History of the Krummlauf Device: Hitler's Folly (One of Many)
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2024
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Today we are taking a look at the backstory of the famously recognizable Krummlauf device, the curved barrel attachment for the StG-44. It is really a perfect example of how German late-war desperation weapons took shape. It went from an idea nobody actually wanted to an impossible development program in the chaos of the German defeat.
You can see my previous video on an example of the Krummlauf (from 2014) here:
• Krummlauf Curved Barre...
And definitely check out Garand Thumb's video shooting an original one here:
• Hitler’s Secret STG44 ...
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Can we take a step back and talk about that helmet cannon?!?!?!😂🤣
Instant terminal whiplash 😮
No, it's a silly thing
It's like the original "yes Chad" meme
How the British won India. True story.
There's also a WWI era US patent drawing of the same idea with an M1911 in the helmet.
Some engineer saw that one Tom and Jerry episode and was like “guys, you gotta see this”
Its peak unsupervised engineer activities
Interestingly, the first viewing of this episode was in 1944, so while it's in the right time period, you're a year or two too late lol
@@TheOriginalFaxon I guessed so 😂
@@Some-nerd-who-tinkers It was a good guess lol, the show started its run in 1940 so it was theoretically possible for it to have been before this was developed, but I was able to find an original air date for this clip on knowyourmeme lmao
Stolen Sam o nella joke :/
Coincidently I just watched a episode Of Mythbusters about this. They used a simple .22 rifle for the test. Surprisingly, it actually worked quite well. Not with a device that clamps on the muzzle, but with a bend barrel that is curved as smoothly as possible. They tried it all the way to 180° (which is admittedly not very useful, unless you want to commit suicide) and it still only lost about 10% of the muzzle velocity of a straight barreled gun.
However, they only shot a few rounds each, so it didn't say anything about durability. But it worked.
I thought they tried it with a 6.5mm Carcano too, but I may be misremembering the episode.
yeah!
people think that magically bending a barrel will make it blow or plug, but its pretty much dependent on the smoothness of the curve and caliber used
Demolition Ranch also has episode with bent barrels and it worked fine with 180 and 5.56, rifle shot it's optics:D.
The issue is not that it didn't work at all, but that it didn't work well enough. What's the point of "curving" a bullet, if you can't hit things? Besides the idea for infantry is silly as the scenarios where this would really work are very limited and also come with limitations like the height of average dug outs affecting how much your head sticks out for example. You'd probably be better off with a rifle on a stick from WW1.
Demolition ranch did a crazy video where he set up a bunch of pipes and shot a gun through the tip, and the bullet traveled down the entirety of the pipe contraption (tons of bends and such) and launched out the end
Curved barrels. They've got CURVED BARRELS!
They're tubes!
“… which wear out in a big hurry and are terrible for accuracy….”
What a criminally underrated comment
Great reference.
I see a great reference, I like the comment. Simple as that
I bet that if the war had gone on longer, and they had managed to make it “work” in 1946 or so, Hitler would have completely forgotten about it by then.
“Mein Fuhrer, I’m happy to report we have completed your order! 20.000 Krummlaufs are ready to be deployed!”
“Krum-what??”
Wait a minute, there was a helmet mounted cannon?
Just a patent.
@@ForgottenWeapons Was it patented by a chiropractor desperate to drum up new patients?
@@bluemountain4181 No. It was a psychiatrist.
I spat out my dinner when I saw that goofy ass whiplash contraption. ridiculous
There's also a US patent drawing from the WWI era of the same idea with an M1911 in the helmet. The tube in the soldier's mouth inflates a little balloon that pulls the trigger.
Forgotten weapons and Garand thumb both uploading a krummlauf video 17 minutes apart LOL. Time to watch both!
What a time to be alive.
Yeah that's kind of a strange coincidence.... Leviathan behind that maybe? Maybe not but it's still weird.
@@justanothergunnerd8128 Garand thumb left leviathan and Ian has never been with them. In fact he doesn't run advertisements so he couldn't be. These guys know each other and Garand Thumb constantly references Forgotten Weapons for in depth history on things he shoots. I'd say from watching this video he told Ian it was happening and when it would be posted, so Ian could make a collaborating history vid.
"You couldn't say no to the guy" is 100% the best summary of Nazi-era Germany that I've ever heard.
Only Speer could get away with that.😅
"Hitler's fever dream" also.
There have been several officers that said no to Hitler. Sadly, the vast majority just didn't dare to man up against the insanity.
Well, you could... It just wouldn't go well for you.
The brits made nearly 3 million sticky bombs... they made Hitler look like a genius!
As a German working for the IFZ in Munich, the Krummlauf-Gerät to this Day is really really hard to get proper Documentation on for some Reason.
And yeah it definitely was a Folly. I hope one Day we find some Trial and even Battle Reports with it, they got to be out there and since a lot of our Documents were looted after the War and only returned to us in the past 10 Years, we still got Millions of Documents to go through, let's hope there is some more about it and other interesting Items in there.
That said, watching this Video i even ended up learning something new! So good Job Ian!
Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
I don't think any sane Unteroffizier would have forced his Trupp to use this abomination... *lol*
Grüsse aus Leipzig! :-)
With Hitler being a veteran of WW1 I'm almost not surprised he thought this would be a fantastic idea.
It's interesting that they kept trying to do the curved barrel instead of what the "CornerShot" ended up doing with decoupling the shooty parts from the holdy parts. Like, some sort of "pistol on a stick" with a remote trigger.
The funny thing is that already existed, basically everyone had some form of the “periscope rifle” in WWI which just made a remote fire rifle.
Here's the thing with the CornerShot though - why don't we just use a helmet mounted HUD with a camera on a pistol, you just stick the pistol around the corner? Surely I would hope that "hand exposure" wouldn't be the excuse lol. And, oh look, you end up carrying perfectly normal guns in that case instead of these big, cumbersome contraptions. I'm sure it would be a lil bit cheaper(and more reliable) too.
@@RyTrapp0someone should do This
@@RyTrapp0I'm sorry, are you suggesting there's only a laughable difference between a curved gun that literally exposes you to zero danger, vs sticking your hand around a corner while wiggling your pistol camera and promptly losing 3 fingers? What's your next idea? A firing system where you loop some string around your big toe in the event "hand exposure" has become kind of a big problem?
@@RyTrapp0 This is basically the FWS-I
I wonder if they tried to use the curved device on a MP-38 using the much more tame 9mm pistol cartridge ?
No, because the MP44 was supposed to be the replacement for the MP40.
Was just watching Garand’s video. Coincidence?
Same here
No such thing as a coincidence.
Haha same
Strange thing that it came minutes after Garand Thumb's video.
I think NOT
In the USSR, a curved-barreled version of the Goryunov machine gun was adopted for armored firing points in fortifications (7.62-mm curved-barreled Goryunov KSGM machine gun in a BUK installation). There have been experiments with RPKs to protect the tank from infantry. Even the 82-mm casemate mortar OBK-43.
P.S. The F word in the Polenar Tactical video was too much for me LOL
Garand Thumb and Forgotten Weapons on the same topic within just sixteen minutes of each other?
My morning is complete
Still waiting for Perun's PowerPoints
I think the fundamental problem is that even if it does work it is such a niche application that nobody is going to bother carrying such a bulky device around when it goes at the expense of carrying ammunition.
Trenches are static and vehicles have mounts.
If this had worked, it would absolutely have been viable, at least weight-wise.
This is no coincidence, ian and mike have been cooking together on these spicy delights. This is like the third video where they covered the same topic, on the same week.
He teased the topic on Instagram a couple days ago, so I filmed this to post at the same time. I figured it would be a good piece to give more background to what was likely going to be mostly a shooting video.
@@ForgottenWeapons and dad advice video.
@@ForgottenWeapons more firearm content for us!!!! Also more views for you guys, same gun means you'll both pop up on search!
Two of my favorite gun channels. Now… if you could convince Garand thumb to do a Pedersen rifle video, that would be awesome lol
@@ForgottenWeaponsdemolition ranch did an extremely long multi curve sysytem that only makes me think hotwheels track a while back 🎢
Today is Forgotten Thumb Day
As ever, TOTALLY interesting.
The guys who wasted their time on this sort of thing were in fact wise enough to see it as a way to stay in a factory and not in some benighted foxhole. So, my argument is that given the military situation from November '44 -- they were the Smart ones.
Great Video and Many Thanks Forgotten Weapons
Can we get a legit forgotten weapons and garand thumb crossover?
Tell us more about the pith helmet cannon...
It was just a silly idea that gets reproduced in pictures over and over because it is wacky.
Basically the idea was a gun in a hat/helmet that you touched off with an air tube you blew in to actuate the trigger. Obviously it never went anywhere.
Reminds me of the flatline barrel I had on my old tippmann 98 paintball gun. Curved up about 20-30* then flattened out for the last 6" or so to induce backspin on the balls. Had to aim low at short range inside of about 10yds. But then they stabilized and gave me an extra 50yds of range over any other paintball gun so I could easily snipe people while they were trying to lob rounds in a huge arch trying to reach me. But their balls would fall short or the occasional ones that made it would bounce off me harmlessly while I could shoot flat and mark them up. Later tippmann came out with the apex barrel that I had on my A5. It was more standard looking straight barrel with what looked like a fat can on the end for the last 6". It had a slider on it for an adjustable hop-up. And could be rotated in 90* intervals. So with it spun upwards to 12o'clock and the hop-up slider maxed out, it operated just like the flatline, but you could back the slider off to eliminate the hop-up effect for closer range so you didn't have to aim low like with the flatline. And the really cool part was you could twist it to either side like 9o'clock or 3o'clock and max out the hop-up and it would put a side spin on the balls so they would go out about 50ft or so and then start curving off to the side to basically shoot around walls. Or flipped down to 6o'clock to drop balls down over the top of cover. It was a very slick setup and worked as well as advertised. Nobody was safe at that point. The tricks you can do when using spherical projectiles..
I suspect the British officer who first reported this to his commanders asked his men how well it had worked when used against them, and included that detail.
I love the increased cross channel support I've been seeing among the gun guys. I know you've always supported each other, there don't seem to be or have ever been any rivalries for real. That is pretty sweet.
PSA Krummlauf clone set ups when? LoL
I feel like the rifle grenade idea would’ve worked quite well for shooting around corners rather than regular bullets because only the gas has to travel around the bend
ehh, how do you dig it in? rifle grenades are not like modern 40mm, where you can shoot it from the shoulder without breaking it.
you need a good bit of support for rifle grenades to not get absolutely destroyed by the recoil
@@robertlinke2666 I didn’t think about that, it would probably end up with some weird late war German contraption that essentially just turns the STG44 into a trench mortar in everything but name
@@robertlinke2666 You don't. You just tell Rookie he gets to be the hero that saves everyone from the rapidly approaching enemy. Rookie fires rifle grenade. Rookie makes an imprint on the other side of the trench and his shoulder lands in Norway. Enemy dies. Everyone except Rookie is happy. At least that's the theory.
@@IncognitoActivado I don’t know if you’re replying to me, but I was meaning the gas from the cartridge firing going around the curved barrel
The timing of the release of this video was BRILLIANT! Just finished the Garand Thumb video, re-freshed my sub list and here is this video. THANK YOU!
Thank you for clarifying the details on the development on this unique German device.
This past week has captured the old spirit of FW, which kept me tuning in back in the 2010s - keep it up!
Great info Ian, thanks for the presentation
Fascinating content, Thanks Ian.
Thank you for this amazing post, Ian. You're the best comunicator.
Watching this and Grandthumbs is like a full hour of amazing content on an awesome topic🔥
What a treat, just watched GTs video and now yours!
Just the video we needed to follow up GT’s vid, thank you sir👌🏻
There was a quote from a judge on Forged in Fire that I like. He said, Don't waste a lot of time on a bad decision.
I always learn something new watching your videos Ian
While watching Garand Thumbs video i thought "i wonder if Ian ever did a video on this?" Just under the video was this. Thanks Ian for a great video! Answered many questions i had while watching GT's video.
The Allies wound up using German tech to develop space programs. This looks like something the Elbonian Army would pursue.
The Elbonian army is a considerable force for peace, inasmuch as they never actually develop anything (Intentionally) lethal.
Who would be more interested than they in putting an elbow in their guns?
This is one of my favorite videos of Forgotten Weapons.
Allies defending their decision to test their own version:
“Well the Germans wouldn’t waste time and materials developing and manufacturing these if they didn’t work”
Cool, I saw the Garand Thumb video. The information was useful as I'd never heard of this.
I'm starting to think this Hitler guy might not have been so bright...
Never trust a left handed vegetarian coke addict.
@@Elatenl if you watch the video you'll understand where I'm coming from. Ordering 20k of something without doing any amount of research into the feasibility of something is very dumb.
A mind clouded by regular use of amphetamine might have had a role in that
@@IncognitoActivado ooh some modern Nazi apologists! It's okay. You'll be forgotten by history. No need to waste anymore time on you.
There is one of these firearms in the CFB Borden military museum gun collection. It was the version that was issued to the tankers. The museum is open Monday to Friday: 9:00 am -3:00 pm and Saturday & Sunday: 10 am - 4:00 pm.
After seeing Mike's video, I'm suprised the Germans tested this thing for groups at 50 meters, he couldn't even get anything reliable at roughly half that (25-30 yards).
Equally interesting is how high the Germans had to aim over the target, where in Mike's (very limited) testing it tended to shoot high instead.
It's another great example of how you can track Hitler's (and his staff's) ever declining mental capacity throughout the war just by looking at the more insane "Wunderwaffen" ideas being put into production.
Well, I see straight path from this idea to the bunker where he offed himself.
Never mind the dirt it kicked up the sun reflecting of that big mirror would be my worry.
Also in the Koblenz museum we have a Panther now :D
I member back when The History Channel was still showing history on one of their Nazi Wonder weapon shows, Dr. William F. Atwater, a director for a museum, showed an original copy of one they had in the collection.
It’s one of those, on paper, sounds neat, but I wanna saw Mythbusters, and Dr. Atwater showed it didn’t really work every time
I thought Myth busters did something about these but I'm not sure I'm confusing it with the "curved bullet" from the movie Wanted.
@@ericpode6095 they did that too and multiple other ones
I remember seeing a History Channel episode talking about the Krummlauf
Great video keep up the good work
Saw the krummlauf device in a kids book in 1980, Weird and Wonderful Weaponry by Major EN Hebden. Loved that book!
When the US Army Ordnance Museum was still in Aberdeen, they had several examples of the Krummlauf device. Testing reports that I saw suggested that 1) They were hideously impractical, 2) grossly inaccurate, and 3) tended to cause bullets to break up, flinging loosely-aimed fragments in the general direction you were aiming (for certain values of 'aim').
In Grand Thumb's video the breaking up thing turned out to not be very true.
@@BouncingZeusi wouldnt take one guy making a video in 2024 as sufficient evidence to rebuke this.
@@d.optional3381 ehhh I tend to trust video evidence over anything the us government says.
Just saw thumbs video and wanted your perspective. Awesome.
I just watched a new video by garandthumb on the krummlauf now I'm watching this new video of forgotten weapons about the something. Strange.
Got their scripts crossed.
Heh, considering it was at a time when the Brits had ideas like a papier mache (yes yes, pykrete) aircraft carrier and tanks like the TOG II or vehicles like the Praying Mantis... pretty much everyone and their mother had insane ideas that surprisingly got to various stages of production.
Germans and Brits had some of the more outrageous ones.
And sometimes those crazy ideas worked!
The bomb that skips across water (and over the torpedo nets), or a bomb that buries itself into the ground and destroys the foundation of a bridge rather than trying to hit the bridge itself. Or a bomb that can pierce through multiple layers of concrete.
My favorite is "The Funnies!" Specialized tanks made for amphibious assaults, mine-clearing, bunker-busting, trench clearing, or bridge laying. Brilliant stuff really!
I'm not aware of any British experimentations with bent barrels but am no expert on the subject. However I have seen photos of a member of the Royal Army Service Corps in the post war period with a Sten Mk.5 with a swivel rear butt stock, the rear sight had a glass prism behind it to allow the shooter to still get a sight picture. It also had a front grip handle added that differed from the standard Mk.5 and I believe also swiveled.
Great video by the way! Long time follower and watcher :)
You can tell that Ian, as an engineer, is chomping at the bitt to develop this idea.
wow...Ian finally visited the" Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung" in Koblenz, Germany.
Absolutely recommendable...it is a comprehensive collection & exhibition of the german Bundeswehr...you find guns & cannons of all kinds but also aircraft, missiles and so on.
Don't be surprised, if you go there you'll find the place is really stuffed...and it's directly situated in the Rhine valley...
One of the old C.B. Colby weapons books has a picture of a US soldier posed with an M3a1 with a curved barrel being used to shoot around a corner.
A video game named ghost recon 2 had the xm8 series guns with the camera to lean around corners and was a big topic and you could unlock behind the scenes stuff about the program they were trying in the early 2000s. This always reminded me of that how the Germans tried to do something like that. I'm no expert so might have got terms and time period wrong but i remember the game did have them even if it was frictional and system was never used.
If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Koblenz in Germany, I only can recommend the museum Ian mentioned: "Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung". Entry is cheap and they have a lot of curious weapons.
Thanks. The only other reference I have ever read about this was in Ballatines History of WWII Infantry Weapons book, 50 years ago.
lol, the fact that it straitened out the barrel was and engineering hint.
The idea that comes to my mind is what if the Tank version of this idea was experimented with instead? What if the special tank turret idea was played with more? The tank version, with all of its fixed sights and more durable construction, could have been something used by infantry only in specially built bunkers (not something they would have to carry around, but something that engineers could build for them to man). Like, if on the beaches of Normandy these things were mounted on bunkers to allow troops to fire into places that the machine guns could not without exposing the soldiers.
That's the only way I can imagine this idea working at all. Like a lot of "Wonder Weapons" I'm curious what it could have been if it was given more time, effort, and reasonable expectations, but, of course, anyone with the available time, effort, and reasonable expectations wouldn't have tried developing these "Wonder Weapons". Like, what if instead of this just being something that attaches to an existing gun, the gun and cartridge were built around this idea?
With a smaller bullet moving slower the damage to the curved barrel would be much lower. If you were going that far, though, could you instead just have an entire pistol/SMG with a short barrel at the top of a periscope? For the Tank version something small could be enough to deal with infantry too close for the mounted machine gun to hit, especially since this device doesn't need to be effective past 200m. For this infantry the same idea I had before applies. Something like this could be mounted on a bunker to fill the gaps that the machine guns can't hit without exposing the soldier. I mean, what is a bunker if not just an immobile tank made of concrete?
Again, anyone with the actual ability to develop something like this would probably just develop something else instead. It's just fun to speculate about.
WWII Geman Hetzer TD already had external machineguns that could be fired inside the vehicle with periscopes and handlebars. Few tanks had those systems (and nowadays a lot have thanks to advancement of cameras and motors). I doubt curving the barrel is the solution.
Much more effective is what the US (and others, probably) tried to develop with things like the "land warrior" concept. Where you mount a camera to the rifle, and the sight is mounted in the helmet. Can't shoot around corners, but you can hold the rifle around the corner and shoot that way, so kinda the same thing?
I do see this as inevitable tech, it's just not quite there yet.
Of course, semi-autonomous drones are probably where we are headed. Send the drones in, then pick one and assign a soldier to remote operate it. Your trained soldier isn't exposed to danger, and the drone can do the boring part (getting into position) at least mostly on it's own. Imagine a drone that can fly into a contested area, land, and set up surveillance. It detects possible targets, a soldier gets assigned to the drone, assesses the situation, and can fire whatever ordinance the drone is carrying if it is deemed worth while.
My respect for Ian went up another few notches with his excited support and shout-out to Garand Thumb! Great example for other YT producers!!
I remember reading someplace that they experimented with all lead bullets to reduce wear on the barrels.
Would love to see a video covering forgotten firearm technologies that you think deserve a second look or deserved further development.
How is this possible you and Garand release a video about the same subject at the same time
There are this things on the internet people use to communicate with each other. You can write what you want to say, press "enter" and the message gets sent to the recipient. Some even support voice communication. With this miracle of science people can talk with each other to, for example, synchronize video release! It's amazing!
@@lieutenantcoloneltanyavond8273 🤣
@@lieutenantcoloneltanyavond8273wow that's crazy! What's next, curved gun barrels?
@@lieutenantcoloneltanyavond8273 u wot m8?
Several decades ago I read an article in a magazine about these weapons. At the time, it was thought they were for shooting around corners of buildings. The battles of Stalingrad were mentioned!
Inyeresting that they were for trench or foxholes!
In WW1, various nations had a variety of mounts, and periscopes fitted to conventional rifles to allow them to fire over the top of the trench with out exposing the shooter, including a folding rifle stock for the 1903 Springfield. Apparently the latter was never fielded. There is an interresting article in the American Rifleman posted on line on April 5, 2018, "Sniping from below: Periscope Rifles in WW1" by Tom Laemlein
I had heard about this system many years ago but thought it was for a submachine gun not the battle rifle, learned something new today. When I was a Marine Corps tanker back in the 1970s we were taught that is your tanks were engaged by enemy infantry that you would use your tank's coax machinegun to cover your partner's tank. A sorta I scratch your back, you scratch mine system.
Using the coax seems a bit risky since you're pointing the main gun to point at something it's not allowed to shoot at.
I believe they call it "de-lousing".
@@vaclavjebavy5118 I seem to recall that they do something even more risky now. They use cannister shot.
@@christophercox2325 Risky in that they need to unload actual anti-tank or long rannge HE rounds, I assume.
@@Grubnarexactly what I thought when I read the comment.👍
Came straight here from GTs' video!
Fascinating weapon attachment.
At the same time garand thumb making video about this topic too
Meanwhile Demolition Ranch was able to Looney Toons this concept into working
It's pretty funny that Hitler wanted to make the Sturmgewehr shoot around corners after he didn't want it to replace rifles at all, leading to the deceptive MP 43 and MP 44 designations.
WHAT A GREAT DAY TO BE SUBSCRIBED TO BOTH CHANNELS
Hitlers folly (one of many)
This channel is meme gold for a reason.
This story is a great example of how bad ideas self-perpetuate.
Someone has an idea. It might or might not be a bad idea. However, someone in charge hears of this idea and immediately dreams up a much, much worse version of it and demands it be made reality.
Now it falls to you to make the bad idea reality, no matter what, because your boss isn't going to listen to reason.
Finally, once you produce your best implementation of the bad idea, OTHER people in charge look at the idea and think "Well, they wouldn't have made it if it was a bad idea!" and the cycle repeats.
I like the Finish view of this concept which you can Still Purchase To This Day where it's a site that lets you hold a gun at either a 45° or 90° angle and Accurately still fire it!!! 🤠👍🇫🇮
P.s. Ian had already done a video on it a few years back!
When I was at the Royal Armouries on a research trip back in 2014-15 (I can't remember the exact date) one of the weapons I was allowed to handle was the STG-44, and the Krummlauf attachment.
My first observation was 'wow the Sturmgewehr is way heavier that i expected it to be' but on top of that, the STG with Krummlauf attached is so awkwardly balanced, and difficult to aim, that even if technical problems had been solved, I cannot imagine it seeing much actual use under combat conditions.
Ian : "They realized this thing could actually work..."
Me : "Umm... Can we more specifically define this term, 'Work' ?"
Ian : "Fewer... Not 'None', but, FEWER catastrophic failures."
Me : "Ah. Right. So, pretty much like I expected, then."
Ian : "... Accuracy was not good..."
Me : "OH REALLY. YOU DON'T SAY."
Great video.
Wow, I've never been this early to a FW vid.. idk what to do
WW1 Trench warfare fever dream came true?!
I figured this was coming after Mike dropped the firing video of this.
Not the first time a smart ass joke suggestion(Sure, why don't we bend the barrel down to shoot at the ground) gets taken seriously because the situation is just that out of control.
The helmet version would be probably mounted to the recesses of the helmet, which was initially designed for visors.
There was an experimental Sten Mk.V to shoot around corners.
Instead of bending the Sten's barrel, they fitted a pivoting stock and front grip. Aiming was done through a prism attached the rear sight.
I had read of those in Phillip Sharpe’s The Rifle in America, published shortly post WWII. Sharpe was entertaining, but not a very careful researcher. He was attached to US Army ordnance late in the war, and described the Krummlauf as having vicious side recoil.
Mythbusters did this, started with small bends, made them bigger, they ended up (if I remember correctly) with a 180deg bend, and it still spat out a bullet at deadly speed.
I imagine the helmet mounted sight would look like the german snipers in Wolfenstein the old blood, with that gigantic lens sticking out
Demolition Ranch has a couple of videos where he bends a barrel more and more - and then some more again...
They have one of these in the Kentucky Military History museum in Frankfort, which is where I saw it for the first time back in 1960. Colonel George Chinn, author of “The Machine Gun” was their curator and in charge of their collection for many years. You should come here and visit them.
This "One topic on multiple gun channels at once" should be a regular coordinated thing. Guys, do it!
Honestly, the P-version would have probably been at least as effective, cheaper, and easier to handle inside the vehicle, if they had focussed development on 9x19mm SMG as the host gun.
Lower pressure, lower velocity, rounder bullets, and do youbreally care if an FMJ pistol bullet is tumbling when it hits meat at close range?
Honestly, you aren't going to be making hits in combat at the outer reaches of the nominal dead zone (say, 50-150 meters) *anyway* . Even a tumbling pistol bullet going subsonic slapoing into an enemy soldier sideways at 50m is still a harder hit than a fragment from a hand grenade at 5 to 10 meters. More than adequate to disrupt a grunt trying to close close enough to theaten a tank with antitank grenades.
The idea still generally sucks, and the stuff the Rhodesians tried to protect farm truck convoys (like a daisy wheel of shotgun barrels with a crank handle to fire them in succession) would work better.
And before anyone asks, "But what about nearby friendly infantry? Won't you risk hitting them?" Look, if youve got friendly infantry around your tanks as you enter an area where enemy infantry might be, it's those infantrymen who are supposed to keep the enemy tank killer teams off you. That's literally why you *have* an infantry screen. 😅
Hitler throughout his reign had lots of crazy ideas, especially involving weird or incredibly large technological developments, often made with little or no reference to reality. There were actually enormous battleships on the drawing board (the H44 was so big it wouldn't have fit through the Kiel Canal), ridiculously large tanks (good luck getting them across a river, given that no bridge was rated for something weighing 100 tons), tanks armed with rocket propelled mortars as a main armament (the vehicle could only carry 12 or so rounds, and had to withdraw from combat for each reloading because it was a muzzle-loaded gun with an actual crane to assist the crew in loading), rocket planes (propelled by liquid rocket fuel, which tended to melt the metal bottle it was contained in, and then melt the pilot for good measure), multi-engine bombers that could supposedly fly to New York City with a bomb load and then safely return, and so forth. The Krummlauf was somewhat crazy, but given it actually sort of worked, he had crazier ideas.
The US Army Ordinance Museum in Aberdeen Maryland,had two examples of the "Curves Barreled" MP44 as well as a few versions of the M3 Grease guns in their old museum...I have no idea what happened to all the weapons from the Ordinance Museum after the reshaping of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds...
FYI, That "J" is actually an "I", in the older scripts. On the 'I' that hook sits on the standard base line/level as most other letters. The hook on a 'J' goes below the base line, like lower case 'g', 'p', 'q', etc..
Crazy. In any shooting game, tank main job is to protect the foot soldier while advancing but in real life the foot soldier actually is the one that actually protecting the tank