MG 42
Hitler's buzzsaw, the gun that pinned Easy Company down.
The MG 42 is the German recoil-operated general-purpose machine gun used by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in the second half of World War II, the gun that pinned Easy Company down in the hedgerows, at Carentan and in the Ardennes.
Quick Facts
- Origin
- Nazi Germany
- In service
- 1942–present
- Used by
- See Users
- Designer
- Werner Gruner
- Designed
- 1942
- Produced
- 1942–1945 (Nazi Germany)
- Number
- 423,600
- Variants
- MG 45/MG 42V
- MG 1
- MG 2
- Rheinmetall MG 3
- M53
- MG 74
Facts from the source article.
Background
Entering production in 1942 to supplement and replace the costlier, slower-built MG 34, it fired the standard 7.92x57mm Mauser round and proved reliable and easy to handle. Its cyclic rate of about 1,200 rounds a minute, against roughly 850 for the MG 34 and 450 to 600 for guns like the M1919 Browning or the Bren, made it devastating in suppressive fire and earned it the nickname 'Hitler's buzzsaw'. After the war it was copied and built under licence, becoming the basis of the near-identical MG1 and the Bundeswehr's MG 3. In the Netherlands an MG 42 bullet pierced Lewis Nixon's helmet and grazed his forehead.
More in powers
Elsewhere in Band of Brothers
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