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MG-42

An MG42

The MG42 is in German called "Maschinengewehr 42", or "Machine gun 42" in English. It is a machine gun used by the Wehrmacht against the Allies during World War II.

Info

The MG42 is a belt-fed air-cooled General Purpose Machine-Gun used by both Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) forces. First developed in 1942, the weapon was intended as a replacement for the MG34 at the squad level, though by the end of the war it had yet to be completely implemented. The MG42 was cheaper to make and less sensitive to dust and mud. It had several advantages over it's Allied counterparts, most notable were it's high rate of fire (1200 RPM, compared to 600 for the Vickers and Browning Machine guns, used by the British and Americans respectively) and it's ability to quickly replace the barrel if it overheats. The MG42 was most commonly used with a portable bipod or tripod and a 75 round drum magazine.

The German Army (Heer) doctrine called for the weapon to be the center of any infantry squad, used and supported by five men, but frequently reduced to three (The gunner, loader and spotter).

Due to the high rate of fire and the ability to quickly change the air-cooled barrel, the MG42 was capable of tying up large numbers of Allied troops with a nearly non-stop rate of fire. The weapon was, like many weapons of the Nazi military a potent psychological warfare tool. So frightening was the sound of the weapon (which sounded rather like a buzz-saw) and it's rate of fire that the U.S Army made an instructional video specifically dealing with teaching troops to combat fear of the weapon.[1]

However, the MG42 was not without its limitations. The weapon was vulnerable from the sides and rear and was nearly uncontrollable unless mounted with a bipod or tripod. Often times, Allied forces would attack the weapons position as the soldiers manning the weapon were reloading or changing the hot barrel.

After the war, the MG42 continued to see service in West Germany as the MG3, which was unchanged aside from being re-chambered to 7.62x51mm NATO round as opposed to the 7.92x57mm Mauser round. The MG3 is still in use with many nations including the Spanish and Greek Armies, though it has been replaced in the German army with G36 S.A.W Variants and the MG4, based on the Belgian MINIMI LMG. The Yugoslavian and later Serbian army used this weapon virtually unchanged as the M53.

To the Allies it was sometimes known as "Hitler's zipper" (Russian troops called it 'linoleum ripper') due to the sound the weapon made when firing, often times comparable to cloth tearing or linoleum tiles being smashed. British troops called it the "Spandau" after the district in Berlin where they were manufactured. German troops sometimes called the weapon Hitlersäge (Hitler saw).

In Game

In the Call of Duty series, the MG42 is often used as an obstacle to your progress or as a defensive weapon to halt an enemy advance. It has unlimited ammunition and does not require reloading. The weapon is powerful, capable of eliminating a player with a short burst of fire or mowing down adversaries by the droves. In Call of Duty: Finest Hour, it can be used in a few stages as an unmounted weapon. However, it's recoil is so great that it requires the player to go prone and deploy the bipod in order to fire it with any accuracy. Mounted MG42's can often be defeated by throwing smoke grenades towards them and flanking their positions to eliminate the German manning the weapon. Tanks can take fire from the weapon and remain unharmed, and can easily be defeated with a well-aimed cannon round.

File:Nazi MG-42.jpg

A German Paratrooper using the MG42.

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