"Opinion on this video" Topic

Lindy is conciderd quite an authory on Ancient/Medieval weapons. But alot of people feel is is just rehashing old myths and sterio types when it comes to modern stuff.
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Both were solid weapons for their particular roles.

I suppose we can look at post-war usage where light machine guns with a detachable ammo box have been more popular than giving each squad a GPMG.

Agree that both were valued by the troops who used them

I must say that in a revised version the MG-42 is still in use by the Bundswehr (mind you, in some places so is the Bren)

Norway too uses/used the MG3. It used to be the standard infantry support machine gune. But the Minimi had taken it's plance and it's now mostly relagted to vehichal mounting both on armord and unarmord cars. As well as base defence ect.

In the light machine gun role the Bren was better in the medium machine gun role the MG-42 was better. I have heard quite a few people say MG-42 was really scary to be fired upon but no one has talk about anybody being killed by them.

x42

Like all questions that ask for an opinion, there is no right answer. Each person you ask might give an answer based on various factors, and for them that is the right answer. Like most things, your opinion, like your mileage, may vary.

Having not fired either gun, let alone had to hump it around in the field in actual field conditions, I can't say which was better. From what I know, both were night and day better than say, the Japanese type 11, or the French Chauchat, and both the Bren and the MG42 were by all accounts good pieces of kit.

At the end of the day, does it matter other than thumping up your chest and saying, 'My country's stuff is better than yours?'

In the light machine gun role the Bren was better in the medium machine gun role the MG-42 was better.

The terms "light machine gun" and "medium machine gun" do not describe a role. They describe weight.

In the early modern and inter-war period, when these terms came into use, armies still primarily marched on foot, knowing the weight of a weapon was critical to understanding how to use and support it. A light machine gun was a gun that could be carried by one man. A medium machine gun required a crew to transport it. A heavy machine gun was a small piece of artillery … it might be transported tactically by a crew, but really required pack animals or a vehicle (cart, pack animal, truck, whatever…) for operational deployment.

Had nothing to do with the caliber or the tactics employed. Had to do with looking at a TOE and knowing how you needed to support the unit.

Wargamers often get confused over this … and so also do wargame rulesets. A U.S. Browning .50cal is a heavy machine gun. So also is a British Vickers .303 and a Russian Degtyarev 7.62mm. Different calibers, different roles, but all are heavy because they weight enough that they can not be man-ported without a team of several men.

In modern military parlance, when armies and their support infrastructure are usually not foot-bound, we can identify MGs by their role … and so the terms SAW (squad automatic weapon) and GPMG (General Purpose MG) have come into common use, and HMG (Heavy MG) usually refers to the caliber of the weapon.

Bren and MG42 were both light machine guns. The Bren was an exceptional SAW. The MG42 was an exceptional GPMG, and was also used as a SAW.

I have heard quite a few people say MG-42 was really scary to be fired upon but no one has talk about anybody being killed by them.

?????

You have never heard anyone talk of the soldiers killed by German small arms fire? How remarkable.

This video repeats a grave mis-reading of history in asserting that the German MG-34 or -42 were primarily weapons of suppression, and that the Bren was different in being accurate enough to actually hit.

In automatic weapon fire there is little to no value in putting multiple successive rounds at the same point. You WANT to spread them around. If your first round hits, you really don't need to put 4 more after it. If your first round does not hit you want your next 4 rounds to be in the area around the first round, not right behind it. And if you want to hit more than 1 target, your subsequent rounds need to be spread out even more.

The MG-34 and MG-42 were the primary killing weapons of the German infantry squad. The riflemen were there to support and defend the MG team, and to keep them in action. The great majority of casualties caused by German infantry fire were caused by the MGs.

This was different than U.S. and British squad-level doctrine. In the U.S. and British armies the squad MG was there to support the riflemen.

The MG-34 and -42 (particularly the -42) fired a LOT of rounds very quickly. Having a wider distribution led to a higher hit rate, not per round fired but per time of firing. German pre-war theory (and most post-war studies) accurately comprehended that troops in the open quickly fell to cover when under MG fire. The theory behind the MG-34 and -42 was that if you want to create casualties, you need to have numerous bullets arrive within the first burst, before the enemy has taken cover, in an area that is wide enough to be confident of at least one, if not multiple, strikes.

That said, the MG-34 and -42 were not, by any means, perfect weapons. They were not nearly as portable as the Bren (or [gulp! Dare I say it?] the U.S. BAR), and so were not nearly as useful when the squad was maneuvering. Also they ate ammunition at a prodigious rate. The MG-42 in particular really fired too fast to be optimal for an infantry weapon, and post-war MGs did not follow the MG-42 on the 1,200+ rpm cyclic rate. The rate of fire of the MG-34, about 900rpm, was equally effective but more supportable than the rate of the MG-42.

At least this is what my readings and conversations with veteran troops have given me to understand. Never actually used any of them, in combat or in training. So no first-hand experience.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

WW2:
Light machine gun. Bipod
Medium tripod air cooled
Heavy tripod watercooled/or big giant bullet. Så A M42 would never be a heavy machine gun.

Modern:
Light machine gun. 5.56mm
Medium 7.72mm
Heavy: .50/12.7mm and above. From 20mm it's an auto cannon.

Heavy tripod watercooled/or big giant bullet. Så A M42 would never be a heavy machine gun.

The WW2 Germans did it by mode, not weight, so an MG42 could be a heavy machine gun or a light machine gun, as evidenced by the use of the terms s.M.G. and l.M.G. in their K.St.N. tables.

Also they ate ammunition at a prodigious rate. The MG-42 in particular really fired too fast to be optimal for an infantry weapon, and post-war MGs did not follow the MG-42 on the 1,200+ rpm cyclic rate. The rate of fire of the MG-34, about 900rpm, was equally effective but more supportable than the rate of the MG-42.

I wouldn't think the rate of fire of the MG34 was equally effective:
"It will be seen from this that the ammunition expenditure of the MG-42 is a little higher than with the MG-34, but to balance this, the results on the target with the MG-42 are increased up to approximately 40%."
link

"Like all questions that ask for an opinion, there is no right answer…"

Agree!

Amicalement
Armand

Mark I makes a good point about infantry squad taking cover. When you open fire and everyone hits the deck within one second the MG42 at 1200 rpm has put out 20 rounds into an exposed squad. An M1919 firing at 600 rpm has put out 10. However, after that the M1919 can keep the enemy under fire and suppressed for twice as long with the same amount of ammo. I think overall that makes it a more "effective" weapon but the MG42 more "deadly".

This shows whey you really need to spread out and flanking fire can be so deadly.

Wolfhag

WW2:
Light machine gun. Bipod
Medium tripod air cooled
Heavy tripod watercooled/or big giant bullet. Så A M42 would never be a heavy machine gun.

Modern:
Light machine gun. 5.56mm
Medium 7.72mm
Heavy: .50/12.7mm and above. From 20mm it's an auto cannon.

Useful guidance if you are sitting in your living room playing with toy soldiers. You can see the bipods or the tripods. What more do you need?

But for an army? Nope … having a category depending on how you steady the gun is not very useful for organizing your force. When your army travelled on foot you needed to know how you supported the weapon in action. Now that your army travels by vehicle you want to know what level of the organization uses the gun, and/or how it is used.

WW2
Light machine gun. Carried by one man. Provide a number 2 to carry the ammo, please.

Medium machine gun. Carried by 2 or 3 men. Provide more to carry the ammo, please.

Heavy machine gun. 2 or 3 men can carry it from the cart to the emplacement. But if you want your troops to march 20 miles today, you better d@mned well provide a cart, or a truck.

Modern:
SAW: The squad's gun. Light and quick into action. Can be used while maneuvering on foot.

SFMG: The platoon or company-level support gun. May be (probably?) on a tripod. Stationary for firing, but can be man-ported. Who cares, they've got an APC anyways.

GPMG: One gun that can do either SAW or SFMG role, depending on if it's in the hands of the squad or the support troops.

HMG: Big gun, big bullets, shoots big targets. Usually up to 12.7mm / .50 cal. In some countries up to 14.5mm or 15mm.

That's useful information for an army. Whether it has a tripod or a bipod is a detail that is no more relevant than whether it has a trigger or a button or a lever.

"It will be seen from this that the ammunition expenditure of the MG-42 is a little higher than with the MG-34, but to balance this, the results on the target with the MG-42 are increased up to approximately 40%."

The source was quoting from a German wartime document that was instructing MG-42 gunners and infantry officers on how to use their gun.

As with any nation instructing it's troops how to use a weapon during wartime, I expect there was a bit of "confidence building" hyperbole. You WANT your troops to believe in their weapons, so you justify all the key aspects and differences.

But was the MG-42 really more effective? Well in the post-war period almost every nation went towards infantry MGs with rates of fire in the range of about 700-900rpm. Even the Bundeswehr toned down the rate of fire of the MG-3 (the post-war MG-42, little changed except for the adoption of the NATO standard caliber and the lower ROF). 1,200rpm and above was indeed sought … for aircraft guns. Not for infantry weapons.

Consider this … the document describes the effectiveness of the MG-42 based on firing 5-7 round bursts. At something more than 1,200rpm, the gun fires something more than 20 rounds PER SECOND. So this document is asking gunners to fire bursts of about 1/4 second.

It is EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT to fire an automatic weapon for less than 1/4 second at a time. It takes a lot of training, a lot of practice, and in the stress of a combat environment it takes nerves of steel.

IF the gunner masters the art of the 1/4 second burst, this document then calls for him to engage 22 targets per minute. That means he has LESS THAN 3 SECONDS to observe after his last burst, identify his new target, move his gun to the direction of the new target, get his sites aligned on that target, and fire his burst. He has less than 3 seconds to do this, and is expected to achieve that less than 3 seconds result 22 times in a row!

Not saying it can't be done. Just saying that is a pretty skilled gunner if he can do it!

I would imagine that a conscript army and squads that had to replace their gunners frequently (he was, after all, the most shot-at member of the squad), it would have been more common to find gunners who fired 1/2 or 3/4 second bursts (still pretty impressive discipline!) and could re-aim the gun 10 or 15 times per minute. So maybe 200-250 rounds fired per minute, for only half the number of targets engaged.

In any case the Germans found that the MG-42 consumed ammo at a prodigious rate. In the hands of a trained and disciplined gunner it was extremely lethal, if not quite as mobile on the battlefield as many other LMGs. In the hands of a conscript army it was scarier, but harder to feed, than many other LMGs.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I would beg to differ on nomenclature. This stuff varies from one army to another and over time.

The British Army was very clear that a heavy machingun was .50 cal or larger, while my 1942 Vickers manual is very clearly labelled "Notes on the tactical employment of medium machinations"

In Ww1, anything which wasn't watercooled and mounted on a tripod was disparagingly referred to as an " automatic rifle", which included Madsens and Lewis guns.

The Germans of course only differentiated between light and heavy role in their nomenclature, even though it was the same weapon, just on a different mount.

The time and national differences are part of the source of confusion in rule sets:)

The MG42 is often put into that lofty category of "superior weapons", like the Tiger, the M1 Garand, the Focke Wulf 190, the longbow, the katana etc …

And they are always presented as being far ahead of everything else leaving a power gap that cannot be filled. A combatant equipped with said weapon was going to win every episode of "Deadly Warrior"

The problem with superior weapons are that they are devastating against a hapless enemy who does exactly what you want them to do to maximize the effectiveness of your weapon, however reality has a very nasty habit of kicking sand in your nice theoretical cake.

There is no discussion that anyone finding themselves on the receiving end of an MG-42 is more than likely to be shot to pieces.

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence will realize that you need to find ways to minimize the effects of the MG-42. That's where infantry tactics and using your own advantages. The other guy has an MG-42 ? You have an SCR-300 and a battery of 105mm standing buy.

So while the "experts" may take one of each to the range and discuss how this weapon has a half-second lead over the other when changing barrels and compare the minutiae and discuss wound cavities, barrel wear and the ergonomics of the bipod, in the context of larger operations at the company or battalion level, it's completely meaningless. A weapon like the Bren or the MG-42 has a "reach" where it can affect matters on the battlefield, and in the case of the MG-42, it's mostly at the squad/section and platoon level. Except for rare occasions it's not going to do much against a properly handled battalions or regiments.

Lloyd's video does make some rather peculiar assumptions, but it does make a point that any particular weapon has limits, even the so-called "superior ones".

Anyone who points a MG, regardless of type, at a target is quite frankly someone who does not understand MGs. MGs are an area weapon! Despite Hollywood, any half trained mg gunner will be taught to aim at a zone. The wall of bullets effect will affect anyone trying to pass through it. That is why the old mantra of enfilade fire from a defilade position is drummed into properly trained mg Gunners.
You place you mgs to fire across the front of the neighbouring position, be it a squad, platoon or company. They will do the same for you. Interlocking arcs of fire with proper assessment of first catch/first graze will cause serious problems for any attacker.
If you try and fire directly at oncoming enemy, you are wasting a key aspect of the MG and you sorely deserve the kick up the arse you should get from your Sgt.