MG 08
The MG 08 is a heavy machine gun which served as the standard HMG of the Imperial German Army during World War I. It was an adaptation of Hiram Maxim's 1884 Maxim gun design, and was produced in a number of variants during the war. The MG 08 also saw service during World War II in the infantry divisions of the German Army, although by the end of the war it had mostly been relegated to second-rate "fortress" units.
Designated after 1908, the year it was adopted by the Imperial German Army, the MG 08 was a development of the license-made MG 01, which was a slight development of the MG 99 The MG 08's rate of fire depends on the lock assembly used and averages 500 rounds per minute for the Schloss 08 and 600 rounds per minute for the Schloss 16. Additional telescopic sights were also developed and used in large quantities during World War I to enable the MG 08 to be used in long-range direct fire and indirect fire support roles.
Development and adoption
The German Rifle Commission began firing tests of the Maxim gun at Zorndorf in 1889. On October 3, 1892, Kaiser Wilhelm II approved a supreme cabinet order allowing the introduction of the "8-mm Maxim machine gun into the naval artillery" for cruisers and landing parties, within the same year, Ludwig Loewe's company signed a seven-year contract with Hiram Maxim for production of the gun in Berlin. The Imperial German Navy ordered Maxim guns from Loewe in 1894. The Navy deployed them on the decks of ships and for use in amphibious warfare. In 1896, Loewe founded a new subsidiary, the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken, to handle production. The agreement with Maxim concluded in 1898 and DWM received orders from Austria-Hungary, Argentina, Switzerland and Russia. An application for a UK patent on the sled carriage was filed by DWM in 1900.The Imperial German Army first considered using the Maxim gun as an artillery weapon The German light infantry Jäger troops began trials of the gun in 1898. The Guards Corps, II Corps and XVI Corps made more experiments in 1899. The tests produced a recommendation of independent six-gun detachments to march with the cavalry, with the guns mounted on carriages pulled by horses. Eventually, a modified Maxim was adopted as the MG 99, which was soon followed by the MG 01, both were purchased in limited quantities. By 1903, the German Army had 11 machine-gun detachments serving with cavalry divisions.
Criticisms of the MG 01 stressed its limited mobility and inability to keep up with the cavalry. The DWM and Spandau Arsenal developed the design further, decreasing weight by, adding a detachable gun shield, an option for an optical sight, and removing the wheels. The result was the MG 08, which went into production at Spandau in 1908. After the introduction of the MG 08, the MG 01 was mainly used by German colonial soldiers.
Further development, training and use
The German Army observed the effectiveness of the Maxim gun in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, many of them German exports. With the importance of the machine gun apparent, the Army asked for additional funding from the Reichstag to increase the supply of machine guns. After criticism of the request from Socialist deputies, the Army's demand for six guns per regiment was reduced to six guns per brigade in 1907. Training was regulated by the Field Service Regulations of 1908, providing the German Army six years to train with the guns before the outbreak of World War I. The Army Bill of 1912 finally gave the Army its demanded six guns per regiment. On 3 August 1914, soon after the outbreak of World War I, the Army had 4,411 MG 08s, along with 398 MG 01s, 18 MG 99s and two MG 09s.At the onset of World War I, Germany developed an aerodynamically refined bullet intended for machine gun use. This full metal jacket s.S. boat tail projectile was loaded in the 7.92×57mm Mauser#German military standard ball service rifle cartridge evolution. The s.S. Patrone had an extreme range of approximately. From its 1914 introduction the s.S. Patrone was mainly issued for aerial combat and as of 1918 in the later stages of World War I to infantry machine gunners.
Another early-WWI improvement introduced in 1915 was a muzzle booster, a patent-protected Vickers invention, which was designated Rückstoßverstärker 08 S. Thanks to that MG 08 came up to its British and Russian analogs with their Vickers-licensed recoil boosters in its rate of fire and reliability.
Design details
The gun used 250-round fabric belts of 7.92×57mm ammunition. It was water-cooled, using a jacket around the barrel that held approximately of water. Using a separate attachment sight with range calculator for indirect fire, the MG 08 could be operated from cover.The MG 08, like the Maxim gun, operated on the basis of short barrel recoil and a toggle lock. Once cocked and fired the MG 08 would continue firing rounds until the trigger was released or until all available ammunition was expended.
The standard iron sightline consisted of a blade front sight and a tangent rear sight with a V-notch, adjustable from in increments. The Zielfernrohr 12 was an optional 2.5× power optical sight that featured a range setting wheel graduated or in increments. With the addition of clinometers fixed machine gun squads could set ranges of and deliver plunging fire or indirect fire at more than. This indirect firing method exploits the maximal effective range, that is defined by the maximum range of a small-arms projectile while still maintaining the minimum kinetic energy required to put unprotected personnel out of action, which is generally believed to be 15 kilogram-meters. Its practical range was estimated at some up to an extreme range of when firing the long-range 7.92×57mm Mauser#German cartridge variants during World War II.
The MG 08 was mounted on a sled mount that was ferried between locations either on carts or else carried above men's shoulders in the manner of a stretcher.
Pre-war production was by DWM in Berlin and by the government's arsenal Spandau. When the war began in August 1914, 4,411 MG 08s were available to battlefield units. Production at numerous factories was markedly ramped up during wartime. In 1914, some 200 MG 08s were produced each month, by 1916—once the weapon had established itself as the pre-eminent defensive battlefield weapon—the number had increased to 3,000; and in 1917 to 14,400 per month.
MG 08/15
The MG 08/15 was the "rather misguided attempt" at a lightened and thus more portable light machine gun from the standard MG 08, produced by "stepping-down" the upper rear and lower forward corners of the original MG 08's rectangular-outline receiver and breech assembly, and reducing the cooling jacket's diameter to . It was tested as a prototype in 1915 by a team of weapon designers under the direction of an Oberst, Friedrich von Merkatz; this became the MG 08/15.The MG 08/15 had been designed around the concept of portability, such as the French Chauchat, which meant that the firepower of a machine gun could be taken forward conveniently by assaulting troops, and moved between positions for tactical fire support; as such, the MG 08/15 was to be manned by two trained infantrymen, a shooter and an ammo bearer. In the attack the weapon would be fired on the move while on the defense the team would make use of the bipod from the prone position. To accomplish that, the MG 08/15 had a short bipod rather than a heavy four-legged sled mount, plus a wooden gunstock and a pistol grip. At the MG 08/15 had minimal weight savings over the MG 08, being "a cumbersome beast to use in the assault." Intended to provide increased mobility of infantry automatic fire, it nevertheless remained a bulky water-cooled weapon that was quite demanding on the crews and never on par with its rivals, the Chauchat and the Lewis Gun. Accurate fire was difficult to achieve and usually in short bursts only. The fabric ammunition belts were prone to stretching and there were cartridge extraction problems when they were wet.
It was first introduced in battle during the French Second Battle of the Aisne in April 1917. Deployment in increasingly large numbers with all front line infantry regiments continued in 1917 and during the German offensives of the spring and summer of 1918.
There were other, less prominent, German machine guns in WWI that showed more promising understanding of tactical firepower; such as the air-cooled 7.92 mm Bergmann MG 15nA which weighed "a more manageable 13kg," had a bipod mount and was fed from a 200-round metal-link belt contained in an assault drum instead of fabric belts. Despite its qualities, it was overshadowed by the production volumes of the MG 08/15 and exiled to secondary fronts, being largely relegated to use in limited numbers on the Italian Front. The Bergmann MG 15nA was also used by the Asien-Korps in Sinai, Mesopotamia and Palestine. Being air-cooled, the Bergmann MG 15nA's barrel would overheat after 250 rounds of sustained fire. Other light machine guns would maintain the water-cooling system, such as the Dreyse MG 10 and MG 15; with an air-cooled version produced just before the war, known as the Dreyse-Muskete or the MG 15.
Despite such developments, the MG 08/15 remained by far the most common German machine gun deployed in World War I, reaching a full allocation of six guns per company in 1918. By that time, there were four times as many MG 08/15 light machine guns than heavy MG 08 machine guns in each infantry regiment. To attain this goal, about 130,000 MG 08/15 were manufactured during World War I, most of them by the Spandau and Erfurt government arsenals. The heavy weight remained a problem though and a "futile attempt" to solve this problem was a late-war air-cooled version of the MG 08/15, designated as the MG 08/18; but it was only 1 kg lighter than the MG 08/15. The MG 08/18's barrel was heavier and it could not be quickly changed; inevitably overheating was a problem. It was battlefield tested in small numbers during the last months of the war. As noted, "the Maxim Gun was not a sound basis for an LMG."