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 German [World War II fortresses|"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 campaign|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."

Idiom

The designation 08/15 lives on as an idiom in colloquial German, nullachtfünfzehn, being used as a term to denote something totally ordinary and lacking in originality or specialness.
The name of the weapon originally became a slang term in the German Army in the Second World War. Because of the 08/15's tendency to jam, German soldiers used the name of the gun to refer to any thing that went wrong in their Army experiences.

Aircraft gun development

lMG 08

A lightened air-cooled version of the original water-cooled rectangular pattern-receiver MG 08 infantry automatic ordnance, the lMG 08, was developed by the Spandau arsenal as a rigidly mounted aircraft machine gun and went into production in 1915, in single-gun mounts, for use on the E.I through the E.III production versions of the Fokker Eindecker. A lower case letter "L" beginning the prefix meant luftgekühlt rather than Luft.
The lMG 08s were later used in pairs by the time of the introduction of the Fokker D.III and Albatros D.I biplane fighters in 1916, as fixed and synchronized cowling guns firing through the propeller. The Parabellum MG14 built by DWM was a lighter and quite different, air-cooled Maxim system gun with a very high rate of fire. It was introduced in 1915, and was, but not without serious problems on occasion, prototyped on Parschau's own A.16/15 Fokker A.III "green machine" monoplane with the Fokker Stangensteuerung gun synchronizer, received back with the synchronized Parabellum by Parschau on May 30, 1915 and first used in quantity as the synchronized forward-firing armament on the five examples of the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker production prototype aircraft, and soon afterwards served as a flexible aircraft observer's gun for rear defense.
File:Early Spandau Triple Mount.jpg|right|thumb|Triple mount of initial production examples of the lMG 08 machine gun in Kurt Wintgens' Fokker E.IV, May 1916 - these guns have the "over-lightened" cooling jackets that caused fragility problems. These use the standard "two hole" ammunition belt
The initial model of the air-cooled "Spandau" lMG 08 front-firing cowling machine guns had lost the stocks, grips, and bipods of the infantry MG 08s to adapt it to a fixed, forward-firing mount forward of an aircraft's cockpit, with gun synchronization allowing safe firing through a spinning propeller's arc. The 105 mm diameter cylindrical sheet metal water jacket used for the infantry's MG 08, an important support member for the barrel, was initially over-lightened with cooling slots, with fourteen rows of such slots completely surrounding and running the whole length of the jacket's circumferential sheetmetal.
These alternated between seven rows of nine "oblong" slots, alternating with seven more intervening rows of eight slots and twin round holes fore and aft of the slots apiece. Because of the important physical reinforcement provided by the cooling jacket on the MG 08 series of guns, the excessive slotting of the initial model of the air-cooled lMG 08 — amounting to slightly over 50% of the total area of the cylindrical cooling jacket's original circumferential sheetmetal — rendered the gun as too fragile, to the point of making it impossible to fit the muzzle booster that the water-cooled infantry MG 08 guns could be fitted with.
The later models of lMG 08 air-cooled machine gun variously "tweaked" the amount of slotting of the barrel by reducing the amount of sheet metal removed from it in minor ways through at least two or three trial formats, and eventually in the final versions produced, had the slotting omitted at the extreme ends of the cooling jacket's cylindrical member, with a 13 cm wide area of solid sheet metal at the breech end, and a 5 cm wide solid area at the muzzle end, giving the resultant gun much more rigidity. The lMG 08 also retained unchanged the rectangular rear receiver and breech assembly of the water-cooled MG 08 infantry weapon.

LMG 08/15

Later, the MG 08's receiver would be lightened by being "stepped down" at its upper-rear and lower-forward corners as the more refined and lighter weight LMG 08/15 version was developed, using the same airframe mounting geometry as the earlier ordnance to allow interchangeability between the earlier lMG 08 and later LMG 08/15 models, with the still well-perforated cooling jacket reduced to a 92.5 mm diameter. Spandau Arsenal began producing the LMG08/15 in May 1916. The LMG 08/15 was introduced in 1917.
The lMG 08 and LMG 08/15 guns were always used on fixed-wing aircraft, as fixed forward-aimed synchronized firing ordnance initially in single mounts for Germany's 1915-16 era Fokker Eindecker and Halberstadt D.II "scout" single-seat fighters, and by 1916 in dual mounts, first appearing on the mass-produced examples of Robert Thelen's Albatros D.I and D.II fighters in late 1916, and singly on German "C-class" armed two-seat observation aircraft for synchronized forward-firing armament. The usual ammunition load for fighters was for longer, 500 round, belts, one for each gun.
A device, occasionally fitted to the rear surface of the later LMG 08/15's receiver backplate, told the pilot how much ammunition was left to fire. Later on a significant upgrade to the gun's aerial usability was the fitting of the Klingstrom device on the right side of the receiver, which allowed the gun to be cocked and loaded with one hand from the cockpit. Various cocking/charging handle styles evolved with a simplified distinctive long handled cocking/charging device finally becoming preferred late in the war.
LMG 08/15's used the 30mm "two hole" ammunition belts of the flexible Parabellum MG14 machine gun rather than the wider "three hole" belts of the MG 08/15 water-cooled infantry weapon. It is possible that these belts were used as they were a bit lighter and less bulky than the wider "three hole" ground gun belts and certainly made for standardization which would have been easier for the armorers and in addition allowed for smaller and lighter "tubes" or "chutes" that guided the empty belts into storage containers in the aircraft after firing.
It is a common misconception that the tubes or chutes coming out of the fixed mounted aviation LMG 08/15 fixed guns were for expended cartridge cases. In actuality these attachments were for guiding the empty cartridge belts into a container inside the fuselage of the aircraft so that the belts would not interfere with the operation of the aircraft. As the entire MG 08 Spandau family of German machine guns ejected their empty cartridge cases forward through a round hole in the receiver's lower forward surface, immediately under the aft end of the barrel's cylindrical cooling-jacket, these cartridge cases were guided out of the aircraft through tubes from under the barrel to the bottom of the fuselage. With Fokker designed aircraft following the Eindecker, the cartridge cases were ejected without tubes from the receiver hole directly into open trays that guided the tumbling cartridge cases backward and sideways onto the sloped fuselage decking, which then streamed down past the cockpit on either side. These trays are clearly visible in photographs but have rarely been recognized for their purpose.
Hermann Göring, who flew both the Fokker Dr.I and Fokker D.VII was so annoyed with the case tumbling out in front of him that he had deflectors made on his aircraft to ensure the empty cartridge cases did not find their way into his cockpit. On photographs of Göring's aircraft these plates, seen only on his aircraft, are very prevalent and have even been recognized in scale models of his aircraft copying his particular planes, but even then most historians have failed to recognize their purpose. Both empty belt guides and trays were attached directly to the machine guns rather than to the aircraft. In the famous film showing Australian officers handling the LMG 08/15s from Baron von Richthofen's crashed triplane, the Fokker type belt tubes/chutes and empty cartridge trays can be clearly seen still attached to the guns.
More than 23,000 examples of the LMG 08/15 and an unknown number of the lMG 08 were produced during World War I.

Chinese derivative

Based on the commercial MG 09, in 1935, the Chinese began to produce the Type 24 Heavy Machine Gun, a derivative which was not based solely on German drawings and introduced several improvements and new features.
The Type 24, first introduced to the National Revolutionary Army in 1935, designed to replace the original MG 08. It was the standard heavy machine gun for all Nationalists, Communists, and Warlords from 1935. They were usually made in the Hanyang Arsenal. Like the original MG 08, because of transportation difficulties, the M1917 Browning machine gun and other machine guns slowly replaced the Type 24 for the NRA after the Chinese Civil War. The PM M1910, and the SG-43 Goryunov slowly replaced the Type 24 Heavy machine gun after the Chinese Civil War, but it was kept in service with the PLA, KPA and the NVA until the 1960s during the Vietnam War.
The Type 24 heavy machine gun's tripod resembles the tripod of the MG 08. This gun is not able to be mounted on sledge mounts. When aiming at enemy infantry, it usually comes with a muzzle disk. When used as an anti-aircraft gun, it uses a metal pole to make the tripod higher and usually does not come with a muzzle disk. The gun's receiver is similar to the MG 08's gun body. Like the original MG 08, it needs a crew of four. The Type 24 heavy machine gun is chambered with the 7.92×57mm Mauser round, the standard Chinese military rifle cartridge of Nationalist China. After the Chinese Civil War, People's Republic of China militia and reserve units converted a number of Type 24 HMG into the 7.62×54mmR Russian cartridge. They were used for training or as filming prop, and never entered service.

Variants

;Predecessors
  • MG 99 − Modified Maxim machine gun made for German service in 1899. Introduced the sled mount, which remained standard in the MG 08.
  • MG 01 − Introduced lightweight spoked wheels to the sled mount, making possible the pushing and pulling of the weapon. Exported to Chile and Bulgaria., with at least 400 made by 1914.
;Ground variants
  • MG 08 −
  • MG 08/15 −
  • MG 08/18 − An air-cooled variant developed at the very end of World War I as a lighter alternative to the MG 08/15. Only a few hundred appeared to have been produced. The MG 08/18 barrel jacket served as the basis for the MG 34 barrel shroud.
  • MG 09 − Commercial pattern of the MG 08 made by DWM, featuring the naval tripod mount of the MG 08 instead of the sled mount. Exported to Romania and Switzerland.
  • MG 16 − An experimental version of the MG 08, which was to be a universal machine gun for the Deutsches Heer. The MG 16 could use the bipod of the MG 08/15 or a modified tripod for the MG 08. Due to Germany's limited manufacturing capacity, mass production was not proceeded.
;Other variants
  • lMG 08 − Aircraft machine gun
  • LMG 08/15 − Aircraft machine gun
  • MG 18 TuF − A heavy machine gun version designed in 1917, chambered in the same 13.2×92mmSR round as the Mauser Anti-Tank Rifle. It was introduced in 1918, issued in very limited numbers in the near end of World War I and saw no service.
;Foreign derivatives
  • MG 11 −
  • − A Chinese variant based on the commercial MG 09 with some improvements.

Manufacturers

; Main manufacturers
; Other manufacturers

Users

  • — At least two MG 01s were delivered and used during the Balkan Wars. MG 08s were supplied before the Balkan Wars and during World War I. After World War I, some were retained, both officially and as hidden supplies.
  • — Despite the cheaper Hotchkiss machine gun already in service, the MG 01 was adopted as the ametralladora Maxim modello 1902 on the orders of Emil Körner who was affiliated with DWM.
  • — Made under license as the Type 24 heavy machine gun. Imported MG 08/15 machine guns also used during Second Sino-Japanese War.
  • — Used Type 24 guns.
  • — The MG 08/15 was in use after independence
  • — The MG 08 used as late as the Continuation War. The MG 08/15 and MG 08/18 were used until 1931, when they were sold off.
  • — MG 08 and 08/15 versions were captured and used by French forces in WW1 and afterwards.
  • — Used by the Kaiserliche Marine and Deutsches Heer between 1901–1919. By the start of World War I, almost all of the MG 01s and other machine guns considered obsolete had been relegated to machine gun detachments in Germany's colonial possessions where they had started to be replaced by the MG 08s.
  • — Used Chinese Type 24.
  • — At least 11 light-weight MG 08s used by the Latvian Army
  • — About 800 MG 08 and 520 MG 08/15. Some MG 08 were modernized for anti-aircraft defense.
  • — Ex-German MG 08s confiscated at the end of WWI entered Dutch service in 1925 in the light anti-aircraft role, with the designation Spandau M.25.
  • Ottoman Empire
  • — Between 1918–1944, up to 5,964 MG 08 and 7,775 MG 08/15 were used.
  • — Used Chinese-made Type 24.
  • — Used Chinese-made Type 24s
  • — Commercial MG 09s marked as Model 1910.
  • — At least 1 MG 01 captured from the Germans and put into service during World War I.
  • — The Viet Minh used Chinese Type 24 during the First Indochina War, as did the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
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Surviving examples

MG 01

There are only 2 known surviving examples of the MG 01:

Conflicts

; 1900 – early 1920s
; Late 1920s onward

Weapons of comparable role, performance and era

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Main sources

;Books
;Others
  • Schweizerische Armee : Technisches Reglement Nr. 3, Das schwere Maschinenge-wehr, provisorische Ausgabe 1939, Bern 1939
  • Bericht des Chefs des Generalstabes der Armee an den Oberbefehlshaber der Armee über den Aktivdienst 1939-45

Secondary sources

;With authors
;Without authors
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