which weapon is in general more useful in cqb? i always thought its smg and that the handgun is an emergency weapon but many times i've seen handgun being used instead of smg's.

Unless I am crawling down an air duct or in a earthen tunnel (in which case I would carry a .45acp with hollowpoints), I would carry an minimum firepower of a M-4 carbine. Stock retracted of course.

Check Six

 

Rocky

In fact I would throw a grenade or tear gas down the tunnel!

Check Six

 

Rocky

which weapon is in general more useful in cqb? i always thought its smg and that the handgun is an emergency weapon but many times i've seen handgun being used instead of smg's.

A long gun is pretty much always preferable in CQB (unusual circumstances aside), even one chambered for pistol caliber ammunition.  Like the other replies, I'd rather have an M4 with a pistol as secondary.  I'd take a decent SMG (MP-5 comes to mind) with a pistol as secondary and feel acceptably armed in most cases.  In a choice between a pistol or an SMG, I'd take the SMG.  But, sometimes a pistol is all you've got, or sometimes the alternative is something really cumbersome like a full length DMR or SAW or whatever . . .

For CQB I think the Soviets had it sussed with their PPSH41(?), with the 71 round drum magazine, and 7.62x25mm pistol round, with its superior penetration to 9mm, and the weapons high rate of fire combined wih a decent weight, making it controllable.

 

I really don't know why the Soviets replaced the 7.62x25mm round with that poxy 9x18mm round.

 

I am a very big fan of the bayonet anyway, but I think it also to be an important asset in CQB.  If anything, it prevents people trying to grab for your weapons muzzle in confined spaces melee, I would imagine.

 

I would always choose a submachine gun over a pistol in CQB situations.  Subguns are simply much more accurate and have better range than pistols.  While it is true that at ranges of five meters or less pistols are just as accurate as subguns, there are moments when you need weapons with greater range.  I always carry a Colt Commando in 5.56 caliber, but a couple of the guys on my team carry a twelve gauge shotgun, which is an extremely lethal CQB weapon.  Grenades and bayonets are great CQB weapons, but only in military situations. 

I don't think having a go at blaggers with shotguns is seen as appropriate in the UK, I think they are just use for breaching here.

 

There is a good book about CO19 (SO19 at the time), where it seemed to be frowned upon.

 

Sorry, just to add that the book is called, "The Good Guys Wear Black", and I would well reccomend it.

 

Over here, the tactical shotgun has a definite association with law enforcement.  For years the shotgun was the firepower step up from the handgun for the vast majority of American law enforcement officers, and it remains popular to this day in that field.

Military use is pretty much restricted to breaching these days (and military police in their law enforcement capacity), though in the past it has seen combat use when engagements tended to be close quarters affairs (jungle, trench raiding, etc.).  Buckshot at CQB ranges gives the shotgun a peculiarly powerful level of lethality, but this is undermined these days by body armor and the fact that I can get most of the lethality from a 5.56mm gun firing controlled pairs and still transition to 1-300 meter shots with no problems, whereas the shotgun lacks the legs for that sort of thing on the battlefield.