Research - StG44 - Western Front

[Michael Steiner]

So i have been told that the StG was not on the western front. I have already found bulge pictures that prove this wrong. What i need help with is numbers on the western front. Even other campaigns if possible. Appreciate it.

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/31852-assault-rifles-stg-44-normandy.html

It would appear that the 2 Panzer Division had them in normandy 44. Also the 17.SS.

[Karl Ritter]

Link aint working, but..wtf, no Stg's in the West?
What the hell is the guy you're arguing thinking, or even use as his source?

Distribution numbers and front, I do not know. But over 400.000 of different variants where procuded before wars end..seems unlikely that they where only issuad to the East. Not to mention, they where issued to units, who where swapped from one front to the other on multiple occasions.

[Emmerich Schweitzer]

Don't have any numbers regarding distribution, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 were produced, and whoever said they weren't used in the west is full of shit.

[Klaus Rall]

It was on the West Front, but in smaller numbers than on the East.

It was quite rare in the early days of the West front though, as almost all the rifles were allocated for the East Front to shoot hordes of Russians.

[Michael Josef Schwendau]

They were every along the western front. They used the mainly in the SS units to augment the firepower of the ever shrinking platoon's. The only catch was supplying them with ammo.... wonder what it would have been like if they just used 8mm k98 ammo instead?

Osprey books would have some info in there men of war series about this. I honestly trust them more than most publishers due to the amount of research they put into there product.

[Ernst Hoffmann]

LOL there were StG in the west not during the battle of Normandy but later along the west wall and the Ardennes/Hürtgen. There might have been earlier StG/MP44 derivatives early on the west front but to be honest I think even that is a long shot.

Ernst

[Karl Ritter]

Long shot?
One of the first batches to be delivered to frontline units was the Maschinenkarabiner 42H, an earlier version of the Stg44, wich was delivered to the Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf in late 1942 already.
And we know the first two fought in Normandy.

In distribution, I know the waffen-SS was the priority party to be given the STG44, and most SS units did fought in the westfront. Some even in Italy.

[Klaus Rall]

Long shot?
One of the first batches to be delivered to frontline units was the Maschinenkarabiner 42H, an earlier version of the Stg44, wich was delivered to the Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf in late 1942 already.
And we know the first two fought in Normandy.


Yeah, but those were trial guns and they were issued when those divisions were on the east front and I'm assuming they were either returned or discarded after newer versions of the gun came out. I assume they received the newer versions though, so I don't know, they could have been there, but the number of the west front was much lower than the east front, until at least October/November 44.

[Michael Josef Schwendau]

I believe they also had the machinegewhere spitballen peasenschutzen 3mm.... a fully automatic spit ball gun. :)

[Ernst Hoffmann]

I would be very suprised if those weapons issued to front line troops in late 42were still in the front line in mid to late 44.

[Schaaf Kaufmann]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl31ZPOW04Y&feature=related&fm=18

Cool combat footage with the STG in it.