Cool WWII Training Film- US vs German Automatic Firearms

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RPRNY

I understand why vets said it sounded like material ripping!
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Yep that's what my Dad said too! Also a good reason not to use the enemies weapons that they left behind. Guns like the MG42 and MP40 had distinctive sounds when fired and you just might draw friendly fire on your position if you were to use them!
 
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There's a fallacy underlying the video -- that the effectiveness of machine guns can be measured by their degree of rifle-like accuracy. Machine guns are not pinpoint weapons. Their purpose is suppressive fire, and area fire. And the German tactical doctrine was quite different from the American tactical doctrine. The video ignores the German tactical doctrine entirely. But I guess it's important for soldiers to go into battle having confidence in their weapons. That was the real purpose of the video.
 
AlexanderA said:
There's a fallacy underlying the video -- that the effectiveness of machine guns can be measured by their degree of rifle-like accuracy. Machine guns are not pinpoint weapons. Their purpose is suppressive fire, and area fire. And the German tactical doctrine was quite different from the American tactical doctrine. The video ignores the German tactical doctrine entirely. But I guess it's important for soldiers to go into battle having confidence in their weapons. That was the real purpose of the video.
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I think it's called trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear... I was impressed with the chaps firing the Thompson and the M3 grease gun. Unless the film was doctored - which is quite possible - hits on target with both exceeded my expectations quite a bit. And their fire control was quite admirable.

But no amount of film they could have shown me, no logic they could have applied would have convinced me that going anywhere near an MG42 was anything but suicidal. Brave boys indeed that did.
 
We had a friend of my son's bring some of his toys over during one of our dove hunts. He brought an MG42, a PPSH42, a PPSH44, an MP40, and a couple of FA AKs. Standing behind the MG42, it just sounded like a very fast machine gun, but if you went around the house to the front, it sounded like a very loud ripping. Both PPSHs were hard to shoot fast because of the recoil (7.62x25 Tokarev) unless you used short bursts. The MP40 was the easiest to handle, like pointing a garden hose.
 
I got to fire the MG42 when I was stationed in Germany during Desert Storm. It is nothing short of impressive. The amount of suppressive fire it can lay down is remarkable, as long as it can keep being fed. Our tactics against it during WWII revolved around attacking the emplacement during barrel changes, which were fairly frequent, but could be quickly done. The Germans countered it by pairing the guns whenever possible so one was always able to support the other.
The video showed it being fired from the tripod, which made for a very steady platform, but it was also frequently used from a bipod, like the older, smaller, and slower firing MG34. That's how I got to shoot it, prone with the bipod sandbagged to help stabilize it.
 
"...sound of that MG42..." 1200 RPM vs the 400 to 600 for a .30 Browning.
Hits on target with a Chopper or any SMG is about experience. You'd never shoot that may rounds in a burst though. A BREN was considered too accurate for an LMG. Got used on occasion to snipe. A Vickers(the water cooled MG) at very close range will put a round in every square yard in front of it.
 
Hmmmm......the MP 40 wasn't a "Schmiesser." That was an old WW2 intelligence error.
So I guess that's why it was in the film..it was a WW2 film.
The difference between the M3 Grease Gun and the Thompson was interesting to me.
 
Very interesting. Thanks for posting!

Clearly there is a bit of propaganda. The hit/miss ratio test was done with different shooters and apparently only one range session. Nevertheless there is something to be said for more accurate fire over high rates of suppression fire.

I cannot help but wonder if we have adopted the Nazi machine gun philosophy with our modern weapons with higher rates of fire. We certainly "lug around" more ammo but we have the supply lines to do it.
 
Tommygunn said:
Hmmmm......the MP 40 wasn't a "Schmiesser." That was an old WW2 intelligence error.
So I guess that's why it was in the film..it was a WW2 film.
The difference between the M3 Grease Gun and the Thompson was interesting to me.
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Me too. The M3 had a really low rate of fire.
 
I've seen that video before on some WW2 documentaries. In one in particular, a British tank platoon suffering heavy losses form ONE GERMAN Tank retreated back to a small village and took shelter behind some heavily constructed houses. The German tank started firing through the houses blowing the tanks up. :what:

Those German weapons were nothing short of incredible.
 
Interesting that the MG42 had no protection on the flanks by the other members of the German platoon.

I remember at Ft Benning doing the same thing. Assaulting an M60 in a bunker. One squad layed down suppressing fire while the other squad attacked the flank.

We had Miles gear on. Lost about 1/2 of the squads. Really learned about cover that day

Honestly, unless they pointed out the flank no one would have known where it was.
 
Tommygunn said:
Hmmmm......the MP 40 wasn't a "Schmiesser." That was an old WW2 intelligence error.
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The MP38 and MP40 were called "Schmeisser" due to their use of the straight magazine that Hugo Schmeisser held the patent for. He did develop two submachine guns that held significance during WWII.
1- The MP28 which was used by the German police. It was also copied by the Brits and used mostly by the Royal Navy and called the Lanchester SMG.
2- The MP43, which was released in 1944 and called the Sturmgewehr 44, or StG44. The "assault rifle" from which arguably everything after followed: a compact cartridge (non-pistol) in a compact, magazine-fed rifle.
 
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I have never fired any of those guns. Why didn't the guy shooting the MG42 on the tripod aim? The other three guys were sighting down their machine guns like you would a rifle. The MG42 was sitting down behind the gun but not looking down the barrel.
 
The Germans could use a machinegun with an incredibly high rate of fire while our side used ones that fired at a more moderate rate.
The distance between their ammo plants and the front line was at most a few hundred kilometers. Sometimes shorter.
The distance between our ammo plants and the front lines was over three thousand miles, a lot of it Atlantic Ocean.
 
Balrog said:
I have never fired any of those guns. Why didn't the guy shooting the MG42 on the tripod aim? The other three guys were sighting down their machine guns like you would a rifle. The MG42 was sitting down behind the gun but not looking down the barrel.
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That's how good they were!


:rofl:
 
Not to mention that the MG42 was a squad weapon. The infantry squad of 10 men was built around that machinegun so every tenth man had one of those things. The British and our belt feed machineguns were attached at the company level.
 
Back then I would have accepted their reassurance with some skepticism. Today after viewing that I up I would suspect conspiracy and cover-up. It was a neat film. Thank for sharing it.
 
Balrog said:
I have never fired any of those guns. Why didn't the guy shooting the MG42 on the tripod aim? The other three guys were sighting down their machine guns like you would a rifle. The MG42 was sitting down behind the gun but not looking down the barrel.
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That's a fairly elaborate tripod, with a built-in recoil-absorbing mechanism. That would have allowed the gunner to pre-sight the weapon, and fire bursts with some assurance that it would return to the original point of aim. Also, the cyclic rate was so high that it did not disturb the aim as much as a lower cyclic rate would have. I think that a slow cyclic rate causes more muzzle rise. (That said, the cyclic rate on the M3 Greasegun is so slow that the gunner can recover between bursts or even individual shots.)
 
Piggybacking on AlexanderA, Our own M60 used a tripod with a Transverse and Elevation (T&E) mechanism. It had graduated scales for windage and elevation. In the daytime, you picked your target area, wrote down the numbers, and could dial that target in day or night. You would set up a range card with several targets listed and shoot at the one directed. That setup was more of an area denial weapon rather than a point-target setup.
 
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