The MG-42 (a) was the replacement for the earlier MG34 machine gun of the German army. The MG-34 is described in detail in Warrior 59: The German Infantryman (1) 1933-1940. The weapon was in design before the start of the war, but experiences in Poland and France made it quite clear that the MG-34 was far too well made. Its tolerances were an engineer’s dream, but an infantryman’s nightmare. The weapon stopped with alarming regularity, due to feed problems and to dust or mud in the mechanism. Because it was so extremely well made, it was unsuited to the rigours of the warfare practised during the period.
The MG-42 was designed to operate in quite awful conditions: it fired in mud, water, snow, heat and dust. As long as the machine gunner handling it knew how to maintain his weapon, about the only time it refused to fire was when the metalwork of the action was frozen. The ingenuity of the Germans then solved even that problem, with the aid of sunflower oil, which lubricated the working parts at sub-zero temperatures.
The weapon was a belt-fed fully automatic machine gun. The barrel change was extremely simple, effective and quick. It fired at a rate of between 800 and 1,200 rounds per minute but some have felt this was too high a rate of fire for a battlefield machine gun. The Germans did not subscribe to that theory.
The Germans didn’t want to get more rounds into a given length of burst. They wanted to compress the burst length in order to narrow the cone of fire at close range. However, their motivation was pretty much as you describe it.
I believe that part of the reason for the Germans wanting a high rate of fire was that enemy soldiers would dive for cover as soon as they came under fire, so the more bullets they could send in their direction in the first couple of seconds, the better.
The gun weighed 11.6kg with its bipod, was 123cm in length, with a barrel length of 53cm. The weapon has a workmanlike look to it which has rarely been equalled, and its feed mechanism has been taken into later weapons such as the American M60 and the FAL and GPMG machine-gun designs. The M60 was effectively an amalgamation of features of two German fire support weapons, the MG42 and the FG42.
This, with the earlier MG-34, was the first true general purpose machine gun. It could be used by one man on the battlefield, and the rate of fire was sufficient to win any local fire fight, even against light machine-guns of other nations. It could also be installed on a tripod (b), when it could engage targets indirectly by means of aiming posts and a dial sight. It also had an automatic traverse system built into the tripod so that at night the weapon could fire on fixed lines and traverse automatically, covering the whole of its arc with a regular bullet pattern.
The weapon is also shown stripped. The parts of the gun are as follows: 1, gun body; 2, barrel; 3, breech block; 4, feed mechanism and cover; 5, pistol grip and trigger housing; 6, cocking handle; 7, rear cover; 8, butt; 9, bipod; 10, sling; 11, recoil booster and nozzle and barrel guide sleeve; 12, recoil spring.
These weapons may be seen in various museums, but the best collection is at Royal Armouries, Leeds (www.armouries.org.uk/leeds).
The Germans designed the MG-34 and MG-42 as a light machinegun that, mounted on a tripod, provided the same firepower as the water cooled machineguns without the weight. This is also the set-up for the U.S. M1919A4 Browning air cooled LMG and the Bren LMG. However, the M1919A1 didn’t have a removable barrel like the BREN and the two German weapons. On the other hand, the BREN only fired using a 30 round (actually 28 rounds as 29 or 30 rounds damaged the magazine spring) magazine. The German weapons could fire using a 50 round non-disintegrating link belt (which could be fastened together), or a single or double drum magazine which contained 50 or 75 rounds.
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The German LMG, whether firing as a LMG using a bipod or a heavy 7.92mm machinegun on a tripod would have the barrel heat up after firing 250 rounds (the M1919A4 and A6 probably had the same problem). If you continued to fire you would strip out the barrel’s rifling which ruined the barrel. The US solution (also used with the Browning) was to pour any liquid available over the barrel to try and cool it off. The German solution, like the British (Czech actually) was to have a removable barrel.
The MG-34 had a cooling jacket that is round with a lot of holes in it. The bipod attaches to the jacket. When hot the weapon could be opened and the barrel slid out of the jacket through the breech. This is why you see the big mitten as part of a MG-34 loader’s kit (along with 2 – 4 barrels depending on whether it is being used in a LMG or HMG role) because the loader had to grab the hot barrel and pull it out of the cooling jacket after twisting the unlatched receiver 180 degrees. A cool barrel replaces it.
The MG-42 has a square cooling jacket with ventilation slots on the left side of the jacket. The right side of the jacket has a long slot almost along its entire length. Pushing a release lever located where the cooling jacket meets the gun swings the barrel out to the right of the gun (the reason for the barrel length slot) allowing it to be pulled out by grabbing the wooden carrying handle attached to the barrel at the end that disconnects.
“Pulling the barrel” meant after firing off 250 rounds you put a cool barrel in. I have two books here, both give the cyclic rate of fire as 1100-1200 rpm with an effective range of 800 meters using the bipod. The MG1, 2 and 3 (post-war version of the MG42 in 7.62mm) has a cyclic rate of fire of 1200-1300 rpm with a light bolt and 700-900 rpm with a heavy bolt.
Cyclic rate of fire is the fastest the gun will fire if you hold the trigger down for a minute and have a continuous feed of ammunition. Probably determined by firing for 10 seconds with X number of rounds, determining how many rounds were fired, and multiplying by 6. Effective rate of fire is the number of rounds per minute a crew can fire loading normally without damaging the gun. The MG-42 effective rate of fire is 250 rounds per minute, then a five second pause to change the barrel. 250 rounds requires using 5 50-round belts, which attached together and were reloadable. A BAR firing 250 rounds per minute would use 12-13 20 round magazines, burn out its barrel, and fire on its own when reloaded since it fires from a closed breech that would be hot enough to set of any round in it. The BAR’s cyclic rate is 500-600 rpm (fast) or 300-400 rpm (slow). The BREN gun has a cyclic rate of 480 rounds per minute. The M16’s cyclic rate is 750 rpm.
In order to determine how effective small arms are the effective range and sustainable rate of fire need to be known. Maximum range and cyclic rate hints at effectivity.
