I have a book of various German survivors' accounts of the Battle of Stalingrad. One of the accounts stated they had a small perimeter of a section of the northern factory district nestled with a pair of these MG42's. The person telling the story went so far to say he would check in on the machine gun posts from his position and noticed both MG42s in that area were glowing red from the non-stop fire they had to put out to stop the Russians from advancing on their position.
those guys are clueless about handling a MG42 - bipod positioning is completely wrong, you have to lean into the gun and push forward. The guys are firing blanks so there is no recoil, correct positioning does not matter, just like in Hollywood movies
Dekhana mera gun ka kaisa kop he ea praishram ka phal he germany ka jab sahaya nehi kiya tab uski engineer ne bananaya tha russia bhi us samay germany ka sath nehi doya tha ye hard metal labour ka parishram he
Hello from another Thiele in Australia. I served in our Armoured Corp (M113 APC Driver) and our Leopards had the MG3 as a coax to the main gun. Brilliant weapon. Cheers for sharing all those years ago.
Seems, that these guys had no training on this weapon. If there is no lafette, the dualpod on front is folded out (as shown), fastened in the gound or on some other rifle rest and then the shooter lays his full weight forward in direction of the dualpod. Only in this shooting position the MG42 is in a stable position to hit a target up to 400m with a rather high percision. The dualpod bent back is instable and not the way it is trained in the armies, which still use the nearly identical MG3. Regards Th. Krapf
509th & 517th wore camo M42 Airborne uniform & helmets. 550th & 551st were also amazing Parachute Infantry Battalions. I like the battalions smaller size unit but still formidable & got the job done. Another bit of a rarity in knowledge are the RCTs of WWII, Regimental Combat Teams.
