WWII bolt action in the Pacific???

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I have often wondered about the tendency of museums to display copies, fakes, and other items as "good enough" or with a "who knows, who cares?" attitude.* For some reason that does not extend to art museums which don't seem to want fake Leonardos or Rembrandts on their walls.

*Per a current TV show, museums even have fakes made and display them without any notice that they are not original or authentic.

Jim
 
I'm ok with museums displaying copies, fakes, dummies, reproduction etc., so long as no attempt is made to pass them off as the real thing. Some things I would expect and demand to be fakes or dummies, simply for safety reasons.

(for example a display of 1880s mining should NOT include real, live, 1880s dynamite.)

to date, I haven't personally met any museum people who would not listen to friendly "corrections", once they have accepted your bona fides. "I was there and this is how we did it" really isn't enough. Proof through photos, or being part of an official group (vets group), or being a published author on the subject, etc, things like that, which back up your word are good to have, and get you listened to.

Tell them that the vase belongs in the 5th dynasty and not the 7th where they have it, you better have valid bona fides. Also remember that for some things, reality has to fight an uphill battle against generations of TV & movie misrepresentations.

I forget which (bad) movie it was, something set in the Pacific theater, where the sgt hangs grenade(s) off his web gear, and snags something, pulling the pin. He realizes it, just in time to utter a bitch about dying because of a "stupid cherry mistake!" then, boom! (me, I like to think I would have thrown the grenade, rather then spouting a line, but hey, its a MOVIE)

Another thing to consider is that if something isn't technically right, but looks right, they may go with it, over what really is right. One complaint from a real expert once in a while, vs. constant complaints from people not seeing what they expect to see would make a difference to an administrator with a bureaucrat's, and not a historian's mindset.

Of course, if you run into "we are the mighty (infallible) Smithsonian, and you are a peon" attitude, getting things right will be an uphill battle.
 
I forget which (bad) movie it was, something set in the Pacific theater, where the sgt hangs grenade(s) off his web gear, and snags something, pulling the pin. He realizes it, just in time to utter a bitch about dying because of a "stupid cherry mistake!" then, boom! (me, I like to think I would have thrown the grenade, rather then spouting a line, but hey, its a MOVIE)
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The movie was "The Thin Red Line", and it was Woody Harrelson .... attempted to pull the grenade off his pistol belt ... by the pin ..... and he couldn't get at it to get it off, so he threw himself against a dirt bank so as not to kill or injure his fellows ..... and then berates himself, as he's dying: " I blew my butt off with that stupid 'cruit trick".....

I thought it was a pretty good movie.
 
I have long wondered about those grenades in the movies where the hero pulls the pin with his teeth, or a pin gets pulled by snagging something. The grenades I used had the pin bent over and it was very hard to pull without straightening the ends first. I am pretty sure using my teeth would have resulted in a nice set of dentures. But then, I wasn't in the movies and never played John Wayne.

Jim
 
Yep, those pins were pretty tough. I notice that the car mechanics don't pull the cotter pins holding the wheel hubs off with their teeth either lol.
 
Again, those of us in the know, those of us who have served know not to get our history from Hollyweird. Cf all those left handed M1893 Mausers in Rough Riders. Or the "Civil War" soldiers in The Red Badge of Courageusing Indian Wars uniforms, insignias, equipment,
I recall the episode of A&E's "Biography" series on Omar Bradley. For the Normandy Campaign they used footage from the Eastern Front, in one scene a Panther tank goes by-the number on the turret is reversed. The Beetle Bailey comic strip shows them in 1950s uniforms.
 
How far can we drift this thread?

Anybody ever been on a submarine?:D

In the peace corps?:D

Collect Barbie dolls?:D

I apologize to the OP for being a part of the drift, but it sure has been an informative thread.
 
I don't have much experience with military grenades, only a couple of smoke grenades...

That said, those pins were quite tough to pull, and I can't imagine the pins on fragmentation grenades being any easier to pull.
 
In night defensive positions (hastily dug "fox" holes, we would straighten the pins out on one or two frags and lay them on the edge of the hole for quick access in the darkness.

Before we moved on in the morning, each squad leader was to conduct a safety check and insure that all pins were rebent and properly secured on web gear, and that no frags or mags were left behind.

If I recall, the pins would withstand being straightened and rebent several times. When the paint on the body became bleached out, it was assumed, rightly or wrongly, that it was time to get new grenades and blow the old ones in a hole.

In my first tour, I got to the company about a week after the company commander got killed. His replacement was a safety freak. I do not recall an incident where anyone got hurt because of a grenade accident or negligent discharge. He would also randomly personally inspect all your mags and grenades. Having rust on a weapon, corroded ammo and bent magazines would invoke the wrath of hades, not only on the GI, but his squad leader, Platoon sergeant and platoon leader. As it should have.

His practice spread to each GI, who would safety check the man in front and behind him. There is an old army saying, "the company is only as good as it's commender".
 
The U.S. tried that philosophy with their tanks, producing almost 50,000 M3 Sherman tanks (Known to the armored units as Rossignols, b/c they "lit the first time, every time" when hit by enemy fire), well past their obsolescence. The result was a lot of U.S. tank crews killed by Germans (or Murdered by allied war-planners, take your pick) needlessly, because some desk-bound, pencil-pushing CHAIRborne commando in logistics decided that "good enough" should replace "BESt available", since the former could be made in wholesale quantities. Such a mentality borders on the criminal. If I recall correctly, U.S. tank crews expected to lose 2 M3s for each Panther, 3 M3s for every Tiger I, and FIVE M3s for every King Tiger they defeated. I'm not very sure that someone could get me inside an M3 tank AT GUNPOINT, with odds like that.
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That's Roson not Rossignol, iirc there was also a British tank known as a Ronson. Maybe there were tanks in each of the various armies known for exploding.
And it's the M4 Sherman, the M3 was the Grant.

The problems associated with the M4 Sherman were addressed pretty quickly. It was modernized several times till the last iteration was a close match for the Pz IV Panzer.
The main problem was the original gun the short 75mm. The later 76mm gun while still no match for the German long 75mm let alone the 88mm on the Tigers, was still good enough for the majority of Axis armor.
Although the 17 pounder on the Firefly variant came close.

According to Stephen Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers" one Sherman took out 5 Panthers. No details were mentioned but it's safe to guess that the Sherman's powered turret which allowed it to transit its gun much faster than German tanks helped that happen.

The American tank tactics also didn't envision tank vs tank encounters being as important as they turned out to be. That's why we had the "tank destroyer" class of weapons. The M 10 Wolverine was equipped with the 76mm gun and the M 36 Jackson with its 90mm gun, the later being introduced in Sept. 44.

As mentioned above, combined arms was what killed most Axis armor. That meant the Sherman wasn't facing those Panthers and Tigers alone. By the end of the Normandy campaign every US tank could call in an air strike or an artillery barrage as could most infantry units.

The M 26 Pershing when it did show up wasn't that great of an improvement. And in the same ship that would hold 2 M 26s we could shoe horn in 4 or 5 Shermans.

It would have been nice if we had developed our version of the T 34 sooner. But we used what we had and we won.

There's lots to be said for the Sherman but I'll leave it at that.
 
Now that I think about it, I actually have been on a submarine. In Inner Harbor tourist area of baltimore, the USS Torsk is tied to a pier as a static display, available for tour for $8. It was a diesel sub built in WWII. I do not know the class.

My hats off to anyone that ever served on one of these. I don't know how big the crew was, but there appeared to be 12 bunks for the crew scattered all over the boat. The crew's head was 3x3 with a curtain for a door. The boat's galley(kitchen to us landlubbers) was 4X5.

The whole thing reminded me of a cramped sewage tube with pipes and gear covering every surface. I can only imagine the noise inside when the diesels were running. It still reeked of diesel. I can't imagine doing a 90 day cruise on one.

NO, I have not ever collected any Barbie dolls.
 
While a torture chamber by modern standards, our WWII fleet boats were wonderful machines, compared to what had been before, and what was used most by our enemies.

The Type VII U boat is about half the size, and seems twice as cramped. Unlike some things, war movies have done a fair job representing the inside of subs, and Das Boot is brutally accurate.

Outside, its a different matter. How many old submarine movies can you remember where the sub, the depth charging destroyer, and sometimes even the seabed are all in the shot at the same time?

They do it with tanks, too. Point blank and short range engagements do happen, but normal ranges are hundreds to thousands of yards. I know why they do it, if they accurately represented the ranges, the characters (ship, tank, etc) would look like dots on the screen, something boring to the audience. It just bugs me when I see it. ;)

now that I think of it, anyone know what the standard small arms compliment on a fleet boat was? Some 1911A1s and Tommyguns are what show up in the movies. I am wondering if there was a "bolt action in the Pacific" as part of the normal arms TO&E. I'm thinking that while rifles were found on surface ships, seems it would be wasted space on a submarine. They had Browning .30 cal machneguns, and pistols and SMGs, so what use would a rifle be?
 
They had Browning .30 cal machneguns, and pistols and SMGs, so what use would a rifle be?
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According to http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/guns.html

Submarines also generally carried a few Thompson submachineguns, which fired the same .45 ACP round as the M1911 pistol. These were normally fitted with the straight 20-round box magazine, rather than the 50-round drum magazine usually seen in gangster movies. M-1 Garands and/or 1903 Springfield bolt-action rifles could also be found, mainly intended for shooting at floating mines. These "personal" weapons were normally kept under lock and key. Certain movies to the contrary, small arms were never kept within easy reach of the crew for the simple reason that they didn't ordinarilly need them and, on those occasions when they did, there would almost always be time to issue them
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A good friend of mine was an artilleryman in the Phillippines in 1945 and was equipped with a 1903 Springfield, as were all the men in his unit. He told me back in the early 80's that the rear area troops in that fight were all armed with the Springfield, not the M-1. This offered in confirmation of other similar comments in this thread.
 
I was a high school Junior in Manila, 1949/1950.

Out in the hinterlands, the going price of a BAR was a carton of cigarettes. Half that for a Garand. A friend of my mother's who had been an internee during the Occupation had a BAR on the floor, by the entryway into her house.

Handguns were common. At the main entry of the Manila Hotel was a Sikh guard, a small table and a sign: "Please check firearms before entry".

Leftover "pineapple" hand grenades were not unknown for fishing in Manila Bay. Worked okay except that occasionally a grenade would explode as the pin was pulled--a one-time event for that fisherman.

When the Korean war broke out, nobody really knew who was doing what to whom, at first. A wealthy Filipina lady offered her three M-4 tanks to the government, if needed.
 
Cleveland is home to the USS Cod, a WWII veteran sub with many kills on her record. I've toured it many times. It is famous for an incident in which a Dutch sub, known as a Whiskey class ran aground on rocks, in an enemy area...The crew of the Cod took them aboard and destroyed the Dutch sub to keep it out of Japanese hands, an episode known as "Whiskey on the rocks". Must have been pretty crowded with an entire second crew on board.
A group of volunteers have been restoring the Cod, even installing new, original Diesels.
 
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