Hi all
I have just been watching band of brothers and was wondering how were the personal weapons distrubuted were they chosen by the soldiers or were they just handed out?

They would not have been handed out. There was a pattern based on the type of unit it was with various small arms issued. As in armor with tanks and artillery...) I don't know specifics but I'm sure there will be more than enough responses that will give you chapter and verse. I know there are riflemen with M-1 Garands and automatic riflemen with the BAR. Machine gunners with the 30 calibre. A lot of NCO's carried the thompson and officers generally seemed to carry the carbine and 45 pistol. I am sure during combat other weapons and weapon "upgrades" occured

As Blaster points out, weapons and equipment were distributed based on an organizational table -- a list of personnel, equipment and vehicles -- which told who got what.

Most riflemen carried the M1 Garand rifle. NCOs often carried a Thompson SMG. Officers and heavy weapon crewmen were issued .45 pistols or the M1 carbine. Each platoon also had light machine guns -- in the 101st at the time of D-Day, these were M1919A4 machine guns, usually crewed by a gunner, assistant gunner and a couple ammo carriers. As far as I can tell, paratoopers did not get BARs until later in the war.

Granted, once troops were in combat, they would try to "upgrade" their weapons. For instance, the M1 carbine was pitifully underpowered -- it fired a .30 caliber pistol round. Troops originally issued the carbine would sometimes ditch it when they could pick up a Garand from a casualty. Note in BoB how Winters lost his weapon on the jump, later picked up a Mauser from a dead German, then dropped the Mauser when he got a M1 Garand off a U.S. casualty.

Here's a good site for more info on what the real 506th PIR carried in WWII: http://www.101airborneww2.com/equipment.html Check out the load list for the individual paratrooper, as well as the ammo loads. Also note that these loads were the MINIMUM carried -- if extra stuff was available and the troops felt that they could carry it, they'd take it.

Here's a great list of reference books you may want to try to find at your library or hobby shop: http://www.usarmymodels.com/figurereferences.html George Forty's book, "The US Army Handbook 1941-1945," has organizational tables for just about every type of Army unit in World War II. Note however, that these tables were continually being updated and changed, so a TOE (table of organization and equipment) from say November 1943 might be completely revised by a TOE dated June 1944.

Hollowpoint,

how popular was it actually for allied/american soldiers to pick up and use German equipment ? (particularly weapons like the MG 42 and StuG 44

As far as I know the Germans did it quite lot, partially because of lack of supüplies, but also because of the quality of certain weapons... in some cases they either converted the weapons, or started producing ammo for it, at least according to some sources that I saw a few years ago (the PPsH is an example).

I have seen several photos of American soldiers carrying captured German weapons, so it certainly did happen. Pistols were particularly popular among the GIs, followed by SMGs, like the MP40. I imagine that a few troops picked up heavier weapons at times, but probably dropped them when they ran out of ammo, when they got tired of hauling the extra weight or when they discovered that the sound of German weapons tended to attract friendly fire.

That last point is a biggie -- an MG42 has a considerably different sound than a M1919A4 .30 caliber machine gun (the rate of fire and rythm of fire were very different). For understandable reasons, fire tended to be directed to taking out enemy machine guns. Not that the Americans didn't like the MG42 -- the U.S. M60 machine gun was a direct decendant of the MG42.

Thanks guys thats eally helpful!!!!!