The amount of restraint Ian has to not chase every tangent available to him is impressive. That said I would watch an hour long video of him rambling and going where ever digression takes him.
I think the issue with your premise is that you assume that Maxim would prioritize low weight when developing a modern machine gun. The Maxim machine guns really put reliability and sustainability first and foremost.
Carbon fiber water jacket, Graphine barrel fins within the water jacket to better transfer heat, polymer receiver, polymer bolt works with steel bolt face, a delinker to work with modern 7.62 NATO/.50 BMG belts. It would be glorious.
Call the mechanic! Bubba bolted a MG34-Barrel on an MG08/15.....again! Edit: Hadn`t watched the whole video, didn`t knew it WAS a MG34-Barrel, more or less.
This one is in the game as a regular primary weapon called the "LMG 08/18" for the support class. The "juggernaut" or Sentry in the game uses the 08/15, not this.
@@MrTetonMy best guess is that the lower case L stands for the German word "Luft", which means "air", possibly referring to that it is an air cooled variant of the machine gun.
@@Hitscanister mostly correct. that is lowercase L and it stands for "luftgekühlt" to denote that it's an air-cooled machine gun. there's also another lMG 08 that was mounted to planes. basically it's the heavy MG 08 with its water jacket "skeletonized".
I am not as familiar with the MG34 as with the 'NATO'ized" version of the MG42, but that gun has a very quickly exchanged barrel that the rückstoss (gas pressure) pushes back far enough to let the bolt begin to unlock, thus allowing a rather heavy barrel and bolt to have a rate of fire upwards of 1200 rounds per minute. When firing the MG42, you don't get a "!bangbangbang" but a "frrrrummm" when 5-6 projectiles race eachother downrange.
Seems like they just kept using the existing design to get more power to cycle the reciprocating barrel. In all of these guns the barrel needs to push back with enough force to kick the bolt all the way back and also pull in the belt. Or it could have been used just to bump up the fire rate
@@mbr5742 it's more advantageous from a manufacturing and weight standpoint now to have the booster on the barrel. You make one that fits to the sleeve and a simple straight barrel which is lighter and simpler to be changed as needed.
Since the Channel is Forgotten Weapons he is not restricted to that. "Today I want to show you this Ufbert sword, a cheap italien copy of the famous Ulfberht swords..."
@@MrTredBear kinda yeah. After both wars, the germans were largely disarmed. All kinds of equipment mangled, melted, dumped in the ocean. (We would cry, just out of respect for machinery). To this day, the German government has an almost legal, not legal program of confiscating even demilled equipment. Some bureaucrat might just seize the property you own.
When i grew up in Nova Scotia, about 1 hour and a hslf drive from Halifax is a rural town named Parsboro. Is a community on the shores of Fundy Bay that attracted many retired sea captains. In the late 1960s i vividly recall many German WW1 water cooled machine guns. One on each side of the driveway leading to the once seafarers dry & warm home. Absolutely all of them were painted thickly with black tar. This practice is now long gone. About a decade ago, in Brandon Manitoba i spotted my last German water cooled machine gun on public display. I do believe it was visible from the only traffic circle in that town. On the route leading to CFB Shiloh.Perhaps next to a small church.
Eh, maybe not. When you're in the midst of a war, especially one on that scale, not disrupting your existing production becomes a major concern. A lot of people argue that in WWII, the German focus on the variety of late war _Wunderwaffen_ actually hurt their overall war effort, and that if they had employed those same resources instead to maximize production of their proven, existing designs, they could have held out longer. There is always some introduction of new technology and new weapons on all sides of course, so I don't doubt that there would have been advances; it's just that I feel sure they would mostly have been incremental advances on existing designs, rather than whole new weapons. It probably would have been a mistake to expect the first assault rifles to appear, for example, had WWI gone on into 1919 or even 1920. But you probably _would_ have seen the Tommy gun make its debut, and the German MP18 improved (perhaps the snail drum Luger pistol magazine replaced with a box magazine, for example).
Maxim guns are always fascinating to me, both mechanically and historically. It's also a true mindscrew that a system first invented in 1884 is STILL seeing combat and being effective in some places to this very day.
And some of the same modifications that were being made in 1918 are being made right now as well. Last month footage was released showing a Ukrainian conversion of the Soviet PM1910/30 Maxim to use an air-cooled barrel with a very similar shroud to this.
There's always a balance in question. Instability to you may mean versatility to them, say you need to aim up or down or to the side quickly, that's easier with a center mount
@@beargillium2369 I imagine that given the Germans after the war re-positioned the bipod to the front of the MG08/15, they must have decided the increased side to side movement didn't make up for the bouncing.
Interesting fact. In Germany, till these days there is a saying, when you describe something total normal, nothing special as 08/15. "Null Acht Fünfzehn".So you can say 08/15 to everything, that's not special. BTW, even most of Germans don't know this, but they are using it pretty often.
Please do a ww1 ww2 history video from the arms development prospective. Id love to listen to you talk about not only who were involved but what they were using and developing! Don’t go into any details about any weapon but cover the years of each war and the progression of arms from each country.
Yep. On a related tangent, there was also an (at least aesthetically) similar competitor to the MG 13 from Rheinmetall, which after being rejected by the Germans in favour of the MG 13, was adopted by Austria as the MG 30. The MG 30 was later developed into two aircraft-mounted versions used in virtually all German aircraft in the early years of the war, the MG 15 (flexible) and MG 17 (fixed). Later in the war, the MG 15s and MG 17s (now largely replaced by the MG 81, MG 131, and/or MG 151/20), along with some MG 81s (simplified MG 34 derivative for aircraft) and MG 81Zs (twin version) were adapted for ground use, with stocks and bipods.
Fortunately the campaign of 1919 was never fought, the preceding four years were enough of a crazy blood sacrifice. But it would have been the most wonderful and wacky collection of steampunk weapons going at it from both sides. Still happy it ended. Lest we forget, far too many have already.
I'm curious on how barrel jackets are actually manufactured, I am guessing it's similar to the manufacturing process of pipes, but im not 100% sure. Honestly the whole manufacturing process of maxim guns interests me
Stoßtruppen were definitely expected to be ogres, the earlier 08/15 weighed nearly 50 pounds with a full jacket of water and they were expected to fire that beast on the move. I think part of why the MG stocks in particular were so long is because they were only supposed to be shouldered when deployed on a bi/tripod, for "walking fire" they were meant to have the stock cradled between the arm and torso.
This thing looks absolutely absurd with all that beefy steel perched atop a tiny little pistol grip lol. I love the mandolorian style butt stock too. The Germans really had the coolest stuff in both world wars.
should copy the Lewis gun instead, but maybe the German industry was too stretched with fulfilling existing war demand to be able to switch to new type of weapon production.
Really a castle nut with a cotter pin on the barrel shroud? I'm surprised. You only do that for things you will only take apart when you're taking time which in the military is not often
@Arbiter099 actually in the late stages of the war people thought Germany was winning. I do suspect the austerity might have had something to do with it and maybe the Lewis too.
I might be repeating things but Lewis Gun was the Brits answer for a light machine gun. Germans were pushed to lighten their own Maxim variant because they didn't have any other good alternatives. Madsen was the closest one for Germans but they simply imported them from Denmark and they couldn't get more of those once the war had begun.
@davitdavid7165 The Spring Offensive was anyone's game, but the Hundred Days Offensive, the final Entente push, was a curbstomp towards a foregone conclusion.
A week or two ago the news had a front line story from Ukraine. I remarked to my brother that the Ukrainians were using an old Russian Maxim from their entrenched position. He thought it was a mini gun, but I told him that what made it look like that was the water jacket, and what might have thrown him off was the Russians used a fluted water jacket which at a glance might look like multiple barrels.
must be desperation. today that seems like something you would encounter in the possession of an untrained jihadi militia. as a US citizen, the concept of the state military not having enough standard issues for every combatant is far out.
The Ukrainian military has been pulling everything out of the corners of their arsenals for a while. There are quite a few water cooled Maxims out there. Often 2 bolted together with modern optics on them. Have seen one double mounted on a pedestal in the back of a pickup. Africa technical style.
@@SexyFace That's because modern western militaries dont mobilize - i.e. they not expand several times over their peace-time size. When, for example, US military did for WW2 they procured substitute gear in bulk.
surely the US military mobilized in iraq, afghanistan, indonesia, yemen, syria, and djibouti since then. the United Nations Protection Force never overextended to a manner where 100+ year old surpluses were in use @@genericbit677
@@SexyFace Meh, as far as mobilization go. You cant seriously compare expeditionary missions and national war of survival. Neither Afghan nor both Iraq's demanded similar levels of commitment, both absolute and relative, and those are closest. Rest of the examples are puny in comparison.
Ah my main workhorse in Battlefield 1. Still the history of late World War One weapons is fascinating. Misfires, revolutionary and ahead of their time sums them up.
This is one of those guns where the people paying attention will be doing so because they've been offered one and they're trying to figure out if its a repro/fake or the real deal.
Looks like the Browning M1919A6 and although it’s called a light machine gun, it’s really too heavy to be classified as an LMG, and same thing goes for the MG08/15. So for the more accurate purposes, the Browning M1919A6 and the MG08/15 are definitely called the medium machine guns, and they’re typically used much like the FN MAG of today. And it’s because I remember watching the machine gun types part 1 and seeing the outliers part.
That's why an English terminology of machine guns isn't precise. In Polish we distinguish RKM and LKM. The first are weapons like BAR, M249, BREN or RPK which are portable machine guns, light enough to be fired from shoulder like a standard rifle, payed by not a full MG firepower. It translates to something like Manual or Hand Machine Gun. LKM means literally LMG and they are this type of weapons like MG 08/15, M1919A6, Bergmann MG 15 nA or even maybe Lewis - supposedly portable machine guns with stocks and bipods, but too heavy to be fired from shoulder. RKM - Ręczny Karabin Maszynowy LKM - Lekki Karabin Maszynowy
"Light Machine Gun" in this time period does not mean the same thing it does today. At the time, it's simply what it sounds like, a Machine Gun but lighter. The modern term (which includes the then-nonexistent "Medium Machine Gun") refers to cartridge type, not weight: Light Machine Gun using an intermediate cartridge (MG equivalent to Assault Rifle), Medium Machine Gun using a full-power cartridge (MG equivalent to Battle Rifle), and Heavy Machine Gun using a... heavy cartridge, like .50 BMG, 12.7x108mm, or 14.5x114mm (doesn't really have a rifle equivalent). And then we have terms like General Purpose Machine Gun, which are descriptions of *doctrine/use* rather than a technical weapon type (same with Marksman Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Squad Automatic Weapon, etc).
@@BleedingUranium Well, IIRC only HMGs and MMGs are both stationary weapons distinguished by cartridge. Any other machine gun is by its use, even a lot of GPMGs are called LMGs in their portable variants despite full-power cartridge.
@@kot0472 Technical names and usage names don't exist in the same "list", as it were, they're separate ways of defining things. And I'm not talking about colloquialisms here. The M240, for example, is a Medium Machine Gun that serves in the role of a General Purpose Machine Gun. Just like a Bolt Action Rifle can also be a Sniper Rifle. Or a Pistol/Handgun/Revolver/SMG can also be a Sidearm.
My knowledge is the GPMG is just machine gun able to fill the role of MMG (stationary) and LMG (bipod/shoulder) with keeping full firepower of that first one. Both types have slighty different tactical roles. See, LMGs using full-power cartridge exist and are still in common use. How to classify them then? And if you're mentioning pistol and revolver, this is the difference on level of gun's mechanics/action. Both are handguns, just like single shot flintlock pistol. That's almost like distinguish machinge guns by having magazine-fed, belt-fed or even clip-fed mechanism or is it firing from open or closed bolt. Sidearm is not a class or type of weapon itself but with "Primary gun" it is an element of soldier's personal equipment. Your sidearm can be as much knife as a shotgun. Meaning type of gun we can mention Handgun, Submachine gun, Rifle, Machine gun, Granade launcher, Shotgun. Mentioning classes of particular gun type in tactical meaning, for example rifle, there are Assault rifles, Sniper rifles, Carbines, Marksman rifles etc. The same with machine guns, there are HMGs, GPMGs, MMGs and LMGs. I don't think there are colloquialisms here.
