Chapter 224: Responses to German Advantages
The Great War spread across the world quite rapidly. It wasn't really surprising when you really thought about it. After all, the majority of the world was currently owned by the Great Powers. There were few independent nations outside of Europe that remained.
However, one of those independent nations was the Empire of Japan, and they were perhaps the only non-European nation in history who had more or less kept up with the level of development of the European Empires, so much so that in the first half of the 20th century, they were capable of challenging them to some degree.
Something that nobody else on the global stage was really remotely adequately prepared for. It was true that by 1945, Japanese technological development had completely and totally lagged behind their allies and rivals on the global stage.
But in 1914, they were more or less on par with the European Great Powers, having access to most of the same level of military equipment. Recoil-compensated artillery? Check. Bolt- action rifles? Of course. Heavy machine guns? Absolutely! And thanks to Bruno's intervention in the timeline, the Imperial Japanese Army also had access to general-purpose machine guns.
Granted, many of these weapons were chambered in the relatively anemic 6.5x50mmSR Arisaka, as it was relatively lacking in power compared to contemporary cartridges of the era. However, in the 21st century, the 6.5×50mmSR Arisaka would more or less be redeemed in the eyes of ballistic experts, as it had more than enough power to take down a man-sized target and a very flat trajectory, which was something desirable among shooters.
Considering in the 21st century, the 6.5×48mm cartridge became favored among competition shooters for this very reason, Bruno actually advised the Japanese to stick with this round rather than develop an unnecessarily larger cartridge, like they had done in his previous life, and in doing so strained their supply lines.
It was honestly a testament to the capability of the cartridge that the world's first "battle rifle" in Bruno's previous life was chambered in the 6.5x50mmSR Arisaka. While many would argue that the Russian Fedorov Avtomat was the world's first "assault rifle,"
The weapon, which was initially manufactured in limited numbers in 1915 and used more extensively in the Russian Civil War than during the preceding Great War, did not technically meet such a definition. As an "assault rifle" was defined by militaries across the globe as a rifle chambered in an intermediate cartridge, which had select-fire capabilities.
This, of course, meant that the Fedorov Avtomat, which was chambered in a full-sized rifle cartridge and not an intermediate cartridge like the 8x33mm Kurz utilized in the Sturmgewehr 44, was, by definition, a "battle rifle" instead. A battle rifle had virtually the same definition as an assault rifle, but with the slight variation of using a full-sized rifle cartridge instead.
This was a rather important detail to mention, as the Russians were currently developing this very rifle as a means to compete with the German Gewehr 43, or Gewehr 05, as it was called in this life that Bruno had forced into the timeline much earlier than it would have normally occurred without his interference.
But who wasn't trying to come up with a solution to advanced German weaponry that was currently dominating the battlefield? The Austro-Hungarians were more or less in the process of creating a rather simple, cheap, and effective conversion of their Steyr-Mannlicher M95 straight-pull rifles into a semi-automatic variant.