Mg08
- Thread starter MG1918
- Start date
So many things missing.......
Perhaps what you really need is one of those Zeppelin guns: standard '08 with water jacket, armoured snout and no connections on the jacket for the tanks and hoses. Filled them up on the ground and that was it; air up at 10,000 or so was cold enough that it only boiled of very lowly. There is one in the IWM main-floor exhibit hall. My grandparents both saw the Zepp being put down over London: Pup with Bucks...... Zepp burned all the way down.
Takes 500 rounds to bring the jacket to boiling, then only a pint boils of for every 500 after that. With 10 pints of the water in the thing, you can put out a lot of rounds before you run dry.
My GF was with 54 Batt ("The Kootenay Regiment"), reported making tea in the jacket of a specially-prepared Vickers (gun prepped without barrel-packing lube to keep the oil-slick off the tea). Vickers, of course, was just a lightweight Maxim upside-down. Maxim owned 50% of Vickers Sons and Maxim, which became Vickers Limited and got into aircaft, ammunition, Lugers and other fun things.
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Perhaps what you really need is one of those Zeppelin guns: standard '08 with water jacket, armoured snout and no connections on the jacket for the tanks and hoses. Filled them up on the ground and that was it; air up at 10,000 or so was cold enough that it only boiled of very lowly. There is one in the IWM main-floor exhibit hall. My grandparents both saw the Zepp being put down over London: Pup with Bucks...... Zepp burned all the way down.
Takes 500 rounds to bring the jacket to boiling, then only a pint boils of for every 500 after that. With 10 pints of the water in the thing, you can put out a lot of rounds before you run dry.
My GF was with 54 Batt ("The Kootenay Regiment"), reported making tea in the jacket of a specially-prepared Vickers (gun prepped without barrel-packing lube to keep the oil-slick off the tea). Vickers, of course, was just a lightweight Maxim upside-down. Maxim owned 50% of Vickers Sons and Maxim, which became Vickers Limited and got into aircaft, ammunition, Lugers and other fun things.
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Rather have a Vickers any day, for looks or use. ZF12 was a good idea, but that limited traverse on the MG08/15 must have saved a lot of Allied lives.
#1: "The most beautiful weapon in the German army is our proud machine guns."
#6: Quite the sight the Belgians made up for theirs. Got a closeup of that unit?
#7: Notice the AA ring sight, also the post the gun was mounted on for AA use. Signal pistol in the belt of RH man. The pieces of cloth in the background were a sort of camouflage; they would flap in the breeze and catch the eye of snipers and other observers, helping to disguise real movement by soldiers.
#8: "Imperial Prussian Machine Gun Sharpshooter Detachment No.2, 3rd Coy." "Ersatz bayonet"/trench knife on belt of RH man.
The Heinies really seem to have loved posing for keeny-meeny photos in the front lines. Makes you feel like fixing bayonets just looking at 'em!
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