Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a pretty darn cool piece. This is a registered,
C&R, fully transferable, German MG 3.
That's the 7.62 NATO version of the iconic World War Two MG 42
which was used by the German military, well, after World War Two.
So the thing is of course with the end of World War Two the Wehrmacht,
the German Army, is disarmed and disbanded by the Allies.
But of course we're going to slowly descend into the Cold War,
West Germany is on the front lines of the Cold War.
The French, British and Americans realise that they don't really want to be
perpetually responsible for German military security.
And you know, it wouldn't hurt to have Germany as an ally.
... The expectation was if the Cold War turns hot it's going to involve a
giant Russian armoured column punching through into West Germany.
So maybe we should let the Germans reconstitute a military.
And so they do. The question comes up of what equipment is this military going to use?
Obviously they are not going to use Kar98ks anymore.
They ... adopt the FAL as the G1, they adopt the G3 as the G3.
And when it comes to machine guns the initial solution was very simple, it was
"There are still lots of MG 42s around, that was a great gun, we'll just use that."
Once 7.62 NATO is adopted that needs to be converted to 7.62 NATO.
This becomes the MG 1, which is essentially just an MG 42 converted to the new .308 cartridge.
But that's not going to work forever, because you can't just refurbish and reuse old guns forever.
There is going to need to be new production to get guns that
... have a long service life still ahead of them.
And so that is where we get the MG 3.
There are also a whole bunch of product improvements and minor changes.
... They are all kind of minor changes, but put together
they make for a substantially better gun than the MG 42.
So I figured this would be a really good opportunity to take an MG 3
and compare it to a World War Two MG 42
and show you guys all the various changes that were made.
Let's start with a quick look at the markings, these are on the back left of the receiver as on the MG 42.
We've got our official designation, serial number,
a Rheinmetall logo here and the date of production.
This is particularly relevant because it is July of 1968,
which means it pre-dates the US machine gun amnesty that came later in 1968.
And this is in fact a fully transferable gun, which is super cool and extremely rare.
Let's start with the changes involved in the change in calibre.
The original 42 of course was in 8mm Mauser, this is 8x57.
The MG 3 is in 7.62 NATO, which is 7.62x51, a substantially shorter cartridge.
They've also added all this stuff to the bottom of the feed tray.
This latch right here is for attaching a plastic assault drum.
Basically it's just kind of like an RPD drum.
It's a carrier that holds a 50 round belt rolled up.
It's not actually a magazine, it's just a belt carrier.
The original MG 42s used the same sort of thing.
On the MG 42 it simply slipped down onto these little rails.
On the MG 3 it clips in like this. And of course the drums are not interchangeable
because ... the MG 42 ones are substantially longer than the MG 3.
Now if we open these up you can see a number of other changes.
This is our MG 42 it's longer, you can see the difference in the spacer here.
This is space for the belt to feed out when it's empty.
You can see this has been changed a little bit, there's a tab to help control the belt better.
And of course this is shorter because the whole thing is shorter.
More importantly, the ... MG 3 has added this extra set of holding pawls,
which prevent the belt from sliding out ... of the feed side of the gun.
This is part of a series of improvements
that allow the MG 3 to pull a belt substantially heavier than the MG 42.
The MG 3 can lift like 6 feet of hanging belt against gravity and successfully feed.
It's much stronger at doing that than the MG 42 was.
And of course these both lift up in the same way.
Also here looking at the feed covers, on the 42 this moves just loosely.
On the MG 3 this is now spring loaded, you can see the spring right here.
So this will always sit in the same position.
And the roller on the rear of the bolt which controls the feed mechanism
is now spring loaded so it will compress down.
Which means you can close the feed [cover] whether the bolt is forward or back.
On the MG 42 here you had to ensure that this channel
was in the right position to drop over that feed roller.
So if it was in the wrong position, you could actually damage the feed [cover] by trying to force it closed.
And the MG 3 solves that issue.
Along with those improvements to the feed system,
the MG 3 was designed to be able to use three different loading systems.
It could use the German DM1 50 round continuous belts,
the German DM6 disintegrating links, or the US M13 links,
which gave it a really good element of universal applicability.
This was something that made it easier to sell to other countries.
Kind of take whatever NATO standard links you're already using and, well, they'll work in an MG 3.
We also have some differences in the sights.
The basic idea is pretty much the same, you have a folding rear sight on each.
There we go. The MG 3 is graduated out to 1,200 metres,
the 42 was graduated out to 2000.
I guess they decided just to get a little more realistic with the effective range here on the MG 3.
The MG 3 also, very distinctively, has a built-in ... anti-aircraft rear sight.
So that lifts up for use with the standard front sight.
On the MG 42 you did actually have anti-aircraft sights.
This was your rear sight, which flips up.
But then the anti-aircraft front sight was a spider type
that was carried separately and plugged into this socket.
So with the MG 3 ... you actually have anti-aircraft sights fixed to the gun
and always available should they be needed, with a little cover plate there to protect them.
And our last external difference before we start taking the guns apart
is in the booster, and this is basically just machining design.
there's no fundamental change in how these are working.
But this is the MG 3 booster, this is the older MG 42 booster.
Disassembly is identical for the MG 3 and the MG 42.
We're going to start by pressing that button, rotate the stock, stock comes off.
You can actually remove the buffer here without removing the stock first,
or you can take them both off.
So there is the rear buffer of the gun and the nice braided recoil spring.
Then we can just open the charging handle
and pull the bolt assembly out the back of the gun.
And here we have a bunch of other changes,
some of them kind of subtle, but also pretty important.
So of course you can see the spring-loaded roller right there (this is our MG 3 bolt, this is the 42).
The MG 3 bolt is a bit heavier, you can see there's more material back here.
There were actually two different bolts and two different buffers developed for the MG 3.
There was a heavy bolt and a heavy buffer, and then the standard ones,
which are still a bit heavier than the original MG 42s.
By tweaking the exact components for the bolt, the buffer
and the booster you can kind of get your pick of rate of fire on the MG 3.
Anything from 700 rpm up to about 1,300 rpm.
The Bundeswehr decided to go with a fast rate of fire.
Some of the other countries that bought the MG 3 would opt for
the heavy bolt and the slower rate of fire to conserve ammunition.
At any rate, we also have this added feature
on the top of the bolt body, this is to help direct link ejection.
This is one of those things where when you get tens of thousands of MG 42s in service,
you start finding the low-probability issues that occasionally come up.
And then you can fix them one at a time.
And one is occasionally links getting stuck between the bolt and the receiver rails.
And this added little rib prevents that from happening.
We can go ahead and disassemble this pretty easily.
Spring, this ... guy is going to hit our ejector pin right there when the bolt comes all the way back.
We've got our firing pin and its body, and the ejector itself.
The MG 42 is a recoil-operated roller-locked gun.
So these rollers are going to stay locked into the trunnion
until recoil operation pushes the whole bolt backwards,
which pushes the rollers back into the bolt head and unlocks the thing.
So this is not a delayed blowback gun, it is actually a recoil operated, positively locked design.
One of the issues with the original MG 42 is you could actually reassemble the bolt head
onto the bolt body upside down, and that causes problems.
On the MG 3 they fixed that, you can see there's this little extra flange of material right here.
That makes it impossible to put the bolt head on backwards.
Again, not something that ought to be strictly necessary,
but if you're going to make improvements, that's a good improvement to make.
And we can also see that the MG 3 has a slightly larger ejection port
here on the bottom of the receiver compared to the MG 42.
So another just slight increase in reliability.
Beyond those sorts of changes though, it is really remarkable just how identical these guns are.
This truly is the same design, just improved in a few minor ways and changed in calibre.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the MG 3 turned out to be a very successful project for Rheinmetall.
And a very successful gun for the Bundeswehr, as well as for the like
four dozen other countries that would purchase and use and adopt these things.
The Bundeswehr used this as their standard machine gun, general purpose machine gun,
until it was finally replaced in 2012 by the new HK MG 5s.
However, we will be seeing MG 3s in military service around the world for many decades still to come.
It is particularly cool that there ... are actually 3 total
transferable examples of these on the US NFA registry.
And they are just barely able to squeak in.
This was adopted in 1968 which is the same year as the US amnesty,
and ... the end of the ability to import and register foreign-made machine guns.
So this is one that just barely squeaked in.
It's in gorgeous condition, and ... it'll be a real treat
for someone who's interested in a German machine gun collection.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.