Editing American WWII Military Equipment (section)

===Rifles and SMGs===
* '''M1 Garand''': Described by Patton as "The greatest battle implement ever devised," it was the best infantry rifle in the whole damn war, not having the janky problems of emergency build SVTs, the bolt action inferiority of pretty much everything else, and the logistics line complicating STG with its separate caliber at a time with no fuel to go around. The Americans had the advantage of adopting it well before WWII and figuring out all the teething problems with gas-operated rifles that everyone else was having. It feeds from an eight-round en-bloc clip, making it extremely fast to reload in the heat of battle. It makes a distinctive PING! when empty, which many soldiers believed might give away their position to the enemy, but realistically, the normal sound of battle would make such a sound hardly audible.
* '''Springfield Model 1903''': it was and still is a solid bolt action rifle, but it was clearly on the way out of the line of battle. Did well in the early war at the Pacific before the Garands got sent out at numbers; after that, it served as an excellent sniper rifle and with the rifle grenadiers before the Garands got their rifle grenade launchers.
* '''M1 Carbine''': the Carbine was not terrible, but the marines often complained it had insufficient stopping power, though the M1 Carbine had always been intended as a backup weapon for support troops, not a frontline weapon. It worked best in close combat for units that were not expecting infantry combat but still needed something better than a pistol. The M2 Carbine with automatic fire and M3 with night vision (variant of M2) paved the way for assault rifles along with the Garand's upgrade/replacement M14 battle rifle. The M1 and the M2/M3 approximately bridged the gap between rifles and submachine guns. They can be considered as something of a predecessor for the Personal Defense Weapon concept for when SMGs are too weak but Assault Rifles are too big.
* '''Johnson Model 1941''': while it was adopted concurrently with the Garand, it was used almost exclusively by US Marine paratroopers. On the whole it operated almost the same as the M1 Garand, with a few notable differences; it has a ten round capacity and it takes stripper clips instead of en-blocs. The army refused to adopt it fully due to the inability to mount a bayonet and that the Garand was more mechanically reliable. It's more of a design oddity than anything else, as its rotating bolt would later be adopted into the Armalite AR-10 battle rifle and its numerous, numerous descendants.
* '''M1917 Enfield''': A leftover from WWI, the M1917 Enfield was another bolt-action rifle that was used mainly with rear line troops or given away in lend-lease. It could hold one extra round as the Enfield was originally designed for rimmed .303 British cartridges, which took up more space than .30-06.
* '''M1 Thompson''': The famous Thompson SMG adapted and simplified for military service. It was heavy, but a reliable weapon provided it wasn't equipped with a drum magazine (the M1, which also substituted the vertical foregrip of the original "Tommy Gun" with a simple plank, couldn't fit drum mags anyway). Not the match of the sheer firepower of the PPSh, but manufacturing and magazines were significantly superior. Not quite as controllable as the MP40, but fired faster. It's biggest problem though was that it was expensive, for something that spat bullet's about the same as a cheaper piece of junk. Part of that was because of the overcomplicated "Blish-lock" mechanism that didn't actually work and in practice was just a straight blowback gun, which is not ideal in a caliber like .45 ACP. The replacement M3 Grease Gun was a cheap and simple gun used by tankers and other crew-served far longer than it.
* '''M2 Hyde''': The Thompson's original replacement plan, the Hyde was actually found to be superior to the Tommy Gun in all aspects and was cheaper to boot. Unfortunately for the M2, the Grease Gun was so cheap and fast that the M2 order got cancelled after only 400 were made. Speaking of the M3 Grease Gun...
* '''M3 Grease Gun''': As soon as the war started, the demand for SMGs outstripped Auto-Ordnance's ability to make enough Thompsons. Looking to replace it with a simpler, cheaper gun anyways, they eventually settled on the M3 Grease Gun after the Hyde got out-economied. Borrowing from the Sten gun, its little more than a tube of stamped steel with a folding stock; many models didn't even have a charging handle, you just stuck your finger in the bolt. Despite the extreme lack of ergonomics, it was reliable, lighter, and more controllable than the Thompson.
* '''M55 Reising''': The marines got stuck with this SMG early in the war due to early logistics issues. It was in theory superior to the M1 Thompson, as it was a closed bolt gun with more accurate fire, and a folding stock for easy storage. It had two main problems though; the charging hand was located inside the fore, so you could accidentally break your finger if it slipped inside or it would get dirt inside. Even worse than that, all Reisings were hand-fitted but someone had the bright idea to dissamble them all for transport, leading to countless mismatched parts that would cause the guns to malfunction. In the end the Marines dumped their guns in the water and waited for replacements to arrive. After the Marines were able to foist them off, the guns were used for Lend Lease aid and by stateside police and guard units, and was widely acquired post war by police departments. In these cases with access to better maintenance the guns were pretty good.
* '''United Defense M42''': An oddball gun that was mainly used in lend-lease or given to partisans. The most unique feature was its magazine; two stick mags were welded together as standard, making it the first gun to use the "Jungle Mag" configuration seen later in the Cold War.