Posted on 10/17/2014 7:08:11 AM PDT by C19fan
Last year, the German armed forces announced they would purchase Heckler and Koch’s MG-5 machine gun to finally replace a World War II-era weapon. The new machine gun should put the Bundeswehr’s existing weapons to shame—and make up for past failures.
“Its main feature is that it is much more accurate than its predecessor,” German army colonel Christian Brandes told U.S. Army reporters at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona during testing of the new gun on Oct. 14.
The predecessor Brandes was referring to is the MG-3. That aging weapon is essentially just an upgrade of a machine gun Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht started using in 1942. The MG-5 will replace the MG-3 as well as some of the German army’s less aged, but somewhat inadequate, MG-4s.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
I shot the Danish version of the MG-42 long ago. It was an exact copy in 7.62NATO. For a demo, they put the gun on the ground, on a bipod, and buried the ammo belt in dirt, sticks and pebbles out to the side. Then a Dane leaned over and fired the MG one-handed, on the ground. The gun ate the ammo without jamming. Then they did the same trick with another Dane standing on the end of the ammo belt, on the ground. The other guy leaned over again to pull the trigger. The gun dragged itself over to the ammo belt, shooting. I was impressed.
The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, as they say.
The Germans lost, didn't they?
Seems to me that the FN-MAG (M240) and the Browning M1919 (and the Lewis) were far more successful than the MG42 and its clones in terms of armies winning wars.
The feed tray covers were interchangeable.
WW II TF on the old model at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQwRjZByaok
We didn't win in Vietnam. Does that reflect on the quality of our equipment?
I think the soldiers and logistics probably have a little something to do with victory as well.
The WWII German Tiger tank was one bad a$$ machine, but they still lost.
There is no doubt that the Germans had much better weapons than the Allies during the war. Their tanks, machine guns, and anti-tank weapons were vastly superior to what the US army had.
However, their supreme commander negated their advantages through poor Geo-political decisions. If he had not invaded Russia, but concentrated on beating the UK, he could have owned Europe.
I’m an MG-42, M-60 guy myself.
I haven’t heard it called the pig gun in a long time
“were far more successful than the MG42 and its clones in terms of armies winning.” wars”.................................... Especially when thousands more were produced and thousands more troops had them?
Superior weapons don't win wars. Superior fighters or numbers of fighters do.
The MG42 was superior in every measurable way to the the M1919, just as the Panther tank was superior to the Sherman. And if the Germans would have had a Panther for every T-34 and M4 Sherman that was produced, I'm not sure they would have lost.
Hitler was their Robert Macnamarra
They were winning until they invaded the USSR and declared war on the U.S..
The best military in the world cant win with stupid people in charge.
If the Germans stationed all the manpower into France and Italy that they wasted in Russia, the Allies might never have invaded either country. Likely, they might have just waited for the Atomic bomb to be developed, then that would have been that.
“I haven’t heard it called the pig gun in a long time”
How did it get the name?
/bingo
Hitler didn’t understand warfare from either a strategic or a tactical sense.
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