Jan 7, 2018 · A German Waffen SS soldier involved in heavy fighting in and around the French town of Caen in mid-1944. He is carrying an MG 42 configured as a light support weapon with a folding bipod and detachable drum belt container.

The MG 42 (shortened from German: Maschinengewehr 42, or "machine gun 42") is a German recoil-operated air-cooled general-purpose machine gun used extensively by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS during the second half of World War II.

Oct 29, 2018 · A German Waffen-SS soldier carries an MG 42 configured as a light support weapon during heavy fighting in and around the French town of Caen in mid-1944. Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1983-109-14A / Woscidlo, Wilfried / CC-BY-SA 3.0

The Germans await: a pair of SS panzer-grenadiers, supported by a Panther medium tank, man their MG-42 machine gun in a field near Caen, July 1944. It took the British four days of bitter fighting to reach Villers-Bocage, losing men and tanks along the way.

The Maschine Gewehr 42 (German for Machine Gun 42), also simply known as the MG 42, was a machine gun that was used by Germany during World War II. The MG 42 had an extremely high rate of fire compared to other weapons at the time. It could fire 1,200 to 1,500 rounds per minute.

Mar 21, 2016 · Two soldiers from the 12. SS-Panzer-Division "Hitlerjugend" with a MG 42 machine gun position in the garden of a château in the Caen sector, Normandy, summer of 1944.

—The M.G. 42 is a combination short-recoil blowback weapon. Instead of the rotating bolt action of the M.G. 34, 12 the bolt is locked to the barrel by means of two movable locking studs, located in the bolt head, and operating on two locking cams on the barrel extension.

MG-42 gunners were armed with a 08 Luger or Walther P-38 pistol in 9mm. Troops were also armed w/pistols and revolvers from the occupied countries. The Waffen-SS issued the "44 Dot" camouflaged uniform, known as the Erbsenmuster Peas Pattern w/helmet cover. The peas dot uniform, was similar in pattern to the field gray M43 uniform troops.

German MG42 machine gun crew in France, Jun 1944; note captured French S35 tank in background German soldier with MG42 machine gun, Caen, France, Jun 1944 28 items in this album on 2 pages.

Dec 13, 2023 · A team of German fallschirmjager armed with an MG 42 during the fighting for the defense of Caen, Normandy 1944 Fallschirmjäger / Paratroopers