[ Madsen-Saetter at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and courtesy of Morphy's,
we are out here on the range today with
a Madsen-Saetter GPMG.
I'm really excited to try this thing out.
This is chambered for .30-06. It uses German DM1 belts.
Today we're actually using a World War Two era German MG 34/42 belt.
I did a little bit of test firing already to get the high speed footage,
which you'll be seeing in just a moment,
and so far it seems to be working just great with that belt, which is really cool.
So, yeah, we got a 1940s belt, 1950s ammo (it's Lake City), and a 1960s gun - so what could go wrong?
Now, normally there would be a belt box underneath here,
unfortunately this gun doesn't have the belt box with it.
Loading procedure: pull the bolt handle back, lock it open, bring that forward.
Lay our belt in there, that's it, we're ready to go.
Ready for some shooting?
The safety is in the front of the trigger guard, disengage that.
That is a really nice gun to shoot.
That is a potent cartridge, .30-06 is no slouch.
But that's really quite controllable. I was feathering the trigger in there a little bit,
that's why we got ... kind of some of the weird burst, and single, and burst, and single.
But this actually handles remarkably well.
The rate of fire on it is really quite nice, it's controllable.
There's not too much recoil coming out of the thing.
I can do a pretty decent job of maintaining a sight picture while I'm shooting. Bipod's stable.
I was really curious, ... when you look at the historical data,
the Madsen-Saetter was tested by a number of countries, most notably the British.
And it was being tested against things like the FN MAG and the
modernised MG 42s, like what would be the MG 3.
And from the shooting of it, I think it was probably on par.
It was the equal of those guns shooting.
It's the disassembly and the more complicated nature of the internal mechanism.
And ... with the MG 42 there was a lot of maturity already built into that gun
by the time you get to the 1960s.
The FN MAG is built on a well-recognised system, the BAR.
It's the Madsen-Saetter that is the least mature of those systems.
And I think that's what led to it not being more widely adopted by anybody except Indonesia.
But it's actually a good shooting gun, like if it been in a slightly different time
or a different place, it could have done really quite well.
Alright, let's go ahead and load this up, again.
So ... the top cover, lock the bolt back, charging handle goes forward.
As I said, this ought to have a belt box, but it doesn't.
Position the first round there, top cover goes down, and you're ready to roll.
I don't know about you guys, but I really get a kick out of a gun like this
that has the combination of being weird and obscure, an unusual mechanical system,
but actually chambered for a cartridge that's readily available,
and actually really nice to shoot.
So many of the guns that are forgotten like this one, are forgotten for really good reasons.
This one's actually a pretty darn good gun
that was just up against really outstanding competitors.
Man, you really get the echoing reverb of that .30-06 out here, that's pretty cool.
Well, this has been really fun to do.
There is basically zilch out there for shooting footage of a Madsen-Saetter,
and I was really looking forward to getting the chance to put some together.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you do like this sort of thing
the one other thing you can look at is this horribly cheesy 1950s
Danish knockoff of Godzilla called "Reptilicus", which actually features
a couple of Madsen-Saetters as well as a ton of Madsen light machine guns.
So if you're into old schlocky movies, a great combination there.
Anyway, this obviously doesn't keep,
can't pack that up and take it home, so we'll just go ahead and empty it now.
Thanks for watching.