Maschinengewehr Modell 34 (MG34)

History

After the First World War (1914-1918), the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Germans from developing or manufacturing any major warfare equipment, including tanks, submarines, and automatic weapons. However, with the rise of the Nazi Party and the re-emergence of the German military in the 1930s, German authorities circumvented many treaty restrictions as they prepared for a new world war in Europe.

By this time, German war planners were exploring the concept of a portable light machine gun and incorporating their usual companies into the plan.

For a while, the MG13 was his light machine gun solution. Introduced in 1930, it was a reinterpretation of the WW1 era water-cooled Dreyse model 1918, now modified for basic air cooling. It was fed from a 25-round magazine or a 75-round saddle drum and was adopted as a standard machine gun by the German Army for the foreseeable future. The gun was eventually installed on Luftwaffe tanks and aircraft, but overall proved expensive to manufacture and had a rate of fire of only 600 rounds per minute.

As a result, this model was withdrawn from front service in 1934 and sold or stored.

The relative failure of the MG13 as a "jack of all trades" machine gun prompted us to do additional work on the long-term product. Rheinmetall-Borsig, a longtime veteran of the German military industry, arranged to form a shadow company called "Solothurn" in neighboring Switzerland to circumvent treaty restrictions and continue researching new air-cooled machine gun designs. During World War I, machine guns were often water-cooled, which made them unnecessarily difficult to handle and transport.

So testing in the early 1930s would soon reveal the perfect child for all this development work.

The first real product born from this program was the Solothurn MG30 (Type 1930) released in 1930. The weapon was partially adopted by neighboring Austria and Hungary, as well as Germany, but German authorities still insisted on using streamlined and man-portable weapon systems, resulting in an evolving production line. Over time, it evolved into the MG15, an air-cooled machine gun that proved very suitable as a defensive aircraft weapon, and received numerous production orders after it was officially adopted by the Luftwaffe. Further development of this line gave birth to the famous MG34 - better known by its long name "Machine Gun 34" - which combined the best features of all previous models, including the MG30 and MG15 series. The resulting system was so revolutionary that it produced the first real-world example of a "universal machine gun" - a machine gun detailing its multipurpose battlefield capabilities, a weapon capable of adapting to multiple roles without Sacrifice changes its core design.

The weapon is credited to engineer/gunsmith Heinrich Vollmer.

The German army quickly adopted the new weapon and it entered service in 1936, just in time for the rearmament of Germany that led to World War II (1939-1945). The original manufacturer was Mauserwerke AG, but the factories of Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG and Waffenwerke Brunn were soon added.

From 1935 to 1945, total production eventually reached 577,120.

The core of the MG34 is designed for the proven 7.92x57 Mauser rifle cartridge. The base gun system weighs 26.5 pounds and has a barrel length of 48 inches, and the standard barrel length is 24.7 inches. The action uses a unique short recoil operation with a rotating bolt action and increased recoil momentum through an air pocket at the muzzle. Rates of fire for these early guns ranged from 600 to 1,000 rounds per minute, with the base model providing selected firepower (single-shot, fully automatic). Muzzle velocities of up to 2,500 feet per second provide good penetration values ??at ranges up to 1,200 meters, and this is somewhat increased by the use of a specially designed heavy machine gun tripod.

Sightings are via a typical iron array with a range of up to 2,000 meters in 100-meter increments.

The MG34 has an "inline" design, which means the stock, receiver/receiver and barrel are connected along an imaginary line. The intent was to provide a more stable, closed firing platform, which wasn't always the case. The shoulder rest is an ergonomically designed extension to the rear of the receiver, which itself is plate-side with a slim profile. The feed and ejection ports are easily visible, and the trigger group/pistol grip is underlined in the usual way. A heavily perforated barrel casing was placed in front of the receiver, encasing the barrel assembly in it.

A conical flash suppressor is mounted on the muzzle. When used in infantry support roles, a foldable bipod mounts under the barrel jacket and hinges at the attachment point to allow the legs to be lowered. Such a long gun requires this type of frontal support, especially when the shooter is prone.

Air-cooled machine guns have an inherent design flaw - they rely on the natural cooling of the air circulating around the barrel during firing. As a result, the barrel is often wrapped in a perforated jacket for cooling, but this approach isn't the perfect solution for prolonged sustained fire -- especially on a support/suppression-focused weapon like the MG34. So, with air-cooled machine guns, short, controlled bursts of fire are the task of the day. The MG34's barrel was limited to 250 rounds and had a barrel life of about 6,000 rounds before replacement was recommended. To facilitate this, German engineers devised a "twist" action in which the receiver is unlocked and rotated away from the barrel sheath (while still attached along the hinge point).

The operator can then access the barrel inside the shroud through the exposed rear end of the assembly and remove the barrel for replacement. A new, cool barrel (activated by a specially protected tube) can then be inserted, the gun locked, and firing continued as usual.

Fire is initiated by a two-piece trigger assembly, allowing single-shot or fully automatic fire. The upper part is marked with the letters "E" ("single shot") for single-shot fire, while the lower part is marked with "D" ("continuous fire") for fully automatic fire.

This enables the operator to control his ammunition supply and barrel heating.

The loading of the MG34 has also received special attention. In stationary roles, the gun is usually fed from a 50-round drum or a 75-round double saddle drum (from the MG15 design). To lighten its load as a portable squad support weapon, a 50-round belt is used.

If desired, this can be further connected to other conveyor belts to produce the full 250 rounds. The use of a 50-round belt also taxed the feed mechanism and slowed the weapon's rate of fire. Infantrymen appreciate this quality as it makes the MG34 more controllable in this role.

In practice, the MG34 was quickly well-received by all branches of the German army - from special forces to ordinary infantry. Teams with a minimum of two people are usually equipped with a machine gun section. One acts as the gunner and brings the weapon into battle, while the other acts as the ammunition handler and carries the ammo, while also helping to insert the belt and clear any disconnects that arise.

Additional members were recruited as needed - some carried extra barrels, while others carried tripods or extra ammunition.

The design of the MG34 proved to be so tactically flexible that it was quickly used in every conceivable battlefield role - its primary purpose was as a support weapon for the infantry class. In this form, it is deployed with a bipod, and soldiers typically use a 50-round belt for this role. The rate of fire is always an advantage of the weapon, but the controls make the operator prefer single-shot shots or very short bursts for greater accuracy. However, the increased rate of fire worked well with anti-aircraft (AA) machine guns, and the MG34 was mounted on a spiked tripod with proper equipment (including a large iron sighting device on the jacket) - flying enemy aircraft.

For the role of a heavy machine gun (HMG) - that is, targeted continuous fire - the weapon was attached to a heavy tripod of the "Lafette 34" series. This assembly includes an integrated buffer mechanism that stabilizes the weapon during firing.

For this role, optics can be mounted above the receiver to better track and reach targets from a distance.

MG34 has a quick peel function, so it can be cleaned, serviced and repaired in a short time. The use of plastic helps control the operational weight, and these additions have proven to be powerful, despite the abuse of the weapon on the battlefield. Given the precision engineering of the MG34, it's easy to pick up all kinds of debris on the battlefield, which can cause interruptions in action/feeding.

Therefore, it is important for its caretakers to maintain a strict maintenance schedule to keep the weapon free of anything that could cause its functionality to falter at the worst possible moment.

Another weakness of the MG34 - which did not fail in operation - was the problem that plagued other pre-war guns: it was only built to high quality standards and required a lot of time, expense and effort to produce. When the German war started, these qualities did not match the supply and demand nature of the war, and the MG34 remained in short supply throughout the war as it was required by all German services on all fronts. This eventually forced about 5 German factories to specialize in the production of the MG34 gun, and it took additional resources, time and effort to manufacture the various accessories and equipment needed for the gun to perform various tasks.

The end result was an excellent weapon that was actually "fantastic" for the rigors of war, which led to the development of a simplified version of the eponymous MG42 series in 1942 (described in detail elsewhere on this page).

Some engineers worked on the further development of the MG34 during the war years. The MG34m is equipped with a heavy barrel jacket as it is mounted on countless German armored vehicles as an anti-infantry weapon. Both the MG34 prototype (note the small "s") and its final form, the MG34/41, featured a shortened barrel assembly (about 22 inches long) to increase their inherent rate of fire - useful for anti-aircraft roles - and became fully automatic only shooting. The MG34/41 was intended to be a successor to the original MG34 model, but that never happened - largely limited by the introduction of the more streamlined and equally effective MG42 range.

The MG34/41 never officially entered service, although it did show some numbers.

The MG34 "Panzerlauf" is a German tank machine gun variant of the MG34. These models used a heavier barrel casing with far fewer perforations seen along its length. The shoulder rests were also removed to create a more compact silhouette inside the cramped German armored car. However, if the vehicle must be abandoned, a conversion kit is carried on board to quickly convert the tank barrel to a ground-fired LMG.

The kit includes the required bipod, shoulder rest and sight components to make changes possible.

The last MG34 form to appear before the end of the war was the MG81 defensive aircraft machine gun for the Luftwaffe, replacing the aging MG15 line. The MG81Z ("twin") is an offshoot of the series and is essentially paired with two side-by-side MG34s whose actions are linked via a trigger unit. The breech was also modified to allow loading from either side of the gun, with an impressive rate of fire of 2800-3200 rpm.

Production of the series was limited due to the need for the MG34 on the more valuable ground fronts of the war.

Although the MG42 introduced the successor to the MG34 in 1942, the MG34 continued to be produced until the end of the European War in May 1945. While the MG42 was intended to replace the MG34 as a front-line weapon, it never achieved its rather lofty goals, only truly complementing the classic and excellent design of the 1930s throughout the conflict - although by the end of the war it rightfully had its own Story to tell.

The history of the MG34 is not limited to German use in World War II, as the type was used worldwide during and after World War II. Operators include Algeria, Angola, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Finland, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Israel, South Korea, northern Vietnam, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Turkey. As such, it was used in conflicts such as the Chinese Civil War (1946-1950), the Arab-Israeli War (1948), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1955-1975), and can still be found in combat today.

Far Away (2014).