As I pointed out at the top of this page, it's more likely the US would have gone ahead with their own designs in 1915 rather than go with British or French equipment. In some cases this would make little difference. In others it might help and still in some might even hurt things.pugsville wrote: ↑17 Nov 2019, 09:53The Equipping of US troops cannot just be moved linearly with the entry Date. US troops were equipped with french and British weapons, tanks, artillery, machine guns, aircraft. I do not have the figures, by I would suggest the French and British woudl have struggled to equip the US earlier and the US entry would not have boasted British and French production. As they was conflict between equipping and supplying the US troops and entente forces. For instance the US entry reduced that amount of shipping available for British use by about 1 million tons. That shipping the US troops and supplying them would impact French and British resources and production.
Even something as basic as rifles. The US were unable to equip there troops with their prepared rifle and relied heavily on lines the British had paid for in the US to make the pattern 14. Now these lines took a lot of effort to be brought up to speed by the British work that was going on anyway.The US with it''s mammoth need for rifles would take these lines over sooner, and may have worked out the wrinkles of mass production sooner, but it would still take time. In the historical time frame the US was only able to equip it's large army with rifles because it could take over these lines which were already gone through the development process. So this development which went on regardless of US entry woudl still need to be done and simply moving the date of US entry does not mean n months after entry into the war X number of rifles, as they did N months after their historical entry. They woudl have less how much less??????
And the French railway lines, a massive US force is going to require logistical support. Can millions more men be supported without over loading these railway lines, ports etc? There MAY (I I'm not saying there are, I don't know enough out the logistics here) The Limitation may not be US manpower, shipping, railways, ports, rifles, all these need to support the larger US Army. I don;lt think you can just take the raw manpower numbers and extrapolate freely,
In artillery, the US M1902/3/5 3" gun and M 1906 4.7" gun were adequate field pieces. They could have used older 3.2" M1897's as well. The US Army also had small numbers of heavier pieces like the M1908 6" howitzer.
I think the Colt M1895 "potato digger" machinegun would have been adequate, if just. The M1909 was another possibility. This was a French Hotchkiss design, but wasn't popular with the US troops due to loading issues and several fragile parts like the firing pin. They often called it the "daylight" gun (a disparagement that you could only use it when you could see what you were doing).
The M1903 Springfield would have almost certainly been the issue rifle.
On a different note, the Mexican Revolution was still going on at that point, and the problems on the US border like raids into border towns by Pancho Villa, would have still forced US action. This could have been a distraction in getting troops deployed. On the other hand, the Zimmermann note might have just pushed a US already in the European war to just invade Mexico and take control of the country.