Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about
the FG-42 and its ... actual use as a sniper rifle.
Because I think the reality of this situation, ... this question,
is a bit clouded by the frequency with which you see scopes mounted on FG-42s.
And the thing is the scope makes the gun look really super cool,
especially the early dovetail style mounts that are kind of swept back and cool looking.
And the first pattern ones like this that are brass
give a really cool element of colour to the gun.
And what you get is a lot of people,
probably the significant majority of people who own real FG-42s,
would love to put scopes on them.
And at any opportunity, if they're able to find original scopes,
"Hey, that thing looks great. Let's throw it on there."
The same goes with grenade launchers. They actually made a
muzzle spigot grenade launcher for the FG-42.
They were absolutely used in combat, how many of them is unknown,
but man, it sure looks cool to stick that thing on the end of a real rifle.
And so you will see ... a disproportionate number of original rifles in collector hands
with scopes, because basically every scope that can be found gets stuck onto a rifle.
In reality, there were probably not more than a couple hundred FGs actually issued with scopes.
And most of those would be the later pattern guns, not the early guns like this.
So to give a little bit of a time-line and some background information.
The milled receiver FG, the first pattern like this, which technically is the Type E.
There were four other earlier variations through the development process.
They finally got to the E, and that's what first got into serious production.
And that was first available in like January of 1943, very early in '43.
And the scope available at the time for the standard German sniper rifles was the ZF39,
which was like a totally conventional, large, commercial-style scope.
And that's not going to suit a deliberately compact paratrooper's rifle like this.
But the ... requirements for the FG-42 called for it to be capable of mounting a telescope
so that it could be used as a marksman's rifle.
This is because the Luftwaffe wanted this thing to be used as anything,
a replacement for any small arm used by the infantry.
So it had to be an infantry rifle, a sniper's rifle, and a light machine gun all at the same time.
And Louis Stange, who designed this thing, did a remarkably good job at
filling that basically impossible requirement.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The typical scope that was on the ZF39 sniper rifles,
which were Kar 98ks at that time, was not going to suffice.
And so Voigtländer came up with a new design of scope, specifically to use for the FG-42.
And it was designated - get this - the ZFG42 scope.
And it was largely patterned after the Soviet PU scopes,
which were rugged, inexpensive, and effective.
They weren't very fancy, but they certainly did work.
And Voigtländer decided to copy that thing.
And the problem is they didn't do a very good job on the first run through.
At trials the ZFG42 scopes were found to get foggy internally fairly quickly.
The lenses would come loose and get not just fog,
but they'd lose clarity because the lenses would move.
And perhaps most embarrassingly, the adjustment knobs, the turrets,
to adjust the windage and elevation had a tendency
after only minor shock, or jarring, or bumping, to shear off the scope.
So that's a problem.
Now there were at least some of these manufactured,
and some of them were issued, but probably very few.
And what happens is
the scope is developed about the same time as the rifle, they're issued together.
And the rifle is going to become,
not obsolete, but the rifle is going to become replaced by the later pattern of FG-42.
Because the specific alloys required to make that milled receiver
are difficult for Germany to acquire,
and they are becoming really critically important materials.
And so anything that the German military can do with stamped components
instead of this much more expensive, much scarcer, good alloy for milled, hardenable steel,
they're going to try and replace with stamped components.
And the FG-42 is one of these things.
Basically, even at the time that this early pattern is going into mass production,
it's going into production only as a stop gap.
And they're already designing the stamped version that will replace it.
But it's going to take until basically early 1944
until the stamped version of the FG-42 is available.
[ Sorry, the milled version does not see substantial issue (2,000 guns) until early 1944. The stamped pattern is not issued until late March of 1945. ]
Well, it is after these actually get introduced but before the stamped version comes out,
that ... Voigtländer comes back and redesigns its scope and comes up with the ZF4.
And this would become a standard scope
used for basically all marksman's rifles across the German military.
So it would get used on the K98k,
it would then much more recognisably get used on the G43/K43 semi-auto rifles.
And it is the scope that would be used on the second pattern, the stamped receiver FG-42s.
Now when they went to the second pattern the receiver design changed,
the scope mounts had to change because an early pattern scope mount
will not fit on a late pattern rifle.
And the FG-42, like a lot of German guns, was kind of just a disaster of production logistics
all the way right until the end of the war.
There were I believe, if I have the count right, five different
variations of scope mounts made for the second pattern FG-42.
Some of them experimental, some of them production,
but they just couldn't quite get their mind made up.
Now they would all use the ZF4 scope however,
which, while still not a great scope, it was a lot better by World War Two standards.
It was more durable, it was more economical to produce,
and it didn't have some of the really embarrassing faults like the turrets shearing off.
So there will be a mount rather like this, except it was made out of heavy gauge sheet metal,
that was used for the second pattern FGs.
And there was also a ... more typical two ring mount that was developed for the late pattern FGs.
Although, interestingly, a lot of the ones that are actually out there
are actually post-war manufacture, not original ones.
And this stems I believe from the fact that on an early FG-42 like this one,
if you want to mount a scope on it and it to be correct,
you have to have the ZFG42 scope, which is extremely difficult to find.
There are very few of them because they had those problems.
Interestingly, this reproduction (this is an SMG reproduction scope and mount),
is actually using a Soviet PU scope.
Which fits the bill largely because that's what the ZFG42 scope was based on, which is pretty cool.
And it's using a PU ... that doesn't have all the faults of the original German scopes.
I think that's a really neat little sort of coincidental use of
Russian equipment on a reproduction German rifle.
At any rate, if you want to have an appropriate scope on a second pattern FG-42,
then you just need a ZF4, and ... those are widely available.
Now, there are a few things to note if you want to find an authentic legitimate ZF4 used on an FG-42.
... A lot of them were actually calibrated for the barrel length of the FG-42,
and marked with an "L", either on ... the scope body, or on the elevation turret.
Because the calibration for the range ... drop
is slightly different for these rifles than it would be for a K43 or a G43.
In addition, a lot, not all, but a bunch of the FG-42 second pattern scopes
are actually engraved "FG42" and a serial number.
And this is most likely because of this stupid variety of scope mounts
that were not interchangeable with each other, or with different iterations of receiver.
... Get the scope to fit, and then just mark the serial number on it,
and don't ever try to interchange the scopes.
And that probably accounts for the "FG42" markings on some of the ZF4 scopes.
There was no ZF4 scope specifically for the FG-42, aside from an elevation calibration cam.
So, how many of these were actually issued? We really don't know.
Probably a couple of hundred out of a grand total
of about 8,500 FG-42 rifles that were manufactured in total.
They were actually making the FG-42 right up until the very last days of the war.
(The last days of Germany being in the war, right up to the end of the Battle of Berlin.)
And ... really at the end of the war you can forget about trying to get a scope with the rifle.
Even earlier than that, the issue of scopes seems to be relatively scarce,
just based on the number of surviving guns compared to surviving scopes.
And that's why a lot of people look to reproductions, and unfortunately fakes, for FG-42 scopes.
At any rate, I think this one's really cool, and I wanted to touch on the actual use.
Oh, the one other thing we should talk about briefly is the accuracy.
Because this is intended to be a sniper's rifle, is it actually that accurate?
The answer is no, it was not.
It was required to be equivalent in accuracy to the K98k, which means about four minute of angle.
Looking through a variety of German testing reports,
you will find ... they measured groups as horizontal dispersion and vertical.
And pretty much the best you will ever find for one of those discrete measurements
is about 3.5 minute of angle, and they go up to 5 or 6 minute of angle.
In post-war testing in the US, Aberdeen Proving Grounds tested
a second pattern FG with a telescopic sight,
and they got ... a 5.8 inch, 10 shot, group at 100 yards.
Today this would be considered abysmal accuracy.
At the time, this was reasonable,
like they only expected 4 minute from a Kar 98k as a sniper's rifle
or as a marksman's rifle, and so this was acceptable.
But anyone who thinks today that an FG-42, because it's fancy and looks cool,
and it's cutting-edge German small arms technology from World War Two,
if you think that makes it a rifle with modern equivalent accuracy
you are going to be disappointed when you actually take the thing out and shoot it. So.
That I think pretty much covers everything on that question.
I thought it was interesting to look into, hopefully you guys agree.
Thanks for watching.