volunteered to join him on his next attack. The machine gunner followed to give them fire support. Summers and his two companions killed 30 more Germans.

  Summers kicked in the door of the next building and found 15 German soldiers eating breakfast, apparently never having noticed all the shooting that had been going on around them. With his tommy gun Summers shot them all down at the table.

  Harrison Summers was a man of great courage and initiative. But he could not have accomplished what he did without his submachine gun. The submachine gun (often abbreviated SMG), a small machine gun that fired pistol ammunition, was born in World War I. It achieved maturity in World War II, where it became the most valuable weapon in every army for clearing buildings and urban fighting.

  In the Soviet Union’s Red Army, it was as important as the rifle. In a typical Red Army attack, submachine gunners in the first wave laid down a barrage of small arms fire from 200 yards and worked their way forward. Then the tanks, with “tank riders” advanced. Tank riders were soldiers with submachine guns and hand grenades who fired on any enemies they saw. They protected the tanks from antitank guns in the enemy front lines as well as from infantry with antitank grenades and panzerfausts. The panzerfaust was a very small recoilless gun, an ancestor of the Russian RPG-7 (erroneously called a rocket-propelled grenade launcher), which fired a shaped-charge shell considerably larger than its diameter. Tank riders led a life that was short and not at all merry. A single burst of machine gun fire could — and usually did — clear a tank of all its tank riders.

  Towards the end of World War II, the submachine gun became obsolescent. The U.S M-2 carbine, a smaller, lighter, and more powerful automatic, indicated the trend of the future, but it was the German sturmgewehr, or assault rifle that revolutionized infantry small arms and introduced the weapon that would replace both rifle and the submachine gun.

  Some authorities say the first submachine gun was the Italian Villar Perosa, a very strange weapon. The Villar Perosa was a pair of tiny machine guns firing the 9 mm Glisenti cartridge, an underpowered version of the 9 mm Luger. It was fired from a bipod or tripod, from a truck mount, and even from the handle bars of bicycles. Each barrel fired at the rate of 1,200 rounds per minute. Each barrel was fed from a separate 25-round magazine. With that rate of fire, the soldier with a Villar Perosa must have spent a lot of time changing magazines.

  The idea of a pistol-caliber automatic may have reached Germany from the Italian front, or it may have occurred independently to Hugo Schmeisser, who designed a short, heavy automatic weapon for the 9mm Luger cartridge called the Bergmann Musquete or by German troops, the Kugelspritz (bullet squirter).

  The Bergmann gun, the MP (for maschinenpistole) 18, was carried by some of the “storm troopers,” who spearheaded Ludendorff’s 1918 offensive. It took the 32-round drum magazine that had already been developed for the Luger pistol and had a cyclic rate of 400 rounds a minute — much more reasonable than the Vilar Perosa’s 2,400 a minute from both barrels. The German army planned to issue submachine guns to every infantry company officer and NCO

  as well as 10 percent of the privates. Each company was to have a submachine gun squad with six SMGs, six gunners, and six ammunition bearers. The six ammunition bearers would push three handcarts loaded with cartridges and magazines. Production of SMGs never reached a point that would allow the Germans to even begin that kind of distribution, however.

  Meanwhile, Tulio Marengoni of Italy’s Beretta factory separated the two barrels of the Villar Perosa, made each barrel a weapon for an individual soldier, added some other improvements, and, although the new gun was not ready for World War I, Beretta ended up with the Model 38, one of the best submachine guns of World War II.

  In the United States, retired General John T. Thompson conceived the idea of a light automatic weapon that could be used by an individual soldier in the vicious, close-quarters fighting that characterized trench warfare. Before any news of European developments reached them, Thompson and his employees were working on a hand-held machine gun firing .45 auto pistol cartridges.

  Oscar Payne of the Thompson organization came up with a workable gun. The war ended, though, before Thompson could offer the government his “trench broom.”

  The U.S. Army wasn’t interested in Thompson’s “trench broom” when the war ended, and the Allies outlawed all SMGs for the Germans and Austrians except for a few to arm the police. Most Thompsons went to police agencies.

  The Coast Guard used them in its campaign against rum runners, and the Marine Corps adopted the gun for its brush-fire wars in Central America and the Caribbean. Gangsters also used them, but not as many as the gangster movies of the 30s and 40s would have you believe. The Germans couldn’t keep submachine guns, but they turned out several submachine gun designs and sold them around the world. Most of them were chambered for the 9 mm Luger cartridge, which is one reason why that is now the world’s most popular cartridge for military pistols. The Finns produced their own submachine gun, the Suomi, which they considered their most important weapon in the Winter War of 1939–1940 against the Soviet Union. That war also stimulated Soviet interest in the little, pistol-caliber machine guns.

  The American and British armies were among the last to adopt submachine guns on a large scale, but when they did, they came up with two of the most easily mass produced SMGs in history: the U.S. “grease gun,” officially the M 3, and the British Sten gun.

  Meanwhile German ordnance specialists were working on the problem of the rifle. They had started before the war. The problem was known to all ordnance men. The infantry rifle was too powerful. It was designed to kill enemy troops at more than 1,000 yards, but you seldom saw an enemy soldier that far away. And given the marksmanship training they had, few of the soldiers in World War II’s mass armies would be able to hit a
man at that distance. To get that power, the rifle used ammunition that was at least 50 percent heavier than it needed to be, and which gave the rifle a kick that recruits found disturbing and inhibited their marksmanship.

  Most of the rifles in World War II had hand-operated bolt actions. Only the United States had generally issued a semiautomatic. The German ordnance people dreamed of giving every soldier a fully automatic rifle — or better, a selective fire rifle, capable of either automatic or semiautomatic, as with the best submachine guns. To produce a workable, handheld automatic rifle, the power would have to be greatly reduced in anything of around the weight of a standard infantry rifle. Otherwise the repeated recoil would make the rifle unmanageable.

  So the Germans designed a new cartridge. It was the same 8 mm caliber as the standard round, but it had a lighter bullet — 120 grains instead of 198 grains — and a lower velocity: 2,250 feet per second instead of 2564. The cartridge case was shorter and the whole round weighed about half the weight of the standard cartridge, so soldiers could carry more ammunition.

  Then, they built a rifle to use the new cartridge. Legend has it (and it’s probably true) that Hitler violently objected to reducing the power of the standard rifle cartridge — it would be unmacho, or whatever the German equivalent is. So ordnance specialists changed the designation of the experimental guns from maschinen karabiner to maschinen pistole. Hitler was not happy with a low-powered rifle, but he liked a high-powered submachine gun. Then some of the generals on the Russian front asked for more of those new MP 43s and MP 44s. The Nazi dictator decided that such a successful weapon should have a more macho name. It changed from maschinen pistole to sturmgewehr, or assault rifle. “Assault rifle” is the name now applied to all low-powered, selective fire (both full automatic and semiautomatic) military rifles. In spite of many American politicians, no semiautomatic-only rifle is an “assault rifle.”