Posted on 10/28/2014 1:28:52 PM PDT by C19fan
During World War II, American G.I.s called the German MG42 machine gun “Hitler’s buzz saw” because of the way it cut down troops in swaths.
The Soviet Red Army called it “the linoleum ripper” because of the unique tearing sound it made—a result of its extremely high rate of fire. The Germans called the MG42 Hitlersäge or “Hitler’s bone saw”—and built infantry tactics around squads of men armed with the weapon.
Many military historians argue that the Maschinengewehr 42 was the best general-purpose machine gun ever. It fired up to 1,800 rounds per minute in some versions. That’s nearly twice as fast as any automatic weapon fielded by any army in the world at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
“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.
It is still around in the form of the .308 Win version called the MG3. Very, very reliable. You can see it in action in Afghanistan, or my favorite as German troops in an APC light up a couple of Serbs in a KFOR mission.
Comments self censored. You would like them.
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.
How many threads are you going to post about that stupid gun? The MG42 was a war loser not a war winner. An excessive rate of fire is a serious flaw in a single-barreled air-cooled weapon, as I said in the last piece of fluff posted for this gun.
The Germans tried to fire in three to five round bursts, same as our gunners, until a rush or assault.
Indeed they did. Did you read something into my comment that suggested otherwise?
I was just saying that a soldier who actually faced a German machine gun would probably not be particularly impressed by a training film telling them its bark was worse than its bite. Sorry if my post seemed to say other wise.
The MG 42 was a model for the design of the M-60 machine gun, which was the US Army primary machine gun post-WWII.
Barrels very short life. Saw some similar type at US army was fooling with at APG,Maryland in 1961 or 2. Also saw & heard Multi-barreled Vulcan for my first time and German heavy tanks from WW 2.
BOR makes mention of it in his book Killing Patton.
Not at all, my post was not on topic. I stand corrected.
My dad used to speak about this gun with awe.
Scared the heck outta everyone.
Slick thing about it was you could change the
hot barrel without touching it in seconds.
Germans would fire off burst about knee high..........
I believe German platoons had one gun for each squad. A lot more firepower than a Yank squad, even with the BAR.The quick barrel change you mentioned made the 42 even more deadly. Barrel changing the 1919 was a job of work for GIs. My uncle who fought in Italy and South of France told me the number of MG42S they’d face was very demoralizing.
It was hard keeping it fed at that rate of fire. Each gun had to have its own ammo truck parked beside the bunker.
I beg to differ. The Italians and Spanish still used the MG42 well into the 1980s and my men and I had an opportunity to shoot them several times under different situations. I was in the Marine Corps then and we had the M60; which in a general way was the grandson of the MG42.
The MG42 never broke, ate anything it was fed, was very accurate (especially unusual when you consider how old many of these guns were) and had a very good balance for a MG.
Yeah, it was heavy, but it was a lot better than the M60 we carried. The general opinion was that they lightened the M60 so much that parts were prone to cracking. And they seemed to crack all of the time. We kept an extra fully assembled bolt (not authorized) with us when we shot our MGs, because the M60 bolt lugs seemed to like crack.
I remember once, we shot our M60s about 800 rds per gun and by the end of the shoot, 2 of the 6 were broken due to parts breakage. in contrast, I asked my Italian counterpart how often their MG42 broke. He looked at me like it I was crazy. He told me that parts wore out, but always gave warning, so they had time to get new parts.
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