German MG-08 machine gun crew posing for a photograph, circa 1917.
The Maschinengewehr 1908, was the standard machine gun of the German army in World War I. It was an adaptation of the original Maxim 1884 machine gun. It was a water-cooled heavy machine gun and weighed 65 kg without water and 69 kg with water. The MG-08 fired 7.92x57 mm ammunition belts, with a cadence of 500 to 600 rounds per minute. The canyon had a range of 2 to 3.6 km. He was operated by a crew of 4 men. In August 1914, the German Army had 12,000 MG-08s at their disposal.
As the trench war raged on the Western Front, and the machine gun had established itself as a defensive, weapon production increased rapidly. At the end of the war, 72,000 MG-08 had been built. In 1915, the Germans experimented with a lighter and therefore more portable version of the machine gun, which would be called the MG-08/15. He weighed 18 stone, using a short bipod instead of a heavy tripod. While still quite heavy for the infantry advancement, it provided increased mobility and firepower.
The MG-08/15 was first used at the Second Battle of the Aisne in April 1917 and inflicted heavy losses on the French infantry. It was used during 1917 and 1918 and became the most common German machine gun of the war, with 130,000 units produced in total.
Two variants of the MG-08 were produced for German aircraft, the LMG-08 and the LMG-08. Both cannons were widely used by German pilots, with 23,000 LMG-08/15 under construction and an unknown amount of LMG-08. At the end of the war, more than 225,000 MG-08 machine guns of all variants had been produced. The MG-08 was used until 1945 in Germany and until the 1960s in China.
Comments
Post a Comment