Editing Nazi Equipment (section)

====Machine Guns====

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJkU4Sah8I '''''Maschinengewehr 42'']:''' "Machine gun 1942". German infantry tactics during WWII were built around the machine gun and, as such, the Germans developed an exceptional machine gun in the MG 42 (basically an improved but functionally identical version of the earlier MG 34). It was lightweight (11.7 kg), belt fed (unlike the magazine fed LMGs it was usually pitted against), and it could nominally fire 1,200 rounds per minute (although, in practice, it was actually even faster) while most other machine guns could barely reach 600. That much [[dakka]] causes a lot of heat, so the gun was designed for easy swapping of barrels; although even with the barrels being regularly changed it was not uncommon for these guns to fire so fast that a cartridge would ignite before being fully loaded, completely breaking the gun and potentially injuring the gun's crew. Its terrifying rate of fire and distinctive report earned it the nickname "Hitler's Buzzsaw". The core idea of the MG42 was the universal machine gun; that is, the German army wouldn't have light, medium, heavy, or antiair, machine guns, but a single weapon that could do it all. That stupidly high rate of fire was designed to let it throw enough lead at enemy aircraft to be sure it hit something, the quick change barrels let it maintain that stupidly high RoF without being water cooled, and it was light enough to be man-portable, so it could be toted around by infantry squads and used as a SAW. The MG 42 was the basis for numerous other weapons throughout the Cold War (and is still in use by NATO forces today as the MG3, the only real changes were switching it to NATO-standard caliber and reducing the firing rate to actually be 1200 rounds per minute, as opposed to the 1500 rpm of the original MG42). The MG3 is still widely exported and its production licensed to NATO and allies. A ''double barrel'' variant of the MG3 was also produced as a ''low cost Minigun alternative''.

* '''''Maschinengewehr 34'':''' The predecessor to the MG 42, it was still in wide use at the start of the war. It had a lower, more controllable rate of fire of around 800-900 RPM, and had a single-shot mode that was removed in the MG 42. Its production went on parallel to the MG 42 because its swing-down barrel-swap method was more compatible with vehicle ball mounts than MG 42's slide-open method, so all MGs seen on German tanks even late in the war were still MG 34's.

*'''''Maschinengewehr 15''''': A progenitor to the MG34 that was designed mainly as a turret gun for aircraft. As such, it had two primary differences; the gun had no stock to allow for extra space inside aircraft, and it fed from a top-mounted 75 round saddle drum. Otherwise it had the same absurdly high rate of fire. As the war progressed, MG15s started being taken out of aircraft as machineguns were becoming less effective against high speed aircraft, and were repurposed as ground infantry guns by adding on a stock and bipod or tripod.

*'''''Maschinengewehr 08/15''''': A mid-WWI improvement on the regular MG 08 of the Imperial German army. It was developed as an answer to the problem of assaulting positions without direct support from automatic weapons, since the standard MG 08 was too heavy to carry around. The result saw the mounting of the MG 08 being replaced by a bipod and the coolant jacket being reduced in size and volume, bringing down its weight from almost 40 kilos down to a more comfortable 20, and the addition of a shoulder stock also made it possible to use it like a more modern LMG. By modern standards, still way too heavy to reliably use it in that particular role, but it worked well enough for the Germans that they continued to improve on it, leading to a (and due to the end of WWI ultimately ineffective), fully air-cooled version of the LMG 08/18, which did away with water cooling entirely, reducing its weight to 16 kilos, actually making it comparable to guns like the Lewis gun (Also the reason why drum-fed LMGs never caught on in the German military, as Germany was forbidden from developing new automatic weapons by the Treaty of Versailles). The 08/15 remained the standard MG for the Reichswehr and even the early Wehrmacht. Loads of them remained in stockpiles well into the war, where they were issued to rear and police units for what the Nazis called "anti-partisan action", with reports of the weapons being used tracking all the way into late 1941 and 1942. Fun fact: The gun was so ubiquotous and regular training tasks on it so tedious, that the word "nullachtfünfzehn" (Zero-Eight-Fifteen) entered the German language as a derogatory term for something mediocre, uninspired and boring.