Could you effectively use a WWII era machine gun as a weapon, without it being mounted on a bi-pod?

Question

In this video game I play people do it all the time, I'm curious as to how accurate this is. I would think that the recoil and heat would be far too intense for someone to be able to pull this off.

Answer 1

Yes: It happened several times during WWII - I know of at least two cases where the person won the CMOH - One was on Guadalcanal and the other was on Okinawa

In the case on Guadalcana it was a two man team on the move and the loader was killed by an advancing squad of Japanese. The gunner killed every one of the attacking Japanese soldiers with his .30 cal browning cradled in one arm

On Okinawa there was a five man team in support of an advance on a village. They were separated and when the attack went south an officer ordered the squad to higher ground overlooking the village. As soon as they tried to set up on the hill they came under fire. from 250 advancing Japanese. The gunner was killed right off and the tri-pod was destroyed. One of the men picked up the machine gun and cut down a large number of the advancing Japanese.

He was described as a powerful, giant of a man.

I'm sure you could do a search of CMOH citations - and find more cases

Answer 2

Heavy machine gun no. Medium and light calibres, some no, mostly yes. Many machine guns are able to be used from the shoulder and carried and fired. The problems for medium to light calibres not the recoil since they are no worse than a standard weapon if they are firing the same cartridge.

Generally the problem is you empty magazines very quickly once you no longer have link running into the gun.

One of the most famous machine guns the 303 Bren gun was favoured as a carry weapon in ww2, also using the same cartrdige as the old 303 bolt action.

For WW1 era guns generally the answer is no since due to the technology of the time they were built still as heavy mounted units and even watercooled etc.

Answer 3

I've seen a man shoot a MG 34 in short bursts from the shoulder effectively. The MG 42 has a far higher rate of fire though and would be a joke. The 1919a4 has no provision for shoulder fire, but the rare 1919 Stinger (a 1919 aircraft gun with a garand buttstock grafted to the backplate somehow) was used as a shoulder-fired weapon by one heroic man on an island in the Pacific in WWII. I can't recall his name, but if you search for "1919 stinger airsoft guns",or "1919a4 airsoft guns" you should be able to locate the site where they have photos of a real stinger they've replicated as an airsoft gun and the long and detailed story of the heroic soldier who used it...and his picture.
I've seen it, read it, WOW.
p.s. The BAR is a 19 pound 30-06 automatic machine-rifle. Today we'd call this weapon a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) .The earliest guns had no bipod and were intended for shoulder fire.
These were used by U.S. Navy troops on the Yanztese River patrol boats we used to kep in China before WWII ( the "River Rats") The bipod version (1918a2) didn't appear until a year later.
Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde infamy, was a SMALL woman who could and did effectively use a BAR and a sawed-off BAR fron both the hip and shoulder. look it up.

Answer 4

the reason assault rifles use medium power rounds like the 7.92x33 in the stg 44 & the 7.62 x39 in the ak 47 is because thats all the power the average man can control in a 8 or 9 lb. hand held full auto weapon. this was first determined by experiments done by the Germans with their usual efficiency in 1940 & 41 & tested against the Russians in1942 in the mkb 42 which later became the stg 44 the worlds first assault rifle. the30-06 BAR weighs about 15or 20 lbs for the same reason to help manage recoil.
there have been many instances where soldiers in combat have picked up & used 30 lb.or more light machine guns but this is not something they would do under more normal circumstances.

Answer 5

A big, BIG strong person could fire a light (rifle caliber) WWII era machine gun without the bi-pod in short bursts but it would be a handful and very impractical. A heavy machine gun? I seriously doubt that THAT person has been born. THAT you only see in the movies and on video games.

Best.

H

I suppose I should explain what I mean by 'Heavy Machinegun." That is one that is of .50 caliber or above (.20mm automatic cannon). A .7x57, .30 caliber (.308 or .30-06) are light machinguns of rifle caliber and these can be fired without the bipods or tripods.

H

Answer 6

Until Rambo made the scene all the pre-hightech machine guns were CSW (crew serviced weapons) that required a gunner, loader, ncoic, yada. To demonstrate this point I had a sergeant at Ft. Ord have the biggest, burliest, macho dog in the company give a demonstration with the M-14 when it made the scene and could be set to fire full auto. Three shots hit the target and the rest went high, higher and highest. On full auto an MG-42, Browning, MG-34, yada, needed to be mounted on something. They were heavy and uncontrolable otherwise. Movies and TV are great for people running around holding machine guns and firing pistols held sideways and yada. I also get a kick out of somebody with a submachine gun who fires a truckload of ammo and can't hit the broadside of a barn but the hero with one shot from his cigarette lighter size pistol takes out three or four bad guys with one shot; give me a break. This is when I switch to the cartoon hour to see how Wile E. Coyote is faring in trying to nail the roadrunner.

Answer 7

BAR and M-60 can be shot from the shoulder but your accuracy would suffer. I fired both in the Army and we were allowed to shoot them a few times from the shoulder just to show us why they had a bipod on them. I am 6'-0" tall and weigh 200 lbs and it moved me backward a little but it was still shootable.

Answer 8

Absolutely not. The MG-34, MG-42, Browning 1919 etc. could not be hand held and operated.

I've seen this in video games, for example DoD, and it's just not possible. Guns like the MG-42 required a team to carry and operate.

Even the BAR was a bear to handle and few men, usually only the largest and strongest of men, could wield it effectively and then they would need to put it down and extend the bipod for automatic fire.

Answer 9

i have read stories and seen video of people shooting a 30. cal machine gun from the hip