So....

I was watching an old 'QI' last night.....
(For those of you NOT in the UK....This is a humorous quiz program...."Quite Interesting"....Sometimes full of bizarre information, and at other times it shows that 'facts' that you'd always known to be true are complete rubbish.)

One of the questions last night was along the lines of..."Why would a hoplophobe be frightened of a Sturmgewehr with a Krummlauf."

Seeing as I had no idea as to the meaning of hoplophobe..(someone who has a fear of firearms, apparently)....I was stumped straight away....Though I'm sure there'll be quite a number of you that already know what a Sturmgewehr is....Have to admit that again that had me foxed, though really I should have perhaps known that bit.  (An assault rifle)

But the Krummlauf ?....... A curved barrel for shooting 'round corners'.

Didn't these barrels ever explode ?

I did a quick bit of checking and was 'informed' that
a)...the barrels tended to wear out rather quickly.....and had to be replaced on a regular basis.
b)...the 'slug' tended to shatter in the barrel and come out more like a small shotgun blast, without a huge amount of accuracy.

Well, b) makes a bit of sense to Mr Muppet here..but didn't the barrels ever undergo catastrophic failure and injure the gunner ?.....Or is this a wind up ?

Cheers - Phil.

According to my "big book of shooty bangy things", the Krummerlauf was also used by tank crews through pistol ports to counter swarming Russian infantry. It also says that the device successively leaked gas, thus reduced pressure on the device, but halved the muzzle velocity.   

Been coming across references to this for decades now, so what I know (or think I know!) has been cobbled together from bit and pieces.

It's for real but like most Late War Wunderwaffe it was less effective than hoped.

It was designed for streetfighting, literally for shooting round corners and for crews of armoured vehicles (the Elefant springs to mind) with dead zones that couldn't be cleared by the vehicles machine-guns.

I believe it was produced primarily for the Sturmgewehr 44.

Of course this may all turn out to be the sort of misinformation so beloved of QI!

Quote from: fsn on 15 December 2013, 05:01:39 PM
According to my "big book of shooty bangy things", the Krummerlauf was also used by tank crews through pistol ports to counter swarming Russian infantry. It also says that the device successively leaked gas, thus reduced pressure on the device, but halved the muzzle velocity.   

Ahhh...Right....The 'leaking gas' bit makes sense, so it would reduce the risk of 'gas pressure' blowing up the end of the Krummlauf...?
And I think I spotted somewhere that certain tanks had 'blind spots' so the the guys in the tank could use these things but effectively stay 'in cover'.....Ditto hiding down in a trench.

I suppose that was a reasonable idea....But they don't sound as though they were (would have been) particularly effective ?
Thanks Both
Cheers - Phil.

Wasn't very effective apparently. The US revisited the idea after their tanks were swamped by Chinese infantry in Korea.

I seem to remember the US trying out something similar in Afghanistan. Can't remember what it was called nor how effective it was though ... I am the Alan Davies of the Pendraken Forum

The big screen behind Ithoriel shows Alan Davies in BIG letters......Klaxons blare out and Ithoriel loses 10 points.
Cheers - Phil.

 

Didn't that show also have a photo of the CornerShot?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CornerShot

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Quote from: Techno on 15 December 2013, 04:39:36 PM

a)...the barrels tended to wear out rather quickly.....and had to be replaced on a regular basis.

I saw a documentary on this not so long ago, and i think they stated that they only lasted 300 or so shots.

Quote from: Russell Phillips on 15 December 2013, 08:54:24 PM
Didn't that show also have a photo of the CornerShot ?

If it wasn't exactly that one Russell.....There was something very very similar.
(Or is that the only modern 'version' of a shooting around a corner gun ?)

Quote from: petercooman on 15 December 2013, 09:42:27 PM
I saw a documentary on this not so long ago, and i think they stated that they only lasted 300 or so shots.

From what I understand Peter (Hah !...next to nothing ).....It depended on how angled the barrel was....(4 or so variants ?)
I think I read that some (the sharpest angled) would only last around 30 shots.
Don't know how true that is though.

Cheers - Phil.

Apparently the Israli's have improved on this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3324893.stm