Posted on 09/04/2009 8:26:30 PM PDT by tired1
It seems to me that the '34 was about as good as it gets. The cyclic rate was perhaps too high.
Why go through the expense of improving on the wheel? Could not this weapon be adopted to a US or NATO round and put to use?
Critiques of this weapon system would be welcome, thanks.
As a gunsmith, and old end-user of man portable MG’s, I would guess that the amount of machining required was one drawback. Our M-60 did incorporate some features of those designs.
It was basically adapted with some modification as the M60 and is still in use with the original 8MM Mauser round in the former Yugoslavia. The MG42 to my knowledge used more stamped parts and was easier to manufacture than the MG34.
The Bundeswehr uses a 7.62 NATO version of it. Rheinmetall MG 3.
Too many rounds wasted to get to the target.
the M-60 machine gun was a direct ripoff of the MG ‘42 design with a lower cyclic rate....
If I remember correctly, the M60 machine gun was modeled after the MG-42 (somewhat anyway). It seemed to have some reliability problems, but I don’t recall the details. I can remember having a runaway gun more than once during live fire exercises.
Anyway, the US military went back to a Browning design with the M240G AKA MAG-58 that's been around for fifty years already in Euro countries. It's the squad LMG we should have been using all these years instead of the M-60.
However, the new limited use M-60E4 is a huge upgrade over the M-60E3.
Yeah, what everybody else said. Additionally, the feed pall (sp?) on the M-60 was not robust enough to pull the belt out of the can. That’s why you see a c-ration can on the ammo can mount on the side of the gun. The M-60 has had some work done on it and is now very reliable and does not suffer from the same overheating problems it did 40 years ago. Don’t know much about the M-240-G the kids today use.
Yeah, what everybody else said. Additionally, the feed pall (sp?) on the M-60 was not robust enough to pull the belt out of the can. That’s why you see a c-ration can on the ammo can mount on the side of the gun. The M-60 has had some work done on it and is now very reliable and does not suffer from the same overheating problems it did 40 years ago. Don’t know much about the M-240-G the kids today use.
The MG42, updated, is still in service, as the MG3 in Germany, and in other countries as well, so obviously it has less wrong with it.
I’ve never operated either of them (or any belt-fed weapon for that matter), but having read some German accounts of their war production (in German), the Mg34 evolved into the ‘42 in much the same way that our Thompson sub-gun was supplanted by the M3 “grease gun” — and for the exact same reasons.
The MG34 had a LOT of manual machining involved in making one. The tolerances were (relatively) tight for a full auto weapon. In short, the MG34 was everything you’d expect from a German weapon design: finely crafted, expensive, superb workmanship, tight, excellent functionality.
NB the word “expensive.”
After the Nazi war machine spooled up to take everyone in Europe and they looked eastward at Russia, it was abundantly clear that they simply could never make enough of the MG34 with the loving craftsmanship they were using.
The MG42, like our wartime production, opened up tolerances, went to stamped steel where ever possible, reduced man-hours per weapon, reduced production costs per weapon, etc. With steel stamping, you can multiply the output of a couple of machinists with the press - the machinists make the dies, and the stamp or press cranks out parts at the hands of untrained workers.
In that day, the best production machining you could manage was a turret lathe, or quick-change tooling on mills, etc. There was nothing remotely like today’s CNC, where you could conceivably line up a bunch of milling centers on a production floor, load every one of them with the necessary CNC program and tell a bunch of workers with very limited training (NOT machinists, but machine operators) to simply keep loading billets of steel or aluminum into the machines and take the results out and send it on down the line.
We found the same things with the Thompson, (among other weapons) - and this led first to the cost reduction on the military issue variant of the Tommy gun, and then the design and fielding of the M3 Grease Gun, which was almost entirely stamped steel - crude to the point that there wasn’t even a bolt handle, but it worked and it fired .45 ACP ammo.
The Germans had a penchant for pursuing high levels of craftsmanship in their weapons. Today, we enjoy some of the fruits of their labors - eg, if you want to build a very nice bolt action rifle, there are worse places you can start than a wartime Mauser 98 action. They’re incredibly strong, versatile actions that will hold up under all but the most outlandish modern magnum loads. It wasn’t until very late in the war before the Nazis started taking shortcuts on the Mauser production quality. Meanwhile, they were being overrun by Russians with weapons of much inferior quality.
As Joe Stalin like to put it: “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
In flashback mode are we.
?
The MG34 was a Mercedes of a weapon. Tight tolerances, excellent craftsmanship, good finish. But you’re not going to produce a half-million Mercedes a year.
The MG42 was a Volkswagen. Much less fancy, much more amenable to mass production, but still a robust, solid, sound design that’s cruising around nearly seventy years later (in the form of the MG3).
Compare that to something like the AK-47 post-war, which I guess would be a Volkswagen as built by Lada...an incredibly simple, solid, and robust design built with the quality you’d expect from underpaid vodka-swilling Communist assembly-line workers. And yet the damn thing always works.
}:-)4
Consider the following three classes:
1. Light machineguns like the BAR, the Chauchaut, the Bren, or the FG-42 (Fallshirmjager) used by the german airborne. 250 to 500 rpm, range to 800 meters, weight 8 to 20 lbs. Tactically these are used to suppress enemy fire to permit offensive maneuver.
2. Medium water cooled machineguns like the Maxim, Vickers, or Browning M1919 .30 cal, the M-60, or the modern MAG M-240, rate of fire 600 to 800 rpm, weight 20 to 35 lbs, range to 1400 meters. Tactically these are used to put final protective lines across in front of your position to stop assaults.
3 Heavy machineguns like the M-2 .50 Browning, or the 12.7X109mm Russian. weight 88 to 100 lbs, range to 6000 meters. Tactically these are used for long range suppression, and antiaircraft fire.
MG-34 and MG-42 were General purpose machineguns, intended to use a higher rate of fire to extend the range, yet still be mobile enough to permit a single man to operate them. Not a bad idea for the small forces permitted to the Weimar republic, given that they were not permitted proper water cooled machineguns. (they hadn’t played nice with the ones they had in WWI). In response that ban the German engineers developed the quick change barrel, now widely copied.
The GPMG had a firepower advantage over forces equipped with light machineguns, a range and mobility advantage over forces equipped with medium machine guns, and a mobility advantage over forces equipped with heavy machine guns. Not bad at all.
However they could be outmaneuvered by forces with light machine guns (and rotinely were!) and were outranged by forces with heavy machineguns (and routinely were). They could not assault through proper water cooled machinegun final protective lines. The Germans generally needed two GPMG Final protective lines (firing less than waist high across the front of your position) because one was generally changing barrels).
The US infantry medal citations have a lot of descriptions of brave men who decided to take out a german machine gun position while it was changing an over heated barrel. It was possible, but very hazardous because the other men in the position were also armed.
The MG-34 was designed for the 100,000 man Reichwehr. It was intended as a universal MG, able to be used in a ball mount, in an aircraft, as a light(ish) medium or almost heavy machinegun. The MG-42 in addition to being easier to make, made no pretense to being used in aircraft or in a ballmount. Both used quick change barrels, an idea developed for the MG-34 to cut weight, and get around Versailles treaty restrictions. The MG-42 came along when those restrictions didn’t matter any more, but the mobility argument was still effective.
Thanks, couldn’t remember and too lazy to look it up.
German Army infantry tactics centered around the LMG. The MG was viewed as a long range shotgun that delivered a helluva lot of 7.92 rounds into a LOOOONG eliptically shaped beaten zone, enabling the MG crews squad mates (who acted as ammo bearers) to manuever and overrun the enemy on the offensive or for them to protect the MG crew’s blindspots on the defenseive.
The extent to which the Germans believed in this idea is reflected in the fact that the MG 42’s cyclic rate was 1200 rpm as opposed to the MG 34’s 850 or so.
MG 42 had the best and quickest barrel change in the business. It had to, given that high rate of fire.
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