Reliability of Crew-served Machine Guns

[Beer_n_Pretzels]

Greetings,

I'm hoping some of the WWII history Gurus and/or BTS reps could shed some light on this situation.

I'm a die-hard British player and nothing warms my heart more than the continuous chatter of a 1912 Vickers machine Gun. The Vickers is the perfect sustained fire support / suppression machine gun. It doesn't have the muderous rate of fire of a MG42, or the sheer stopping power of a 50 Cal, but it just goes, goes and goes. In fact the Vickers can just about be fired non-stop for an average 30 turn Quick Battle. Sounds Good?

I've also read that the Vickers 1912 MG had an amazing reputation for reliability. For example, at the Somme in 1916, the 100th Machine gun company fired non-stop for twelve hours, with not one stoppage. At the end of the action the guns had comsumed an average of 8,300 rounds, totalling 1,000,000 rounds for the entire company" (see p124, John Weeks, Infantry Weapons, Ballantine, 1971).

Based on this excerpt, I decided to do a little test. I set up a firing range and got 10 Vickers MG's to fire non-stop at 10 buildings for 20 turns. 14 Jams were recorded. I then repeated this experiment with German MG42 and the US 30 Cal. The 30 Cal recorded 16 Jams and the MG42s, 13 Jams.

The results suggest there is little difference between the machine guns in terms of reliability. Of course one test is not statistically valid, but it does beg the following questions:

1. How is the reliability of crew-served machine guns reflected in CM? (disregard vehicle mounted MG's)

2. What does a JAM result actually represent? is is an actual stoppage, or does it also represent barrell changes, refilling coolant etc?

3. Was the Vickers MG historically more reliable than the MG42?

thanks in anticipation

[engy]

<ahem>

*bump*

...especially since I was also under the impression of the ultra-reliability of the Vickers, I was wondering if there were any comments...

[jshandorf]

Is that a BUMP in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Jeff

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I once killed a six pack just to watch it die.

[This message has been edited by jshandorf (edited 01-08-2001).]

[Moon]

Coming back to the original question (and without looking at the specifics of the Vickers MG), number 2 is true as far as I know, i.e. the JAM actually does represent things like changing the barrel etc. (or just letting it cool down).

Martin

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"An hour has 60 minutes, each minute in action has a thousand dangers."

- Karl-Heinz Gauch, CO 1st Panzerspähkompanie, 12th SS Panzerdivision

[Jarmo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Beer_n_Pretzels:

Machine gun company fired non-stop for twelve hours, with not one stoppage. At the end of the action the guns had comsumed an average of 8,300 rounds, totalling 1,000,000 rounds for the entire company" (see p124, John Weeks, Infantry Weapons, Ballantine, 1971).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think I have the same data here, from "the world's great machine guns"

It was a company of 10 Vickers guns firing total of 999,750 rounds.

Interesting note is that one fired 120,000 rounds.

So there were differences of up to maybe ten thousand shots per MG.

Suggests some didn't fire quite as continuously as others?

The firing rate of the top shooter was on average 167 rounds/minute.

I'd hazard a guess there probably were some stoppages,

but nothing serious like a broken gun.

Even so, I would expect the MG42 to jam more often than Vickers.

[This message has been edited by Jarmo (edited 01-08-2001).]