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FAUXTON posted:Yeah, when you're short on everything, a gun that goes through barrels and bullets insanely fast is a Bad Thing. The Germans were never short on either ammo or barrels. They had real shortages but it wasn't like they were lacking for small arms. Also the guns didn't burn their barrels significantly faster than other designs. The quick change barrel was there because a gun's barrel overheating really badly causes all sorts of problems with running it. Swapping out barrels on the fly lets you keep it up and running much more effectively. Think of it as the same reason emplaced guns in WW1 were water cooled, only rather than extending the gun's active time by cooling the barrel you're just switching it out at regular intervals. The MG42 was a good design. It was far superior to the MG34 in ease of manufacture and it was a reliable gun. There are good reasons why European countries are still using variants of it, most notably the MG3. We're not talking lovely militaries either. Norway, Denmark, hell the loving Bundeswehr is still using it.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:50
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Xander77 posted:Huh. One might imagine that the upper classes of the USSR didn't mind swearing either. The current upper classes certainly don't, though for very different reasons. I just tend to assume that Russians swear constantly for whatever reason. I have no idea why I have that impression, which leads me to wonder: is that accurate at all?
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Mar 31, 2016 05:08
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I feel like in the many ways you can call out German equipment small arms aren't really one of them. They had some oddities and poo poo like Hitler meddling in dumb ways like he loved to do, but all in all they had some great infantry weapons. I forget was the FG-42 considered good or bad? I know it looks cool as gently caress.
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Mar 31, 2016 05:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:The Germans were never short on either ammo or barrels. They had real shortages but it wasn't like they were lacking for small arms. Oh, I'd have imagined they would have had ammo shortages on the regular as soon as their supply lines stopped being reliable. As for the ease of barrel swaps and design simplicity, yeah the 42 was a massive improvement over the 34.  that steam game where you take weapons apart had an MG34 model for fieldstripping and disassembly. Oh god the sheer mass of tiny bits and pieces involved was incredible. It's like someone asked a watchmaker to make a machine gun.
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Mar 31, 2016 05:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:The Germans were never short on either ammo or barrels. They had real shortages but it wasn't like they were lacking for small arms. In fact, I can only think of a single later variant of the MG 42 (the Yugoslavian M53) that really lowered the rate of fire...and it's still pretty intense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E4qA50I4hI
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Mar 31, 2016 05:54
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chitoryu12 posted:In fact, I can only think of a single later variant of the MG 42 (the Yugoslavian M53) that really lowered the rate of fire...and it's still pretty intense. 
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Mar 31, 2016 06:24
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chitoryu12 posted:In fact, I can only think of a single later variant of the MG 42 (the Yugoslavian M53) that really lowered the rate of fire...and it's still pretty intense. Yugoslav Partizans were extremely conservative about spending ammo, for obvious reasons, which is why it was, for example, really easy to tell the difference between Nazi and Partizan forces firing from the exact same kind of gun by ear. I imagine this experience made rate of fire a relatively low priority in later gun development.
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Mar 31, 2016 06:58
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Mazz posted:I feel like in the many ways you can call out German equipment small arms aren't really one of them. They had some oddities and poo poo like Hitler meddling in dumb ways like he loved to do, but all in all they had some great infantry weapons. FG-42 was good and had a lot of neat features (Louis Stange always had interesting ideas). I'll agree that Germany generally did well in regards to small arms. There really aren't any particularly bad ones (obvious last-ditch weapons not included). Yeah, while the MG34 was more practical in terms of a more sustained fire, the MG 42 beat it in most every other regard. The 34 has lots of tiny little bits and bobs and was harder to produce, while the 42 seems less extravagant (Bolt housing on the 34 has around 25 individual pieces while the MG 42 has around ~15 from what I remember, for example). I've never particularly gotten where the "M60 is copied from MG-42" comes from. I don't see much similar in terms of mechanics or internals. One's even gas operated while the other is recoil operated. I could see it as more of a "The US adopted the idea of a mobile, belt-fed LMG like the MG-42", but unless I'm way off about something, "copied" seems strong. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 07:31
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Mazz posted:I feel like in the many ways you can call out German equipment small arms aren't really one of them. They had some oddities and poo poo like Hitler meddling in dumb ways like he loved to do, but all in all they had some great infantry weapons. This video should answer your question about the FG-42 the best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY5jUXMg2-I
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Mar 31, 2016 07:31
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Hypha posted:This video should answer your question about the FG-42 the best Forgotten Weapons callouts can't go without a mention of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VKGhqIl4Gw&t=295s  that sound
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Mar 31, 2016 08:34
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Plan Z posted:I was re-reading about Operation Torch recently, and a tank destroyer unit in particular was talking about being strafed by friendly Mustangs and Spitfires for several days on end, presumably because all of the M3 GMCs looked like German halftracks. One thing I've always been curious about how often air crews were ever confronted about specific issues of friendly fire in terms of either debriefs or even punishment like court-martials. I imagine it could really mess someone up. I'm guessing if it happened, it was only in extreme cases as keeping crew numbers up was probably very difficult, but it's something I've been really curious about even since I was little. On the things I remember the most from Generation Kill is how the Marines are assaulting a city during OIF and most of the casualties come from friendly planes strafing their AAVs (how do you mistake that horrible beast with anything). I wonder how the pilots felt. I get to post this every 20-50 pages. Plan Z posted:I've never particularly gotten where the "M60 is copied from MG-42" comes from. I don't see much similar in terms of mechanics or internals. One's even gas operated while the other is recoil operated. I could see it as more of a "The US adopted the idea of a mobile, belt-fed LMG like the MG-42", but unless I'm way off about something, "copied" seems strong. Same way you get StG-44 and AK-47 "SAME RUSSIANS CAN ONLY STEAL" argument: they look vaguely familiar. Got to touch an MG3 last year, it's not too heavy, and they showed me how to change the barrel. You can probably get Red Orchestra flashbacks during training, it's that similar. The cyclic rate is lower almost by half, tho.
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Mar 31, 2016 08:37
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JcDent posted:On the things I remember the most from Generation Kill is how the Marines are assaulting a city during OIF and most of the casualties come from friendly planes strafing their AAVs (how do you mistake that horrible beast with anything). I wonder how the pilots felt. About a quarter of British troops killed in the first Gulf War were thanks to the US Air Force (24 total killed by the Iraqis, 9 by an A-10 pilot who shot up two British APCs). I guess Warriors look a bit Soviet or something...
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Mar 31, 2016 09:46
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Plan Z posted:After all, Hitler didn't exactly have majority approval going for him. Why do you believe this, out of curiosity? After 1933, anyway; and even then, while he didn't get a majority in those elections, people in proportional voting systems very rarely do. He still got by far the highest number of votes.
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Mar 31, 2016 09:57
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feedmegin posted:Why do you believe this, out of curiosity? After 1933, anyway; and even then, while he didn't get a majority in those elections, people in proportional voting systems very rarely do. He still got by far the highest number of votes. I don't understand what the contention is. The 30-ish some percent doesn't constitute a majority.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:30
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I'd bring out the 30 something figure to reiterate that Hitler's rise isn't at all some kind of historical inevitability. (Yeah he got the most votes of any party, but the largest party doesn't always form the government.) But that doesn't mean a majority of Germans didn't approve of his government.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:36
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Hitler never had a majority, He just got the largest vote share and Hindenburg asked him to be Chancellor to prevent yet another round of elections. German politics were in a really bad way.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:The Germans were never short on either ammo or barrels. They had real shortages but it wasn't like they were lacking for small arms. Denmark's made the switch to the M60E6, but yeah, until then it's worked really well as far I've been able to see.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:38
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Plan Z posted:I don't understand what the contention is. The 30-ish some percent doesn't constitute a majority. I took the implication to be that the majority of Germans explicitly didn't want him and felt oppressed by him. My point is that this wasn't really the case; the guy who wins 50% more votes than anyone else, in a system of proportional representation, has about a big a mandate as you're ever going to see under PR - so he was certainly pretty popular in the last unbiased direct evidence we have for that - and I don't really see much evidence that that really changed, until say 1942 or so at any rate (losing a war will tend to do that for you). I.e. Nazi Germany wasn't a nation of people uniformly groaning under a dictator they all wanted rid of; quite a lot of Germans in the 30s were actually fully down with the programme. Edit: I meant 'pretty popular'. Hitler was never pretty    feedmegin fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 10:42
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Lord Tywin posted:I rememer reading earlier in the thread about someone saying that they were going to do a first crusade megapost, did anything come from that? Or can someone recommend me a book with a good overview. That was me. Sorry, stuff got in the way. I still mean to write it, but I don't know when I'll have a chance.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:43
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feedmegin posted:I took the implication to be that the majority of Germans explicitly didn't want him and felt oppressed by him. My point is that this wasn't really the case; the guy who wins 50% more votes than anyone else, in a system of proportional representation, has about a big a mandate as you're ever going to see under PR - so he was certainly pretty in the last unbiased direct evidence we have for that - and I don't really see much evidence that that really changed, until say 1942 or so at any rate (losing a war will tend to do that for you). It was an intended understatement in a lot of ways to just be safe. I meant for it to be vague to allow lots of people who supported/opposed the regime in different ways and for different reasons. I was just sort of making a "safe bet" remark as I didn't want someone to come in with "WELL ACTUALLY not all Germans" as is usually the case.
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Mar 31, 2016 10:49
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FAUXTON posted:Forgotten Weapons callouts can't go without a mention of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VKGhqIl4Gw&t=295s The sound of that same guy firing the Chauchat on full auto gives me the hugest gunboner every drat time.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwP3Dm52Ls&t=755s
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Mar 31, 2016 10:53
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Same! There's something glorious about the sound of 400rpm. Tip o the day, you can get a fn mag aka m240 et al, to run just so. It gets as unreliable as a chauchat doing it, but god drat that sound. Something about the loudness of it getting the time to really reverb(?)... It's like adding 
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Mar 31, 2016 12:54
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:That was me. Sorry, stuff got in the way. I still mean to write it, but I don't know when I'll have a chance. I'd love to read it, as well, but do your thing, no stress 
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Mar 31, 2016 13:04
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Elyv posted:I just tend to assume that Russians swear constantly for whatever reason. I have no idea why I have that impression, which leads me to wonder: is that accurate at all? No. Real life isn't DotA.
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Mar 31, 2016 13:34
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Since we are all posting forgotten weapons, cause he owns, here is his video on the mg 34 and 42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJkU4Sah8I The similarity to the M60 seems to be part of the bolt and the locking mechanism, and then the top cover and feeding system. Dude also has a video on the FG 42 and tons of other cool stuff. I'm a gun control proponent and do not own a single gun, and I love this guy's stuff. He just talks about cool old guns and their history, and there is barely ever a reference to gun laws except to inform the viewer if the gun is regulated under certain laws.
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Mar 31, 2016 14:15
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I've always seriously impressed with the MG3 and I have no idea why the US bought the 240 instead of it. Also it is really weird that the American MIC hasn't produced a competent light machine gun since the BAR.
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Mar 31, 2016 14:28
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Yeah, thanks for linking that dude. Iirc he was first linked when we had Chauchat chat. Were there any big differencies between the Maxim clones?
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Mar 31, 2016 14:32
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bewbies posted:I've always seriously impressed with the MG3 and I have no idea why the US bought the 240 instead of it. Was it competent after the 30s?
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Mar 31, 2016 14:40
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Ensign Expendable posted:No. Real life isn't DotA. Pretty sure every culture finds constant swearing and open doucebaggery annoying still, depsite what you see you see on the internet. Also, Cyrano4747 never stop posting in this thread. Always top notch stuff whatever the subject.
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Mar 31, 2016 14:45
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Pick a modern firearm in service and there's a good chance that Fabrique Nationale were involved in designing/building it at some point.
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Mar 31, 2016 15:37
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Plan Z posted:
http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/t52e3-an-m60-prototype/ quote:After the war, US arms development took the feed mechanism of the MG-42 and the operating system of the FG-42 and merged them together in to the T44 experimental machine gun. The T44 was chambered in .30-06 still, and featured an unusual belt feed mechanism which ran belt vertically up the left side of the receiver. When it was decided to drop the .30-06 round in favor of 7.62×51 NATO (at the time called the T65 cartridge), the T44 machine gun gave way to the T52. The T52 was chambered for the new cartridge, and used a more conventional horizontal feed with the typical top cover design (again pulled form the MG42). The T52 went through three more formal iterations (E1, E2, and E3) and then several variation under the designation T161 before ultimately being adopted as the M60.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:34
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As someone who owns a MG-34, I can safely say that I absolutely hate removing the barrel and I would not want to have to do it under combat circumstances.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:55
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Hah, now I want to see how complicated it is. Could someone post a video about how to disassemble a MG-34?
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Mar 31, 2016 16:58
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Hogge Wild posted:Hah, now I want to see how complicated it is. Could someone post a video about how to disassemble a MG-34? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNQwQyQv_0&t=81s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QIrtSq8jPo Mine does not open that fast or smoothly, but mine's more an exception than the rule. The fact that you have to rotate the receiver is particularly annoying, and trying to grab and pull out the barrel if its stuck would not be fun to do with bare hands. Also note the position of the two guys and the guns. Now imagine if you had to do this prone, and without leverage, because you're taking fire and don't want to get shot.
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Mar 31, 2016 17:10
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Jobbo_Fett posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNQwQyQv_0&t=81s Thanks! Didn't they have some kind of gloves for it?
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Mar 31, 2016 17:14
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Hogge Wild posted:Thanks! Didn't they have some kind of gloves for it? Yeah, but if memory serves it was more of a mitten Edit: 
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Mar 31, 2016 17:23
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There was an asbestos rag, IIRC.
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Mar 31, 2016 17:23
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good lord
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Mar 31, 2016 17:27
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Jobbo_Fett posted:As someone who owns a MG-34, I So how long have you been waiting to use the phrase "As someone who owns a MG-34, I..."?
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Mar 31, 2016 17:32
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I'm lazy so i"m not going to nest a bunch of quotes: German manufacturing and shortages: Bombing never hosed German industry as a whole. They did a good job of distributing manufacturing and at any rate bomb raids tended to screw things up fora short time after which they would get going again. The sort of machines used in 1940s industry are pretty durable. Look up figure for their tank and airplane production. By the end of the war the problem wasn't finding airplanes and tanks, it was getting skilled crews and gas. Refining, incidentally, is the one are where strategic bombing arguably did gently caress things up on an economy-wide scale. Small arms manufacture was impacted in some ways, but mostly it had to do with supply line stuff or factories that were never really effective in the first place never being rebuilt. The G-43 factory at Buchenwald, for example, wasn't spun back up after the buildings got flattened. Late, late war there were also a lot of transport problems that led to parts substitutions and the refurbishing of parts rejected in previous years. This didn't gently caress up their production numbers on rifles or anything, but it gives collectors something to do trying to figure out why factory X started using a hosed up front bands in 1945 or went back to the old stock style that they retired in 1942. Ammo was never, ever in short supply if for no other reason than they were producing it and stockpiling it for the whole war. By the time 1945 comes along they are sitting on literal mountains of rifle ammo in depots scattered from the Rhine to the Vistula. Along these lines, it's also important to remember that after 1943 the Germans were always retreating. Supply lines were getting shorter and they were going into areas that they could expect to have MORE of their equipment available, not less. Pushing into enemy territory is when you have to dedicate a poo poo load of trucks to follow you with bullets for your guns. Retreating into your own that's less of an issue. The FG-42: It was a lovely gun. Not because it was particularly poorly made, but it was just a prime example of jacks of all trades being lovely at all of them. It was designed to be a single-weapon replacement for paratroops that would serve as LMG, SMG, and rifle. It was insanely heavy and unwieldy compared to other contemporary rifles, even the semi-auto ones. It was designed to be light, so it was loving uncontrollable on full auto unsupported, so it was a garbage SMG/proto-assault rifle. It was fed by a side-loading box mag so it ran out way too quickly when used as an LMG, making it inferior as a squad machine gun to anything with a belt. Note that these are also all reasons why the BAR wasn't as great as video games imply. If any of that sounds familiar it's because those are the same mistakes that the US made when trying to develop a one-size-fits-all gun in the M14. The M14 was also the shortest lived standard issue rifle in US history. Full auto full cartridge rifles are bad cul-de-sac in firearms design history. Hitler's popularity with Germans: The vote numbers are a bit of a red herring. By the time 1939 came around he had been in office for six years and had taken over the government from the inside. He mobilized all of society towards what was explicitly described as a social revolution. He created massive government spending programs that in turn created a ton of jobs and was loving LAVISH with social programs and hand outs for average Germans. His regime was very good at creating a calm political order (of course, at the expense of jailing communists and dissidents) which even if you weren't a fan of his in 1933 was a really nice change from the lovely chaos of Weimar. In 1938 he was a popular leader with the support of the majority of the population. There's no getting around that. It also helps that the first two years of the war were wildly successful for Germany. People were pretty antsy when they got a second war with France, but when it ended in German troops in Paris after six months rather than another 4 year long trench warfare slog they were pretty on board. One thing that you really have to understand to grasp the way Nazi Germany worked (and for that matter most single-party dictatorships - the parallel to the Ba'athists is undeniable and you're not too crazy if you look at the Communists in China and Russia the same way) is how they tied the party into every aspect of day to day life and made people invested in its success. Want to go to school? Want to get a professional certification? There are party organizations which help with all of that and, in time, become mandatory for it. Being a Nazi in 1935 wasn't only a political statement, it was a loving good career move. So much so, in fact, that they had to stop enrolling new party members for a few years at that time because they were overwhelmed with the sheer number of applications. Ponder that again: SO MANY PEOPLE WANTED TO BE CARD CARRYING NAZIS THAT THEY HAD TO FREEZE NEW ADMISSIONS SO THEY COULD PROCESS THE BACKLOG. Of course this didn't go unnoticed by the old party faithful. There was a clear hierarchy where the "Old Fighters" of the pre-1933 days were considered better than these new guys. This is also why the whole process of denazification and certifying people as OK to work in government etc was such a headache. You really couldn't just toss everyone who had been a Nazi out or you couldn't run the schools, railroads, courts, etc. Another thing that needs to be mentioned is how the property that was expropriated from Jews and Communists was liberally distributed as hand outs. Gotz Ally wrote a great book - Hitler's Beneficiaries - that explores this large scale wealth transfer and how it bought a lot of loyalty. We're talking everything from a store taking over the Jewish competitor down the block to neighbors carting off the furniture and silverware of the Jews "resettled to the East." Finally, you've got the matter of patriotism and good old fashioned propaganda. That had an effect and I think people are way too flippant in discarding its impact. This is doubly important to remember when your'e talking about wartime support. The Germans in 1942 who were rampaging around the East weren't - as a society - the same Germans voting in 1933. You have almost a decade of everything I described above, plus all the indoctrination about the Jewish/Bolshevik menace from the east. gently caress, a fair number of the soldiers out there got that poo poo spoon fed to them in school following a childhood of cheerful memories marching with their friends in the HJ. You really, really can't just look at the 1933 election to try to answer the question of how much wartime support Hitler had and, by extension, how much German society as a whole supported and participated in his atrocities. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 17:33
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