Any other WWII assault rifles?

by [deleted]

[deleted]

Meesus

What exactly is your criteria for "assault rifle?" Modern nomenclature specifies an Assault Rifle as a select-fire gun firing an intermediate cartridge. By that standard, only the MP44/StG44, AS-44, and a few select German Volksturm rifles meet the criteria, and of those, only the MP44 saw any significant success. The AS-44 wouldn't get anywhere close to service by war's end. The only other gun that comes close to the MP44 as far as (barely) plausible wartime use would be the SKS-45, which falls short because it was semi-automatic only. The SKS-45 would see significant post-war use all over the world, but it was still in the development stages at the end of WW2, and there's only some vague claims of trials rifles seeing use in small numbers with a few units participating in the Battle of Berlin.

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There were a few guns that come close to the "Assault Rifle" definition but don't necessarily meet the criteria. The M1/M2 carbine is probably the closest, as .30 carbine is close, but not quite, an intermediate cartridge, and the M2 carbine was select fire. However, the M2 carbine only appeared at the end of the war in small numbers (some might have taken part in the fighting on Okinawa), and, while .30 carbine put it in a class above a submachinegun, it still fell well short of true "assault rifle" performance. The Hyde carbine faces the same problems - it's less an Assault Rifle and more an overgrown submachinegun.

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Of the other guns you mentioned, they generally fall more under the classification of "Battle Rifle" as they're chambered in full-powered cartridges. Keep in mind, though, that most of those guns saw limited use (if any) and the few that did see service (as with post war Battle Rifles) are, for practical purposes, significantly different from an Assault Rifle. If you're going to include the SVT-40 and FG-42, then you should also consider the Garand in the same class, as it was a semi-automatic rifle firing a comparable-powered cartridge. There's also the German semiautomatic service rifles, like the G.41 and G.43, which saw limited but not-insignificant use. If you're going to insist on limited-production prototypes, there's also the Japanese Type 4 and French MAS-40, which remained in the prototype stage when their respective nations left the war. There's also the French MAS-44, which, despite a large order placed in January 1945, never actually saw any deliveries to combat units by war's end.

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Also, it sounds like you've got the MAS-36 confused. The MAS-36 is a bolt-action rifle that was just supposed to share a lot of tooling with the MAS-40.

GoldenRamoth

Are you looking for assault rifles, or just submachine guns in general?

What role are you thinking of for this game?

Most WWII games that I know if, the Assault Rifle/Submachine gun role is essentially the "Easily Portable Automatic Weapon" category. So guns like the Browning Automatic Rifle, Thompson, MP40, or the PPHS-41 would also fit this category, even though the calibers and role usage are all over the place.

But to be fair, your categorization includes the M1A1 Carbine, and the STG (I assume 44) as similar type weapons, and these have nothing in common functionally either, so without more information on what you want, it's really hard what to tell you.