Caleb is on vacation. What does one do when the boss goes on vacation? If you answered “whatever they darn well please” then give yourself a gold star. I’m even abandoning the GunNuts dress code and I’m posting while wearing shorts and flip flops.
So today to celebrate day 1 of absolute freedom, I’m going to post part of my “If I win the lotto” shopping list…which in this case is German small arms of World War II. The period shortly before World War I and World War II was the Cambrian Explosion of firearms design, leading to the creation of most of our modern firearms. Most of what came after was refinement around the major themes already created during this period. Even though Germany (thankfully) lost World War II, many of their small arms were carefully studied and reproduced by the victorious nations. This was especially true of automatic weapons. Most modern belt-fed machine guns share much of their design with the belt-fed machineguns fielded by the German military in World War II. Matter of fact, if you break down a MAG-58 (which is in the American inventory as the M-240B) and an MG-42 you’d have the devil’s own time telling their major working bits apart. Break down a Walther P38 and a Beretta 92 and you’ll notice some pretty striking similarities too. Oh yes, Virginia, we’re not just using Germany’s belt-fed machine gun, we’re using a refined version of their sidearm, too.
So let’s sit back and enjoy a look at the German arsenal of small arms from World War II and thank our lucky stars that the Nazis didn’t do everything as brilliantly as the design of the MG-42.
