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.
Comparing the M60 to anything, the other gun will be better. I carried one in Vietnam and it was a failure-prone, least-bidder piece of trash. The enemy guns worked better, which is saying something.
The MG42 has too high a rate of fire. Too much ammo burned, too dense a pattern, crazy barrel heating. No use at all for defensive fires.
The M240G is a far better gun - very happy our Corps got it.