“The mere sound of an MG42 firing took a psychological toll on troops. The situation became so bad the U.S. Army produced a training film intended to boost the morale of U.S. soldiers terrified of the machine gun’s reputation.”
“The German gunner pays for his impressive rate of fire,” he intones. “But you get maximum accuracy with a rate of fire that isn’t just noise! The German gun is good—but ours is better. Their bark is worse than their bite.”
I suspect American soldiers who had faced the MG42 in combat would have had some rather, um, *colorful* replies to that training film.
Those GI’s saved the world.
Reminds me of a story I heard of a poster that went up at an 8th Airforce installation. It came from Boeing, had a B-17 on it a an FW-190 coming in guns blazing. In bold letters it read “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” This when the 8th was without fighter escort and regularly taking 10% losses and more, per mission.
Every man in the squadron reportedly signed the poster and sent it back to Boeing.
The Germans tried to fire in three to five round bursts, same as our gunners, until a rush or assault.