Zach has a message for you: "Hello! At one point I say the mg-42 feed tray was wholesale copied by the M60. I meant to say the MAG-58 (or 240 series). I got excited and made a blunder, and grossly insulted the MAG-58. I apologize to you, my glorious machine gun. Also: I see you writing a comment about how “WWII German MG squads were not set up like that,” or “they did have assault rifles, I can’t believe you got that wrong!”It’s fine, this is a comedy video, and I’m not a historian."
I'm a gun enthusiast due to years of playing games, watching movies, and shooting anything I've been able to get my hands on. I ain't an expert historian, nor do I expect that from most of the people I listen to. The closest I've been to military service is fucking high school JROTC. I know many people know more than me, but nobody's perfect.
I find the notion of historical accuracy important, however this is video game. The entire video takes place in a fictional universe, despite similarities. Just try to enjoy the video, and if you can't even do that due to "historical inaccuracies" might I recommend you go watch a documentary instead.
In the austrian army the assistand mashinegunner would slide the new barrel in its metal container underneath the gun so when the gunner had to swap it it was right there. Burned my hand once in an exercise because i thought "those were only 200 blank rounds. It can't be that hot" It was that hot
9:41 Subtitle correction: Zach is referring to "Mechanix", not just generic "mechanic's gloves". Mechanix is a brand that makes gloves, from gardening to tactical to construction use cases, that're quite popular.
Has a barrel change animation too. I think it triggers when you get to about 75% repair. It just eats through .308 though, so I like to keep Contreras around.
For the mod author: the ancient Roman poet referenced in "Dante's Inferno" is Virgil, with two i's. Vergil is the half-demon antagonist/rival from Devil May Cry.
Another reason the MG34 was used in tanks instead of the MG42 was because you could fire it without the buttstock. The MG42 had its recoil spring in the buttstock so you can’t operate the gun without it. Since the 34 was designed to do LITERALLY everything, they had usage in vehicles in mind. So having it still be operable without the buttstock was a key design feature.
Something crazier is that I find it hilarious that the older MG’s like the Maxim are still in use. There’s some crazy bastard who basically dual linked maxims together in Ukraine … grandpa maxim will outlive us all
The only real problem the Maxim ever had was that it was water-cooled, and as such, very heavy, but if you're in a static position like a trench, that stops mattering and actually becomes beneficial as it removes the need for barrel changes so long as you can keep the water topped off.
The fact Zach spent 10 minutes of this video talking about guns makes me incredibly happy. Nothing on this planet is better than listening to someone talk about something they enjoy and know a lot about.
My mom wanted me to take a look at the scene in Indiana Jones where the guy grabs onto the barrel of a mg42, she thought his hand would have burnt off, she got mad when I just said "no it has a shroud"
I heard that during WWII, there were training films created to teach soldiers to only attack when the machine gun crew were changing barrels, which would onle be a window of about 5-10 seconds.
It's a good day when Mike drops a new video and Zach goes all giddy with MG42. A real treat indeed. Also in 16:47 you can hear a _muffled legion soldier in the distance_
Im not going to lie, knowing that mike was in the millitary and doesnt understand how a gun team works is kinda agrivating. Then i remember that both Mike and Zach were POGs so it slides.
That quest with the Hermit, I’m surprised there isn’t something like that in Vanilla. You got Cannibal Johnson and the Khan, sure, but I mean, Vegas and the Strip as-is has only existed for 5 years. Finding some bushman who thought the lights were rads isn’t out of the question.
"Anything written by Hunter S. Thompson is difficult." Wait......WHAT?! How so? Fear and Loathing was one of the funniest books I've ever read! If you get a chance, you should check out The Curse of Lono by Hunter.
The need for barrel changing cannot be underestimated; one Brit was caught surpressed in a crater with a German MG (I don’t know which type) that was just unloading around him and never hit him once, meanwhile there was also things like “the beast of Normandy” that described a gun emplacement that was able to change barrels so quickly it really got that title. I do wonder if that’s the origin of the “all bark no bite” because yea, in somewhere like North Africa a sloppy team may achieve little but suppression whilst a well equipped crew could be unquestionably lethal, and even just in a suppressing role it fit German infantry tactics well enabling riflemen to move up. Quite often In military weapons and vehicles you see things like a general machine gun concept fall flat or suffer because their made of compromise, but this certainly wasn’t one of those cases, even if it was a bit heavy and ammo hungry.
You guys are my absolute favorite TH-camrs! You guys are so hysterical Zach is an absolute blast! The excitement he portrayed when he found the MG-42 it makes me so happy!!!
About the water cooled MG's there's an anecdotal story from the brits where they used the maxim/vickers MG during testing to see when it would overheat and they had to cut it short because they were afraid of running low on ammunition or something.
I'd have to check again (I think Forgotten weapons has it in their coverage) but the gun can continue firing for days without a barrel replacement. I seem to remember 3, but I want to say a full week...
I think I had to read a bit of The Road back in school. I vaguely remember the guy with a revolver and whittling fake bullets out of wood so that people would assume he’s fully loaded.
If we were to speak precisely it is about 1200-1500 bites per bark. Also find it interesting how amazingly similar in construction the heat shield is to some of the smgs ive played with. I know they were mostly stamped like the mg-42 and thats why but its still neat, especially how they just have a big rectangular hole in the side like some of the late war “oh shit” smgs that were produced.
@@Chronomaton yea, the pps-43 even more so. A few late/post war smg barrel shrouds are pretty similar too. It’s just kinda neat how reoccurring this shape is even though in theory a round barrel shroud should be perfectly easy to stamp especially if its not a one piece stamp with the receiver like on the soviet guns
my dad was a machine gunner during vietnam, and his story was about using one while in a rice patty. Said he was just ripping through ammo and it was red hot but the guy with his stuff wasn't near so just dunked it in the water to cool and ended up boiling the water. Made the dumb joke about how he can suppress fire and make dinner at the same time.
@10:40 The reason early MGs used water cooling is because the Maxim gun set the standard and all later doctrine was based around it. And the reason the Maxim used it, most of all was because when Hiram Maxim started developing it, he was using blackpowder ammunition, as smokeless hadnt been invented. Blackpowder leaves a lot more heat in the system longer than smokeless, so a thin barrel and water cooling were necessary just to keep firing for more than a couple hundred rounds. When using smokeless the system worked even better, and since it allowed demonstrations of continuous fire for thousands of rounds, it became a selling point. Notably, not all early MGs used water cooling( Brownings 1895, various French MGs) but the Maxim was by far the most popular and widespread.
I’ve heard that the operator must change barrels every 250 shots to prevent it from losing accuracy. Also it should have a 50 round belt instead of a 100 round belt. Because first off, that ammo drum can only hold that much, and also if you use anything longer than a 50 round belt outside of a static position without an assistant gunner, that ammo belt is going to get snagged on something.
Something I'm sure Zach knows about is the CETME Ameli machine gun. It's an MG42 chambered in 5.56 Unfortunately the quality control wasn't all too great for mass production so they're not really that popular
I like the MG42 as well because I view it as the father of all machine-guns even though it really isn't. I enjoy the fire rate , caliber , quick change barrel , stock , sights , multi role usage , and aesthetic mainly
It's the one that was so good that most modern LMGs can trace at least some design inspiration from it. Much like the Mauser was to bolt action rifles.
I think the point of Hunter S. Thompson's writing is to be difficult. Since most of it is based on experience anyway, and it's hard to translate experience to words, and the chaotic nature sorta helps with his drug fueled gonzo journalism style. just my opinion
Fun fact: German ww2 doctrine was to change the barrel every 200 rounds. Early war machine gun crews had 4 people on them, but by the end of the war it had been cut down to 2.
12:40 iirc the doctrine was the support gunners would be riflemen who's goal was to funnel enemy troops into the kill zone of the MG. Maybe that was the role of other squads idr the details too well. Basically you had the MG squad and their goal was volume of fire, suppression and area denial whereas the rifle squad's goal was maneuver.
so the reason the MG34 was being used on tanks while it was being replaced by the MG42 in general use was because of the mountings, the space saving had little to do with it, it was a nice bonus but the main reason came down to that it was cheaper to keep using the MG34 as factories and manufacturers were already making the mountings for the MG34 for use in tanks but not the MG42 and switching over would have been costly and offer minor benefits benefit especially since the MG42 would at that point already be in high demand everywhere so using the MG34 meant greater availability of weapons and no downtime in production as ofcourse they wouldnt have to design, test and retrofit the mountings on tanks in the production line. also something to note you can also tell the difference between an MG42 and the MG34 by their pistolgrips and tigger set up- the M34 has a way more complex trigger as it has both single-fire and full-auto on a very unique double trigger while the MG42 just has a traditional trigger assembly because it only has 1 kind of fire mode that being: I dont want to see you or your friends again for a bit and I am not negotiating
10:30 I wouldnt say it started with planes that we air cooled machine guns, it started with cavalry and colonialism. French machine guns were air cooled so soldiers didnt have to waste water in the desert. The alternative solution was to use a heat sink. The hotchkiss 1914, a wartime derivative of an earlier colonial machine gun used giant brass donuts around the barrel, essentially trading water for mass and surface area. Ot also helped cooling being that it was open bolt. The other Hotchkiss, the Benet-Mercie, was technically an LMG for cavalry use. It was first adopted by the US for frontier use by cavalry, where its light weight came in handy. Its solution was to use a fairly recofnizable heatsink of a cluster of metal fins.
The mg 42 was so good at its job that german squad tactics revolved around using riflemen to basically chase people around until theyre infront of this machine gun.
I'd really like to see places like Good Springs and Novac expanding because of one's efforts to pacify the neighbourhood and make the routes safer. They aren't roads any more and there are no wheeled vehicles to run on them if they weren't catastrophically pitted and broken up. There's a lot of empty houses that still have working roofs people could occupy, assuming we could arrange enough water somehow.
Too add on a movie reference that would make the MG42 the GPMG of Fallout, is if you find smart tech stuff and add the MG42 into it, then it becomes the Smart MG; or from a certain movie, the M56 Smart Gun; I would love to have it in game.
Essentially, the point of those training videos was to remind soldiers that, just because it sounds weird, doesn't mean it's any different in practical terms from any other light machine gun. Although, they definitely lacked touch with reality for a lot of those training videos. For example, the one about destroying tanks which seemed to just forget that high explosive is a thing and the Germans loved to use it whether or not it was necessary
I used a few m240 bravo barrels to boil water for a company of troops, it's amazing how a few red hot machine gun barrel's can boil water in a washed out tar barrel, we had no power at the range and it's on top of a mountain so infrastructure for the military up there is usually brought with but one day they forgot but we sill had a bunch of hot tea so it wasn't too bad
Funnily enough, mikes idea of just 4 assault rifles to 1 machine gun crew is the reason the Germans wanted to use the stg for an entire squad, now everyone can act as a machine gun to allow the squad to move up instead of waiting on the mg to move forward
Fun fact. If you don't have a asbestos glove, use a spent casings, this was actually done irl in ww2 as well. Battlefield 5 did it, found a short saying stuff about that and bam. Now yall know
My favourite thing about zach and mikes relationship is mike being so hilariously incorrect about gun related things that it gives zach a chance to nerd out and go into more detail about something. Also some fun history facts about the MG42! In a vacuum, the MG42 is a remarkably effective machinegun, however there were several components of its design that mean for a conflict like WW2, it was unfortunately inefficient. -The quick change barrel system was very well designed! However, due to the way the barrel shroud functions, unlike other machineguns of that time, as well as the modern day, there was no carry handle attached to the barrel. This, in concert with the fact that the asbestos glove meant for handling the hot barrel was often lost, meant that spare barrels were often left behind when a crew changed position, due to an inability to carry a burning hot piece of metal. -The high fire rate of the MG42 was great for suppression, and the unique sound it makes had tremendous psychological effect, however, the high fire rate was excessive, and lead the gun to burn more ammunition than necessary for the same effect as any other machinegun. As well, firing faster meant the barrels would heat faster, and the parts would become worn more quickly, which feeds into some of the previous and subsequent issues. The MG42 has a cyclic rate of 1200 rounds per minute, while it is really only necessary to have a firing rate of around 650. - The MG42 was designed to fire belts made of disintegrating metal links. This is an amazng modern technology, something we use on machineguns today! However, at the time the germans were in a material shortage, and were having difficulty obtaining metals like steel and aluminum, which meant that having a gun that fired belts made of metal links, which could not be reused, was detrimental vs the approach other nations used at the time, which was either magazine fed machineguns, or reusable belts made from cloth. Overall the MG42 was ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, however, it was not the gun to be used in a conflict like the second world war. This is the reason why (with slight modifications such as a lower base fire rate and a reduction in weight) the MG3 is much more functional, and still in service today!
To clarify as well, the MG3s fire rate depends on ehich of two types of bolt is used, some fire at 1200 rounds per minute like the MG42, which is I believe used more commonly in emplaced and vehicle mounted weapons, while the other bolt fires at around 850 RPM. Additionally, the MG3 can either fire disintegrating metal belts or non-disintegrating, thus fixing the issue of wasting material on belts (however in a modern setting this is usually not a concern anyway since germany is not having difficulty securing metal)
I was a 240 gunner and an AG we always ran a two man team gunner with a 240 and a 9 mil AG usually has m4 and carries 1 barrel for training usually 2 for service fun note our AGs were required to have one magazine full of tracers for directing fire
OOOOooooOOOOh! It's me, Octavius (and Boyd), back from the dead! BraaAAAaaains! Nah just kiddin'. I played The Hermit and Vergil here. Always a little embarrassed when people see my old work, mainly cause of the audio quality. I think I was literally using my headset microphone to record voiceover. :P Glad y'all liked them, though! I never did wind up finding Hermit on The Strip in my playthrough, so it'll be fun to see that encounter play out! Glad to have watched up to 325! - The Artist Formerly Known As chris20855
Yah back in world war 2 most the people still fought with bolt action rifles. Some captains had automatic submachine guns but back then the big issue with those was magazine dimentions. Like the german submachine gun would be issued with 2 or 3 magazines built and hand-fit for every weapon made, which rarely fit well inside other mp40s. Standardization of factory measurement is the big real struggle man.
Me, the industrial engineer, mostly interested in the switch from milled mg-34 to stamped mg-42 because of economies of scale for all out war production.
To be honest, I kinda like the MG-34 better because of the "saddle" drum magazine modification in place of the belt fed system and the cover for the receiver. Looks cooler IMO if it was not so complicated to attach to the gun.
Zach has a message for you:
"Hello! At one point I say the mg-42 feed tray was wholesale copied by the M60. I meant to say the MAG-58 (or 240 series). I got excited and made a blunder, and grossly insulted the MAG-58. I apologize to you, my glorious machine gun.
Also: I see you writing a comment about how “WWII German MG squads were not set up like that,” or “they did have assault rifles, I can’t believe you got that wrong!”It’s fine, this is a comedy video, and I’m not a historian."
Tell Zach we don't mind a simple slipup. We enjoy watching you giddy about weapons like kids talking about pokemon at recess. As long as you have fun
I'm a gun enthusiast due to years of playing games, watching movies, and shooting anything I've been able to get my hands on. I ain't an expert historian, nor do I expect that from most of the people I listen to. The closest I've been to military service is fucking high school JROTC. I know many people know more than me, but nobody's perfect.
@@Chino56751 You're truly a mediocre troll, My gods
I find the notion of historical accuracy important, however this is video game. The entire video takes place in a fictional universe, despite similarities. Just try to enjoy the video, and if you can't even do that due to "historical inaccuracies" might I recommend you go watch a documentary instead.
@@Chino56751🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
Love the fact you can hear the Legionnaire “Retribution” faintly in the background when Hermit asked “No retribution?”
*RETRIBUTION*
RETRIBUTION
16:45
I heard that too and thought I was going nuts but no, Mike actually slapped that sound effect in there. What a guy.
I didn't catch that, thanks for pointing it out!
An NV video with a gun as the title. We're eating good, boys.
The MG42 too, i love using that gun in any game
Two of my favorite guns to actually shoot
Is the mg42 and a 240 Bravo so you know
@rykertate6291 nice
Meats back on the menu boys!
Hunter S. Thompson is incredibly easy to read, so long as you read it in the same intoxicated state he wrote it in.
In the austrian army the assistand mashinegunner would slide the new barrel in its metal container underneath the gun so when the gunner had to swap it it was right there.
Burned my hand once in an exercise because i thought "those were only 200 blank rounds.
It can't be that hot"
It was that hot
9:41 Subtitle correction:
Zach is referring to "Mechanix", not just generic "mechanic's gloves". Mechanix is a brand that makes gloves, from gardening to tactical to construction use cases, that're quite popular.
There's a new MG42 mod by the AWO Team, which has fully animated reloads with a kNVSE set, if y'all wanna check that out.
Has a barrel change animation too. I think it triggers when you get to about 75% repair. It just eats through .308 though, so I like to keep Contreras around.
Oh yeah, i tried that mod and it was fun to use.
For the mod author: the ancient Roman poet referenced in "Dante's Inferno" is Virgil, with two i's. Vergil is the half-demon antagonist/rival from Devil May Cry.
Then who is the former institute member turned super mutant
Pretty sure he too is Vergil
@@pasta1549now I'm imagining a super mutant trying to DMC combo.
Another reason the MG34 was used in tanks instead of the MG42 was because you could fire it without the buttstock. The MG42 had its recoil spring in the buttstock so you can’t operate the gun without it. Since the 34 was designed to do LITERALLY everything, they had usage in vehicles in mind. So having it still be operable without the buttstock was a key design feature.
Zach's gun rants volume 5 is going to be wild.
Soon.
@@TheRealAaronSmith our ears will be eating good that day.
Something crazier is that I find it hilarious that the older MG’s like the Maxim are still in use. There’s some crazy bastard who basically dual linked maxims together in Ukraine … grandpa maxim will outlive us all
Him and the Browning .50.
rata tatta ratta tatta
budda budda budda
kapow kapow
blam! blam!
whoosh....KABOOM!
The only real problem the Maxim ever had was that it was water-cooled, and as such, very heavy, but if you're in a static position like a trench, that stops mattering and actually becomes beneficial as it removes the need for barrel changes so long as you can keep the water topped off.
@@fresnel149 Doesn't even matter if its not actually water!
(Cut to several sides having stories of soldiers pissing in their gun mid battle)
@@amhuman5138 soooo
Liquid nitrogen?
Zach has an MG42, the Mojave is screwed.
The fact Zach spent 10 minutes of this video talking about guns makes me incredibly happy. Nothing on this planet is better than listening to someone talk about something they enjoy and know a lot about.
It’s always a treat whenever Zach goes on one of his gun rants.
You hear someone finally made a mod to make grenade rifles have an arming distance, how Zach pointed out that vanilla grenade rifles lacked?
My mom wanted me to take a look at the scene in Indiana Jones where the guy grabs onto the barrel of a mg42, she thought his hand would have burnt off, she got mad when I just said "no it has a shroud"
I heard that during WWII, there were training films created to teach soldiers to only attack when the machine gun crew were changing barrels, which would onle be a window of about 5-10 seconds.
MG-42 is one of the few guns that got it right the first time.
The other is the Browning M2. Because John Moses Browning.
who knew Stimpack-droppings took the form of plasma rifles 🤣 Also how frigging long ago was stimpack 🤔
Literal YEARS.
pretty sure it was when they were double digits
@@jackthunderbolt4307did you mean double digits? Because I swear she get introduced around the 200 or 300 episodes
It's a good day when Mike drops a new video and Zach goes all giddy with MG42. A real treat indeed.
Also in 16:47 you can hear a _muffled legion soldier in the distance_
"Anything written by Hunter S Thompson is difficult." what a mood
You had me at MG42
Im not going to lie, knowing that mike was in the millitary and doesnt understand how a gun team works is kinda agrivating. Then i remember that both Mike and Zach were POGs so it slides.
Buddy Chicken is my favorite literary reference!
It gets better. Not only did they get it right the first time, but the company that made and designed it, hadn't even made a firearm before.
That quest with the Hermit, I’m surprised there isn’t something like that in Vanilla. You got Cannibal Johnson and the Khan, sure, but I mean, Vegas and the Strip as-is has only existed for 5 years. Finding some bushman who thought the lights were rads isn’t out of the question.
"Anything written by Hunter S. Thompson is difficult." Wait......WHAT?! How so? Fear and Loathing was one of the funniest books I've ever read! If you get a chance, you should check out The Curse of Lono by Hunter.
Shoulda said personal opinion was sometimes he’s hard to follow
The need for barrel changing cannot be underestimated; one Brit was caught surpressed in a crater with a German MG (I don’t know which type) that was just unloading around him and never hit him once, meanwhile there was also things like “the beast of Normandy” that described a gun emplacement that was able to change barrels so quickly it really got that title.
I do wonder if that’s the origin of the “all bark no bite” because yea, in somewhere like North Africa a sloppy team may achieve little but suppression whilst a well equipped crew could be unquestionably lethal, and even just in a suppressing role it fit German infantry tactics well enabling riflemen to move up.
Quite often In military weapons and vehicles you see things like a general machine gun concept fall flat or suffer because their made of compromise, but this certainly wasn’t one of those cases, even if it was a bit heavy and ammo hungry.
11:48 Mike just found out why the Sturmgewehr was invented.
I wish I could see (and maybe fire) Zachs' gun collection. I would pay anything. Unfortunatelly all I can offer is home cooking and lego.
You guys are my absolute favorite TH-camrs! You guys are so hysterical Zach is an absolute blast! The excitement he portrayed when he found the MG-42 it makes me so happy!!!
4:15 crash bandicoot when you hand him the bad mustash man's buzzsaw.
About the water cooled MG's there's an anecdotal story from the brits where they used the maxim/vickers MG during testing to see when it would overheat and they had to cut it short because they were afraid of running low on ammunition or something.
I'd have to check again (I think Forgotten weapons has it in their coverage) but the gun can continue firing for days without a barrel replacement. I seem to remember 3, but I want to say a full week...
I think I had to read a bit of The Road back in school. I vaguely remember the guy with a revolver and whittling fake bullets out of wood so that people would assume he’s fully loaded.
tickles me pink how amused Zach is by buddy chicken XD
18:58 He's referring to an STI/D when the mod author wrote, "You'll burn up but not in radioactive vapor."
Sometimes when I can't sleep I put you guys on as background noise. Surprisingly nice at low volume!
If we were to speak precisely it is about 1200-1500 bites per bark. Also find it interesting how amazingly similar in construction the heat shield is to some of the smgs ive played with. I know they were mostly stamped like the mg-42 and thats why but its still neat, especially how they just have a big rectangular hole in the side like some of the late war “oh shit” smgs that were produced.
The posh heat shield does look notably like a stubby MG42's now that I think about it.
The ppsh*
@@Chronomaton yea, the pps-43 even more so. A few late/post war smg barrel shrouds are pretty similar too. It’s just kinda neat how reoccurring this shape is even though in theory a round barrel shroud should be perfectly easy to stamp especially if its not a one piece stamp with the receiver like on the soviet guns
my dad was a machine gunner during vietnam, and his story was about using one while in a rice patty. Said he was just ripping through ammo and it was red hot but the guy with his stuff wasn't near so just dunked it in the water to cool and ended up boiling the water. Made the dumb joke about how he can suppress fire and make dinner at the same time.
Zach, pro tip. If you see one Cazadore, it is always followed by more, even more aggressive Cazadores, those of which are accompanied by even more.
I'm going to say both MG 34 and MG 42 had more bite than bark. Hella accurate and filled the air with lead
@10:40 The reason early MGs used water cooling is because the Maxim gun set the standard and all later doctrine was based around it.
And the reason the Maxim used it, most of all was because when Hiram Maxim started developing it, he was using blackpowder ammunition, as smokeless hadnt been invented.
Blackpowder leaves a lot more heat in the system longer than smokeless, so a thin barrel and water cooling were necessary just to keep firing for more than a couple hundred rounds.
When using smokeless the system worked even better, and since it allowed demonstrations of continuous fire for thousands of rounds, it became a selling point.
Notably, not all early MGs used water cooling( Brownings 1895, various French MGs) but the Maxim was by far the most popular and widespread.
Zach and Mike are the best youtuber i have ever watched. Thanks for providing endless hours of entertainment and laughter and also the gun knowledge
I’ve heard that the operator must change barrels every 250 shots to prevent it from losing accuracy. Also it should have a 50 round belt instead of a 100 round belt. Because first off, that ammo drum can only hold that much, and also if you use anything longer than a 50 round belt outside of a static position without an assistant gunner, that ammo belt is going to get snagged on something.
I love the light hearted gags that come back every now and then like a fart noise playing as it shows Zach's face.
Something I'm sure Zach knows about is the CETME Ameli machine gun. It's an MG42 chambered in 5.56
Unfortunately the quality control wasn't all too great for mass production so they're not really that popular
I like the MG42 as well because I view it as the father of all machine-guns even though it really isn't. I enjoy the fire rate , caliber , quick change barrel , stock , sights , multi role usage , and aesthetic mainly
It's the one that was so good that most modern LMGs can trace at least some design inspiration from it. Much like the Mauser was to bolt action rifles.
I think the point of Hunter S. Thompson's writing is to be difficult. Since most of it is based on experience anyway, and it's hard to translate experience to words, and the chaotic nature sorta helps with his drug fueled gonzo journalism style. just my opinion
Fun fact: German ww2 doctrine was to change the barrel every 200 rounds. Early war machine gun crews had 4 people on them, but by the end of the war it had been cut down to 2.
12:40 iirc the doctrine was the support gunners would be riflemen who's goal was to funnel enemy troops into the kill zone of the MG. Maybe that was the role of other squads idr the details too well. Basically you had the MG squad and their goal was volume of fire, suppression and area denial whereas the rifle squad's goal was maneuver.
"Smash the pages together to make a book." So Mike wants to make a choose your own adventure story
so the reason the MG34 was being used on tanks while it was being replaced by the MG42 in general use was because of the mountings, the space saving had little to do with it, it was a nice bonus but the main reason came down to that it was cheaper to keep using the MG34 as factories and manufacturers were already making the mountings for the MG34 for use in tanks but not the MG42 and switching over would have been costly and offer minor benefits benefit especially since the MG42 would at that point already be in high demand everywhere so using the MG34 meant greater availability of weapons and no downtime in production as ofcourse they wouldnt have to design, test and retrofit the mountings on tanks in the production line.
also something to note you can also tell the difference between an MG42 and the MG34 by their pistolgrips and tigger set up- the M34 has a way more complex trigger as it has both single-fire and full-auto on a very unique double trigger while the MG42 just has a traditional trigger assembly because it only has 1 kind of fire mode that being: I dont want to see you or your friends again for a bit and I am not negotiating
I knew i recognized this, it's the LMG in FO76.
I love my exploding rounds one, but good god does it chew through .308.
The amount of joy i got knowing that zach knows why the germans used the mg34 on tanks versus the mg42 cannot be understated. 😂😂😂
10:30 I wouldnt say it started with planes that we air cooled machine guns, it started with cavalry and colonialism. French machine guns were air cooled so soldiers didnt have to waste water in the desert. The alternative solution was to use a heat sink. The hotchkiss 1914, a wartime derivative of an earlier colonial machine gun used giant brass donuts around the barrel, essentially trading water for mass and surface area. Ot also helped cooling being that it was open bolt. The other Hotchkiss, the Benet-Mercie, was technically an LMG for cavalry use. It was first adopted by the US for frontier use by cavalry, where its light weight came in handy. Its solution was to use a fairly recofnizable heatsink of a cluster of metal fins.
22:10 is perfect fallout new vegas without context material
The mg 42 was so good at its job that german squad tactics revolved around using riflemen to basically chase people around until theyre infront of this machine gun.
I'd really like to see places like Good Springs and Novac expanding because of one's efforts to pacify the neighbourhood and make the routes safer. They aren't roads any more and there are no wheeled vehicles to run on them if they weren't catastrophically pitted and broken up. There's a lot of empty houses that still have working roofs people could occupy, assuming we could arrange enough water somehow.
7:30 i was half expecting Zach to say made love
"Buddy Chicken, meet Missus Cactus."
.
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"Glad that you're acquainted now."
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*Insert random fucking Cazador🪰👺
Too add on a movie reference that would make the MG42 the GPMG of Fallout, is if you find smart tech stuff and add the MG42 into it, then it becomes the Smart MG; or from a certain movie, the M56 Smart Gun; I would love to have it in game.
It’s funny that Zach uses an oven glove to handle hot weapon parts while I have a pair of welding gloves in my kitchen that I use as oven gloves
23:13 I was not expecting a Groucho Marx reference, "when her muscles start relaxing up the hill comes Andrew Jackson..." 😂
Essentially, the point of those training videos was to remind soldiers that, just because it sounds weird, doesn't mean it's any different in practical terms from any other light machine gun. Although, they definitely lacked touch with reality for a lot of those training videos. For example, the one about destroying tanks which seemed to just forget that high explosive is a thing and the Germans loved to use it whether or not it was necessary
2:34 We don't even need to go to Fo4 for an example of that. In Fo2 we got Lenny and his father.
I love the pause he gave at the loading animation
I didn't even know the MG 42 could be modeled into New Vegas.
"B.J.! We need you defending us with the MG 42!"
I used a few m240 bravo barrels to boil water for a company of troops, it's amazing how a few red hot machine gun barrel's can boil water in a washed out tar barrel, we had no power at the range and it's on top of a mountain so infrastructure for the military up there is usually brought with but one day they forgot but we sill had a bunch of hot tea so it wasn't too bad
Mike....watching this makes me glad your role in the military was handling water and not dealing with shooting people
Funnily enough, mikes idea of just 4 assault rifles to 1 machine gun crew is the reason the Germans wanted to use the stg for an entire squad, now everyone can act as a machine gun to allow the squad to move up instead of waiting on the mg to move forward
Ironically the USMC has gotten rid of beltfed Machineguns at a squad level. They still have 240s but thats platoon level
So Zach, they actually made The Road into a movie in 2009 and it pulled no punches
Fun fact. If you don't have a asbestos glove, use a spent casings, this was actually done irl in ww2 as well. Battlefield 5 did it, found a short saying stuff about that and bam. Now yall know
Uses a machine gun to cut down and entire tree. I guess you could say he's a..... LUMBERZACH
i wanted to ear Zach talking about the mg42 yesterday and i got served on a silver plate, what a surprise 😅
Can’t wait for the next episode of gun rants NV
In this episode Mike completely misunderstanding thermo dynamics thinks that you can avoid barrel heat
My favourite thing about zach and mikes relationship is mike being so hilariously incorrect about gun related things that it gives zach a chance to nerd out and go into more detail about something.
Also some fun history facts about the MG42!
In a vacuum, the MG42 is a remarkably effective machinegun, however there were several components of its design that mean for a conflict like WW2, it was unfortunately inefficient.
-The quick change barrel system was very well designed! However, due to the way the barrel shroud functions, unlike other machineguns of that time, as well as the modern day, there was no carry handle attached to the barrel. This, in concert with the fact that the asbestos glove meant for handling the hot barrel was often lost, meant that spare barrels were often left behind when a crew changed position, due to an inability to carry a burning hot piece of metal.
-The high fire rate of the MG42 was great for suppression, and the unique sound it makes had tremendous psychological effect, however, the high fire rate was excessive, and lead the gun to burn more ammunition than necessary for the same effect as any other machinegun. As well, firing faster meant the barrels would heat faster, and the parts would become worn more quickly, which feeds into some of the previous and subsequent issues. The MG42 has a cyclic rate of 1200 rounds per minute, while it is really only necessary to have a firing rate of around 650.
- The MG42 was designed to fire belts made of disintegrating metal links. This is an amazng modern technology, something we use on machineguns today! However, at the time the germans were in a material shortage, and were having difficulty obtaining metals like steel and aluminum, which meant that having a gun that fired belts made of metal links, which could not be reused, was detrimental vs the approach other nations used at the time, which was either magazine fed machineguns, or reusable belts made from cloth.
Overall the MG42 was ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, however, it was not the gun to be used in a conflict like the second world war. This is the reason why (with slight modifications such as a lower base fire rate and a reduction in weight) the MG3 is much more functional, and still in service today!
To clarify as well, the MG3s fire rate depends on ehich of two types of bolt is used, some fire at 1200 rounds per minute like the MG42, which is I believe used more commonly in emplaced and vehicle mounted weapons, while the other bolt fires at around 850 RPM.
Additionally, the MG3 can either fire disintegrating metal belts or non-disintegrating, thus fixing the issue of wasting material on belts (however in a modern setting this is usually not a concern anyway since germany is not having difficulty securing metal)
Mike learning about water cooled machine guns (praise Hiram Maxim) is great
I was a 240 gunner and an AG we always ran a two man team gunner with a 240 and a 9 mil AG usually has m4 and carries 1 barrel for training usually 2 for service fun note our AGs were required to have one magazine full of tracers for directing fire
Runs away from giant Tarantula hawks despite having an MG 42 lol
2:34 probably more likely it was the Quincy infighting that was what caused billy to hide
You've heard of Thesus's ship now get ready for Thesus's MG42
OOOOooooOOOOh! It's me, Octavius (and Boyd), back from the dead! BraaAAAaaains!
Nah just kiddin'. I played The Hermit and Vergil here. Always a little embarrassed when people see my old work, mainly cause of the audio quality. I think I was literally using my headset microphone to record voiceover. :P
Glad y'all liked them, though! I never did wind up finding Hermit on The Strip in my playthrough, so it'll be fun to see that encounter play out!
Glad to have watched up to 325!
- The Artist Formerly Known As chris20855
RETRIBUTION!
RETRIBUTION
RETRIBUTION!!
Yah back in world war 2 most the people still fought with bolt action rifles. Some captains had automatic submachine guns but back then the big issue with those was magazine dimentions. Like the german submachine gun would be issued with 2 or 3 magazines built and hand-fit for every weapon made, which rarely fit well inside other mp40s. Standardization of factory measurement is the big real struggle man.
So you can cook bacon with a machinegun and you can cut a tree with a machinegun.
Sounds like a very useful thing to have!
I find it funny that Germany went don't fix what ain't broke with the mg 42 and just rechambered it
Me, the industrial engineer, mostly interested in the switch from milled mg-34 to stamped mg-42 because of economies of scale for all out war production.
32:31 🎵It's Zach and the Cactus! One's thorny, one's horny!🎵
Legion ends up having D day flashbacks when you fight them 😂
Zach's Gun Rants, the Return
31:53 I think I've heard the Illiad being like that as collective war stories from a history youtuber, the Odyssey is like that too?
22:13 I’m kinda surprised neither of them know what a bookmobile is
I saw Fallout New Vegas and the rest didn’t matter
But then again MG-42
I felt something was amiss in this little Books Arc and I think it’s Zach’s Book Recs
Cutting trees with a machine gun should be a job. The job title should be lumberzach
To be honest, I kinda like the MG-34 better because of the "saddle" drum magazine modification in place of the belt fed system and the cover for the receiver. Looks cooler IMO if it was not so complicated to attach to the gun.
The MG 34 has a round cheese grater.
The 42 has a square Cheese grater
Zach: "I have an MG-42."
You _what?_