7/M31 MG Platoon
the 7/M31 MG platoon, more widely known as the Schwarzlose Machine Gun was an early 20th century Machine Gun. It can be best described as the Eastern European poor man's Maxim.
IRL[edit | edit source]
The Schwarzlose was first developed for use in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to get in on the whole automatic firearms thing that all the cool kids were doing. It was upgraded with a stronger spring to fire significantly faster. Like most machine guns of the period, it was water cooled to prevent barrel overheating.
The Schwarzlose was cheap to produce and provided a roughly equivalent performance to the other machine guns of the period, but suffered from being almost totally unadaptable beyond use with Infantry units. Poland used the weapon after the war in their airplanes, and immediately switched them out when better alternatives became available.
The Schwarzlose also aged poorly, as many machine guns either already had a comparable rate of fire or an outright superior one in the case of the M1919, developed a mere decade afterwards. It kinda became what the AK has become in our modern world and what the Mosin has been since 1918: A cheap but decent firearm if you don't expect to be fighting a first rate power.
Still, the weapon was highly sought out and used by Eastern European countries and was standard issue for Italian Colonial troops as both a support weapon and an AA weapon. The weapon was primarily produced by what we now call Steyr Arms and the FÉG industrial concern. It even saw service as far as the post-war Jewish Palestine conflicts.
Hungarian Forces in Flames of War | |
---|---|
Tanks: | Toldi II - Panzer 38(t) - Turan - Panther |
Infantry: | Hungarian Rifle Platoon - Hungarian Mortar Platoon - 7/M31 MG Platoon |
Artillery: | Nebelwerfer - Hungarian 105mm - Hungarian 100mm |
Tank Destroyer: | Zrinyi Assault Gun - Stug III - Hetzer |
Recon: | Csaba Armored Car |
Aircraft: | |
Anti-Aircraft: | Nimrod SPAA |