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From:	derekp@**.rr.com (Derek Peterson)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Mon, 21 Jul 2003 15:57:49 -0500

Message no. 1 I will answer the second part first. One good place for that type of astral
energy is in Bataan. Specifically the prisoner camps located their during
the war. After the fall of the Philippines the Allied POW's were made to
march to the Bataan province. Many died along the way and the ones who made
it didn't fare much better. Torture and executions were common in the
camps. There were multiple camps in the province.

Now I will answer the first part. The typical foot soldier late in the war
used the M1 Garand Rifle. It is a Semi-auto, .30 caliber, 8 round, top fed
clip. Another weapon used was the fully-automatic SMG the Tommy Gun. It
has a 30 round magazine and is .45 caliber. It was usually used by the
people in vehicles or on motorcycles, as it is small and easily stowed.
When a soldier was needed to lay down a lot of bullets for covering fire
they used the Browning Automatic Rifle or BAR. It is very heavy, it weighs
15.5 pounds. It can either fire belt fed ammo which requires a separate man
as ammo carrier or it can fire using a clip of a size I cannot find at this
time. The typical pistol was the Colt .45 caliber pistol. Usually only
officers or non-commissioned officers carried a pistol.

Now that I've laid all that out here is what you could relate these weapons
to in the SR world. The M1 Garand could be a Remington 750 Sport rifle with
an 8 round clip instead and weighing 9 pounds. The Tommy Gun could be any
SMG with a 30 round magazine and 7M damage but it weight 12.5 pounds
instead. The BAR doesn't have an equivalent in the book, it is from an age
before Assault Rifles. It is somewhere between and AR and LMG as it can
fire belt ammo. It can only fire SA or FA. No burst fire. You could use
the stats of any AR from the game, just make it heavier (15.5 pounds), take
away the BF option and allow it be belt fed (must have ammo carrier then).

Here is a site that details all the weapons I spoke of
http://www.jodavidsmeyer.com/combat/military/weapons_american.html

Here is a good site on what happened at Bataan:
http://www.bataansurvivor.com/

I'm sure I can find more if you need. E-mail me at derekp@**.rr.com if you
want more.

From:	maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:21:53 +0200

Message no. 2 Derek Peterson wrote :
> Now that I've laid all that out here is what you could relate these
> weapons
> to in the SR world. The M1 Garand could be a Remington 750 Sport
> rifle with
> an 8 round clip instead and weighing 9 pounds.

I also seem to recall that the M1 Garand has a big problem in that you
must empty the clip completely before reloading the rifle.

> The Tommy Gun could be any
> SMG with a 30 round magazine and 7M damage but it weight 12.5 pounds
> instead.

And don't forget the optional (yet famous) 50-round drum magazine!

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr@*****.fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"

From:	derekp@**.rr.com (Derek Peterson)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:24:58 -0500

Message no. 3 > I also seem to recall that the M1 Garand has a big problem in that
you
>must empty the clip completely before reloading the rifle.

Yes, if you want to reload before all the ammo is spent in the clip it would
take 2 complex actions to get the old clip out and to put another in. If
you fire all the ammo in the clip though the clip just springs out and you
pound another in.

From:	anders@**********.com (Anders Swenson)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Mon, 21 Jul 2003 14:50:44 -0700

Message no. 4 On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:24:58 -0500
"Derek Peterson" <derekp@**.rr.com> wrote:
>
>
> > I also seem to recall that the M1 Garand has a big problem in that
> you
> >must empty the clip completely before reloading the rifle.
>
> Yes, if you want to reload before all the ammo is spent in the clip it
> would
> take 2 complex actions to get the old clip out and to put another in. If
> you fire all the ammo in the clip though the clip just springs out and you
> pound another in.

Yeah, I was issued the M1 for some years. You could also reload the clip from
an open bolt during a lull in shooting, if you wanted to. Clumsy, yes.

There are a lot of Wierd War II games this year, of course. Email me for more
information on this if you need to.

There were SRII stats for WWII relics in one of the old NAGEE or NERPS books.
I don't have those handy to check. THere was a great Call of Cuthulu
scenario on the Lost Battallion which would be great for atmosphere. I don't
have the title handy, unfortunately.

Do you just want Marine battles, or U.S. armed forces in general, or WWII in
general?

--Anders

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:26:42 +0200

Message no. 5 According to Derek Peterson, on Monday 21 July 2003 22:57 the word on the
street was...

> the Browning Automatic Rifle or BAR. It is
> very heavy, it weighs 15.5 pounds. It can either fire belt fed ammo
> which requires a separate man as ammo carrier or it can fire using a
> clip of a size I cannot find at this time.

There is no BAR variant that I know of that used a belt feed; all had a
20-round detachable box magazine ("clip" in SR terms).

> It can only fire SA or FA. No burst fire.

No weapon of the time fired bursts as we think of them today; the first
production weapons with burst limiters appeared in the 1960s, IIRC. Also,
only some BARs fired semi-auto; the A2 model had two different rates of
automatic fire (about 300 and 500 rpm, off the top of my head).

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:26:57 +0200

Message no. 6 According to Max Noel, on Monday 21 July 2003 23:21 the word on the street
was...

> I also seem to recall that the M1 Garand has a big problem in that you
> must empty the clip completely before reloading the rifle.

You can manually eject it (go watch Band of Bothers, the episode when
Winters gives a trigger-happy soldier a single round to guard prisoners
with, for exmaple :) A bigger problem with Garand clips is that you can't
put _less_ than about five or six rounds into them if you don't want them
to just fall out any time you handle a clip, and that (but this is pretty
much irrelevant in SR), you need to make sure the top round is on a
specific side of the clip (left or right, I can never remember which) else
it will increase the likelihood of getting a feed problem.

> > The Tommy Gun could be any
> > SMG with a 30 round magazine and 7M damage but it weight 12.5 pounds
> > instead.
>
> And don't forget the optional (yet famous) 50-round drum magazine!

Most Thompsons in WWII used _20_-round magazines; the 30-round ones only
came into use fairly late in the war (though they would have been used in
the Pacific, I think), and I don't think the US forces use the 50- and
100-round drums at all in the M1 and M1A1 Thomsons -- they were much more
famous for being used in the M1928 version that was favored by
Prohibition-era gangsters (though there are pictures of both US and
British soldiers with M1928 SMGs with drum magazines).

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	anders@**********.com (Anders Swenson)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 08:25:18 -0700

Message no. 7 On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:26:42 +0200
Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> According to Derek Peterson, on Monday 21 July 2003 22:57 the word on the
> street was...

> There is no BAR variant that I know of that used a belt feed; all had a
> 20-round detachable box magazine ("clip" in SR terms).
>
> > It can only fire SA or FA. No burst fire.
>
> No weapon of the time fired bursts as we think of them today; the first
> production weapons with burst limiters appeared in the 1960s, IIRC. Also,
> only some BARs fired semi-auto; the A2 model had two different rates of
> automatic fire (about 300 and 500 rpm, off the top of my head).
>
Yes, the BAR had no provision for belt feed. OTOH, there was a really strong
recoil compensator, My BAR had a slight foreward pull when you fired multiple
shots. The BF came from a disciplined trigger finger.
--Anders

From:	Jeffrey.T.Dougherty@********.edu (Jeffrey T Dougherty)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:17:51 -0400 (EDT)

Message no. 8 On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Anders Swenson wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:26:42 +0200
> Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> > > It can only fire SA or FA. No burst fire.
> >
> > No weapon of the time fired bursts as we think of them today; the first
> > production weapons with burst limiters appeared in the 1960s, IIRC. Also,
> > only some BARs fired semi-auto; the A2 model had two different rates of
> > automatic fire (about 300 and 500 rpm, off the top of my head).
> >
> Yes, the BAR had no provision for belt feed. OTOH, there was a really strong
> recoil compensator, My BAR had a slight foreward pull when you fired multiple
> shots. The BF came from a disciplined trigger finger.
> --Anders

According to www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/browning.htm, both the
M1918A1 (which had both SA and FA modes) and the M1918A2 (which fired FA
only) were used in WWII. If your characters are fighting early in the
war, it's more likely that they have A1s, since the A2 was not issued
until 1940.

Perhaps in light of what Anders said, a character with Heavy Weapons above
a certain level (4 or 5) should be allowed to use BF rules with the BAR,
since they will have presumably developed the fire discipline necessary to
burst.

Notes on deployment: how you're going to set up the squad and what kinds
of weapons they're going to have depends on when in the war you are.
Early in the war (1942), squads were nine men, similar to the army's: a
corporal acting as squad leader, two scouts with superior woodcraft skills
and possibly sniper rifles, a BAR gunner, and five riflemen, one of whom
was the assistant squad leader. By 1943, squads were twelve men, led by a
sergeant with a corporal assistant, two BAR gunners, and eight riflemen-
no more dedicated scouts in each squad, and I'm not sure what happened.
By late war (1944), squads were thirteen men: a sergeant squad leader, and
three fire teams, each led by a corporal and having a BAR gunner and two
riflemen. All of this info is at
http://orbat.com/site/toe/toe/usa/plattoe.html.

Sorry for the long paragraph and lack of hypertext, but as you can see the
amount of firepower your characters have at their disposal is going to
increase dramatically depending on where they are in the war. Hope this
helps.

Jeff D.

From:	DragonC147@*.com (DragonC147@*.com)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 17:52:26 -0400

Message no. 9 .......
> If your characters are fighting early in the
> war, it's more likely that they have A1s, since the A2 was
> not issued
> until 1940.

The U.S. Didn't enter the war until december of 1941.

Dragon Claw
www.shadowsource.org

From:	anders@**********.com (Anders Swenson)
Subject:	Shadowrun stats for WWII weapons (LONG)
Date:	Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:46:07 -0700

Message no. 10 On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 17:52:26 -0400
DragonC147@***.com wrote:
> .......
> > If your characters are fighting early in the
> > war, it's more likely that they have A1s, since the A2 was
> > not issued until 1940.
>
> The U.S. Didn't enter the war until december of 1941.
>
Yes. New weapons were not met in line units anything like rapidly, especially
before the expansion of the armed forces POST Pearl Harbor. Your newer models
would probably hit NEW units as armory stocks of the older models were
depleated. Established units were porbably not the first to receive newer
models, they already had arms!
--Anders

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