German MG-08 machine gun crew posing for a photograph, circa 1917.
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 advance...