The Weapons of Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

This is a by no means totally comprehensive guide to the history of the many weapons in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam.

PLEASE NOTE BEFORE READING

THIS GUIDE IS UNFINISHED. I WILL CONTINUE TO WORK ON IT AND IT WILL CONTINUE TO GROW, BUT AS YET IT IS INCOMPLETE

. And if you spot any errors (factual or typing) that slipped through my quick proofreading, please tell me, rather than just ranting in the comments section!

The sections from the AK onwards where all written on my iPad, and I have just noticed how appallingly spell-checked they are. I'll fix that as soon as I can, and I plan to re-write everything about Sniper rifles as those sections really aren't my best.

I will finish off my proofreading when I have finished the content.

Primary Weapons

I shall begin this guide by talking about the 'Primary Weapons' in game. This include rifles, machine-guns, submachine-guns, and shotguns.

Rifles

By far the most commonly issued weapon of any military is the rifle. Pretty much every soldier has a rifle, with the exception of specialised units such as mortar or artillery crewman.

In-game, every class other than the Grenadier and RPG Soldier has a rifle, and there are several to choose from.

M14

The M14 Rifle was first issued to US troops in 1957, replacing the then-standard M1 Garand Rifle. It used the same basic action as the earlier Garand (which many people will be familiar with from any WW2 game featuring Americans), but with several key differences, one of the main ones being the change in calibre from .30-06 (a rather powerful round) to the slightly less powerful 7.62x51mm NATO (also known as .308 Winchester) round, which was favourable for the American military as the cases for the ammunition could be manufactured with only slight modification to existing manufacturing equipment.

The M1 Garand Rifle

I could write for quite a while on the story of the adoption of the 7.62mm NATO round, and it would probably be mildly offensive to American military fans, so I'll leave it out for now.

One other main change with the M14 was the switch from the M1 Garand's 8-round En Bloc clip to a 20-round detatchable box magazine.

Aside from this, the stock design changed, and the M14 was originally a selective-fire weapon (i.e. it was capable of both semi- and fully-automatic fire).

The fact that the M14 was essentially a rifle from 1932 in a new calibre was quite a major cause for concern, and the M14 proved to be the wrong weapon for modern warfare.

They were manufactured to extremely high standards, and the design and calibre made them capable of accurate fire out to at least 600m with open sights, but this kind of long-range accuracy was far more than was needed for combat in Vietnam.

The other largest problem was that they were utterly uncontrollable in fully-automatic fire, as a result of the hard-hitting 7.62 NATO round's hard-hitting recoil combined with the design of the stock, with one report stating that, "by the third round of a three round burst of fire, the M14 had transitioned from an infantry rifle to an anti-aircraft gun!" This uncotrollabilty led to most M14 rifles being converted to being capable of only semi-automatic fire, and the rifle appearing in the game is one such semi-auto only weapon.


An M14 Rifle.

Despite it's flaws, the M14 was still popular with many American troops, especially when confronted with the option of the 'Mattel Deathtrap' (see next section).


Two soldiers in Vietnam, armed with M14 rifles.

M16

The M14 rifle only lasted in frontline service until 1964, when it was replaced by a new weapon, the M16. Developed by a team led by Eugene Stoner of a company named Armalite, and originally developed under the name AR-15, the M16 was surrounded by a lot of controversy upon its original issuing.


M16A1 Rifle, as seen in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. Note the 'forward assist,' located on the right-hand side of the reciever. The earlier M16 had a smooth-sided receiver lacking this part. It is the easiest way to tell the difference.

There were three main reasons for this controversy.

Firstly, it was a new calibre. For a long time, the US military had used rifles chambered for .30 inch (7.62mm) calibre rounds, and the new M16 was chambered in a much smaller round, a .223 inch (5.56mm) round. There was a lot of worry among US troops that a smaller round would be underpowered, and that the only way to maintain a round with enough stopping power was to keep it 'nothing less than .30 inches'.


The .223 Remington (5.56 NATO) round compared with .308 Winchester (7.62 NATO).

Secondly, it was a very different appearance to the earlier rifles, being made mainly out of new materials (for firearm manufacturing at least), polymer and aluminium - and this was a far break from more traditional wood and steel rifles such as the M14. This revolutionary design was described by soldiers as 'looking like a toy,' but actually the in-line design of the stock (the muzzle, chamber and shoulder are all in a straight line) greatly helped reduce recoil, which had long been one of the major problems with the M14.

Finally, it was found to be fatallly unreliable in the Jungles of Vietnam. This unreliability combined with the plastic parts to give birth to the rifle's nickname, 'the Mattel Deathtrap'. The problems were not really problems with the rifle, but rather with the US military. There were several main things that contributed to the problems. First, the M16 lacked a chrome-lined bore, something which helps reduce fouling in the chamber and barrel, and extends the service life of the aforementioned parts. Second, the composition of the ammunition used was changed just before the M16 was adopted into service, and the new powder was found to create far more fouling than the type originally used when Stoner desinged the AR-15 in the first place. Now, these two would be just small problems, were it not for the US military's belief that the M16 was a 'self-cleaning' rifle, and which led to cleaning kits not being issued for the M16, meaning that dirt and fouling would slowly build up until it reached unbearable levels and the rifle jammed.

The reliability problems were quickly rectified with the introduction of the M16A1, which added a case deflector and forward assist (a device which is hit to ensure that the bolt carrier has travelled all of the way forwards), visible on the right-hand side of the receiver. Another addition with the M16A1 variant was the usage of 30-round magazines (these are however not currently in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, for whatever reason), which were not universally issued originally as so many 20-round magazines had already been manufactured, but they did eventually phase out 20-round magazines completely.

The M16 is still in frontline use, in one form or another with the US Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps today, and many other military, police and special forces in several other countries.

Interesting fact: the first country to use the M16 was in fact not the USA, but rather the UK, with it being used by the SAS in Borneo.


A soldier in Vietnam, firing his M16A1 rifle.

AK-47 Overview

The AK-47 family of weapons is a very large one, containing, but not limited to: the AK-47, AKM, AKMS, RPK, RPKM, AK-74, AKS-74U, RPK-74, AK-12, RPK-12, AK-12 Para, APS, Type 56, Type 64, Galil, R4, Valmet M-76, PP-Bizon and many other weapons. In game, two AK variants are available, the Chinese licence-built Type 56 and the Soviet-produced AKM. while these two rifles share many similarities, there are also distinct differences, so this section will be on the history of the AK in general, and the two variants will have their own sections.


A few of the multitude of weapons from the Kalashnikov family

At the onset of World War Two, all countries except the US were equipped with bolt-action rifles containing no more than 10 rounds of ammunition. These rifles required the action to be manually cycled, and this greatly reduced the rate of fire that a soldier could provide (excluding the Americans with their M1 Garands, see the M14 section), to the point that the effective rate of fire averaged around 20-30 rounds a minute.

During the war, Germany - long famed for its innovation into firearm technology - started looking at ways to make a rifleman more effective, starting with semi-automatic rifles like the Gewehr 41 and Gewehr 43, but these were overly complex rifles with only 10-round magazines. Also, the full-power rifle rounds used in these weapons had far more power than was really necessary. As a result, the Germans began to experiment with what would later be called intermediate cartridges, specifically the 8mm Kurz (meaning short) round, in the Maschinekarabiner 42 (Machine Carbine 42), which many people will no doubt recognise from Red Orchestra 2. Hitler didn't like the sound of Machine Carbine, he said he wanted submachine guns (Maschinenpistole), so the engineers renamed it Maschinenpistole 43 (MP43), then MP44, then they showed it to Hitler, who liked the idea and christened it the Sturmgewehr (Storm Rifle, usually translated as Assault Rifle). Thus, the iconic Stg. 44 was born. In many people's opinion, the first modern assault rifle: a select-fire, intermediate cartridge rifle with a detachable 30-round box magazine. It was a good gun, reasonably reliable, accurate, controllable and pointable, albeit slightly heavy, and with a very long magazine that made firing prone difficult.

Now, there are many stories about the development of the AK-47, and as I have found no conclusive proof for any of them, I'm simply to going to present three main ones and let you make your mind up.

The first is that while Mikhail Kalashnikov - the AK's inventor - was fighting on the Eastern front in World War Two he saw the extreme effectiveness of the Stg. 44, and was inspired to produce an improved a soviet version. Certainly from a distance the two rifles share a similar silhouette, but the internally actions differ radically.


Mikhail Kalashnikov with his creation

I can already hear people raging about how it's impossible to conceive the idea that the Glorious Comrades of Stalin and the Great Soviet People could ever copy something from the inferior pigs from Germany, but, there is another story, and that story is that Mikhail Kalashnikov was independently working on an Assault Rifle design himself at the time. And this idea can seem to be true as well, as the Soviet Union had a long-running program going to produce a more effective automatic weapon that could be carried by infantry.

The Soviets were definitely believers in automatic firepower, producing million upon million of PPSh-41 and PPS-42 and 43 submachine guns, in fact many millions more than they needed, and it is easy to see how they could have continued refining the design, eventually added Degtyaryev's intermediate 7.62x39mm round to the submachine gun concept to produce the Avtomat Kalashnikova.

The final story is that Kalashnikov was working on trying to design all kinds of weapon, to no avail, but then he met a captured engineer after the war, who had been one of the men behind the Stg. 44, and then they became good friends this German engineer helped Kalashnikov design his rifle.

It's up to you which story you believe.

Anyway, after Kalashnikov had somehow come up with the design of the AK, he took it to the Red Army for trials in 1947, and they quite liked it, so they adopted it as the AK-47. However, the AK proved quite difficult and expensive to manufacture via a machining process, so they decided to make it out of sheet metal stampings. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to do sheet metal stamping. So, they spent several years trying to get their stamping process up and running by forcing captured German engineers to build stamping plants for them. When they eventually did, they adopted the stamped AK as the AKM - Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy.


Kalashnikov-type rifles, such as this Chinese-made Norinco Type 56-1 can still be found anywhere in the world there is conflict

Type 56

In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was aiming to provide a lot of military aid to friendly communist states - such as China - and a part of this aid was plans and equipment to manufacture Soviet weapons in other countries. One such weapon was the AK-47, in its milled form. (The designs for the SKS were also passed on, section on the SKS still to come).

The Soviets themselves had been unable to cheaply and effectively manufacture milled AKs, and so had for the most part stuck with the SKS as a stopgap. However, the Chinese were not concerned with this, and in 1956, put the AK-47 Type 3 into production as the Type 56. It mounted the same folding spike bayonet as the Chinese SKS, and fired the same 7.62x39mm round as the SKS and Soviet AKs. They were manufactured by Norinco, China's state-owned arsenal.

The Chinese produced many millions of these milled AKs, and they are one of the most prolific AK variants outside of the Soviet military. When the Vietnam War started, the Chinese provided them to Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam, who in turn provided them to the Viet Minh and Northern Liberation Front.


An NLF guerilla armed with a Type 56 in Vietnam. Note the unfolded spike bayonet.

Type 56s can be found in pretty much any modern combat zone, and they can be easily identified in footage of the Middle East by their distinctive spike bayonet.

There were two other variants of the Type 56 produced beside the standard one: the Type 56-1 and Type 56-2. The Type 56-1 was the same action with an underneath-folding stock and no bayonet, whereas the Type 56-2 had a side-folding stock and also lacked the bayonet. Only the Type 56 and Type 56-1 are featured in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam.


The standard Type 56 rifle (below) and the Type 56-1 (above)

AKM

Following their difficulties with manufacturing the milled AK-47 Types 1 through 3 cheaply enough, the Soviets eventually got their stamping processes going in 1959, and redesigned the AK-47 for the process, and made a few key changes - more specifically, they redesigned bascially all of the parts of the rifle. This new version was dubbed AKM, and became the standard Soviet infantry weapon. The caliber remained unchanged, at 7.62x39mm, and the magazines are compatible with any other 7.62 AK rifle.


The 7.62x39mm Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy.

These modifications made the AKM around 1kg lighter, and considerably easier and cheaper for the USSR to manufacture at its Izhmash and Tula factories, once they had got the production lines going.

The easiest way to tell an AKM from an AK-47 or Type 56 is the the shape of the dust cover on top. On a Type 1, Type 2 or Type 3 AK-47 or a Type 56, the dust cover is smooth, but on the AKM it is to ribbed to strengthen the stamped sheet metal used to manufacture it. Another easy way to spot an AKM among other 7.62 AKs is the stock angle is more of a flat, horizontal stock than the diagonal one on, for example, the Type 56.


An NLF Guerilla with an AKM. Note the ribbed dust cover.

[Section pending something more to say about the AKM]

SKS-45

Before the famous AK-47, there was the SKS. Chambered for the same round, the 7.62x39mm earlier used in Degtyaryev's RPD (Section on that still to come), it had a ten-round internal magazine and fired in semi-automatic only.


An SKS, chambered in 7.62x39mm, the same as the AK-47 and RPD

As with the AK-47, a large number of the SKS rifles produced were not SKSs at all, but instead were produced by Norinco in China, who got the designs via the Soviet military aid program described in my section on the Type 56 assault rifle. These Chinese-made Norinco SKSs were also designated Type 56 (But Type 56 Carbine rather than Type 56 Rifle), as the designs had been received at the same time as the AK-47.

The SKS was designed by a man named Siminov. Widely regarded as one of the best Russian arms designers, it was probably his most famous design. The SKS (Samozaryadniy Karabin Siminova) can be seen to be a continuation of one of Siminov's earlier designs, the AVS-36 (Avtomat Vintovka Siminova), which was an automatic rifle chambered in the then-standard 7.62x54mm Rimmed cartridge used in the Mosin-Nagant. It had the potential to be very effective, were it not for a few key flaws, most notably the excessive recoil of the 7.62x54R round, the undersized 15-round magazine and the extremely high rate of fire. On top of this, there were reliability issues as well, so production ended very quickly.


The AVS-36, known for being unreliable and having too much recoil

Siminov then went off to work on other things, with his most notable design in this period being the PTRS-41 (Protiva Tankovy Ruzhie Siminova) This was an anti-tank rifle, a concept largely obsolete by the time the PTRS went into production, but that the Soviets continued to use throughout the war. This rifle, chambered in the 14.5x114mm round, was semiautomatic, with a five-round en bloc clip. In 1945, Siminov scaled down this rifle for Degtyaryev's new 7.62x39mm intermediate round, and the SKS was born.


A Soviet PTRS-41 Anti-Tank rifle, chambered for the massive 14.5x114mm round. Its action was the basis for the SKS

The SKS in Soviet manufacture mounted a folding blade bayonet, but the Chinese ones - such as those featured in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam - have three-pronged spike bayonets, the same as on the Type 56 Rifle. Both Soviet SKSs and Type 56 Carbines have 10-round internal magazines and are accurate out to 400 metres.

The SKS was an effective rifle, accurate, reliable and relatively hard-hitting. However, it pales in comparison to what came later - specifically two years later, the AK-47. Firing the same round, even more reliable, and with full-auto capability and 30-round magazines, the SKS truly couldn't raise a finger to the AK-47. Yet, it did. While the Soviets were trying to get their stamping process worked out, the SKS was adopted as a stopgap, and the Russian Federation, many former Eastern Bloc states and China all retain some extremely shiny SKSs for ceremonial purposes to this day.


Here is an example of a needlessly shiny Norinco Ceremonial SKS

Occasionally, a few SKSs do still crop up in modern combat zones such as the Middle East, but production of the Kalashnikov has far exceeded that of the SKS, and such they are nowhere near as ubiquitous or popular with guerilla fighters and/or terrorists.

That said, any rifle is better than no rifle (even if only as a club or bayoneted stick cough L85A1 cough) and the Vietnames fighters in the NLF would have been more than happy to receive Type 56s from China.

[Insert picture of SKS in Vietnam here]

Mosin Nagant MN1891-30

The Mosin Nagant is, for some reason, a bit of a legend. First issued in 1891 to Tsarist Russian forces, and chambered for 7.62x54R ammunition, it is one of the longest-serving designs of rifle ever. Technically, the Mosin is a simple design - a basic bolt-action rifle with a five-round internal magazine, fed from stripper clips.

A standard Mosin-Nagant MN1891/30

The M1891/30 is the most prolific version of the Mosin–Nagant. It was produced for standard issue to all Soviet infantry from 1891 to 1945, and is still seeing some reserve issue with some minor nations. Most Mosin Nagants you would have found in the Vietnam War would most likely have been the Chinese Licence-built Type 53s (a derivative of the M44 Carbine) or a mish-mash of Soviet and Chinese made parts cobbled together in any working fashion.

A Chinese Communist Type 53 Carbine

The Mosin’s ammunition is the 7.62x54mm Rimmed cartridge. This cartridge is the oldest ammunition still in use with regular front-line infantry today with weapon systems such as the Dragunov Series and the PKM machine-gun. As of December 2019, this cartridge has reached 128 years in service. 7.62x54R shares a markedly similar ballistic profile with American 30-06. Springfield. As such, you should expect reliable precision in distance shooting, and very consistent stopping power. The real-life Mosin has very bad iron sights, with a tiny, poorly-defined notch and an overly wide front post.

A variety of Mosin-Nagant derivatives.

This rifle is still a common sight to this day, seeing use in a vast number of conflicts, such as: The Russo-Japanese War, World War I, The Finnish Civil War, The Russian Revolution & Civil War, The Chinese Civil War, The Spanish Civil War, The Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, The Korean War, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, The Vietnam War, The Soviet–Afghan War, The First and Second Chechen Wars, The War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq), The Syrian Civil War, The 2014 Pro-Russian-Ukraine War & Annexation of Crimea, to name a few.

A female member of the National Liberation Front with a Type 53 Mosin slung on her back

Section written by ThunderCock the Annihilator and edited by GLaDOStheFrog

Marksman/Sniper Rifles

While standard issue military rifles are often accurate enoug for most engagements, sometimes a weapon with a it more long-range accuracy and power is needed. Usually fitted with telescopic sights, the issuance policy for these weapons varies from nation to nation, and also between time periods, but they are often one marksman/sniper to a section or one to a platoon (I may be wrong on this, contact me if you have more info). These elite soldiers are often separate from the standard chain of command and act independently from the rest of their unit to provide support, taking out targets of interest such as officers, NCOs, machine-gunners and radio operators.

[section unfinished and in the wrong place, see, 'please read before continuing' or whatever else I titled it]

M21

The M21 shares the action and external appearance of the M14 rifle, but has a heavy barrel, an upgraded trigger, the gas system is made smoother and, the most obvious difference, it has a variable 3 to 9x scope. It is a very accurate rifle, capable of hitting a man-sized target at 900 metres in capable hands.

There is, in all honesty, very little to say on the subject of the M21, as it is basically a scoped M14.

The M21 is still used to some extent by the US Army to date, although it is being replaced by the M24 bolt-action rifle.

There is also the M14 EBR (Enhanced Battle Rifle) used by the US Marine Corps, but that is not a Vietnam-era weapon so I'm not going to talk about it.

If you can think of something more to add about the M21, please tell me, as it's not a weapon I am particularly knowledgable.

Dragunov SVD

The Dragunov SVD (Snaiperskaya Vintovka Dragunova) is a semi-automatic sniper rifle chambered in 7.62x54mmR Russian, the round originally used in the Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle. This is a hard-hitting round with considerably more power than its American equivalent, the M21's 7.62x51mm.

The Dragunov action is a modified and reworked version of the action used in the AK. It is slightly simpler in the Dragunov, as no full-auto mechanism or selector switch is needed. This action is equally reliable as in an AK and is made of higher-quality steel to be able to withstand the increased pressure from the more powerful round. The gas system has also been similarly tweaked to take the higher pressure.

The Dragunov also adds one thing that the AK lacked - a bolt hold-open. The bolt now locks back on an empty magazine, providing a visual aid to know when you're out and speeding up reloads.

Speaking of magazines, the Dragunov magazine holds 10 rounds of 7.62x54mmR, which is more than most bolt-action sniper rifles but less than the M21.

SVDs are usually fitted with the 4x PSO-1 scope, but are sometimes seen with only iron sights. They also accept standard AKM bayonets.

Secondary Weapons

Having a rifle is all well and good, but what do you do if it runs out of ammunition or jams in a firefight? This is where the pistol comes in. Small, light, pointable and only really effective at close range, a handgun almost always serves as a backup to another weapon. Pistols fire less-powerful rounds than rifles by far, able to take down a man at close range, but with far less recoil.

Pistols also serve a ceremonial role as well. In the militaries of the world pre-World War Two, officers would often have to purchase their own handguns, which they would most likely never use in combat, and they would only carry as a badge of honour.

However, doctrines changed in World War Two, with the emphasis being on standardisation. If you only make one type of pistol and one type of ammuniton, you can greatly simplify your manufacturing and thus increase its efficiency. Following this, it has been rare to see an officer - or man from the rank and file for that matter - carrying anything except the standard issue pistol.

A pistol's primary requirements are for it to be reliable as a backup, so long-range accuracy and power are often unnescesary in military handguns. As a result, most will not be accurate at all beyond 50 metres, and their power will be nothing like a full-power rifle.

As well as a badge of honour for officers and a backup for ordinary soldiers and NCOs, pistols are often supplied to men equipped with heavier specialist equipment such as Rocket Launchers, Grenade Launchers or Radios, or to those who would not be fighting right up on the front line such as drivers and tankers. That said, by the time of the Vietnam War, these roles had largely been replaced by Carbines and Sub-Machine Guns.

M1911

The Colt M1911, adopted into US Army service in 1911, as the name may suggest, was designed by legendary firearms designer John Moses Browning. The Colt-Browning Tilting-Barrel locking sytem used by it has been recreated and imitated the world over. There is much to be said on this iconic pistol, so I will try and keep it brief.

The version used in Vietnam was officially the M1911A1, however not all pistols actually were this improved version, and more than a few soldiers were equipped with M1911s.

An intersting piece of trivia on the M1911 is that no M1911s were made for the US Military after 1945, so all of the pistols issued in Vietnam were made before this time, and most had seen service in Korea, World War Two, World War One, or more than one of the above.



An M1911A1, chambered in .45 ACP

[Sorry, I'm tired, I can't be bothered to finish this now, so I'll just add a picture and finish it at a later date.]

Sources/Acknowledgements

The Vital Guide to Combat Guns and Infantry Weapons (ISBN: 1-85310-539-2)
http://www.forgottenweapons.com
Nicht Weiß

[[TMU]☭Товарищ Дима]

How come you didn´t include the onetap beast, the MAS-49 ?

[whereispoland?]

micky, you don't really know what you're talking about. the mosin 91/30 i had was made in 1941 and with surplus ammo shot 2-3" groups at 100 yards, and with handloads shot 1-1.5" groups. i've seen other soviet mosins do just as well. it all depends on how they were maintained. my other mosin was hungarian, re-tooled in the 50s, and performed about the same.

[shakeshakeshake]

polish and finnish "mosins" were radically improved over the USSR variants

its common knowledge if you want a quality mosin and not a fucking stick that goes bang you try to get one of the non-ussr produced ones.

As OP factually stated USSR produced are shit, almost every piece is inferior in every-way to literally any of the great war rifles that saw service in WWII.

[[DoP] GLaDOStheFrog]

Which Mosins have you handled? Some are better than others, but all the ones I've held have been USSR-era M1891/30s.

[whereispoland?]

touche, though i disagree with you on that one. well-written and informative guide btw

[[DoP] GLaDOStheFrog]

@whereispoland? more than once, yes.

[Pestilence [KSK]]

If you can smuggle one into the second gayest country in the world then he prob can try it out.

[whereispoland?]

"The real-life Mosin has very bad iron sights, with a tiny, poorly-defined notch and an overly wide front post."

Have you ever handled one irl?

[CAPPY]

sweet as dude fun read

[Jono]

tfw no qt VC Mosin gf