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

The Nazis had better machine guns. Hard to beat the MG42. The BAR was an ultra-heavy 20 round automatic rifle. You'd think they would have at least made a drum for it. Seems like it would have been better if it was designed as a super accurate semi-auto long range rifle. If I recall, they were full-auto only. I've never fired one.

The BREN was finicky - I have fired one of those, and it had failure to eject problems when I shot it.....not that I got to fire it a lot, mind you.
 
The comments about the M60 machine gun above highlights the fact that machine guns in particular do need to be durable. Whether or not there are stamped parts is beside the point and, anyway, stamped parts are really a heavy industrial kind of thing to produce, at least as far as machine guns go. But they do have to last. You can't have small arms (or other arms either) that quickly break down or wear out or are finicky in service. Some machine guns incorporated oilers for the ammo, which I can only imagine increases the critical nature of the functioning. But I'm sure the designers thought just the opposite.

The biggest differences between a military weapon and a sporting weapon are that the military weapon will (hopefully) be more robust and will have a better rust and corrosion-resistant finish. Only recently have hunting rifles been availabe that are really weather proof. If you see old weapons in museums, it is true they had better finishes than later weapons but it didn't contribute to their functionality one bit.
 
The short recoil operated 1919 and 1917 machine guns are heavier, slower rate of fire, and take longer to conduct a barrel change.

That being said, machine gun math says that the gun that can put effects on the beaten zone longer is the better gun from a tactical standpoint. It isn't how much lead you can put on target, it is how long you can put lead on target.

That is why American GI's are constantly being harped on to conduct good burst control and conserve ammo.

Remember, it is never one single weapon system that wins a war, it is a proper mix of systems and combined with proper tactics to use those systems.

Jimro
 
BAR

I love the BAR, but I don't think they ever came up with a more than 20 shot clip. The barrel replacement required more than just twist and turn, hence the 20 shot max. But I still love 'em. I know they weren't actual machine guns but they only fired 'full Auto' so else do you call them. MG42 heavily influenced the m60 so I quess it's No. 1
 
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Early model BARs did have semi auto. This was dropped on later models.

Technically, the BAR is classed as a LMG (light machine gun). There are several later designs of LMG that are slightly heaver, and still feed of a 20 (or sometimes 30) rnd box magazine. Some of them have quick change barrels, but not all of them do.

Remember the BAR was basically the first, lightest automatic rifle, and while it goes 18lbs or so, its lighter than a Lewis gun. The BAR was built for the concept of "walking fire", to give fire support to the doughboys walking through no-mans land. There was even a metal belt attachment to hold the butt of the gun.
While this tactic did not work out as well as was hoped, the BAR proved very useful, even if it was not as well suited for sustained fire as a belt fed gun.

Browning virtually gave the govt the design (he accepted their first (low ball) bid, under the condition that the first of the new rifles were sent to his son's unit in France.
 
Thanks for the info, 44amp. I never realized there was a semi-auto version. Not that I could ever afford one, but it's nice to learn new stuff, even after 60 years. I used to watch "Combat" just so I could see Gage fire his BAR . It seems all the biggest guys in the squad toted the BAR's. And Browning, despite having to go to Belgium to get some of his guns made, was a heck of an American when it counted.
 
Aren't machine guns wonderful things? Almost as nice as tanks.

I suppose you could argue all day over whether or not a BAR is a machine gun or not. It may be a rifle but it weighed around 16 pounds, depending on what was on it when you picked it up. Now the M249 is belt fed but used in the sale role and weighs around the same. In comparison, a Bren is around 20 lbs, an M250 around 24 lbs. The exact weight isn't so important because at the end of the day, it will feel like it weights twice as much. The important thing is that the users like the gun.

Here is an example of a good idea in a machine gun that didn't work out that well in practice. At least it was replaced with something more conventional. The Japanese first used a light machine gun that was neither belt fed nor magazine fed (It wasn't tube fed either). It was clip fed. In theory it sounds like a good idea. It took ordinary five-round clips for the standard infantry rifle. They were placed in a hopper on the left side of the gun and the cover was placed over the clips. I couldn't tell you how it worked but what I've read suggested it wasn't reliable. The next model had a box magazine. Something to think about next time you're designing a machine gun. Maybe you could get better results.
 
Bluetrain, Nothing is as nice as tanks... Tanks are so cool they have many machine guns + more

Per the Japanese clip feed MG, not that it shows the internals, the one history show on machine guns shows one of those and if you slowmo it you can see that thing kick out that little clip.. Its a sight :D
 
To me, some of the most interesting tanks were the ones that performed the worst in battle, mostly German and British. The German tanks at the beginning of the war were not especially battle worthy and they lost a relatively high percentage in the invasion of Poland.

I mentioned the Japanese clip fed light machine gun. A similiar idea is how a M249 machine gun will take a standard M16 magazine. Again I suppose it was a good idea but I've been told they really are not reliable that way.
 
There is a good Tales of the Gun episode on Japanese infantry weapons, and it included the one that took the rifle stripper clips. One thing I found amusing was that every gun they shot in that show, except for the Arisaka rifle, jammed at least once before it was empty!

The Japanese machine guns of WWII were a really horrid lot. The best one they had was a copy of a Hotchkiss, and that one was neither belt or box mag fed, it used feed strips. I've had a couple of the strips over the years. Neat idea, not so good in actual use, but the did work.

Brass, with little fingers to hold the rounds in place. Each strip held 30 rnds (or so, I don't recall exactly), and could be linked together, forming a kind of rigid "belt". I believe its the type 99 machine gun that used them, we nicknamed it the "woodpecker". One really odd thing was that the gun reloaded the fired cases back into the feed strip!

Another of their LMGs used the rifle stripper clips, BUT (IIRC) the gun wouldn't run right on the regular rifle ammo! And the ammo had to be oiled! Another one used a round dimensionally identical to the rifle round, but loaded to a lower pressure to work in the machine gun. Working in supply must have been a nightmare, to get the right ammo to the right users!

On the other hand, you have to admire their determination. As far as I know, the Japanese were the only people to mount a bayonet on a light machine gun!

We've come a long way, each war producing both good and bad designs, and if modern designs weren't at least some better than the old ones, I'd have to ask, WHY THE HECK NOT?

The design teams that came up with the MG34 and the MG42 did some tremendous work. Maxim proved it could work, and work well, but I think the undisputed king of machine gun designers has to be JM Browning. True, his designs don't have all the bells and whistles we think important today, but for the era his guns were so far ahead of the curve, we're still using some of them today. And when we went to replace some of his designs, we went through one, two, or even three different designs to find something that actualy improved, or had any significant advantage over Browning's designs.

When we replaced the M1919, we went throug 4 differnt guns before finding one that would even serve as well as the old 1919! We tried to replace the M2 .50 cal, the M60 series tanks carried the M85. It worked so well, the M1 Abrams has an M2 on it!

The M60 tank also replaced the Browning 1919 in the coax position with a new design, the M73. Then the M73A1, then the M219 (all "refinements of the basic design, to try to get it to work right). Finally, we went to the M240, which is the basic Belgian MAG58 design, and it works. M240s are mounted in the Abrams too.

Browning machine guns aren't idiot proof, troops can, and do screw them up. I worked on M2s as a Small Arms Repairman, 90%+ of all the repairs I had to make were broken/bent exterior parts (charging handle, sight ears, etc) because they got dropped. Archaic dinosaurs, they didn't have quick change barrels, and you had to adjust the headspace, and timing, but Ma Duce, she just don't quit!
 
For Troop support Hitlers buzzsaw (the Mg42) is the best. But for best Machine gun in the entire World War 2 I would be inclined to say Ma Duace (M2) is the best.
 
44AMP. Yeah, I've heard about those. The idea was the machine gunner could use Arisaka rifle clips if he ran out. I have that show on DVR and you are right, they were malfunctioning quite a bit.
 
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Ask any veteran of any army in WWII which machine gun (or any gun) was the best and most will say their own. It would take a lot of nerve to admit that someone else had a better one. But sometimes I get the impression that sometimes there's a general feeling among soldiers that their enemy has better weapons. Often as not they just have better propaganda.

The odd and unique Japanese light machine gun only used rifle clips. It sounds like a good idea but apparently it sounded better than it worked.

There are outtakes of the TV show Mail Call on youtube on which Gunny is attempting to demonstrate various weapons and other militaria but mostly achieves a very high rate of failures, followed by high quality cursing. But in defense of all of those malfunctioning weapons, virtually all were of WWII or earlier manufacture. But also, as was said of a certain French heavy machine gun (not a Hotchkiss), they worked but it required a dedicated machine gun afficianado (which all readers of this forum would be, of course).
 
For years i was the senior firing range advisor to the Saudi National Guard. One of the non-modernized battalions that used our ranges was the remnant of a princes private army that was integrated into the national guard: They were all from the same tribe. Their automatic rifle was an updated quick change barrel version of the BAR, the FN-D; chambered for 8mm. Their machinegun was the MG42/58. Their rifle was the FN model 1950.

The soldiers from that unit were the best military marksman i have ever seen.
 
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