Who had the best machine guns? The Nazis or America? MOVIE

[WardenWolf]

The MG42's rate of fire came with a significant drawback: you could not fire it for as long periods without burning through significant ammo as well as heating the barrel up enough to fry bacon on. Instead of being able to sweep an area, it had to fire short bursts in a more limited arc. In that sense, its bark really was worse than its bite. The logistics problems created by its rate of fire actually reduced its effectiveness compared to its slower-firing cousins.

 

[Beaux Nehr]

The Americans had much better planes. The P-47 and P-51 could hold their own against the Bf-019 and the FW-190 plus the American planes had a much longer range to bring the fight to Germany. Bombers; the Germans never had a bomber that could equal the B-17 and B-24. The V-1's and V-2's were much less effective than bombers.

The German leadership and oil supply sucked, that is why they lost the war.

Ranb

German technology when it came to aerospace forging and lightweight airframes was far, far superior.

The allies still used bolted together steel planes, while the germans were churning out lightweight airframes.

 

[VAPOPO]

WW Yes and no the quick change barrel of the MG 42 pretty much negates the high rate of fire and overheating, a skilled MG crew can change that barrel out in seconds. With the heavy tripod system and interlocking fields of fire the MG 42/ MG3 was and is ferocious. Most people dont realise that our current GPMG is actually a modernised 1919 derived from the Mag 58 so in a way we have come full circle since WW2 and are basicly back where we started. I also believe that the later incarnations of the M60 are as reliable and much lighter than the 240 series that replaced them.

 

[dprice3844444]

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/WW2_US_Army_45_Multiple_Rocket_Launcher_Article

The Germans had better rockets ( oops, the US didn't have any rockets).

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/rock3.htm

 

[Ian]

Actually, the M240 traces its development back to the BAR. Other than riveted construction and being belt fed, it has nothing in common with the 1919.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

One thing that gets overlooked on the diff in rate of fire between the German MG42 (1200 rpm) and the American M1919 (500 rpm) is that the Germans had a very short supply line. US ammo had to cross the Atlantic. When you have a long supply line, and resupply might be a problem time to time, you tend to want to conserve ammo.

The aircraft mounted versions of the M1919 were rated at 1200 to 1500 rpm, so it is not like they could not have produced a ground version of the M1919 to match the MG42.

 

[Billy Shears]

The aircraft mounted versions of the M1919 were rated at 1200 to 1500 rpm, so it is not like they could not have produced a ground version of the M1919 to match the MG42.

That wouldn't have been easy to do without a pretty significant redesign of the weapon. The high rate of fire was achieved with the aircraft versions chiefly by lightening the barrel (they may have lightened the bolt as well; I'm not sure). This was fine for an aircraft gun carrying no more than 200-400 rounds per sortie, all of which would be fired in relatively short bursts, and with the speed of the aircraft through the air providing a constant, cooling airflow. For a ground gun, however, the lighter barrel would have made it overheat faster, making a quick barrel change capability, which the M1919 didn't have, an absolute necessity.

 

[Billy Shears]

Instead of being able to sweep an area, it had to fire short bursts in a more limited arc.

Machine gunners don't generally sweep the gun back and forth like you see in the movies. They set it up on a tripod, make a range card defining the left and right limits of fire, and use a traversing wheel to dial in where it's aimed, adjusting the wheel to shift fire as needed. Also, given that machine guns are usually set to shoot at an area hundreds of yards away, it only takes a slight adjustment to the traversing wheel to shift fire by tens of meters. Thus, at any given moment, the gun is concentrating its fire on a specific area (the beaten zone), not sweeping back and forth in a wide arc. The aim is to set the gun up so that its field of fire overlaps with that of other guns, making it difficult if not impossible to for enemy soldiers to make it through the hail of lead these interlocking fields of fire create.

 

[Jaymo]

Funny that people still think the .30-06 is more powerful than the 7.92x57. It's not.
American commercial loadings are, but the European military loadings give up nothing to the 06.

The idea of the Garand being the best infantry rifle of the war is very debatable, also. There were a LOT of failures until the armorers started radiusing the op rods.
The #4 Mk1 SMLE was reliable and accurate to a fault, and was a very quick cycling bolt action.
The Brits were trained in rapid firing the Smelly. The .303 rifle ammo was about 300 fps slower than the 06, but did tremendous damage with it's Mk 7 ammo.
The .303 MG ammo gave up nothing in power to the 06.
We didn't win the war because of better weaponry. We won because of manufacturing capability (Something our dear leaders should keep in mind) and because Hitler got the Wehrmacht bogged down in the USSR/fighting 2 fronts.
Germany showed FAR more innovation in military weaponry/technology then we did.

Rather funny, how the military unceremoniously dumped the M60 due to jamming every 800 or so rounds, but kept the POS jammamatic 16 which had and has a higher failure rate.
I know all the Jammamatic 16 fanboys are going to get their drawers in a bunch over that, but the fact remains that no other rifle needs as frequent cleaning/lubing and/or magic coatings to keep it running. Yes, the jammamatic 16 is better than it used to be, but it's still hobbled by it's inferior gas system that poops where it eats.
BTW, I used to be a Jammamatic 16 fanboy. Then I owned an AR. Flame away.
Ma Deuce is still the shizzle, though.

 

[Billy Shears]

Rather funny, how the military unceremoniously dumped the M60 due to jamming every 800 or so rounds, but kept the POS jammamatic 16 which had and has a higher failure rate.
I know all the Jammamatic 16 fanboys are going to get their drawers in a bunch over that, but the fact remains that no other rifle needs as frequent cleaning/lubing and/or magic coatings to keep it running. Yes, the jammamatic 16 is better than it used to be, but it's still hobbled by it's inferior gas system that poops where it eats.

Funny, I carried an M16 and then an M4 in the army, as an infantryman (so it was hardly a weapon that seldom got fired) and I never had a single jam out of either one that wasn't attributable to a bad magazine.

There's nothing wrong with the M16's gas system. And it really doesn't require that much extra cleaning to keep it running. Like any system, direct impingement has its advantages and disadvantages. Its advantages are lighter weight and fewer moving parts, and greater inherent accuracy since there's no piston to interfere with barrel harmonics. The disadvantages are that it needs a little more cleaning.

My experience was the opposite of yours. When I went through basic training, I wanted to see the M16 replaced. After my tour was over, I wouldn't have traded it for anything else.

 

[Zoogster]

The aircraft mounted versions of the M1919 were rated at 1200 to 1500 rpm, so it is not like they could not have produced a ground version of the M1919 to match the MG42.

They did, sorta. In the Pacific.


They made use of some spare AN/M2 variants from aircraft and converted them. Mel Grevich made the ones with BAR bipod, Garand stocks, sights, and aluminum box magazines that would go on to be used in Iwo Jima. They had a rate of fire around 1300 RPM.
The name given to them by the soldiers at the time was "Stinger".

This appears to be a good documentation of some of the uses of this weapon:
http://www.jcs-group.com/military/war1941firearms/stinger.html


One soldier that won the Medal of Honor, Tony Stein, had just such a gun.

Here is a couple pictures of such weapons on the web:

It had no way to change out the barrel, so once it overheated... From what I can gather (though some articles seem to give the wrong info on various aspects of the gun) they had around 100 rounds of linked ammo.
These were full power rifle rounds. At over 21 rounds a second. Stein supposedly fired his in 20 round bursts, so about one second of fire at a time.

 

[PoserHoser]

^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thats what i love about guns you learn something new every day

 

[PTMCCAIN]

Very interesting, thanks for posting those pics.

 

[Jeff White]

Rather funny, how the military unceremoniously dumped the M60 due to jamming every 800 or so rounds, but kept the POS jammamatic 16 which had and has a higher failure rate.

I don't know what your personal experience with the M60 was, but I suspect it's not much.

I used the M60 from the time I enlisted in the Army in 1974 until it was replaced by the M240. It was a very poor design, a bastardization of what someone considered the best features of several different machine guns.

The gas system would disassemble itself from the vibration of firing and the fix was to safety wire it together. This made it impossible for the operator to mainain in the field as only the armorer had the safety wire pliers to wire it back together once it was disassembled. The gas piston was easily inserted backwards and if that happened you had a bolt action machine gun because it would not cycle. And of course the gas system was wired together so you had to cut the wires, reassemble the gas system correctly then get the armorer to wire it back together.....

The trigger group was inside the pistol grip that was held onto the receiver by a flat spring that fit onto two pins through the receiver. If you put the spring on upside down it was easily knocked off, then one pin would fall out of the receiver, the pistol grip containing the trigger group would fall off, get lost leaving you with an inoperable machine gun.

The flat spot on the operating rod where it engaged the sear was soft and would wear causing a runaway gun that wouldn't stop firing unless you opened the feed tray cover, broke the belt or ran out of ammunition.

The bipods were fragile and easily broken.

Towards the end of their service life the Army actually started replacing the receivers as they stretched from metal fatigue and holes didn't line up any longer.

The M60 came into the system in the late 1950s and served until sometime in the 2000s before they were all replaced. It's not fair to say they were "unceremoniously dumped" when the Army stuck with a poor design and terrible performance for over 40 years.