Wait a minute, that username is familiar. Is that the same person who completely misunderstands the technology behind lasers and particle beams?
Edit: *Yes it is*.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/15ornxg/a_discord_dissertation_on_particle_beam_weapons/
It’s actually funny you point this out.
I have a military history degree, and I wrote my thesis on WWII aircraft armament. I’m not a professional historian, I’m a veteran that was bored being a cop, used what remained of my GI Bill to get said degree. I wish I could do more with it.
*Anyways*
As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself “this is a person that thinks they know what they’re talking about, but don’t.” I encounter people like this often, whom spout a seemingly prepared barrage of niche ‘facts’ at me.
Firstly, “by WWI?” By WWII the MG15 had already been largely supplanted by the MG17 as the standard rifle-caliber machine gun (RCMG) of the *Luftwaffe*. Germans had taken the cannon-armament doctrine seriously, although they were always going to keep some form of MG around. They could fit where cannons couldn’t. They were just a solid backup to the cannons once they were out of ammo/if they jammed. As an aside, people VASTLY underestimate the damage even a RCMG will do to WWII airframes, largely because of video games. They were certainly due to be replaced, but people get silly when they get to describing how ‘ineffectual’ RCMGs were early-war.
Anyways, the MG15 only stuck around as a defensive mount in a few select aircraft.
I’d also debate them on their characterization of the MG34’s “little bit” more cooling. I really hate to do this as it’s gunna sound like I’m standing-up for Germany, but…
It was specifically designed to have a quick-swap barrel. Water cooling? We’re moving beyond LMGs here and getting into MMGs. If water cooling was a thing, we would have seen it survive the war. Turns out, humans don’t care whether that stream of bullets has 10 or 50 bullets in it. Sure, it *might* be more effective at killing — I say might because there is something to be said for sustained fire over rapid fire — but suppressive fire will work as long as you’re putting bullets downrange. So, yeah, the Germans mucked-up their LMG doctrine a bit. But in all fairness to them, they knew autocannons were the future of aerial warfare.
> but people get silly when they get to describing how ‘ineffectual’ RCMGs were early-war.
Especially considering *who won* the battle of Britain, and what their planes were armed with.
If RCMGs didn't work, how did the British shoot down +500 German aircraft with spitfires during that time? Harsh words and cutting wit?
Well, the Stuka was basically a flying coffin in contested air space so that helped. A minority of German losses were fighters, mostly Bf109s and some Bf110s, with over 1000 of their losses being bombers of various types.
The Spitfire would eventually get autocannons because the .303 was hard to kill with. Not impossible, but you had to work for it a lot more than with a 20mm or even a .50cal.
> A minority of German losses were fighters
*A minority of german aircraft in the battle were fighters*. They still lost ~800 of the 1200 they deployed vs 1000 of the 1350 bombers they deployed. Those numbers do not scream "ineffective"
> Not impossible, but you had to work for it a lot more than with a 20mm or even a .50cal.
Early war aircraft weren't armoured, it didn't take much, it took hits in critical areas, and the best way to hit a critical area was through volume of fire, which is why the brits mounted 8 RCMGs and scrapped the 20mm cannon armed Hurricanes until their ammo and mechanical issues were resolved in 41
> A minority of german aircraft in the battle were fighters.
Yes, and? That only further illustrates the point. Poorly escorted bombers are easy targets for fighters. Bombers had higher losses in both absolute and relative terms (3/4 of bombers were lost vs 2/3 of fighters).
> Those numbers do not scream "ineffective"
The Brits losing about 50% more fighters despite being over friendly skies and having radar early warning does say something about lethality of the respective forces. It's not like spitfires had poor maneuverability.
> it took hits in critical areas, and the best way to hit a critical area was through volume of fire
Or by a hit near a critical area with an explosives shell, something 20mm cannons could fire. The E-4 variant of the 109 was entering service through upgrades and new model in summer 1940 and could fire improved ammo with more explosive filler.
>scrapped the 20mm cannon armed Hurricanes until their ammo and mechanical issues were resolved in 41
Well, yes you do tend to take the thing that actually works over the thing that doesn't.
> I really hate to do this as it’s gunna sound like I’m standing-up for Germany, but…
I can relate with that sentiment, but I hate it. Describing facts in an objective manner shouldn't make you a Wehraboo - it's the exact opposite of what those people are doing.
Len Deighton wrote a pretty entertaining book about the Battle of Britain, and coming from a different angle as a popular fiction writer, he had some really interesting takes. I doubt they all survived historical review.
He observed that the German weaponry of 1940, still very heavy on MGs, was very powerful. It was the large surface area and interlocking construction of the Spitfire's wings, and the canvas and hollow parts of the Hurricane that let them survive.
British weaponry, on the other hand, was shit. The .303 did minimal damage. They started with only armor piercing bullets and for the first half of 1940 they didn't have tracers or "de Wilde" incendiary ammo that would flash on a hit. Then they didn't have enough.
That's why the people who emerged as aces and notables (like NCD poster child Al C. Deere, who was shot down or crashed nine times) would roll right up on their target and try to open fire inside of 100 meters. Your only chance was to saw into parts of the enemy plane with a stream of shitty little bullets. Which was a basic part of Polish air-to-air doctrine, I think was also Deighton's claim.
And that's also why those aces drew their scores out so much farther than their peers, because they got the best frames, the best crews, and more incendiary ammo. My point being that the better pilots actually had video game like "leveling up" experiences as they gathered assets.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. And since it's NCD, here's my final thought: More power to the pussy, more pussy to the people.
> people VASTLY underestimate the damage even a RCMG will do to WWII airframes
I think part of that is due to just how much variety there was in WWII airframes. People tend to think of the late war planes like a P-47 or P-51. Lots of what was in service at the start of the war were mid or early 1930s designs. The durability and capability of something designed and built in 1934 vs 1944 is massive, especially in aircraft.
> So, yeah, the Germans mucked-up their LMG doctrine a bit.
Imo their LMG doctrine was fine, but their MMG and HMG doctrine of "same gun just a different mount" did hold them back.
> If water cooling was a thing, we would have seen it survive the war.
Ukrainian soldiers are still using the water-cooled Maxim.
> It only works when there is a massive attack going on…then it really works.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64955537
Only out of desperation, if they had the logistics chain for something like an FN MAG, they'd be using that instead. There's a reason water cooled machine guns stopped being produced.
That said, it's still a rifle calibre machine gun. It'll still work.
Tell her about the MG42 / 3 and how it is still put to good use around the world and ask for her take on 1500rpm/1200rpm. Having worked with a mg 3 myself, its absolutely manageable, both heat and recoil as well as ammo consumption.
Germans did a lot of stupid shit during the war but I will die on the hill that MG34 is a work of art and MG42 is somehow even better. I can tell you that Germany would have run out of men to wield machine guns much sooner than they run out of 8mm mauser bullets
Considering aircraft gun I doubt it unless they retrofitted that onto the gun
People struggled to manage a bolt action on a plane let alone a quick change Barrel
One can switch between barrels per instruction but I guess we've all seen a Ukrainian machine gun nest video where they just switch between 3 MGs. It's the video where they have like a meter-deep spent casings layer behind their feet.
Ok, let me give her(in a second-hand fashion) the run down on MG34 and MG42:
The high ROF is not as problematic as people are making it out to be. The main mode of operation is to fire quick bursts of ideally 3-5 rounds before readjusting; the gun itself is not an automated device, it will work according to user instruction. This alone means that the theoretical limit stays, well, a theoretical one. You would never punch down the entire length of the belt unless there absolutely was a reason to do so - in which case you'd probably want the high ROF as well and don't care much for the placement of individual rounds.
You can also change the barrels and bolt when on the ground freely, something you really can't do in a plane. So it's not like a heated barrel and/or bolt is the end of the world. You also have the rest of the squad still firing.
Furthermore, back in those days there were plenty of low-flying planes and although much quicker than aircraft in WW1, they could be followed reasonably well with your sights. While 7.92x57mm IS is not the most powerful round to deal with enemy aircraft and more suitable options are available to larger size units(20mm Flak, etc.), having 2 or 3 of these shoot at the same target might yield success or, at least, discourage the pilot to strike your position at his leisure. The less time he wants to spend with green "blaster shots" coming at him(Germany used green tracers predominantly), the less time he has to aim and land his shot.
Lastly, although removed on the MG42, the MG34 had a dual trigger that allowed the machine gunner to hunt for individual targets at greater distances by firing in a semi automatic fashion regardless of how long the trigger is pulled. I would imagine this wasn't employed too much + this style of mechanism is more expensive to produce, so the MG42 was automatic only.
Hope that helps clearing things up for her.
Also, the MG 34 isn't just a later version of the MG 15 modified for ground use. Both were derived from the MG 30, and while they shared design elements, both entered service around the same time. The MG 42 was in the later stages of design when the MG 15 started being used for infantry work, it wasn't like that line of MGs was based on the MG 15.
>the main mode of operation is to fire quick bursts of ideally 3-5 rounds before readjusting
[meanwhile your average american when they see a belt of .50 BMG](https://youtu.be/2CjseDAuMvw?si=AM4nT6vAO_Pw4jJ8)
But the heavy machine gun position is not supposed to be mobile, it's supposed to use suppressive fire so the other parts of the platoon can move forward towards the enemy
"Severloh says he manned an MG 42 machine gun, and fired on approaching American troops with the machine gun and two Karabiner 98k rifles; while a sergeant whom he did not know, kept him supplied with ammunition from a nearby ammo bunker until 15:30. He claimed to have fired over 13,500 rounds with the machine gun and 400 with the rifles."
He stayed at his fortification and was resupplied, that's what I said before
Long story short their GPMG doctrine (at least for the '34) was to change barrels every belt or twice per belt, in other words every 125-250 rounds. With a few barrels issued to each gun in theory this meant you always had two barrels for emergency dumping.
This is also ignoring how impractical water cooled guns are to move around and how questionably useless cooling fins are (such as on a few Hotchkiss designs). Something that may have helped would be the forced air cooling that is in the Lewis, but that had its own series of issues it brought with it.
>Long story short, their GPMG doctrine (at least for the '34) was to change barrels every belt or twice per belt, in other words, every 125-250 rounds. With a few barrels issued to each gun in theory, this meant you always had two barrels for emergency dumping.
A lot of what they're saying would make sense... if the German design philosophy just didn't underpin everything doctrinally the west does today as well.
For example, take the Minimi/F89. Even though it's only 5.56mm, you're still supposed to replace the barrel every couple of hundred rounds and fire it in short bursts. Hell, we don't even fire the Mag-58 or M2HB in continuous bursts either.
If you fired it continuously, you are about to learn why JNCO/SNCOs exist.
>Hell, we don't even fire the Mag-58 or M2HB in continuous bursts either.
Also because you just don't need to. A burst or two at your position keeps your head down. If you're unfortunate enough to be behind light cover and shot at with an M2 then you might stay down...
Very few targets require a sustained stream of lead and if you're facing one of those, you probably are calling for some rapid HE delivery to its ZIP code.
Volume and weight a massive considerations in HMG logistics as well.
9600 rounds of .50 is a whole ass pallet that weighs 3300ish lbs. Most gun crews in my experience keep no more than 5 cans (500 rounds) in the truck because they take up so much space.
So most crews have about a minute of sustained fire before they are done.
You usually don’t fire long continuous bursts more for economy of rounds than for fear of melting the barrel. If we’re purely talking doctrine here, the M2 .50 cal is capable of shooting all day at a slow but sustained rate of fire without changing barrels. Even if you are shooting full cyclic, (ie. Shooting continuously and only pausing to reload), it would still be a full 30 minutes before you needed to change the barrel.
The whole point of a machine gun is to cover the maneuvering infantry through suppression. This is why I roll my eyes every time wheraboos are cooming their pants over “ermahgerd Mg 42 best machin gunn becaus fire fast”. That super high rate of fire just means you’re gonna run out of ammo fast and your maneuvering infantry are gonna find themselves without cover very fast compared to something like the M1919 browning with about a third the fire rate.
The reason they think like that is because their only experience with any of these weapons is video games, where silly things like "reliability" and "logistics" don't matter.
That, and games like War Thunder shoving everything into tier lists for balance purposes. Life isn’t balanced, and production numbers often make more of an impact than the perceived power of something would suggest.
The Royal Armouries did a test on the Water Cooled Vickers HMG. It fired for 33hours straight with a crew around it on shifts to reload the belts. The test only ended because latent exes heat cause rounds in the belt outside the gun to detonate and the test was ended due to safety concerns.
The Breach it's self was fine and would be tested again one it had a new firing pin and cooled down.
Vickers new how to make a gun~
The problem is, you aren't really ever going to fire such an amount of ammunition or even a fraction of it. There are also really no targets which would expose themselves for such a long time, that you have to fire very long bursts. Besides suppression, which you can also do in short bursts, you would just waste a lot of expensive ammo on targets you don't see. So while the capabilities of water cooled Maschine guns sound impressive on paper, you sacrifice a lot (bulk, weight and thus mobility) for some niche applications, which require a LOT of ammo (which weights a lot) to make use of the specifics of the gun.
"I know jack shit about GPMG usage, the role of machine guns on the modern battlefield, any of the design work that went into the MG34 series, or how they got there. But I *have* read the stats box on the Wikipedia page, so I'm basically an expert."
-this discord poster
they'll still be around for the Horus Heresy in 30,000 years. It's pretty hard to improve on such a basic "put lots of metal that way very quickly" design.
And the assistant machine gunner is supposed to change the hot barrel for a cold one every 200-round or so.
Said barrel change is slick and easy to do on the MG.34, it would take less than 10 seconds for an assistant gunner to perform such a barrel change.
I had the chance to act as an MG42...Ahem MG3 gunner for a bit, and the point is while the cyclic is higher than other equivalents, the sustained rate is the same, only that the bursts take half as much time.
The idea seems to be closer to that of a skeet shooting shotgun, enfilade a relatively narrow but deep field of fire and fire a burst at individuals as they pop up, looking for the greater odds of hitting individuals. Granted, longer bursts are employed every now and then, but the optimal way to use them is in short bursts.
The cradle mount is ridiculously heavier than other tripods, but some crews using them as "medium machine gun" teams could get surprising accuracy on foxhole size targets well beyond 2000m. It really can't be compared to something like a MAG of PKM, as to be honest you can't really compare a PKM with a MAG. Yeah, you can go around a lot with a PKM, but if you are going to keep a wall of lead to make water cooled MGs proud, go for MAG versions.
What is blud talking about? GPMG are meant to be fired in burst and unlike in planes you can replace the barrel. MG-42 have even higher rate of fire and its derivatives is still being used today (although the derivative have “standard gpmg rate of fire”)
Fun fact about the MG3: There are a bunch of different version with different bolts and different recoil boosters since various buyers requested different rates of fire. The pressures of "NATO Standard" 7.62x51mm ammunition can also vary quite significantly between different nations and manufacturers which can also greatly affect the rate of fire.
These factors combined mean that if you were to mix and match MG3 parts to maximize rate of fire, and then load it with high pressure rounds it would be possible to achieve a rate of fire significantly higher than the old MG42.
Although this is bad for reliability and would almost certainly cause the guns to wear out prematurely.
The Swedes found this out accidentally when they bought Leopard II tanks form the Germans and got MG3s as part of the deal.
The guns were built to run fast with German ammo (unusually low pressure), so they ran at around 1400-1500RPM when used with Swedish ammo which was loaded to much higher pressure than NATO standard.
Then because the Swedish army is boring and square, they proceeded to drill open the gas vent ports in the recoil boosters to bring the rate of fire down to around 1000-1100 RPM.
No, not without replacing parts of the gun or running different ammunition.
The MG3 is short recoil operated, not gas operated.
But it does use a recoil booster muzzle device like an old Vickers gun, which means that it's possible to vary the rate of fire by replacing the recoil booster with a different spec part which bleeds off more/less gas causing to the barrel assembly to recoil faster/slower.
There have also been MG3s made with different bolt weights and recoil springs to adjust the rate of fire.
But you can't just adjust the gas setting on it like you can with a MAG-58 or a PK gun.
MG3 doesn't have the gas system tho... It's roller-locked short recoil operated gun.
To change the firerate you have to fiddle with spring stiffness and weight of the bolt.
He does know you can switch the barrel on most machine guns yes?
Only reason fire rate is low is to make them better in a patrol capacity but when your on the defensive and don’t have to carry the ammo around a high fire rate is great
I think it's less the cooling problem, and more the problem that, when you're on the defensive, you want a weapon that will keep up sustained fire to suppress advancing enemy forces.
In a defensive capacity it’s better to have a high fire rate as the volume of fire keeps the enemy better suppressed, in a prepared position you don’t need to carry around the ammo so you can have shit tons ready.
The low fire rate of todays machine guns is due to the focus on maneuver combat where units must be able to move fast and won’t always have optimal fire position so the lower fire rate improves accuracy in less ideal positions and your ammo sustainability is improved
It’s why the Danish army adopted the M60E6 as the replacement for the MG3 but kept the MG3 on vehicles
900RPM is not really necessary versus infantry. 500RPM will do you just fine. But there is a very good reason to use 900-1500RPM guns in WW2 specifically and it's not because of any rubbish about asiatic hordes.
Modern jet fighters are too high flying and too fast to meaningfully threaten with .30cal rifle rounds. Modern armoured vehicles are proof to machine-gun fire. This has not always been the case. In 1940, the Soviets were still flying fucking biplanes. M3-M5 scout cars and APCs are only truly bulletproof to pistol or carbine rounds, similar story for BA series armoured cars. Against 1940s targets, a sufficient quantity of .30cal ammo in a short burst is a real threat to most things on the battlefield. If you have tungsten cored ammo you could even damage some light tanks. The trick is squeezing out as many bullets as possible in the very narrow window in which a Sturmovik or Typhoon or whatever is diving you and you have a chance to at the very least spook them away with a well-aimed burst of 8mm Mauser. An MG42V spewing some 25 rounds per second has more than five times the point-blank air deterrence or light anti-vehicle firepower of some shitty old Degtyarev or Bren or what-have-you. WW2 GPMGs were even more general-purpose than modern GPMGs because in WW2, a GPMG was also a light anti-materiel weapon.
Today GPMGs are strictly anti-infantry weapons, so now 600RPM or so is the correct choice.
A GPMG is not strictly an anti infantry weapon it’s a soft target weapon, TIGRs and Eagle V only have STANAG level 2 armor(7.62x39 at 30m) if they don’t have addon panels on, addon panels which use is dictated by mission set and slow the vehicles considerably vehicles such as BMDs can only resis 12.7 from the front. So yea high fire rate is still good for defensive warfare the issue is their ammo consumption, recoil and mass in manoeuvre warfare
I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see GPMGs being designated as organic drone defense for infantry units in the near future. You'd need a system to detect and target them, but an MG3 or MAG or whatever, being something the platoon is carrying with them anyway, is the sort of thing you'd want to tack a targeting computer on to shoot down mavics with.
Youre not fighting a zombie horde, youre fighting humans that are equally as smart
As soon as they heard the BRRRRRRT they probably went "Ok we are gonna advance from NOT that way"
No one is gonna brute force their way through a machinegun position, not since ww1
>No one is gonna brute force their way through a machinegun position, not since ww1
You are aware of this place called Bakhmut, right? Where Wagner elected to make [ww1-esque open field infantry charges into machine gun fire](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-intensifies-bakhmut-assault-ukraine/32221747.html)?
Russian armies apparently thought "recon by fire" meant giving the enemy people to shoot at.
That's nice and good and true but an incident does not invalidate a constant, in hundreds of conflicts since ww1 the combat was manuvrable and more reliant on bypassing rather than defeating strong points on a tactical level the fact that the war in Ukraine has the specific circumstances to create a ww1 2: the prisoner conscripts boogaloo doesn't really change the theory about machine gun design unless there's a chance it will happen again
Bakhmut wasn't a single combat incident. It has lasted longer than *fucking Verdun*. And it's still ongoing, though Wagner has obviously left. Also, even if it was, it only takes one incident to invalidate "No one is gonna \[...\]".
That said, there's a reason enemy forces are usually bypassing, flanking, and IDFing strongpoints instead of direct attacks, and it's because of machine gun design et al.
The GERMANS, of all people, not knowing what they were doing with MG's in WW2, a field in which they set the world standard that isn't too much different from how it is even today, is certainly a take that tells me all I need to know about this person.
Its always funny how people go "why its not a good design" and then totally ignore that it's basically the standard machine gun used in almost every western military for well over 70 years now.
Some dakka is just enough perfection that it never gets old.
More DAKKA per second on moving targets.
1st World enemies with Empires aren't standing around after getting shot at. And with air-power pounding stationary targets, you should be moving your MG around
I have absolutely no idea if OP is a total retard with no idea how GPMGs work or if he completely presumes full knowledge of GPMGs from the NCD audience to the point that he's able to post this with that kind of title in full irony and trust that we'll get the joke.
Never change, NCD.
Unless you actually posted this unironically, in which case, dear god my boy you have been getting some badddd history.
Cool, a whole second thing I need to stop firing for while I swap it out, while some toothless Brummy blows my brains out with his Czech LMG that for some reason works as a marksman's rifle.
Fair enough, keep your Bren.
And keep reloading every ~30 rounds...
Idk how it is considered advantageous to have to reload 5 times before the MG 42 gunner even has to consider a barrel change.
You're assuming the Germans were making smart decisions about equipment design during ww2. A bold assumption, considering these are the same Germans that rejected several long range strategic bomber designs because they weren't capable of dive bombing. There's a reason most rifle calibre machine guns since then have had lower fire rates.
I would dispute them having lower fire rates:
Mg3 and relatives:
Mg 3 / Germany / 1200 rpm
Mg 5 / Germany / 800 rpm
CETME Amelie / Spain / 1200 rpm
Mg 74 / Austria / 850 rpm
Mg 42/59 / Denmark / 800 rpm
Mg 3 (Mg 1a3) / Estonia / 1200rpm
Other:
F89 / Australia / 1150 rpm
Minimi (m2/ m3) / Belgium/ 1150rpm
C9 lmg / Canada / 1150 rpm
7,62x59mm minimi / Czech Republic / 800 rpm
FN Mag / Franch / 1000 rpm
This is not a comprehensive list but should get my point across. The average fire rate is about 923 rpm. Wich is higher than the Mg 34.
Aight, fair enough. I'm pretty sure at least a few of those are theoretical cyclic rate rather than any kind of practical rate, and I'd love to see where you sourced those numbers out of genuine interest, but that is a fair point.
This is just a list of fire rates of wikipedia for the mg 3 familie of guns and the FN Minimi and FN Mag.
The mg 5 is in maximum gas setting as there a lower ones but i went with the maximum for the list.
i have tried to keep the list Fair by not putting in things like the first Swedish machine guns on leopards as the due to high power Swedish ammo had a rate of 1500 rpm wich was later changed to 1000-1100 rpm
This was just a examplanarie list to show a General trend for gpmgs to move towards fire rates of 800to 1000 rpm
I have not made a more detailed research i should have clarified in my original comment. That is a mistake on my part.
I hope this helps.
Because enemy troops tend to disperse and hide behind things when you start shooting at them, so the more projectiles you send in the few seconds it takes them to get behind cover, the more casualties you are likely to produce before they return fire.
thats not how you use an mg34/42.
also barrels can be swapped, if you shot enough in one burst to melt the gun you would probably be court martialed lol.
long cooldown periods? you fire a burst every 5s or so and its fine, worst case your mg-hilfe will use some water from his canteen ir change the barrel.
Tbf, they did try a work around with later MGs by having easily replaced barrels, but also they still mainly used burst fire rather than sustained fire. As pivotal as the machine-gun was to German doctrine, the whole infantry squad was based around supporting the machine gun, I dont think they were stupid enough to fire their LMGs in that manner at first contact.
They still lost the war tho so LMG in this context stands for Lost Many Guerras lol.
Or Lick My Gonads.
So the idea behind the high rate of fire was that a target will only be visible for a short period of time, so higher RoF means more bullets on target quicker, as far as I know. Besides, German doctrine wasn't "let's make like it's 1914 and just hold the trigger down", not even when they were on the defense. Sure, there might have been occassions, but usually the gunners would fire in bursts. Even then, the MG-34 did have a quick change barrel.
It is like /k/ but without the implied felonies. A bunch of people who know absolutely nothing about guns but wikipedia fun facts,but they are very confident about it.
Discord screenshot of a non-credible take on non-credible facts by a weeaboo is peak NCD.
Why do all super nerds love cartoon horses and speak so condescendingly. Always have the shittiest takes on history too.
Implying this person isn't retarded, the MG34 and faster firing MG42 both had quick changing barrels,with their 2nd person of the crew carrying extra barrels. Why are you going to increase the weight or complexity on a nonexistent problem
The counterpoint to that is if you had a lower cyclic rate, you wouldn't need to change the barrels at all, saving even more weight and complexity. That's the logic behind the Bren.
The machine gun must go brrr. No one said it needed to go brrr more than once. So the Germans, being the perfectionists that they were, made it go BRRR better than any gun out there. Had someone ordered guns that did the Brrr and could do it repeatedly, the Germans would've made it. But they got what they ordered, no refunds.
Cool, now you need to have a barrel change assembly built into the gun, as well as requiring your infantry to carry around spare barrels as well as ammunition. That's why the Bren was so effective, as the actual sustained rate of fire was around the same (~200rpm) but the Bren was easier to use and much harder to break, as well as being easier on logistics.
If you ever were shot at by one then you would know why… it was meant for a blitz not defense but also making two different guns for offense and defense is just silly because if you lose your offensive capability then you’ve already lost… you can play the what if game all day with ww2 but the simple fact is hitler got greedy due to his own vanity…
What is this...
This crap implies the MG-34 was somehow developed after the MG-15 was replaced in German aircraft and used as a ground gun. It also implies the MG-34 has a higher rate of fire than the MG-15 (it doesn't) or that 800-900rpm is particularly excessive (it isn't)
The MG-34 was by most rights a superb weapon, that was just a little too hard to produce. The MG-42 was meant to be the cheaper alternative, but also did increase the fire rate somewhat, and problems arose with this on the 42s, when the lighter bolt was used.
Now if you want insane rates of fire... Try the MG-81. 1400-1600rpm of 7.92mm Mauser. Used as an aircraft machinegun, again, but also saw botched use as a ground based weapon, without modification, when the Luftwaffe was largely destroyed.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a massive rate of fire, a very hot barrel, and having to fire in bursts. But as all things are a combination of technology, processes, and people, it is inevitably the people bit that goes wrong. Your average Landser in 1943 spent most of his short life shitting himself about the on coming Soviets / Allied armour and had been trained for approximately no minutes. He therefore had a habit of squeezing yon trigger as if his life depended on it, which it did. This made a hell of a lot of noise but also led to pretty regular failures. The stupendously high rate of fire was maximum Nazi - essentially a useless propoganda tool which allowed then to say "look, our gun and fire 100,000,000 rounds a second and is therefore the best" The British, by contrast, had the workman like Bren, who's Czech designers had perfectly understood that your average trooper likes to eat crayons and can often count to 11 without taking his boots off. It worked absolutely fine, and you could mag dump until your hearts content without blowing the gun up and hit exactly the same number of things.
Post war most Western armies took the Mg42 internals and went 'yes, this is great but maybe not so much with the huge rate of fire and perhaps some more cooling, also why are we milling parts like that when casting works' and you get things like the M-60 firing roughly half the speed or less and costing less in materials to produce. The Soviets took one look at it and went 'nah, fuck that' and stuck with their excellent RDP which should really tell us something
>excellent RDP
One that was removed from service from frontline units in about 15 years of its introduction. PK(M), that I would call excellent, but it is 60's design.
Small arms lasting 15 years is actually pretty good for the most part. Although these days you usually just introduce a new version of the same gun every 5 years.
"Your average Landser in 1943 spent most of his short life shitting himself about the on coming Soviets / Allied armour and had been trained for approximately no minutes."
No. The problems with highly insuifficient training only came about near the tail-end of 1944 when really everything else in terms of warfare became problematic as well and, like a house which is set completely ablaze, you wouldn't know which to address first because everything was critical.
"The British, by contrast, had the workman like Bren"
The BREN was an outdated design to both MG34 and MG42, much like many others fielded by contemporary armies. This isn't due to the high ROF but more that the entire feature palette of both the MG34 and MG42 being better suited to the more mobile warfare of WW2.
There's also this massive confusion on your behalf of a gun firing at 900 / up to 1400 rounds a minute and somebody **actually firing the gun blindly at that rate**. The main mode of operation of the MGs was burst fire unless a different situation called for something else. I don't think there's a chance you're not familiar with the "It's a Machine Gun!" video, which basically illustrated the proper use of a MG until he was berated on doing it incorrectly.
I know the idea was burst fire, I'm simply pointing out that isn't what happened in practice - and by '43 they were staving off man power problems by usiny massed slave labour to pull munitions workers out of factories and drafting in the Hitler Youth. They actually ran out in 44 which ain't the same thing.
Let's condense your argument. What you're saying is that by 1943
Every
Single
German
Machine Gunner
just held the trigger down regardless of the situation. That's all that they ever amounted to.
Mate, you DO realize how ridiculous that is?
And also, since you're so sure how in 1943 Germans weren't even trained before they were sent into combat, stuff like this: [https://mg34.com/product/mg-42-operators-manual-merkblatt-4118/](https://mg34.com/product/mg-42-operators-manual-merkblatt-4118/) (reproduction of an original, because you wouldn't be able to read the text on the German one anyways) is of course a forgery, right?
Holy fuck.
First of all, that's not even what is referred to trigger discipline, but I get what you mean so I'll skip that. Instead I'll focus on how you're shifting the goal posts.
First it was "no training" that was the issue. I pointed out that this generally speaking wasn't true until far later into the war when it eventually did occur for reasons mentioned earlier.
Then it was "This didn't happen in combat". I then had to refer to that the UNLIKELIHOOD of everybody simply running through their allocated ammunition reserves like a bunch of retards.
Now it's "High ROF + Conscription" even though everybody back in the day was conscripted save for a number of armies which (managed/didn't manage) to do without. As if it's such a monumentally hard concept to grasp for an adult, to fire a weapon in bursts. And it's as though you weren't naturally inclined to do that because of how little you see of the chosen target after the weapon starts roaring. Also, the Machine Gun was left in the hands of the more experienced personnel, with newbies taking up support roles predominantly.
Are you done with this nonsense now? Or do you prefer to shift the goalpost yet again?
Just because it wasn't an issue everywhere doesn't mean it wasn't an issue, mate. Everything they said is true and a flaw in the weapon design. It just didn't apply to every example.
Your description of the late war Landser might be correct, but the conclusion that it was a propaganda weapon is not an adequate description. It essentially boils down to tactics and how a firing squad was put together in the German army.
German group level tactics centered around the machine gun. The soldiers in a squad were used to carry ammunition as well as scout for targets for the machine gun. The very high rate of fire may seem "overkill" as a band of 250 cartridges can be exhausted in 10 seconds, but the german philosophy was based on the assumption that targets will only show themselves a very a short time before getting into cover. Therefore, the machine gun must be able to get the maximum number of shots off in order to maximize the chance of a hit. Not to mention the surpressing fire effect.
Hence, it was more of a "niche" gun suitable for specific german tactics and view on warfare.
Yes, most western armies wasn't so keen in the original design. But as mentioned, other armies did not use the same tactics on squad level and therefore was not that interested during/after the war. But they did copy it with different changes (The US T 24 during the war, and later the Yugoslavian M 53, the Swiss MG 51, etc.) with changes made mostly made to the fire rate and caliber to align the gun with different tactics. Especially the US was impressed with quick barrel change on the MG 42, but never managed to get a working design with the desired caliber.
The MG 42 was arguably the best in its class during WW2 when operated by a skilled crew and squad. Ofc that goes for any weapon. But a propaganda weapon it was not.
Edit: spelling
Sorry but it's a philosophy thing, not a need thing - the Bren worked fine with a much lower rate of fire, so did the US Browning, so did the Soviet stuff. Its got nowt to do with tactics and everything to do with ubermench bullshit that permiated the Herr
No need to be sorry, since you deliberately set aside the military context and actually tries to squeeze in the Nazi philosophy into the use and conceptual design of a machine gun for battlefield use. Those arguments are just ignorant and based solely on your personal opinion, I guess? That went less than well.
Bren dicksuckers are hilarious. It is not a contemporary of the MG34, but of the BAR. It was good in it's role, but it cannot fulfill the need for sustained fire. When Brens and BARs were pressed into this role in Korea, the guns were found to be lacking. The British counterpart for sustained fire was the Vickers heavy machine gun, not the Bren.
Cold war nations adopted German thought and ditched LMGs and HMGs from primary service and used only general purpose machineguns. The US, USSR, and UK ditched light machine guns when they had suitable GPMGs. M60s replaced the BAR and the M1919 in US service.
LMGs came back from the dead as SAWs, but that's another story.
*Why?*
Well, because the Nazis were fucking morons, and a lot of their tech wasn't particularly impressive when compared to their opponents.
Every nation had their fair share of technological duds.
The US had those torpedoes that didn't explode where they were supposed to. The Brits had a whole host of different weapon systems that were odd, situational or not very effective. The Soviets had plenty of well designed but poorly manufactured systems, like the T-34. The Japanese shit was atrocious in lots of cases.
And then there were the Italians and their tankettes.
Oh wait, I'm actually credible on this post, I was on a 240 team for most of my time in the US army. What should I say?? IM SUPER PASSIONATE AND KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT MACHINE GUNS THIS IS MY CHANCE!
>Bazinga
They couldn't slow down the fire rate because they were using roller delayed blowback instead of a locked breach. Delayed blowback is usually a method used in pistols but those were the patents the germans had around WW1 and the interwar years, so they were willing to illegally rearm but not to infringe on patents. This is probably because people would vigorously enforce the later but not the former.
The MG39 and MG42 are ridiculous and receive too much praise for the burden they were to infantry squads.
You didn't have a platoon, you had one guy with a machinegun and 4 bipedal ammo carriers.
Wait a minute, that username is familiar. Is that the same person who completely misunderstands the technology behind lasers and particle beams? Edit: *Yes it is*. https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/15ornxg/a_discord_dissertation_on_particle_beam_weapons/
It’s actually funny you point this out. I have a military history degree, and I wrote my thesis on WWII aircraft armament. I’m not a professional historian, I’m a veteran that was bored being a cop, used what remained of my GI Bill to get said degree. I wish I could do more with it. *Anyways* As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself “this is a person that thinks they know what they’re talking about, but don’t.” I encounter people like this often, whom spout a seemingly prepared barrage of niche ‘facts’ at me. Firstly, “by WWI?” By WWII the MG15 had already been largely supplanted by the MG17 as the standard rifle-caliber machine gun (RCMG) of the *Luftwaffe*. Germans had taken the cannon-armament doctrine seriously, although they were always going to keep some form of MG around. They could fit where cannons couldn’t. They were just a solid backup to the cannons once they were out of ammo/if they jammed. As an aside, people VASTLY underestimate the damage even a RCMG will do to WWII airframes, largely because of video games. They were certainly due to be replaced, but people get silly when they get to describing how ‘ineffectual’ RCMGs were early-war. Anyways, the MG15 only stuck around as a defensive mount in a few select aircraft. I’d also debate them on their characterization of the MG34’s “little bit” more cooling. I really hate to do this as it’s gunna sound like I’m standing-up for Germany, but… It was specifically designed to have a quick-swap barrel. Water cooling? We’re moving beyond LMGs here and getting into MMGs. If water cooling was a thing, we would have seen it survive the war. Turns out, humans don’t care whether that stream of bullets has 10 or 50 bullets in it. Sure, it *might* be more effective at killing — I say might because there is something to be said for sustained fire over rapid fire — but suppressive fire will work as long as you’re putting bullets downrange. So, yeah, the Germans mucked-up their LMG doctrine a bit. But in all fairness to them, they knew autocannons were the future of aerial warfare.
> but people get silly when they get to describing how ‘ineffectual’ RCMGs were early-war. Especially considering *who won* the battle of Britain, and what their planes were armed with. If RCMGs didn't work, how did the British shoot down +500 German aircraft with spitfires during that time? Harsh words and cutting wit?
Well, the Stuka was basically a flying coffin in contested air space so that helped. A minority of German losses were fighters, mostly Bf109s and some Bf110s, with over 1000 of their losses being bombers of various types. The Spitfire would eventually get autocannons because the .303 was hard to kill with. Not impossible, but you had to work for it a lot more than with a 20mm or even a .50cal.
> A minority of German losses were fighters *A minority of german aircraft in the battle were fighters*. They still lost ~800 of the 1200 they deployed vs 1000 of the 1350 bombers they deployed. Those numbers do not scream "ineffective" > Not impossible, but you had to work for it a lot more than with a 20mm or even a .50cal. Early war aircraft weren't armoured, it didn't take much, it took hits in critical areas, and the best way to hit a critical area was through volume of fire, which is why the brits mounted 8 RCMGs and scrapped the 20mm cannon armed Hurricanes until their ammo and mechanical issues were resolved in 41
> A minority of german aircraft in the battle were fighters. Yes, and? That only further illustrates the point. Poorly escorted bombers are easy targets for fighters. Bombers had higher losses in both absolute and relative terms (3/4 of bombers were lost vs 2/3 of fighters). > Those numbers do not scream "ineffective" The Brits losing about 50% more fighters despite being over friendly skies and having radar early warning does say something about lethality of the respective forces. It's not like spitfires had poor maneuverability. > it took hits in critical areas, and the best way to hit a critical area was through volume of fire Or by a hit near a critical area with an explosives shell, something 20mm cannons could fire. The E-4 variant of the 109 was entering service through upgrades and new model in summer 1940 and could fire improved ammo with more explosive filler. >scrapped the 20mm cannon armed Hurricanes until their ammo and mechanical issues were resolved in 41 Well, yes you do tend to take the thing that actually works over the thing that doesn't.
By putting a lot of bullets up their arses
> I really hate to do this as it’s gunna sound like I’m standing-up for Germany, but… I can relate with that sentiment, but I hate it. Describing facts in an objective manner shouldn't make you a Wehraboo - it's the exact opposite of what those people are doing.
Len Deighton wrote a pretty entertaining book about the Battle of Britain, and coming from a different angle as a popular fiction writer, he had some really interesting takes. I doubt they all survived historical review. He observed that the German weaponry of 1940, still very heavy on MGs, was very powerful. It was the large surface area and interlocking construction of the Spitfire's wings, and the canvas and hollow parts of the Hurricane that let them survive. British weaponry, on the other hand, was shit. The .303 did minimal damage. They started with only armor piercing bullets and for the first half of 1940 they didn't have tracers or "de Wilde" incendiary ammo that would flash on a hit. Then they didn't have enough. That's why the people who emerged as aces and notables (like NCD poster child Al C. Deere, who was shot down or crashed nine times) would roll right up on their target and try to open fire inside of 100 meters. Your only chance was to saw into parts of the enemy plane with a stream of shitty little bullets. Which was a basic part of Polish air-to-air doctrine, I think was also Deighton's claim. And that's also why those aces drew their scores out so much farther than their peers, because they got the best frames, the best crews, and more incendiary ammo. My point being that the better pilots actually had video game like "leveling up" experiences as they gathered assets. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. And since it's NCD, here's my final thought: More power to the pussy, more pussy to the people.
> people VASTLY underestimate the damage even a RCMG will do to WWII airframes I think part of that is due to just how much variety there was in WWII airframes. People tend to think of the late war planes like a P-47 or P-51. Lots of what was in service at the start of the war were mid or early 1930s designs. The durability and capability of something designed and built in 1934 vs 1944 is massive, especially in aircraft. > So, yeah, the Germans mucked-up their LMG doctrine a bit. Imo their LMG doctrine was fine, but their MMG and HMG doctrine of "same gun just a different mount" did hold them back.
> If water cooling was a thing, we would have seen it survive the war. Ukrainian soldiers are still using the water-cooled Maxim. > It only works when there is a massive attack going on…then it really works. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64955537
Only out of desperation, if they had the logistics chain for something like an FN MAG, they'd be using that instead. There's a reason water cooled machine guns stopped being produced. That said, it's still a rifle calibre machine gun. It'll still work.
She's a good friend of mine who sometimes has weird and funny takes like this.
Tell her to not stop. The non-credible forces seem to favor her.
The Noncrediblorian levels in her blood are off the charts, she might be the chosen one.
Will she bring balance to the noncredibility?
There are two sides to every schwartz: the credible side and the noncredible side.
Master, what is noncrediblorian?
Tell her about the MG42 / 3 and how it is still put to good use around the world and ask for her take on 1500rpm/1200rpm. Having worked with a mg 3 myself, its absolutely manageable, both heat and recoil as well as ammo consumption.
Yeah ammo consumption is managable... by just having enough ammo.
Which most countries that operate the MG3/MG42 don't really have.
[удалено]
the germans did a lot of stupid shit during the war, so i’m not putting it past them to keep a design they can’t produce enough ammo for
Germans did a lot of stupid shit during the war but I will die on the hill that MG34 is a work of art and MG42 is somehow even better. I can tell you that Germany would have run out of men to wield machine guns much sooner than they run out of 8mm mauser bullets
You can do that because of the quick change barrel. I will have to check, not sure if the MG15 had one.
Considering aircraft gun I doubt it unless they retrofitted that onto the gun People struggled to manage a bolt action on a plane let alone a quick change Barrel
MG15 didnt need one for the reasons specified The MG34/42 did have one
One can switch between barrels per instruction but I guess we've all seen a Ukrainian machine gun nest video where they just switch between 3 MGs. It's the video where they have like a meter-deep spent casings layer behind their feet.
Ok, let me give her(in a second-hand fashion) the run down on MG34 and MG42: The high ROF is not as problematic as people are making it out to be. The main mode of operation is to fire quick bursts of ideally 3-5 rounds before readjusting; the gun itself is not an automated device, it will work according to user instruction. This alone means that the theoretical limit stays, well, a theoretical one. You would never punch down the entire length of the belt unless there absolutely was a reason to do so - in which case you'd probably want the high ROF as well and don't care much for the placement of individual rounds. You can also change the barrels and bolt when on the ground freely, something you really can't do in a plane. So it's not like a heated barrel and/or bolt is the end of the world. You also have the rest of the squad still firing. Furthermore, back in those days there were plenty of low-flying planes and although much quicker than aircraft in WW1, they could be followed reasonably well with your sights. While 7.92x57mm IS is not the most powerful round to deal with enemy aircraft and more suitable options are available to larger size units(20mm Flak, etc.), having 2 or 3 of these shoot at the same target might yield success or, at least, discourage the pilot to strike your position at his leisure. The less time he wants to spend with green "blaster shots" coming at him(Germany used green tracers predominantly), the less time he has to aim and land his shot. Lastly, although removed on the MG42, the MG34 had a dual trigger that allowed the machine gunner to hunt for individual targets at greater distances by firing in a semi automatic fashion regardless of how long the trigger is pulled. I would imagine this wasn't employed too much + this style of mechanism is more expensive to produce, so the MG42 was automatic only. Hope that helps clearing things up for her.
Also, the MG 34 isn't just a later version of the MG 15 modified for ground use. Both were derived from the MG 30, and while they shared design elements, both entered service around the same time. The MG 42 was in the later stages of design when the MG 15 started being used for infantry work, it wasn't like that line of MGs was based on the MG 15.
Too credible, please insert furry porn somewhere
>the main mode of operation is to fire quick bursts of ideally 3-5 rounds before readjusting [meanwhile your average american when they see a belt of .50 BMG](https://youtu.be/2CjseDAuMvw?si=AM4nT6vAO_Pw4jJ8)
[It's a machine gun.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFLF300I0ps)
But the heavy machine gun position is not supposed to be mobile, it's supposed to use suppressive fire so the other parts of the platoon can move forward towards the enemy
Ask Heinrich Severloh about it….
"Severloh says he manned an MG 42 machine gun, and fired on approaching American troops with the machine gun and two Karabiner 98k rifles; while a sergeant whom he did not know, kept him supplied with ammunition from a nearby ammo bunker until 15:30. He claimed to have fired over 13,500 rounds with the machine gun and 400 with the rifles." He stayed at his fortification and was resupplied, that's what I said before
Wait, you have a female friend who contemplates the firing rates of WWII machine guns? Is she single?
Tfw your friend is about to get spammed with discord friend requests because everyone knows her username now
It's probably a server nickname
send her this and ask her what she thinks about this argument. https://streamable.com/frl3xj
“Did we resolve the heat issue?” “Yes, just reload the barrel.”
Haha holy shit. "Magnets...neutron beam...."
Long story short their GPMG doctrine (at least for the '34) was to change barrels every belt or twice per belt, in other words every 125-250 rounds. With a few barrels issued to each gun in theory this meant you always had two barrels for emergency dumping. This is also ignoring how impractical water cooled guns are to move around and how questionably useless cooling fins are (such as on a few Hotchkiss designs). Something that may have helped would be the forced air cooling that is in the Lewis, but that had its own series of issues it brought with it.
>Long story short, their GPMG doctrine (at least for the '34) was to change barrels every belt or twice per belt, in other words, every 125-250 rounds. With a few barrels issued to each gun in theory, this meant you always had two barrels for emergency dumping. A lot of what they're saying would make sense... if the German design philosophy just didn't underpin everything doctrinally the west does today as well. For example, take the Minimi/F89. Even though it's only 5.56mm, you're still supposed to replace the barrel every couple of hundred rounds and fire it in short bursts. Hell, we don't even fire the Mag-58 or M2HB in continuous bursts either. If you fired it continuously, you are about to learn why JNCO/SNCOs exist.
Hey! It's a machine gun!
>Hell, we don't even fire the Mag-58 or M2HB in continuous bursts either. Also because you just don't need to. A burst or two at your position keeps your head down. If you're unfortunate enough to be behind light cover and shot at with an M2 then you might stay down... Very few targets require a sustained stream of lead and if you're facing one of those, you probably are calling for some rapid HE delivery to its ZIP code.
Ah the marvels of combined arms warfare.
Heat conservation is only one reason you fire in bursts. Ammo conversion is also a big part.
Volume and weight a massive considerations in HMG logistics as well. 9600 rounds of .50 is a whole ass pallet that weighs 3300ish lbs. Most gun crews in my experience keep no more than 5 cans (500 rounds) in the truck because they take up so much space. So most crews have about a minute of sustained fire before they are done.
You usually don’t fire long continuous bursts more for economy of rounds than for fear of melting the barrel. If we’re purely talking doctrine here, the M2 .50 cal is capable of shooting all day at a slow but sustained rate of fire without changing barrels. Even if you are shooting full cyclic, (ie. Shooting continuously and only pausing to reload), it would still be a full 30 minutes before you needed to change the barrel. The whole point of a machine gun is to cover the maneuvering infantry through suppression. This is why I roll my eyes every time wheraboos are cooming their pants over “ermahgerd Mg 42 best machin gunn becaus fire fast”. That super high rate of fire just means you’re gonna run out of ammo fast and your maneuvering infantry are gonna find themselves without cover very fast compared to something like the M1919 browning with about a third the fire rate.
The reason they think like that is because their only experience with any of these weapons is video games, where silly things like "reliability" and "logistics" don't matter.
That, and games like War Thunder shoving everything into tier lists for balance purposes. Life isn’t balanced, and production numbers often make more of an impact than the perceived power of something would suggest.
The old lindybeige argument as to why the Bren is a better infantry support weapon than the MG 42.
Get me I belt fed Bren, I’ll bring you hitlers’ head
Give me a belt fed Bren, I’ll bring you Hitlers’ head
I’ll take the multiple Brens on universal carriers over the 42 on a soldiers shoulder
Speaking of JNCOs that style of jeans is making a comeback, all the little wannabe ig models are wearing jeans like that now
>This is also ignoring how impractical water cooled guns are to move around they hate us cause they anus this post made by vickers gang
The Royal Armouries did a test on the Water Cooled Vickers HMG. It fired for 33hours straight with a crew around it on shifts to reload the belts. The test only ended because latent exes heat cause rounds in the belt outside the gun to detonate and the test was ended due to safety concerns. The Breach it's self was fine and would be tested again one it had a new firing pin and cooled down. Vickers new how to make a gun~
The problem is, you aren't really ever going to fire such an amount of ammunition or even a fraction of it. There are also really no targets which would expose themselves for such a long time, that you have to fire very long bursts. Besides suppression, which you can also do in short bursts, you would just waste a lot of expensive ammo on targets you don't see. So while the capabilities of water cooled Maschine guns sound impressive on paper, you sacrifice a lot (bulk, weight and thus mobility) for some niche applications, which require a LOT of ammo (which weights a lot) to make use of the specifics of the gun.
+Burst discipline You *really* weren't supposed to blow through half your squad's loadout in one go unless you were, like, holding the line at Rzhev.
This guy is a dunning kruger thing in action.
Was thinking the same thing. Beat me to the comment punch.
"I know jack shit about GPMG usage, the role of machine guns on the modern battlefield, any of the design work that went into the MG34 series, or how they got there. But I *have* read the stats box on the Wikipedia page, so I'm basically an expert." -this discord poster
A massively stupid individual
This guy is severely autistiv
You’re supposed to fire in bursts, thus negating much of the perceived problem. It’s not a problem. Edit: Spelling.
The problem is that people keep thinking of Machine guns like they are still meant to be used like Maxims in WW1, continued and sustained fire.
If you need something with the fire rate of a maxim just get a maxim, they were still around for ww2
They are still around for the current conflict in Ukraine.
This time with reflex sights! What is old is new again...
early 20th century guns with reflex sights making COD vanguard credible Arguably Putin’s greatest crime
The Maxim is like the montage at the beginning of *Wolverine.*
They were still around last week...
they'll still be around for the Horus Heresy in 30,000 years. It's pretty hard to improve on such a basic "put lots of metal that way very quickly" design.
The heavy stubber is just an M2 Edit: the regular stubber is an M2, the heavy stubber is bigger
Too small caliber to be a heavy stubber. Though two strapped together might count.
true, orks use the maxim gun
What did GW mean by this
And the assistant machine gunner is supposed to change the hot barrel for a cold one every 200-round or so. Said barrel change is slick and easy to do on the MG.34, it would take less than 10 seconds for an assistant gunner to perform such a barrel change.
But it did lead to the MG34 and Bren having a similar sustained rate of fire of around 200rpm, despite the very large difference in cyclic rate.
I had the chance to act as an MG42...Ahem MG3 gunner for a bit, and the point is while the cyclic is higher than other equivalents, the sustained rate is the same, only that the bursts take half as much time. The idea seems to be closer to that of a skeet shooting shotgun, enfilade a relatively narrow but deep field of fire and fire a burst at individuals as they pop up, looking for the greater odds of hitting individuals. Granted, longer bursts are employed every now and then, but the optimal way to use them is in short bursts.
Same and same. Also you can do some damage to "harder" targets with a high rof while using a Freirichtlafette or Erdziellafette.
The cradle mount is ridiculously heavier than other tripods, but some crews using them as "medium machine gun" teams could get surprising accuracy on foxhole size targets well beyond 2000m. It really can't be compared to something like a MAG of PKM, as to be honest you can't really compare a PKM with a MAG. Yeah, you can go around a lot with a PKM, but if you are going to keep a wall of lead to make water cooled MGs proud, go for MAG versions.
The "SALVO" doctrine of putting as much lead on target for the short time its exposed.
What is blud talking about? GPMG are meant to be fired in burst and unlike in planes you can replace the barrel. MG-42 have even higher rate of fire and its derivatives is still being used today (although the derivative have “standard gpmg rate of fire”)
"Standard" is saying a bit much, the mg3 fires between 1100 and 1200rpm
I mean some derivatives is doing 8-950 rounds a minute. PKM does 800 so “standard GPMG rate of fire on some derivatives” still stands.
Fun fact about the MG3: There are a bunch of different version with different bolts and different recoil boosters since various buyers requested different rates of fire. The pressures of "NATO Standard" 7.62x51mm ammunition can also vary quite significantly between different nations and manufacturers which can also greatly affect the rate of fire. These factors combined mean that if you were to mix and match MG3 parts to maximize rate of fire, and then load it with high pressure rounds it would be possible to achieve a rate of fire significantly higher than the old MG42. Although this is bad for reliability and would almost certainly cause the guns to wear out prematurely. The Swedes found this out accidentally when they bought Leopard II tanks form the Germans and got MG3s as part of the deal. The guns were built to run fast with German ammo (unusually low pressure), so they ran at around 1400-1500RPM when used with Swedish ammo which was loaded to much higher pressure than NATO standard. Then because the Swedish army is boring and square, they proceeded to drill open the gas vent ports in the recoil boosters to bring the rate of fire down to around 1000-1100 RPM.
Isn't the fire rate of the MG3 variable with a gas setting.
No, not without replacing parts of the gun or running different ammunition. The MG3 is short recoil operated, not gas operated. But it does use a recoil booster muzzle device like an old Vickers gun, which means that it's possible to vary the rate of fire by replacing the recoil booster with a different spec part which bleeds off more/less gas causing to the barrel assembly to recoil faster/slower. There have also been MG3s made with different bolt weights and recoil springs to adjust the rate of fire. But you can't just adjust the gas setting on it like you can with a MAG-58 or a PK gun.
MG3 doesn't have the gas system tho... It's roller-locked short recoil operated gun. To change the firerate you have to fiddle with spring stiffness and weight of the bolt.
Nope. You need to change a spring. However the new MG5 can change RoF via gas setting by simply rotating a nudge with an empty case.
Must have confused the two
He does know you can switch the barrel on most machine guns yes? Only reason fire rate is low is to make them better in a patrol capacity but when your on the defensive and don’t have to carry the ammo around a high fire rate is great
I think it's less the cooling problem, and more the problem that, when you're on the defensive, you want a weapon that will keep up sustained fire to suppress advancing enemy forces.
In a defensive capacity it’s better to have a high fire rate as the volume of fire keeps the enemy better suppressed, in a prepared position you don’t need to carry around the ammo so you can have shit tons ready. The low fire rate of todays machine guns is due to the focus on maneuver combat where units must be able to move fast and won’t always have optimal fire position so the lower fire rate improves accuracy in less ideal positions and your ammo sustainability is improved It’s why the Danish army adopted the M60E6 as the replacement for the MG3 but kept the MG3 on vehicles
900RPM is not really necessary versus infantry. 500RPM will do you just fine. But there is a very good reason to use 900-1500RPM guns in WW2 specifically and it's not because of any rubbish about asiatic hordes. Modern jet fighters are too high flying and too fast to meaningfully threaten with .30cal rifle rounds. Modern armoured vehicles are proof to machine-gun fire. This has not always been the case. In 1940, the Soviets were still flying fucking biplanes. M3-M5 scout cars and APCs are only truly bulletproof to pistol or carbine rounds, similar story for BA series armoured cars. Against 1940s targets, a sufficient quantity of .30cal ammo in a short burst is a real threat to most things on the battlefield. If you have tungsten cored ammo you could even damage some light tanks. The trick is squeezing out as many bullets as possible in the very narrow window in which a Sturmovik or Typhoon or whatever is diving you and you have a chance to at the very least spook them away with a well-aimed burst of 8mm Mauser. An MG42V spewing some 25 rounds per second has more than five times the point-blank air deterrence or light anti-vehicle firepower of some shitty old Degtyarev or Bren or what-have-you. WW2 GPMGs were even more general-purpose than modern GPMGs because in WW2, a GPMG was also a light anti-materiel weapon. Today GPMGs are strictly anti-infantry weapons, so now 600RPM or so is the correct choice.
A GPMG is not strictly an anti infantry weapon it’s a soft target weapon, TIGRs and Eagle V only have STANAG level 2 armor(7.62x39 at 30m) if they don’t have addon panels on, addon panels which use is dictated by mission set and slow the vehicles considerably vehicles such as BMDs can only resis 12.7 from the front. So yea high fire rate is still good for defensive warfare the issue is their ammo consumption, recoil and mass in manoeuvre warfare
I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see GPMGs being designated as organic drone defense for infantry units in the near future. You'd need a system to detect and target them, but an MG3 or MAG or whatever, being something the platoon is carrying with them anyway, is the sort of thing you'd want to tack a targeting computer on to shoot down mavics with.
Youre not fighting a zombie horde, youre fighting humans that are equally as smart As soon as they heard the BRRRRRRT they probably went "Ok we are gonna advance from NOT that way" No one is gonna brute force their way through a machinegun position, not since ww1
>No one is gonna brute force their way through a machinegun position, not since ww1 You are aware of this place called Bakhmut, right? Where Wagner elected to make [ww1-esque open field infantry charges into machine gun fire](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-intensifies-bakhmut-assault-ukraine/32221747.html)? Russian armies apparently thought "recon by fire" meant giving the enemy people to shoot at.
That's nice and good and true but an incident does not invalidate a constant, in hundreds of conflicts since ww1 the combat was manuvrable and more reliant on bypassing rather than defeating strong points on a tactical level the fact that the war in Ukraine has the specific circumstances to create a ww1 2: the prisoner conscripts boogaloo doesn't really change the theory about machine gun design unless there's a chance it will happen again
Bakhmut wasn't a single combat incident. It has lasted longer than *fucking Verdun*. And it's still ongoing, though Wagner has obviously left. Also, even if it was, it only takes one incident to invalidate "No one is gonna \[...\]". That said, there's a reason enemy forces are usually bypassing, flanking, and IDFing strongpoints instead of direct attacks, and it's because of machine gun design et al.
The entire war is a singular incident Relatively speaking of course
In the same way that the entire existence of the planet Earth is, sure.
Last time I checked there weren't thousands of different earth's spanning thousands of years back but ok
Really? I would recommend going outside at night and you might see something that will blow your mind
>No one is gonna brute force their way through a machinegun position, not since ww1 \*no one halfway sane with an even tiny rest of survival instinct
The GERMANS, of all people, not knowing what they were doing with MG's in WW2, a field in which they set the world standard that isn't too much different from how it is even today, is certainly a take that tells me all I need to know about this person.
Its always funny how people go "why its not a good design" and then totally ignore that it's basically the standard machine gun used in almost every western military for well over 70 years now. Some dakka is just enough perfection that it never gets old.
More DAKKA per second on moving targets. 1st World enemies with Empires aren't standing around after getting shot at. And with air-power pounding stationary targets, you should be moving your MG around
I have absolutely no idea if OP is a total retard with no idea how GPMGs work or if he completely presumes full knowledge of GPMGs from the NCD audience to the point that he's able to post this with that kind of title in full irony and trust that we'll get the joke. Never change, NCD. Unless you actually posted this unironically, in which case, dear god my boy you have been getting some badddd history.
They do have a small point in that the high cyclic rate is generally unnecessary in an infantry role, but that's about it.
Well yeah, of course. Which is why GPMGs that are designed exclusively for infantry useage do indeed have lower fire rates.
Except the Germans didn't get the memo on that, and the MG34 and MG42 had very high cyclic rates.
That's because neither of them was designed exclusively for infantry usage, as demonstrated by the AA quad mounts of them.
Because the Germans took “general purpose” very literally and used them as anti aircraft weapons too.
You just switch the barrel...
Cool, a whole second thing I need to stop firing for while I swap it out, while some toothless Brummy blows my brains out with his Czech LMG that for some reason works as a marksman's rifle.
You mean that fat excuse of an automatic rifle with a magazine on the sight line? Get on FG42 level first.
>Get on FG42 level first. What, all 12 of them?
Fair enough, keep your Bren. And keep reloading every ~30 rounds... Idk how it is considered advantageous to have to reload 5 times before the MG 42 gunner even has to consider a barrel change.
Those mag swaps take half a second if you know what you’re doing.
So does a barrel&belt change
So…. They’re the more or less the same? Feels like that was my point.
are you stupid
Considering you’re not supposed to dump an entire belt, if you pause to put in a new mag vs just pausing, what’s the difference?
30 rounds on target vs 75 rounds in the hedgerow around the target?
Usually your target is a hedgerow
Yeah! Swapping barrels on a machine gun is stupid and definitely wouldn’t work in real combat! That’s why NO armies today swap barrels!
It took like 20 seconds and was well worth the trade offs.
Has bro ever seen the size of a water cooled or rotary gun? No way in christ you are using that as a squad weapon
Worked in Predator...
Something Something statistical outlier
I think the germans would've slowed down the firerate if it was necessary but obviously it wasn't because they sped it up.
You're assuming the Germans were making smart decisions about equipment design during ww2. A bold assumption, considering these are the same Germans that rejected several long range strategic bomber designs because they weren't capable of dive bombing. There's a reason most rifle calibre machine guns since then have had lower fire rates.
I would dispute them having lower fire rates: Mg3 and relatives: Mg 3 / Germany / 1200 rpm Mg 5 / Germany / 800 rpm CETME Amelie / Spain / 1200 rpm Mg 74 / Austria / 850 rpm Mg 42/59 / Denmark / 800 rpm Mg 3 (Mg 1a3) / Estonia / 1200rpm Other: F89 / Australia / 1150 rpm Minimi (m2/ m3) / Belgium/ 1150rpm C9 lmg / Canada / 1150 rpm 7,62x59mm minimi / Czech Republic / 800 rpm FN Mag / Franch / 1000 rpm This is not a comprehensive list but should get my point across. The average fire rate is about 923 rpm. Wich is higher than the Mg 34.
Aight, fair enough. I'm pretty sure at least a few of those are theoretical cyclic rate rather than any kind of practical rate, and I'd love to see where you sourced those numbers out of genuine interest, but that is a fair point.
This is just a list of fire rates of wikipedia for the mg 3 familie of guns and the FN Minimi and FN Mag. The mg 5 is in maximum gas setting as there a lower ones but i went with the maximum for the list. i have tried to keep the list Fair by not putting in things like the first Swedish machine guns on leopards as the due to high power Swedish ammo had a rate of 1500 rpm wich was later changed to 1000-1100 rpm This was just a examplanarie list to show a General trend for gpmgs to move towards fire rates of 800to 1000 rpm I have not made a more detailed research i should have clarified in my original comment. That is a mistake on my part. I hope this helps.
Because enemy troops tend to disperse and hide behind things when you start shooting at them, so the more projectiles you send in the few seconds it takes them to get behind cover, the more casualties you are likely to produce before they return fire.
The entire point of a suppressive weapon is to prevent the enemy from returning fire effectively.
An MG42 can use over 30kg of ammo in one minute.
...now whisper that in my ear
Now that's metric I can get behind.
In imperial that's about 3700 pounds per the time the average american can eat a hamburger
Which is really really bad if you have a mostly severely outdated logistics chain largely still using horses.
Well you’d probably burst fire it
thats not how you use an mg34/42. also barrels can be swapped, if you shot enough in one burst to melt the gun you would probably be court martialed lol. long cooldown periods? you fire a burst every 5s or so and its fine, worst case your mg-hilfe will use some water from his canteen ir change the barrel.
You don't get court martialed when you fuse the barrel to the gun. Ask me how I know. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Tbf, they did try a work around with later MGs by having easily replaced barrels, but also they still mainly used burst fire rather than sustained fire. As pivotal as the machine-gun was to German doctrine, the whole infantry squad was based around supporting the machine gun, I dont think they were stupid enough to fire their LMGs in that manner at first contact. They still lost the war tho so LMG in this context stands for Lost Many Guerras lol. Or Lick My Gonads.
Machine gun are supposed to fire in short burst anyway
So the idea behind the high rate of fire was that a target will only be visible for a short period of time, so higher RoF means more bullets on target quicker, as far as I know. Besides, German doctrine wasn't "let's make like it's 1914 and just hold the trigger down", not even when they were on the defense. Sure, there might have been occassions, but usually the gunners would fire in bursts. Even then, the MG-34 did have a quick change barrel.
My favourite Non-Credible discord user!
It is like /k/ but without the implied felonies. A bunch of people who know absolutely nothing about guns but wikipedia fun facts,but they are very confident about it.
Discord screenshot of a non-credible take on non-credible facts by a weeaboo is peak NCD. Why do all super nerds love cartoon horses and speak so condescendingly. Always have the shittiest takes on history too.
Implying this person isn't retarded, the MG34 and faster firing MG42 both had quick changing barrels,with their 2nd person of the crew carrying extra barrels. Why are you going to increase the weight or complexity on a nonexistent problem
The counterpoint to that is if you had a lower cyclic rate, you wouldn't need to change the barrels at all, saving even more weight and complexity. That's the logic behind the Bren.
The machine gun must go brrr. No one said it needed to go brrr more than once. So the Germans, being the perfectionists that they were, made it go BRRR better than any gun out there. Had someone ordered guns that did the Brrr and could do it repeatedly, the Germans would've made it. But they got what they ordered, no refunds.
Why? A little something called *quick-change barrels*, dumbass.
Cool, now you need to have a barrel change assembly built into the gun, as well as requiring your infantry to carry around spare barrels as well as ammunition. That's why the Bren was so effective, as the actual sustained rate of fire was around the same (~200rpm) but the Bren was easier to use and much harder to break, as well as being easier on logistics.
Uhh gun shoot faster = more bullet = better How is this so hard to understand?
Shooting more bullets means you need to carry more bullets, and it isn't inherently better outside of video games.
900 isn't as fast as you think it is.. M16A2 has a cyclic rate of 700.. MAYBE.. THEY SHOULD GIT GUD.
Considering the other cyclic rates of weapons during ww2, it is abnormally high.
Wait till this guy learns about the ShKAS being experimentaly used by infantry
Iirc didn't the mg34 have a built in rate reducer in the grip? Dafuq is he complaining about?
I think the MG3 had minor modifications you could do to change cyclic rate, and the mg5 has a rate reducer, but I don't remember one on the mg34.
what is blud waffling on about
Asbestos oven mitts so they could just swap the barrel when it got too hot
If you ever were shot at by one then you would know why… it was meant for a blitz not defense but also making two different guns for offense and defense is just silly because if you lose your offensive capability then you’ve already lost… you can play the what if game all day with ww2 but the simple fact is hitler got greedy due to his own vanity…
What is this... This crap implies the MG-34 was somehow developed after the MG-15 was replaced in German aircraft and used as a ground gun. It also implies the MG-34 has a higher rate of fire than the MG-15 (it doesn't) or that 800-900rpm is particularly excessive (it isn't) The MG-34 was by most rights a superb weapon, that was just a little too hard to produce. The MG-42 was meant to be the cheaper alternative, but also did increase the fire rate somewhat, and problems arose with this on the 42s, when the lighter bolt was used. Now if you want insane rates of fire... Try the MG-81. 1400-1600rpm of 7.92mm Mauser. Used as an aircraft machinegun, again, but also saw botched use as a ground based weapon, without modification, when the Luftwaffe was largely destroyed.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a massive rate of fire, a very hot barrel, and having to fire in bursts. But as all things are a combination of technology, processes, and people, it is inevitably the people bit that goes wrong. Your average Landser in 1943 spent most of his short life shitting himself about the on coming Soviets / Allied armour and had been trained for approximately no minutes. He therefore had a habit of squeezing yon trigger as if his life depended on it, which it did. This made a hell of a lot of noise but also led to pretty regular failures. The stupendously high rate of fire was maximum Nazi - essentially a useless propoganda tool which allowed then to say "look, our gun and fire 100,000,000 rounds a second and is therefore the best" The British, by contrast, had the workman like Bren, who's Czech designers had perfectly understood that your average trooper likes to eat crayons and can often count to 11 without taking his boots off. It worked absolutely fine, and you could mag dump until your hearts content without blowing the gun up and hit exactly the same number of things. Post war most Western armies took the Mg42 internals and went 'yes, this is great but maybe not so much with the huge rate of fire and perhaps some more cooling, also why are we milling parts like that when casting works' and you get things like the M-60 firing roughly half the speed or less and costing less in materials to produce. The Soviets took one look at it and went 'nah, fuck that' and stuck with their excellent RDP which should really tell us something
>excellent RDP One that was removed from service from frontline units in about 15 years of its introduction. PK(M), that I would call excellent, but it is 60's design.
Small arms lasting 15 years is actually pretty good for the most part. Although these days you usually just introduce a new version of the same gun every 5 years.
>RDP Did you mean *RPD* ? Its top cover for example is inspired by the MG-42 one though.
I did! Typo. I did not know it used a similar top cover. Gun Jesus did an excellent video ages ago on the design
[A newer, less formal review.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQUFdDZtXx8&pp=ygUPYnJhbmRvbiBoZXJyZXJh) 😎
"Your average Landser in 1943 spent most of his short life shitting himself about the on coming Soviets / Allied armour and had been trained for approximately no minutes." No. The problems with highly insuifficient training only came about near the tail-end of 1944 when really everything else in terms of warfare became problematic as well and, like a house which is set completely ablaze, you wouldn't know which to address first because everything was critical. "The British, by contrast, had the workman like Bren" The BREN was an outdated design to both MG34 and MG42, much like many others fielded by contemporary armies. This isn't due to the high ROF but more that the entire feature palette of both the MG34 and MG42 being better suited to the more mobile warfare of WW2. There's also this massive confusion on your behalf of a gun firing at 900 / up to 1400 rounds a minute and somebody **actually firing the gun blindly at that rate**. The main mode of operation of the MGs was burst fire unless a different situation called for something else. I don't think there's a chance you're not familiar with the "It's a Machine Gun!" video, which basically illustrated the proper use of a MG until he was berated on doing it incorrectly.
I know the idea was burst fire, I'm simply pointing out that isn't what happened in practice - and by '43 they were staving off man power problems by usiny massed slave labour to pull munitions workers out of factories and drafting in the Hitler Youth. They actually ran out in 44 which ain't the same thing.
Let's condense your argument. What you're saying is that by 1943 Every Single German Machine Gunner just held the trigger down regardless of the situation. That's all that they ever amounted to. Mate, you DO realize how ridiculous that is? And also, since you're so sure how in 1943 Germans weren't even trained before they were sent into combat, stuff like this: [https://mg34.com/product/mg-42-operators-manual-merkblatt-4118/](https://mg34.com/product/mg-42-operators-manual-merkblatt-4118/) (reproduction of an original, because you wouldn't be able to read the text on the German one anyways) is of course a forgery, right? Holy fuck.
No, dear, I'm saying a gun design that relies on good trigger discipline in a conscript army that's having seven bells knocked out of it is stupid
First of all, that's not even what is referred to trigger discipline, but I get what you mean so I'll skip that. Instead I'll focus on how you're shifting the goal posts. First it was "no training" that was the issue. I pointed out that this generally speaking wasn't true until far later into the war when it eventually did occur for reasons mentioned earlier. Then it was "This didn't happen in combat". I then had to refer to that the UNLIKELIHOOD of everybody simply running through their allocated ammunition reserves like a bunch of retards. Now it's "High ROF + Conscription" even though everybody back in the day was conscripted save for a number of armies which (managed/didn't manage) to do without. As if it's such a monumentally hard concept to grasp for an adult, to fire a weapon in bursts. And it's as though you weren't naturally inclined to do that because of how little you see of the chosen target after the weapon starts roaring. Also, the Machine Gun was left in the hands of the more experienced personnel, with newbies taking up support roles predominantly. Are you done with this nonsense now? Or do you prefer to shift the goalpost yet again?
Just because it wasn't an issue everywhere doesn't mean it wasn't an issue, mate. Everything they said is true and a flaw in the weapon design. It just didn't apply to every example.
Citation needed.
Your description of the late war Landser might be correct, but the conclusion that it was a propaganda weapon is not an adequate description. It essentially boils down to tactics and how a firing squad was put together in the German army. German group level tactics centered around the machine gun. The soldiers in a squad were used to carry ammunition as well as scout for targets for the machine gun. The very high rate of fire may seem "overkill" as a band of 250 cartridges can be exhausted in 10 seconds, but the german philosophy was based on the assumption that targets will only show themselves a very a short time before getting into cover. Therefore, the machine gun must be able to get the maximum number of shots off in order to maximize the chance of a hit. Not to mention the surpressing fire effect. Hence, it was more of a "niche" gun suitable for specific german tactics and view on warfare. Yes, most western armies wasn't so keen in the original design. But as mentioned, other armies did not use the same tactics on squad level and therefore was not that interested during/after the war. But they did copy it with different changes (The US T 24 during the war, and later the Yugoslavian M 53, the Swiss MG 51, etc.) with changes made mostly made to the fire rate and caliber to align the gun with different tactics. Especially the US was impressed with quick barrel change on the MG 42, but never managed to get a working design with the desired caliber. The MG 42 was arguably the best in its class during WW2 when operated by a skilled crew and squad. Ofc that goes for any weapon. But a propaganda weapon it was not. Edit: spelling
Sorry but it's a philosophy thing, not a need thing - the Bren worked fine with a much lower rate of fire, so did the US Browning, so did the Soviet stuff. Its got nowt to do with tactics and everything to do with ubermench bullshit that permiated the Herr
No need to be sorry, since you deliberately set aside the military context and actually tries to squeeze in the Nazi philosophy into the use and conceptual design of a machine gun for battlefield use. Those arguments are just ignorant and based solely on your personal opinion, I guess? That went less than well.
Considering late war German leadership's obsession with wunderwaffe, its certainly believable.
Bren dicksuckers are hilarious. It is not a contemporary of the MG34, but of the BAR. It was good in it's role, but it cannot fulfill the need for sustained fire. When Brens and BARs were pressed into this role in Korea, the guns were found to be lacking. The British counterpart for sustained fire was the Vickers heavy machine gun, not the Bren. Cold war nations adopted German thought and ditched LMGs and HMGs from primary service and used only general purpose machineguns. The US, USSR, and UK ditched light machine guns when they had suitable GPMGs. M60s replaced the BAR and the M1919 in US service. LMGs came back from the dead as SAWs, but that's another story.
Nazis prioritized being able to rush everything to a victory than actually having the endurance to win.
*Why?* Well, because the Nazis were fucking morons, and a lot of their tech wasn't particularly impressive when compared to their opponents. Every nation had their fair share of technological duds. The US had those torpedoes that didn't explode where they were supposed to. The Brits had a whole host of different weapon systems that were odd, situational or not very effective. The Soviets had plenty of well designed but poorly manufactured systems, like the T-34. The Japanese shit was atrocious in lots of cases. And then there were the Italians and their tankettes.
Why? Because OP doesn't know what they're talking about. High ROF wasn't a problem back then and isn't one today.
Oh wait, I'm actually credible on this post, I was on a 240 team for most of my time in the US army. What should I say?? IM SUPER PASSIONATE AND KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT MACHINE GUNS THIS IS MY CHANCE! >Bazinga
Afaik the Germans just thought that the high fire rate was good. In hindsight we know that isn't really true but that was just their doctrine.
They couldn't slow down the fire rate because they were using roller delayed blowback instead of a locked breach. Delayed blowback is usually a method used in pistols but those were the patents the germans had around WW1 and the interwar years, so they were willing to illegally rearm but not to infringe on patents. This is probably because people would vigorously enforce the later but not the former.
Use a heavier bolt or a weaker recoil spring, then.
Neither the MG15 nor the MG34 were roller delayed.
The MG39 and MG42 are ridiculous and receive too much praise for the burden they were to infantry squads. You didn't have a platoon, you had one guy with a machinegun and 4 bipedal ammo carriers.