Roosevelt's Failed Circular
General view of the T24 machine gun with the barrel half removed. Photo taken at Aberdeen Proving Ground
The Americans did not stand aside either. After the first meetings with the MG-42 in the field, numerous laudatory odes poured into the headquarters “from below” arms the enemy with an unequivocal “I wish we had something like that.” It is worth noting that the Americans had a simply different concept; they did not have machine guns in their infantry squad... Yes, the classic BAR, which appeared back in 1918, is not a machine gun, but an automatic rifle. Since the First World War, the tactics of using this weapon have changed; firing from the hip in an offensive chain, as the main type of fire, was no longer intended, but no one in the USA was going to make a machine gun from a rifle. There were countries that tried to turn this weapon system into a full-fledged light machine gun, and these machine guns even fought in the hands of our soldiers during the Great Patriotic War, but this is a completely different matter. story.
American infantrymen from the 34th Infantry Division (Privates Robert Grassman, Thomas Mandabah and Corporal Virgil Teslow) clean two captured MG-42 machine guns, San Vittore, January 1944
This resulted in the fact that in 1943, an order was given to convert two captured MG-42s to the American cartridge 30-06 (7.62×63 mm) for the purpose of testing, and “if it’s really urgent, we’ll cut the trophies, and then his own will catch up.” It seems that the American rifle ammunition was, in fact, copied from the German (over which the Germans even sued the Americans), made a new barrel, a couple more parts - and forward. But the contractor who received the contract was overwhelmed with other army orders, and the contract for converting two machine guns was abandoned on a distant shelf. Plus, the order itself was received by the automobile manufacturer - General Motors Corporation, which sent this task to its division - Saginaw Steering Gear Division. Needless to say, before this, as the name suggests, the office was engaged in the development and production of steering mechanisms for cars, and was not involved in weapons at all. American industry was still transitioning to a war footing, and this process was fraught with difficulties. As a result, two experimental machine guns, designated T24, left for testing at the Aberdeen Proving Ground only at the beginning of 1944. In addition to the other ammunition itself, the machine gun received sights and a bipod from the BAR automatic rifle, a shorter stock and a mount for installation on an American M3 tripod. Most of the machine gun's parts remained German.
T24 machine gun on an American machine. Photo taken at Aberdeen Proving Ground
Well, let's get to the most interesting part right away - the American Germans failed the test miserably. There are no chances or options at all. One machine gun turned out to be, in fact, inoperable; it jammed after the first shot, then after the second - and that was the end of its testing. The second tortured testers with constant misfires and delays. There were, however, two big “BUTs”. 1. The alterations were carried out completely, literally with the heel of the right foot, hence the fact that one machine gun was actually inoperative. 2. One of the requirements for alterations was to reduce the rate of fire. Although the army command looked towards the idea of a single machine gun, they considered the wild rate of fire to be a flaw.
Official report on machine gun testing dated May 16, 1944. It is in the public domain, you can read about every misfire and delay... and there were a lot of them
Again, different concepts. The Germans believed that in the first burst it was necessary to “cut off” as many fighters as possible before they lay down and found cover, hence the wild rate of fire. Hence the problems with reliability - the machine gun was originally made to meet other requirements. There is a test report in the public domain, and it is quite voluminous, due to the fact that it describes all the malfunctions of the machine gun, and there were many of them.
The receiver of the M1919A4 machine gun with the manufacturer's mark of the Saginaw Steering Gear Division of General Motors Corporation. The automobile manufacturer and its divisions produced a huge number of military products, including small arms. But it’s one thing to receive drawings and produce an already proven model, and another thing to do minimal design work without having relevant experience
In general, the idea was shelved and buried there. The reasons, however, are not only the reliability of the alterations. The year was 1944. It was already more than clear to the Allies that the Thousand-Year Reich would not last even two decades, and everything was coming to an end. Plus, the Americans generally had no problems with machine guns. There was also a machine gun armament system that was fully developed and working, and most importantly, unlike the USSR, there were no problems with the sheer number of machine guns. So, logically, they didn’t change the horses at the crossing and, in general, left everything as it was. Perhaps they made an ersatz single machine gun from the Browning system machine gun of the 1919 model, changing the barrel, attaching a butt and adding a bipod, while leaving the possibility of mounting on a tripod, but it was clear that this was a temporary solution (albeit one that worked).
The German tape was used without any changes at all; the cartridge case for the American and German cartridges was essentially the same
And they took advantage of the German experience after the war, when creating the real first American single machine gun, although another German design was used there, but that’s a completely different story.
American troops did not use German machine guns en masse and for a long time, but this happened all the time, most often until the available ammunition was used up directly in battle. One such incident happened to the legendary Audie Murphy when he used a captured MG-42 to destroy several German positions. The photo shows Murphy himself in a promotional photo for the autobiographical film “To Hell and Back.” It was filmed in 1955 based on the book of the same name by Audie Murphy himself. Both the book and the film were a great success.
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