It seems to me that the practices of the Germans in ww2 have been very much copied by modern armies. The LMG seems to have dissapeared and modern armies seem to have adopted the squad GPMG concept.
Does anyone know if they were the first to do this? Also does anyone know who came up with the concept as I cant find anything.
“The Complete Machine-gun”, by Ian V. Hogg, ( Phoebus Publishing Company, 1979, pp 45-46 )
Improvements in Germany
By contrast, let us now turn to see what the German army were up to in the between-war years. They had finished the war with the venerable Maxim of 1908 and its ‘light’ offspring the Maxim '08/15, plus a collection of extemporised aircraft guns with bipods. There was room for a good deal of improvement here, and the Germans took their time about it.
Due to the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty there was little or no chance to manufacture machine-guns during the 1920s, and the Army spent their time profitably, thinking hard about the role of the machine-gun. Their conclusions were rather different from those of other people. They considered the machine-gun to be the basic squad weapon, about which the rest of the rifle squad revolved. Britain and France, on the other hand, looked upon the riflemen as the basic unit, and the machine-gun as a back-up for them.
They may have invented the GPMG concept, but its usage in post-war armies differs markedly from the ways the Germans used it.
The machine gun was the focus of all small-scale infantry tactics – the German rifle squad revolved around it. It was their firepower, and the whole squad was devoted to its deployment, care, and feeding. In other armies, as George’s tract says, it was merely a support weapon.
GPMG is in the light role tend to be a bit heavy, and in the medium role tend to be a bit light. Indeed, the British re-chambered the Bren gun to 7.62 mm and kept using it until relatively recently as the section support weapon.
Many modern armies don’t use a GPMG at section/squad level any more – they often use a light support weapon. This is typically the standard rifle with a longer barrel and bipod. This is more akin to the BAR approach, and, like the BAR, is incapable of any really sustained fire, and makes a poor substitute for a light machine gun – hence the recent emergency adoption of the Minimi by the British Army to fill the gap. You will also note that the US adopted the Minimi as the Squad Automatic Weapon, after having previously adopted a GPMG which was intended to replace all other machine guns.
So no, the GPMG at squad/section level is by no means universal.
Edited to correct something
Arrrggghh !
(Deep breaths now Cuts)
Yes, what MoS has just written.
(Having painstakingly written, (or rather typed using the Eagle method,) a huge tract of gen I’ve just binned it as MoS has got there first ! :lol:)
Some european countries do use the GPMG at sect level, but that’s mainly because they have no LMG as such.
There are even those countries that have a HMG at section level, although their tactics differ greatly to those of the British Army.
Many of the above are following the trend of using Light Support Weapons with all their associated problems, however in some cases it seems to be as a fashion statement rather than sound tacdoc decisions.
There are of course a number of political reasons for these decisions too, apparenly it’s better the VIPs look good rather than the blokes on the ground not dying…
The theoretical composition of the Soviet Motorised and Mechanised Infantry sections was also heavily biased in favour of Sp wpns, although how much this ideal was adhered to is subject to firey debate.
That true many techniques pioneered by the germans are in use today.
Such as ?
A lot of rocket and missles where developed using Nazi technology.
Sorry mate your totally off-topic, this is about innovations in the German army, not Rocket technology.
i think the submachine gun MP-40 is the result of the idea coming from germany. Light enought for airborne units, yet has enough fire power for defense purposes.
Germany has not been emphaize on range for their guns, which they blieve would not make a difference to have a long range gun in city to city close combat.
The MP 40 can trace its lineage back to the MP 18 – i.e. 1918, when airborne units were not even a twinge in their father’s sack.
Between World War I and World War II, the standard 7.92 mm rifle ammunition was updated to improve its long-range performance, from the S Geschoss (spitzer bullet) to the sS Geschoss (schweres [heavy]Spitzer bullet) (I can’t find the data at the moment, I might have a look when I get home). So it is not fair to say that the Germans did not emphasise range, until the development of the MKb42-Stg44 series. Throughout the war, though, the standard infantry weapon was the rifle.
Here is the data:
World War I-era S-Geschoss - 154 grains flat base
World War II-era sS-Geschoss - 196 grains boat tail
Aditional info about the 8mm extracted from the panzerfaust.com page:
Infanteriepatrone 7,9mm / Mauser 7.92x57 amunition
This cartridge was used by the german Mauser Karabiner 98K, Gewehr 41, 43 and numerous other rifles as well as in aircraft, vehicle and infantry machine guns. As the german standard rifle cartridge it was called Infanteriepatrone 7,9mm (“infantry cartridge”), also known as the 7,9mm - Militärpatrone (“military cartridge”) or as Mauser - Standardmunition 7,92x 57 (Mauser as the weapon company that introduced the ammo for its famous 98K rifle; 7.92mm is the calibre and 57mm the length of the casing (not the chamber as in the US); also, in germany a bore’s caliber is measured from land to land). The total production of this cartridge during WW II was 10,475 million (that is over ten billion). Sometimes, esp. among angloamericans, it is also referred to as 8 mm Mauser.
The fired projectile of the Infanteriepatrone had a typical initial energy E0 of 3,700 Joule (sS - projectile of 12.8g at a V0 of 760m/s) but could reach initial energies of over 4,500 Joule (some V-Patronen) depending on the concrete ammunition type and firing weapon.
Between 80 and 90 % of all 7,9mm ammunition produced was of the 7,9 sS (sS for schweres Spitzgeschoss = “heavy pointed bullet”) type; the complete cartridge weighed 27g, it was 80.6 mm long and contained 2.7g of gunpowder; the projectile weighed 12.8 g and was 35mm long. When fired from a MG34 or MG42 (as well as from the other rifles using the cartridge) it had a typical V0 of 755 m/s. The regular sS projectile had the following penetration performance: 85cm of dry pine wood at 100m, 65cm at 400m, 45cm at 800m and 10cm at 1,800m; 10mm of iron at 300m, 7mm at 550m; 5mm of steel at 100m; 3mm at 600m.
The second most used type was the SmK (Spitzgeschoss mit Kern = “pointed bullet with core”) bullet that measured 37.2mm, weighed 11.5 g and contained a hardened steel core (about 8% of all produced 7.9mm rounds).
Another type was the SmK L’spur (L’spur = Leuchtspur = “bright trace” = “tracer”) bullet that was the previous type combined with a tracer that burned for 800 to 900 m (a little less numerous than the SmK). In the picture at right a soldier is seen preparing a 7.92mm ammunition belt for a machine gun (presumably adding tracers at every seventh round).
The lS (leichtes Spitzgeschoss = “light pointed bullet”) which had an aluminum core and therefore weighed only 5.5g which resulted in a higher speed of V0 = 925 m/s but of course also in a shortened total range (the bullet was used mainly in the air defense role; about 4-7% of the total production), the lS-L’Spur which with a length of 37.2mm and a weight of 6.1g was again the tracer version of the lS (less than 1% of total production).
A version produced mainly for use with the MG 17 as aircraft armament was the so-called V-Patrone which had an increased powder charge that increased the V0 by 15%. This ammunition type was available with the PmK projectile (“Phosphor mit Stahlkern” = “phosphor with steel core”) or with the B (“Beobachtung” = “Observation”) projectile contained a little phosphor and exploded upon impact, the latter ammunition type was also known as the B-Patrone and was used as an incendiary round; both types are not counted in the 7,9mm production
.
The final and most interesting (for our purposes) bullet type was the SmK(H). The H stood for Hartkern (hardened core), this was the armor piercing version of the 7,9mm Infanteriepatrone. The projectile had a length of only 28.2mm, weighed 12.5 g and contained a tungsten core that was 22.5 mm long. The propellant gunpowder of the shell was increased to 3.6 g. The bullet had a penetration power of almost 20mm of plain steel at a range of 500m (90° impact angle). However, production of this ammunition type ceased in March 1942 because of an acute shortage of tungsten; still, SmK(H) cartridges continued to be issued to the troops as late as February 1943. while it was still inproduction, this ammo type accounted for 1 to 2 % of the production of 7,9mm Infanteriepatronen.
anorak on:
Mauser as the weapon company that introduced the ammo for its famous 98K rifle
7.92x57I (.318" nominal, as opposed to the .323" nominal of the 7.92x57IS/sS) was introduced with the 1888 commission rifle, 48 years before the 98k was introduced.