Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here at Limex
courtesy of its owner Alexander Logar,
who was kind enough to give me access to some
of the extremely rare and cool firearms
in his reference collection, including this MG 08/18.
This was going to be one of Germany's improved special new weapons
for the spring campaign of 1919 at the end of World War One.
Except of course the war ended up ending in the fall of 1918.
What we have here is an improvement on the MG 08/15 to make it lighter and more portable.
Where in turn the 08/15 was an improvement on the MG 08 to make it lighter and portable at all.
Now right off the bat I will tell you that this gun is missing a couple of parts.
It's missing the fusee cover, which you can't see because it's on the back.
And more substantially, it's missing a bipod.
This originally used a standard MG 08/15 bipod
with basically just a clamp adapter that went around the barrel shroud
right here and was held in place by a thumb screw.
So unfortunately that's missing, but these guns are so scarce
that I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to film one of them for you.
Development was really pretty simple, it's just a matter of take the MG 08/15
and replace the water-cooling jacket with a perforated air-cooling jacket.
Now you might wonder if you're going to turn this into an air-cooled gun, as they did,
why have a jacket at all? And the answer is because this is a Maxim pattern gun
where you have to have this booster at the end,
because you actually have basically pressure generated here
that pushes the barrel backwards so that it will fire and cycle.
So you have to have something out here to hold this booster in place, that's why it's required at all.
Now originally the idea of the Maxim guns was that the water cooling
allows you to have a very thin barrel but a tremendous sustained fire capability,
because the water absorbs all the heat from firing.
Well the attempt was made with the 08/15 and then the 08/18
to turn the Maxim into essentially a portable light machine gun fired off a bipod.
And in that role it didn't need to have the sustained fire capability
of the original tripod-mounted Maxims. So an air-cooled barrel would suffice.
These are in fact the same profile of barrel as the standard 08/15s.
This is a project that was undertaken at the very end of the war
under very significant ... stress on society in all ways.
Germany was being ground to powder by World War One.
And this was an attempt to simplify, so they did as little as possible to actually change the system.
From here back this is identical to an MG 08/15 (actually, with the exception of the buttstock).
So let's take a closer look at this, and let me show you
the couple of modifications that there are to make the 08/18.
So like I said, basically from here back this is identical to an 08/15,
with the exception of a reinforcement to the buttstock.
So what we have is the same pattern of buttstock,
... there is no separate butt plate, it's just the back of it is checkered and wooden.
You've got a slot for the sling.
But the actual attachment of the stock has been made significantly stronger.
So there's now ... a much deeper metal plug in here, a couple of cross pins to hold it in place.
The stock is now actually dovetailed onto the rear receiver plate.
So you can see the over-travel pin right there, the grooves that it slides in.
You can see the grooves up here on top as well.
And on the left side you have a spring tab here.
You lift that up and then you can slide the buttstock off.
This one is very, very tight on the gun, and so I don't want to try to hammer it off.
But that is how you would actually remove the buttstock.
On the 08/15s you had a much smaller socket on the back here,
and the stock was screwed directly into this rear receiver plate.
Here are our top cover markings. So serial number 141.
And that's repeated on basically all of the parts, as you would expect on one of these.
MG 08/18 and then
Now the way they did this at the front was to reconfigure
the front end of the receiver just slightly.
Where you would originally have had an attachment for the water jacket,
they now have a cross bolt right there.
Goes through to right here, and that is holding on this perforated barrel shroud.
So you can see the line right here, ... that's a separate component
that slots in and is held in place by this bolt.
It has a couple of features built into it, it's got a carry handle here.
This is your front sling attachment position.
So it would use the same sling as the 08/15, same configuration and all.
The front sight is on a nice tall tower because it has to be set up
to be the same height as the original water cooled sight,
because the rear sight is mounted on the top cover of the gun and it can't get any lower.
So that's your front sight, it's offset slightly to the left because the rear sight is as well.
Originally to clear things like the water-jacket fill plug on the top of the jacket.
And then we have basically a standard booster at the front.
That's the same booster that you would have on the 08/15.
These were not actually put into service after World War [One].
This project, this development, was abandoned and the German Army went back to the 08/15s,
which they would modify and upgrade and continue to use even through World War Two.
However, there is a development that came from this.
If that barrel shroud looks a bit familiar, it's because
that was the basis of development for the MG 34.
While these weren't actually used in service, they were around and people remembered them.
And when MG 34 development began
and they needed an air-cooled perforated barrel shroud,
this was a readily available model that was already around and already easily usable.
So things like the patterning of the holes, the dimensions of the tube in general,
this is what directly led into development of the MG 34.
With the removal of the water jacket and its replacement with a ... much lighter cooling shroud,
the 08/18 came in at a total weight of 14.5 kilograms.
Which dropped about 3 kilos off of the 08/15.
Plus an additional 3 kilos of water that would have been in the 08/15 jacket,
which were not necessary of course for the air-cooled gun.
So really a pretty substantial improvement in mobility.
Now the MG 08, the Maxim gun, is still not a good basis for a portable light machine gun,
but this is really as good as anyone managed to make it for that role.
As the name implies, this was fielded in 1918 - late in the war.
I don't know that any of these actually saw field service, very few of them were made.
This is number 141, the one in the Pattern Room is in the 300s,
they were all manufactured by the Erfurt Arsenal.
But this is one of those guns, like the Pedersen device for the Americans,
like the RSC 1918 carbine for the French,
like the
One of those weapons that never ... had a chance to make any impact on the war, it wasn't used.
This would have been for the spring 1919 offensive.
Really, nobody expected that the war was actually going to end in late 1918,
they all thought it would continue to the next season's big spring pushes.
Well, it was the Americans coming into the war that made it essential
for the Germans to make one last desperate attempt to win the war.
Because with American troops coming over in just accelerating numbers,
if the Germans didn't pull off something in 1918
it was extremely unlikely that they would be able to in 1919.
Anyway, we don't need to get into the whole history of World War One.
A big thanks to Limex and Mr Logar for having access to this gun to show to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.