Weapons Of World War II

8 Pages 1913 Words

the Browning M2 was the 15mm. Besa machine gun. This massive gun was hardly used except as secondary armament on tanks. The Besa was originally a Czech design, so the Germans had a similar weapon (293).
The standard British machine gun was the Vickers .303. This gun was perhaps the most famous and widely used of all machine guns. The belt-fed Vickers was an early design, made in 1912, but was used extensively throughout WWI and WWII. The barrel was liquid-cooled, and had a cycling rate of about 500 r.p.m. (296).
The best of all light machine guns (rapid-fire rifle-caliber weapons) In World War II was the German 1.92mm. MG42. The MG42 was used as an infantry support and light anti-aircraft weapon. This potent weapon was fired like a rifle on a simple bipod mount, and was belt-fed and recoil-operated. The MG42 had a respectable maximum range of 4,000 yards, and an incredible maximum cycling rate of 1,200 rounds per minute. The relatively simple construction made it easy to mass-produce.
"'It is with artillery,' Napoleon once remarked, 'that war is made'" (219). This simple statement seemed to be almost prophetic. By World War I, it was shown that artillery had assumed an importance no less than that of the infantry. These large guns were the prime reason that World War II was not the kind of static trench warfare seen in ...