Beltfed Madsen LMG: When the Weird Gets Weirder
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- čas přidán 14. 11. 2023
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First produced in 1902, the Madsen was one of the first practical light machine guns, and it remained in production for nearly 5 decades. The Madsen system is a rather unusual recoil-operated mechanism with a tilting bolt and a remarkably short receiver. The most unusual variation on the system was the belt-fed, high rate-of-fire pattern developed for aircraft use. This program was initiated by the Danish Air Force in the mid 1920s, and several different patterns were built by the time World War Two erupted.
The model here was actually a pattern that was under production for Hungary when German forces occupied Denmark. Taking over the factory, they continued the production and the guns went to the Luftwaffe for airfield defensive use.
In order to use disintegrating links instead of box magazines, some very odd modifications had to be made to the Madsen. One set of feed packs are actually built into the belt bo itself, and the cannot function without the box attached. The only feasible path for empty link ejection is directly upwards, and so a horseshoe-shaped link chute was attached to the top cover, guiding link up over 7th gun and dropping them out the right side of the receiver. Very weird!
While several thousand of these were made under German occupation, very few survive today and they are extremely rare on the US registry.
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Will there be any future prize draws for people outside of the USA?
Your timing on this couldn't have been better! I've spent a significant amount of time in the last 2 weeks trying to find any information on this model a rare gun that I could find. For the first several days I was actually convinced it never existed until I finally found old black and white photographs.
No, sorry.
@@ForgottenWeapons NOOOOOOOOOOOO
In case anyone was wondering about the term "grabby arms", it's a genuine translation of a real Danish firearms-related term. One of the reasons Danish weapons have been so successful over the years, is that we make it damn near impossible for the enemy to reverse engineer our guns, by filling them up with grabby arms, dingle swingers, counter-threaded stubby cams, crescent-flippers and that bendy thing nobody can remember the name of so they just hold up a thumb and wiggle it around a bit to describe which doohicky thingamajic they're talking about (every Dansih armorer does this, I swear). We're so good at this, that we've managed to confuse even ourselves to the point where we no longer have any serious arms manufacturing going on in the country. So yeah, try invading us _now_ and see what happens...
Well, you have got LEGO...
@@TheSrSunday After we signed the Ottawa Treaty, we _also_ ramped up production of Lego bricks, and became suspiciously adept at tactically stealing the boots of invading forces. Coincidence? I'll let you be the judge of that...
For the sme reason we invented the EDB-stik for suddbin offices specifically to charge computers.
So in the case the Russians invade us they cant charge their computers.
Ha ha, jokes on them.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#/media/File%3ADanishComputerPlugSocket-DK-2-5a.png
Explosions of peace?
@@robertkubrick3738 Impossible to say for certain, but whatever the consequence, I'm pretty sure it'll be _most_ confusing for everyone involved.
_finally sees a gun to rival the visual complexity of a G11_
"Several thousand were acquired by the Luftwaffe"
Ah, makes sense
The Washington Generals of the history channel.
Primitive german space magicians recognized the need for a cooky wacky gun
How in the hell is almost perfect geometric rectangle visually complex? Mechanically, sure, but in reality you are hard pressed to find visually more simple gun than what G11 looks like.
@@anteshell Until you open it.
@@maxwell120L55 yeah, exactly as I said: "mechanically".
That sucker would keep a whole team of reverse-engineers busy thru an entire war 😂
That is probably why you don’t see a Chinese knock off of a Madsen.😂
@@tekha1977 We actually made the Madson back to the Qing before they collapsed, hand-fitted of course.
@@mcnodtrooper6413 And depsite having a perfect example the chinese never managed to reverse engineer the Madsen LMG.
That shows how overly complicated this thing is.
@@tekha1977they did, did you not read they are literally produced to small number?
Regarding the Fl.-number above the serial number:
The Luftwaffe had a special system to catalog their inventory during WW2. It was unique to the Luftwaffe and not in use with other branches of the German military.
The system was based on numbers with an abbreviated prefix, very often Fl. or Ln. Fl. stands for "Flieg" (Flight) and Ln. for "Luftnachrichten" (literally Air-messages, basically radio equipment for planes). There were other prefixes as well but these two are the most common.
The numbers were used for equipment that wasn't in use and therefore not already cataloged by the Heer or the Marine. So it makes sense for an Fl-number to be on this gun since the Luftwaffe were the only ones to use it.
One such number could stand for anything from an entire weapon system to a single mounting plate or something like that.
Tl;dr: It's a Luftwaffe inventory number.
that sounds about right for Goering's flying insanity circus.
Thanks for your explanation, I have one correction though. The ,Wehrmacht' was not the army, it was the armed forces.
Its three branches are called: Heer (army), Kriegsmarine (war navy) and Luftwaffe (air force).
@@karlwilhelmmeinert7592 You're totally right, thanks for the correction.
It is always amazing to me how over complicated early weapon systems were. It is the simplification of firearms that has always captivated me. Making a spring perform 2 functions or ditching a cam because it is not necessary. Reducing weight by stamping rather than milling parts. Most guns today do not have superflous gadgets and gizmos on them. Back when the Madsen was made they were charting new areas of design. They were teaching themselves how to solve problems no one had considered before. Their descendents in the weapons industry simply needed to focus on improving and simplification.
My thoughts are: it's because many artisinal aspects survived in design and production a long way after the advent of mass production. The designers wanted to create an excellent product that they were proud of. They, and the armies that used them, didn't realise three cheap okay-ish submachineguns were a lot more useful militarily than one expensive really excellent gun. They wanted the best even though the best wasn't always the best. 😄
Simplicity is genius, as they say.
@@puppetguy8726
That kind of thinking only really works for Mass peasant armies like the Red Army. When you have a small core of professional and elite soldiers, like the Waffen SS, the US Army Rangers, the US Marines, and any current standing NATO Army, quality and reliability becomes very important.
Conversely, with the red army, more weapons were lost in the field than ever sent to shop for maintenance. It's mass production was more important than even being capable of repair.
I was thinking about that too, the action of the Madsen is simple, the other parts... Aren't lol, even more when you belt fed it, that could've been done way simpler actually, a gas operated Madsen with a different feed system, something more akin to the MG42, on the side, would be quite a gun.
@@puppetguy8726 The cheap okay-ish weapons tend to be very reliable. Often the realization was that you don't actually need an SMG to have perfect accuracy, because if that ever matters then you're using it wrong.
*Excited shrieking in Portuguese intensifies somewhere around Rio*
BOOOOORRRRAAAAAA PORRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
That was a bad attempt at a joke. Stay in your lane.
@@nathanworthington4451 calm down buddy
I hope you guys that he's in his own gun show room every show no big deal just saying
Hello
I was very curious how they could have converted it into a belt feed, but I never would have guessed this.
It's like the extinct megafauna ancestor of the Boberg pistol.
It's nice to see oddities like this - the Ethiopian guns have some very cool history, but are mostly mechanically unremarkable - this is a hilariously complex and strange way to deal with a problem, but much how if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, if all you have is Madsens, then the pressure to develop that further, instead of starting again, must be very strong. Fair play to the designers for getting this to work reliably - you've built something so bizarre and complex even Ian won't take it apart for fear of not being able to reassemble it, but it passes military reliability tests? That's impressive!
Small Danish entrepreneurial thinking, of the time, in a nutshell. The less retooling the better. But janky unreliable crap is unacceptable too so complexity becomes an art form. It's funny, though, that if you look at the design philosophies that made Danish furniture all the rage in the 50s you still see the same thinking, but in reverse: To avoid complicated tooling there was an enormous focus on making simplistic shapes look clean, harmonic and deliberate. And it paid off, as it sparked an entire industry of small volume, but rather pricy, functional ornaments that sell internationally and retain their value very well.
It reminds me of something the Fallout developers would try to pass off as an assault rifle 😂
say what you will I really like the fallout 4 machine gun's design, its wonderfully stylized and retro-punky and fits the aesthetic of the game really well. the only issue it has is the last minute rename of it to "Assault Rifle" all the files and technical stuff refer to it as a machine gun, the assault rifle folder goes to an unused Chinese assault rifle.
Lol all it needs is a nonfunctional water jacket around the barrel.
@@Pigness7i think the suppressor still has .50 cal on it, even in fallout 76
@@Pigness7 But the Lewis gun already exists in the Fallout Universe so there is no reason to make a weird implausible fake version of it. It already looks like a lasergun so you don't need to modify it in any way.
yeh terrible, the lmg "assault rifle" cannot make its mind up if its a water jacket for a vickers or a lewis gun air induction jacket lol, why not just employ one gun nerd next time bethesda ffs
As a reloader, I greatly appreciate the effort they put into controlling the ejection.
Back in the day, Danish military used to use a catcher for empty cases mounted to the G3.
@@herosstratos One I've always wanted to see is a Japanese LMG I heard about years ago. Due to their shortage of metals, it apparently took rounds from it's feed tray, fired them, then put the casings back in the tray so they could be re-used. I can never remember the name of it, and apparently it wasn't very reliable but it's a mechanism I'd love to see.
@@brolohalflemming7042ahhhhhh I swear I just watched a FW video on it too. 20 round feed strips
@@brolohalflemming7042I did! Breda M37
czcams.com/video/LjU2qJJhaE4/video.html
@@brolohalflemming7042Breda 37, IIRC. Not sure if any of the Japanese Hotchkis derivatives had the same functionality.
IMHO, if you're worried about brass costs, the Soviet way of just using lacquered mild steel cases is the right way to go.
The old saying "where there's a will there's a way" perfectly describes the existence of this firearm.
Strangely enough that was the saying of the famous Danish jewellery thief Carl August Lorentzen. He wrote it over the entrance to his 18 meter long tunnel out of prison, that he escaped through on Christmas eve 1949.
"How complicated should the gun be?" "Yes."
True, but still simpler than the Breda 30.
"as much as possible; also the 'belt magazine box' thing"
Madsen made a scaled up anti aircraft cannon in 20mm. They also made an aircraft mounted 23mm cannon with belt feed. US evaluated but ultimately rejected them. Some were mounted under the wings of Curtiss P-36s in Chinese service.
The extractors pulling the cartridge back may look weird, but there's a good reason for it. It's acting as a delinker to extract the cartridges from the belt. Browning machine guns do something similar, though the Browning design looks simpler. The Brownings pass the belt over the chamber, the bolt pulls the cartridges backward out of the belt, then drop them down before inserting them into the chamber. This Madsen design passes the belt up beside the chamber, extracts the cartridges backward and moves them sideways before inserting them. However, the Madsen doesn't have to pull the cartridges as far, as the belt only partially overlaps the chamber and the extractors aren't on the bolt.
*takes a shot of scnapps*
Hey guys, what if we made it a belt-fed?
In Danish it's just "snaps", or akvavit if you want to be fancy.
And put it on some reproduction, reinactor Viking ship railings! hehe
Needs to be dual feed for AP and HE selectable with another belt box and a couple of rotors.
Every time you do a video on the inner workings of a Madsen i'm half expecting there to be a swabbing or priming step shown. It's like they made a fully automatic gun by watching someone load and fire a single shot gun repeatedly, then made a seperate mechanism for copying each action the shooter took, then somehow crammed them all into the same case without any of the parts colliding. It's especially fun to alternate viewing Madsens with ww2 soviet submachine guns.
A point not brought out in the video or (so far) in the comments is that these pull-the-round-from-the-belt feed systems allow the gun to handle rimmed (e.g. 8x58mmR, 6.5x53mmR, 8x56mmR) as well as rimless cartridges with equal ease.
Investment castings ( and their moulds!), stampings, different steel grades, so many fixtures. This was before CNC and CADCAM. Hand drawings, manual jigs. Lists and reports without Excel . Hats off !
Pre-digital engineering is always such a mindbogglingly impressive thing, be it mechanical things, buildings, etc.
What’s not obvious is what Ian calls the belt box is actually a belt magazine. Unlike most (all?) belt-fed MG’s where you have to manually insert the belt into the feed mechanism, (mount box-open feed tray-put belt into feed prawls, cycle the charging handle), a two man crew might take 6-10 seconds commence fire.
This is functionally a magazine. With this system you attach the magazine box, cycle the charging handle and commence firing in maybe 2-3 seconds. This is a real advantage for AA machine guns where engagement times are short.
That has got to be one of the best belt feed systems I've ever seen, genius engineering.
“best” is somewhat subjective in a case like this.
@@guaporeturns9472 "genius" also.
@@blshouse true
Denmark may be technically a small country on the map, but the history of that territory is huge and full of brilliance. :D This vid makes me really want to get at least one of these to mount on my reproduction Viking ship, or maybe have as an option to pop on a weapon mount somewhere on my my Neo-Norseman-Airship gondola.. or maybe one of the fighters docked there. :D
@@guaporeturns9472 Mind you I haven't seen that many belt fed systems to start out with. ^^'
Still enjoyed the hell out of finding out how this mechanism works...my main question during the video was: "so where do the links go?"(I'm not that smart).😆
Ian never fails to take an extremely complex mechanism and break it down so someone who knows relatively little about the mechanics beyond a fascination can follow along without much of a headache. Makes taking a look at some of these truly interesting historical weapons that much more fun!
The "layman's summary" type phrases like "the easiest way to think about it is to consider it a full-auto adaptation of the Martini-Henry" go a long way as well. This sort of "practical" description is not only helpful in a straightforward way, but being able to describe something complex in simple terms like this is an excellent sign of someone understanding the subject at hand very well.
I love how complicated old firearms can be! And they work magnificently!
Some do work, yes.
The MG Ian Hogg described as the equivalent of two lifts operating in the same shaft :)
Ian Hogg had an amazing turn of phrase. I had a copy of his book on WW2 artillery a long while ago, and I treasure his quips about some of the weirder or less suitable designs.
Royal Armories recently did a video on a Harston patent device to turn a Martini Henry into a repeater. It looks suspiciously like the feed system of a standard Madsen. Harston approached the UK war office about a year before the first early Madsen rifle would appear (1887/1888).
I wonder if any prototypes of the DISA (Madsen company) DISA Karabin (assault rifle prototype from 1960s using a 7x36mm cartridge) have survived to this day. There is also the Weibel M/32 using a 7x44mm cartridge developed by DISA in the early 1930s to replace the Madsen LMG. There seems to be couple of examples of the Weibel M/32 in Danish museums.
Yes there supposedly is. In the defence museum in Aalborg.
Wasn't Weibel meant to supplement the Madsen rather than replace it?
@@puppetguy8726 Not sure. There's not much info on the internet about the Weibel M/32. You might be correct about that.
I hope one day that you can make a video on the 23 mm madsen. Info is REALLY scarce about it on the internet.
20 or 23 mm THAT's thé question...
@@dallesamllhals9161 As I've understood it the 20 mm Madsen is the ground/vehicle based AA/AT gun while the 23 mm was for aircraft, but I really don't know. Love for Ian to do a video on that as well though.
I know from Danish Resistance literature that DISA (or at the time Dansk Riffel Syndikat) on their factory in Copenhagen Free-port in the 1940' ies produced quad-20 mm on ground mounting for AA. This was one of the 2-3 Danish factories that the Allies most wanted to see 'decommissioned' by the resistance. The blowing up of the DISA factory was one of the biggest and most spectacular sabotages in Denmark during the entire war. So the Allied considered the Madsen guns VERY important!
@@puppetguy8726 Os' mig aka Metoo.
@@ulrikschackmeyer848 Mnjaah, det er der så lige et par meninger om!
Mayhaps..and a few+ disagreements about that!
The entire war...really? NEJ!
The ejection port looks like a fun little slide for the brass to play on.
And I thought the insides of a sewing machine were complicated !
I love when Iain is super excited about a strange weapon :)
He likes weird shit .
present day
present time
@@uwu_smegand you don't seem to understand...
No wonder Germany attacked Denmark, they couldnt let it slide that another country had a more complicated gun than them
These MGs, both in 7.65x54 and 11.35x62 calibers, were standard equipment for many of the aircraft used by the Argentine Army Air Service during the 1930/40s, particularly with our "beggar's choice" fighter, the Curtiss Hawk 75O. The larger caliber one is exactly the same design, just a tad longer and beefier.
I think there's one mounted on a TOE or Scarff ring and fitted with a French gun camera at the Air Force Museum.
Thanks for sharing, Ian. It's always a pleasure to watch a video with some "Madsen Madness" in it.
Cheers.
This weapon isn't forgotten. It has been erased from history.
This channel is awesome.
HRMPH! From Denmark!
Fl = Flugzeug (aircraft) anything bought by the Luftwaffe had to be an aeroplane, and was thus given an aeroplane number. An interesting side-note is that Leica cameras used by the Luftwaffe can be partially identified if such Fl numbers match. The patent company, Leitz, made binoculars etc. and even made the night sights on the WWI Gewehr 98 you discussed in another video.
Whenever I see the Madsen I think about how it looks like a budget video game "Machine gun" model, except real.
Star Wars prop dept. immediately orders 50 coffee mugs and starts googling "Belt-fed Madsen"
I’ve always thought the Madsen system would have made an excellent auto-cannon. Very short receiver and recoil operated. But I never knew how it could be made belt fed, I guess the answer is: Not Easily.
Still, very cool.
Anything can be made belt-fed if you try hard enough. :D
On a similar note, I believe the Japanese were the only ones to manage a belt-fed 20mm Oerlikon, with their later Type 99 variants.
Check out the British design of a belt feeder for the Hispano cannon. It replaces the magazine and is literally a clockwork mechanism, being powered by a large clock spring that gets re-wound by the gun recoiling...
The ingenuity! Here I thought that the insides of a G11 were complex, only to be beaten by the _outsides_ of a Danish gun several decades older [insert Todd Howard jokes here.]
Then again, this is the country that had lever-action muskets in the late 17th century in combat service (still waiting a video of those Kalthoff repeaters, Ian!)
Best description I've ever heard of the Madsens:
They really had no right working as well as they did considering the fact that it was bloody amazing that they worked at all!
I love it when Ian pulls out the weirdest of the weird.
If ever there was a gun that needed a C&Rsenal 3D view treatment...
Great timing! I was just looking for information on belt fed madsens.
Intersting look into a rather peculiar piece of Danish arms history. Just a little tip: the d in Madsen is silent. So, to anglophones, it should be read something like "massen"
Ian does point out the Danish pronounciation in most videos about the gun. :)
@@BleedingUranium just checked, and you seem to be right. But that just leaves me wondering why he keeps saying it incorrectly, when he has shown both knowledge of and ability to say it properly. It's not some deliberately hard name like brzęczyszczykiewicz or something
The Madsen family as a whole can best be described as "this should not work as well as it does." The base Madsen is already a terrifyingly complex design, and this is space magic to surpass the G11, but it just works.
I feel like a belt fed infantry Madsen would put a browning to shame well before it lost its water jacket and got a stock.
earlier today i was talking to some friends about how weird the madsen was... this is different
I know a hand-cranked drill when I see one.
Love how weapons systems get more and more silly and complicated between generations. Now we've got freefloat handguards for equipping lasers and lights, flat tops for optics, and tunable gas settings for running suppressed in an AR, but when the M16 was newer the modifications were more bolt-on, with simple clamps mounting flashlights and optics on gooseneck mounts
Love it. Thank you Ian for showing us this wonderful gun.
A big thanks to the new owner for letting you film this.
But boy would I love to Bruno do a C&Rsenal animation of this belt fed Rube Goldberg contraption's mechanisms :D
I always knew that gun had potential, nice find Ian!
In My country Argentina, we used them on airceaft in 7.65 and 11.35mm
Great to wake up to a new Forgotten Weapons video :)
Hi Ian - love your canal ! As a Dane; forgot the "d" - Madsen are in Danish pronunsed Masen.
JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT WW2 GUNS.
Ian be like: hold my MP5.
Its like dragon ball you never what the final transformation of bizarre in forgotten weapons
Yeeees! I have been looking forward to a video on this gun for so long!
That is a truly bizarre and wonderful gun instantly near the top of the weirdest forgotten weapons you've come across!:3
The boys in Brazil are gonna love this one.
Designed before there was a typical LMG layout so they did their own thing. Found it works and lasts well with their quality engineering and production standards. Even better as materials improved. It works fine so why change it? Keep it clean and oiled and your great grandson can still be issued with it. Cheaper in the long run than the opposition. Now my favourite LMG over the L4.
Are you sure it is just one rifle? When you pulled it apart I thought there were several more hiding inside it.
I think that's by design. It may actually be modular. Disassemble it and you can then reassemble it into two standard Madsen LMGs. : )
Guns to me...I love the weird shite like this, the VZ 52, which I owned never fired was just amazed at the quality. Guns relate to industry and machines and tell the story of industry to me from flintlocks on. Never fired the VZ 52. But did a VZ 52/57. Bit of a regret there. 7.62 X 51 to big for shoulder fired full auto. 7.62 X 39 perfect but range wind issues. I often wonder if 7.62 X 45 could have been the sweet spot between the 2
Remember when those were cheap in the US(80s)…. lots of things were cheap in the 80s.. military surplus guns , old cars , hookers , cocaine…. the list goes on
"Hey Ian, are you going to do a video on how to strip and reassembled???"
Ian: "Fuck no"
This gun looks like it had a run-in with Kel-Tec and their special choo-choo train...
I always enjoy the weird ones! Thanks!
If Rube Goldberg designed a belt fed.
Perhaps an apt episode title to remark... I think I was your receptionist at a hotel in Zagreb a year ago XD I believe were carrying a storage box and you were very polite during your check-in... or perhaps a check-out. In either case, thank your for you informative videos and for being so nice!
It is a marvellous contraption. At the Royal Danish Navy base at Holmen in Copenhagen they have a dual mount version of this that originally was on a pintle mount on a ship :-)
It's really wild that the belt feed mechanism makes the Madsen seems almost... elegant.
Very satisfying clunks, clinks, snaps and thunks
I could see this gun making a cameo in star wars, if it hasn't already
Something about that feed system reminds me of the DeserTech MDR. The way it pulls a cartridge farther back than the feed way makes me think of the MDR pulling empty cases back into the ejection chute and holding them there until the bolt goes forward again
When my granddad did his military service in the 1950's they had taken Kronborg in Elsinore back into military custody after the German occupation. It had been a part of the Danish Army since the 1600 and it was opened for the public in 1939. Well, I cannot find any sources for it, but when they redid the roofing of the castle in the 1950's they had gun nests in the towers where they used Madsen LMGs confiscated from the Germans. I'd love to be more precise and I am sure my granddad could have if he was still around. We had quite a few guns and bayonets and rounds but we handed them in to the police during an amnesty (where you could just come and hand in undocumented/illegal arms) sometimes in the late 2000s. But I still do have some giant cartridges left that cannot be from any handheld gun since the are longer than my foot.
I'd love to delve into my family's history during WW2 at some point. All I know is that my grandparents on my dad's side were more or less voluntarily relocated to Germany and the western part of Denmark to build bunkers for the Germans. My grandparents on my mother's side were children during the occupation. My grandmother's dad was arrested in 1941 and spent the next 4 years in prison and in internment camp.
My granddad's dad was a hard man. He was the union boss of the shipwrights of Denmark. He was also a violent alcoholic and I don't really know anything other about him than his name.
It looks like a broom handle Mauser that got assimilated by the Borg.
Looks like there's a new winner for 'It's too bad Ian didn't have dummy rounds in this caliber.' Great video Ian, and congratulations to the new owner.
A "Forgotten Weapon" eh? Ho ho... Very funny Ian!
I'm a huge fan of all things Danish, except the food, and Danish Warmblood horses are my second favorite breed of horses, second only to American Quarter Horses, so this was great for me to learn about. I got to see them do lots of great stuff when my ex-wife, her best friend and I attended the annual horse show in Henning, Jutland, in Denmark in 1992. It's nice to hear about such a very small country having such success selling one of their products and generating some revenue for Denmark. About thirty years ago they sold one of their Danish Warmblood stallions to the Germans for one million dollars and they were very gleeful about that. Memories of the German occupation of Denmark during WWII live on...
Thanks!
The pistol grip looks straight from Polish RPG-40 grenade launcher.
Kraut Space Magic Alpha! Someone looked at this thinking "This is the most convoluted complicated thing ever!" and HK said "Hold my beer stein!"
I'm reminded of your video on the bullpup pistol during that belt loading system.
Beautiful Danish Engineering!
Thanks for the Video Ian :)
French Automatic Weaponry from the 1900's up until the 1950's had a sweeping, flowing, sewing-machine style of engineering to them. Given the long history of fabric fabrication in France it is no suprise that their weaponry shared the same styling. Danish weaponry most definately is of the Danish industrial style--Form Follows Function First and Foremost. Strip away the excess, think about how it will be used. Design-->Improve-->Design-->Improve. Thanks again for a great vid!
Except for the Chauchat, which looks like it's trying to be the next motive power for express trains on the Paris-Lyons-Marseilles route.
*CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGS ANGRILY*
Hey Ian! I think it'd be pretty neat if you could break down different styles of AA sights and how they're supposed to be used. I can't quite just infer from looking at them and think it'd make for a pretty interesting video
There are historical footage cartoons that explain it, and he goes over it in one of the earlier videos, maybe on an AA MG08/15 or something? The expanding circles that make up the wire mesh are supposed to help with leading shots (since you have to aim ahead of the enemy and therefore point off-center/in front of the target), it follows the same concept as the gunsights used in aircraft. I think some of these sights incorporated secondary functions as well to help with ranging and the like, but I'm not positive. The obviously-simpler ones definitely just give the user a circle of markings for the eye to land on and assist in making deflection shots with.
I imagine it jamming in the field and just being like "welp"
Ian, Royal Danish Air Force was commisioned in 1950!!!!! The Period you are talking about is when Denmark had 2 Air Corps, one was the Army Air Corps and the other was Navy Air Corps, one for artillery spotting and one for maritime (with floats), they were disbanded in 1940 and several off their pilot fled to England to fly for the Royal Air force, which was the reason for establishment off an Airforce after the war!!!
Weird and cool. I want that box-fed one.
"When the Weird Gets Weirder" - Yes please!
That's a beautiful mousetrap.
"Simplicity? Where we're going we don't need simplicity!"
Madsen also made 20mm and 23mm autocannons. Not sure if they used a similar mechanism.
A cannon with such a ram and breechblock mechanism may even make sense.
It's using this wacky system in the 1950s to fire a rifle cartridge that is a marvellou nonsense.
You are right : A FL number is the Luftwaffe part number of a given system. Everything that was fitted on a/c had its own FL number
That thing is wild.
I absolutely love the little grabby arms which pull the cartridge backwards
I've said before and I'll say it again, you can never go wrong with a Madsen!
That giveaway Madsen is sweet.
Danish made Weapon, excellent
Put some polished brass parts on that thing, and it'd be so amazingly steam-punk it's unreal.
"...into a little feed trough from whence they get dropped into the gun."
:D
I absolutely love this - stolt Dansker
Absolutely WOW! Kinda makes the Bren look SICK - How did they stand up for maintenance ?
Watching how the feed system works is like watching that simpsons bit of where the bowling pins go after theyre knocked out of the lane