[ The FG-42 in 8x33 Kurz? ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I have, I think, an interesting quasi-hypothetical question
to take a look at today, and that is: what if FG-42 in 8x33 Kurz?
An interesting idea right? Let's take all the special sauce and the
really advanced engineering of the FG-42, but chamber it for the short cartridge.
Give it even less recoil, give it less muzzle blast.
Allow it to carry more ammunition for less weight. Like this is a really interesting possibility, right?
Especially when you consider that the ... doctrine
of the German paratroops was to minimise ammunition consumption.
They knew that as paratroops they were on a short logistical leash.
They only had what they dropped with, basically,
until they could be re-resupplied by troops fighting through from the ground.
And so their doctrine was to ... ideally engage at close ranges, ambushes.
Basically to avoid medium and long-range fire fights because they took a lot of ammunition,
and the paratroops weren't really set up for that.
Well, that's cool, especially for long range shooting,
but for up close sort of stuff, that in a short cartridge would be really interesting.
Well, as it turned out Louis Stange, who was the designer of the FG-42,
he also thought that would be a really good idea.
And it was actually proposed to the Luftwaffe,
but shot down, so to speak, probably by Hermann Göring himself
who preferred the full-power cartridge.
It's also worth pointing out that Göring was a very close confidante of Hitler at the time.
Hitler did not like the short cartridge concept,
and actually specifically forbade its further development on a number of occasions,
although they didn't pay attention to him.
Göring knew that this rifle would be more likely to be approved overall
by Hitler if it were in 8x57 instead of 8x33.
Anyway, Stange thought it was a good idea though.
HWaA, the Heereswaffenamt, the German Army ordnance office basically,
also thought it was a very interesting idea.
When the first FG-42s started actually showing up in the field,
HWaA actually converted a number of them for testing to 8x33.
And the testing was apparently promising enough that there's a surviving memo
documenting a request from HWaA to have the factory
actually produce some guns in 8x33 for further testing.
And this never actually went anywhere,
because the Army never actually put out a contract for it.
So the factory never got an Army contract.
The Luftwaffe didn't like the idea in the first place, and so they never put up any money to do it.
And so the Ordnance Department wanted it,
but the request just kind of went poof into nothing because no one acted on it.
But we know that there was interest, and there were a few guns actually converted.
Now it's also worth thinking about, or talking about, the comparative testing
between the FG-42 and the Sturmgewehr in various forms.
The MP43 won when the Army tested it, and the MP44 when the Air Force tested it.
So the Army was not a big fan of this additional rifle being put into service,
and using up some of the manufacturing capability of Germany at the time,
which was stretched pretty thin already.
They viewed this as an unnecessary waste of material, and development, and time, and everything.
Like, the Army just wanted the Air Force to take MP43s,
like, "We've got this thing, we're developing it. The new cartridge, the short cartridge is great.
It's much more practical in combat, you should just use those."
And in the very early months of 1944, January/February of 1944, the Army did a test.
They didn't really want to do a test, unfortunately Göring kind of screwed it all up.
Göring presented an FG-42 to Hitler to get his take on it, Hitler went,
"Wow, this looks great! It's in my favourite big full-power rifle cartridge,
and it can be a sniper rifle, and it can be a machine gun.
And this is going to be the future standard rifle of the entire German Army, it's awesome."
And that kind of forced the Army to actually do some formal testing on it,
which they did in January/February of '44.
They compared it against what was at the time the MP43/1, the Sturmgewehr.
And not surprisingly, and in this case very accurately,
they found that the Sturmgewehr was the better combat firearm.
They preferred the fact that it made a lot less noise.
The muzzle brake on those FG-42s, ... like those things are really loud.
To the point that they actually recommended that you put shooters 3 metres apart,
so that they don't like physically injure each other
with the muzzle blast and the ejected casings from the rifles.
The Sturmgewehr in its much lower pressure, much softer shooting, short cartridge
didn't have any of those issues.
The Army preferred the open post and notch sights of the Sturmgewehr
to the aperture sights of the FG, particularly in low light conditions, fog.
... And for rapid acquisition they thought that the notch and posts were actually a better sighting system.
They liked the fact that the Sturmgewehr was actually available.
The FG-42 at that point was months away from any sort of real serial production.
Of course, the Army needed guns now.
The Luftwaffe, looking at this rifle specifically for paratroopers,
was able to be a little more flexible on delivery dates
because they didn't need the kind of quantity of rifles that the Army was looking at.
So February, early February of '44, the test results are in and the Army is able to go,
"Yeah, we tried that thing, don't like it, forget it. We're going with the Sturmgewehrs."
The Maschinenpistole 43.
Not to be stopped, the ... Luftwaffe went and did its own trial in the summer of '44.
At that point they had MP44s (technically, because the name was changed in the spring),
they did their own trial and, shockingly, they came out with the conclusion
that the FG-42 was the better rifle.
They found that it ... got better hits on target at medium range, which is to say 400 to 600 metres.
Yeah, the Sturmgewehr was better at close range, but this was still pretty good at close range.
And it was better at medium range, and you know we might want to engage guys at medium range.
They pointed out the fact that there was at the time
no grenade launching capability for the MP44, as well as no bayonet for the MP44.
Neither of which actually mattered, but these were on-paper considerations
that the Air Force was able to use to their advantage, so they thought they liked that.
They liked the fact that it had a bipod.
And they liked the fact that it was in a full-power cartridge with
better penetration, better long-range trajectory and so on.
Now the Army had looked at this and said,
"Look, that full-power cartridge is simply inefficient.
You are wasting energy, you do not need that much energy in the bullet.
You don't need that big of a bullet going that fast,
because look at where we're actually fighting."
And they were right, by this point in the war
there were actually no more paratroop operations.
The paratroop units were just fighting as regular infantry,
and they would never see another actual drop.
And in that actual infantry combat, maximum range was really about 300 metres,
which was the range at which the Sturmgewehr was more effective than the FG,
even in the Air Force's own testing.
The idea that it needed a bayonet, like there had been 25 divisions
at least partially equipped with Sturmgewehrs fighting in Russia without bayonets
who had come to the conclusion that,
"We really don't need a bayonet guys, it's fine, we're not trying to stab anybody with the things."
However, the Air Force was able to kind of cherry-pick its conclusions.
And despite its own doctrine of engage primarily at short range in ambush
to conserve ammunition and supplies,
well, they decided that ... actually they really wanted the medium range capability,
where this was better, so we'd better keep this.
And ultimately of course the Luftwaffe did adopt the FG-42,
and it did put the second type FG-42 into production.
And they were being produced right up to the very end of the war.
So during the war ..., to wrap back around a little bit,
we know there were a few experiments with 8mm Kurz FGs.
I'm not aware of any surviving examples, but it's possible that there's one
tucked away in a museum somewhere, probably in Germany or Russia.
Like I said, I don't know of it.
And there was actually further experimentation along these lines after the war in Switzerland.
... Well, there was a lot of Swiss new firearms experimentation after World War Two.
They wanted a self-loading rifle to replace the K31 straight pulls.
And both SIG and Waffenfabrik Bern did a bunch of developmental work.
And Waffenfabrik Bern based a lot of its designs very heavily on the FG-42.
In particular, the W+F 51 and 52 patterns were basically adaptations of the FG-42
chambered for what was effectively 7.5 Kurz.
It was 7.5x38mm, basically a Swiss version of 8x33 Kurz.
So these actually got some testing in Switzerland in the early '50s.
We know of course that the FG-42 would form the
developmental basis for what would become the M60, but that's in a full-power cartridge.
The people who developed this in an intermediate cartridge were the Swiss at Bern.
Ultimately Bern's developmental line of rifles didn't come to any effective fruits.
They did also, after the short cartridge versions, they then went back
and did a ... couple of patterns of basically FG-42 in 7.5x55.
But ultimately it would be SIG's development
that became adopted as the Sturmgewehr 57 in Swiss service.
So that, hopefully, was interesting to you.
I think it's a neat concept of what if we had this rifle, but in that short cartridge.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.