MG 42

Winchester's men kill three and claim three more wounded.

They capture an MG42 machine gun.

The company war diary records the dead as Hitlerjugend.

That would mean the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, whose men wear the name as a cuff title.

The ammunition racks bristled with 88mm rounds for the main gun.

Only the MG42 machine was missing from the ball mount in the front radio's operator's seat.

It was all clean and shining, but, he thought, it looked wet.

The blue light danced on the space, mesmerizing him, riveting him to his perch.

And as you can see on the back, this is a German bandolier with the German backpack equipment on it.

So, therefore, we give him the MG42 to use in the Great War.

Well, the Great War was World War I.

In World War 2 then! And on top of that we can give him the German Wehrmacht briefcase filled to the brim with additional ammunition.

And I thought, that barrel looks familiar.

And I realized, wait, is that an MG42, which is the famous German legendary machine gun, Hitler's buzzsaw from World War II, 1,500 rounds a minute, was a beast of a machine gun.

And I'm like, why are they using German machine guns? And it turns out that this was called the M53, and it was a checkmate copy of...

of the MG42.

But it wasn't even really a copy because it was all made on German equipment that, of course, the Nazis had shipped in during the war and was still there.

So the Soviets and the Communists and the Yugoslavs and everything, they grabbed this equipment and they made these machine guns for themselves.

So all three sides in this war are using these MG42 derivative machine guns.

Although, interestingly, they replaced the bolts in them with heavier bolts so they would slow the fire down slightly, which I imagine is so that the barrel doesn't fucking heat up and melt quite as quick.

This, if you can't tell, is the MP40, the original ghetto blaster.

If the MG42 was Hitler's buzzsaw, the MP40 was Hitler's street sweeper.

You probably-

Making jokes about, uh, veteran suicide and just really edgy, insensitive things.

It does.

Does anybody make a 125th scale German MG42? Mount one of those to the roof of this sucker? I'm sure you can find

a file for one and have one printed for you.

You're probably

They're firing belt after belt of rounds.

The barrels on the MG-42s actually get red hot, and they begin to warp.

They have to change the barrels.

They send so many rounds through the barrels on these Rangers as they come off the landing craft.

That's how tough the Battle of Pointe du Hoc was.

And it kept going that way until the 8th of June when the 5th Ranger Battalion, along with elements of the 29th Division, came in, come up from Omaha Beach and relieved the Pointe And what's interesting about that is that they said to me, one of the toughest battles that we ever had was against our own men because there was a friendly firefight.

Some of the men in the 5th as well as the 29th, it was mainly the 29th, as well as the tank battalion, didn't realize that they were dealing with Rangers because they were firing the captured MG-42s.

and the tanks fired into the Ranger lines, and there was a massive firefight that took place.