Baffled once again by C2!!

[slysniper]

Back when I was in the Marine corp, our weapon platoons used the M60's

It was common practice to have talking guns.

One would fire a burst , then the other. they would work in teams.

The concept was, it would help keep the guns cool, help provide constant fire. Allow for fire when one gun jams.

All i can say, jams were so common, that hearing the two guns firing talking guns was likely to not be happening instead of it happening.

Then there was times when both were down.

I would say they were having jams within a belt or two of ammo being fired.

So not facts, but personnally some evidence that the guns jam alot.

But I also agree with the fact they are undermodelled in the game. So I think jams should not be factored in at a high rate.

[JSj]

Well, the M60 was a pretty crappy gun (and therefore got replaced with the M240/FN Mag). So don't judge all machine guns by that standard.

[slysniper]

Well, the M60 was a pretty crappy gun (and therefore got replaced with the M240/FN Mag). So don't judge all machine guns by that standard.

yes, but I think its reliability matches pretty much any MG gun we are protraying within the game.

[YankeeDog]

yes, but I think its reliability matches pretty much any MG gun we are protraying within the game.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. For starters, the water-cooled MGs and especially the Vickers had a reputation of being extremely reliable workhorses. Of course, they were also heavy as hell and therefore inferior to the M60 in other ways. But evaluated simply on jamming frequency by #minutes or #rounds, a well-watered Vickers or M1917A1 probably does beat an M60.

[dieseltaylor]

Here's a general article on the Vickers Gun...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun

And from the article here's the engagement and source...

The gun had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August, 1916, during which the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. They fired a million rounds between them, using one hundred new barrels, without a single breakdown. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one."[1]

1. ^ Hogg, Ian V.; Batchelor, John (1976). Weapons & War Machines. London: Phoebus, p. 62. ISBN 0-7026-0008-3.

"The Vickers gun accompanied the BEF to France in 1914, and in the years that followed proved itself to be the most reliable weapon on the battlefield, some of its feats of endurance entering military mythology. Perhaps the most incredible was the action by the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps at High Wood on August 24, 1916. This company had ten Vickers guns, and it was ordered to give sustained covering fire for 12 hours onto a selected area 2,000 yards away in order to prevent German troops forming up there for a counter-attack while a British attack was in progress. Two whole companies of infantrymen were allocated as carriers of ammunition, rations and water for the machine-gunners. Two men worked a belt-filling machine non-stop for 12 hours keeping up a supply of 250-round belts. One hundred new barrels were used up, and every drop of water in the neighbourhood, including the men’s drinking water and contents of the latrine buckets, went up in steam to keep the guns cool. And in that 12-hour period the ten guns fired a million rounds between them. One team fired 120,000 from one gun to win a five-franc prize offered to the highest-scoring gun. And at the end of that 12 hours every gun was working perfectly and not one gun had broken down during the whole period. It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one. It never broke down; it just kept on firing and came back for more. And that was why the Mark 1 Vickers gun was to remain the standard medium machine-gun from 1912 to 1968."

The South African army continued to use the Vickers converted to 7.62mm until the 1990s. Talk about reliability and longevity!

....................................

[Lt Belenko]

From what I remember MG jams in CMx1 were supposed to represent several occurrences. Actual jams, reload difficulties, barrel changes.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

I agree that different model MG's should have different chances of jamming. The Vickers and other Maxim style MG's would certainly be one of the most reliable if part of a well prepared defence and not hastily moved when access to water may be problematic. At the other extreme would be the Italian Breda MG's which weren't exactly renowned for their reliability so if they ever appear in an East Front game I would hope that this would be reflected somehow.

The MG34 & especially the MG42 would probably be somewhere in the middle of the two extremes in terms of reliability. You can't tell me that an HMG configured MG42 (with no form of water cooling) that can pump out 1,200 to 1,500 rounds per minute isn't going to have problems with jamming from time to time, especially if handled by inexperienced troops.

As a side note, I believe the M60's design was based on the MG42's, except with 18 more mistakes!

Regards

KR

[YankeeDog]

I can't claim to have enough knowledge of gun engineering to really comprehend all the details, but my understanding is that while the M60 does incorporate some features of the MG42 (e.g., feed plate, IIRC), its operating system is actually more closely related to the FG42.

Another thing to consider in regards to MG jamming/failure to fire is the type of malfunction. An MG can fail to fire in different ways, and some are more quickly and easily fixed than others. A simple hang fire, for example, can often be fixed by just cycling the action by hand.

At the other end of the spectrum, apparently there were problems with some earlier versions of the M60 where the mechanism would tear the rim off of a just-fired cartridge, rather than extracting the entire casing. Then, the mechanism would ram a new round into the chamber on top of the torn one. Apparently, this type of jam is particularly difficult to clear and could leave the MG out of action for several minutes.