MG81 :
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The MG
81 was also originally an aircraft machine gun that was later used in the
ground role when it was no longer used for the Luftwaffe just like the
MG 15
and the
MG 17
it had replaced as aircraft machine gun. The weapon had been designed by the
Mauser Werke AG in Oberndorf and introduced in 1938, since early 1940 it began
replacing the MG 15 and MG 17 as the standard aircraft machine gun. The major
improvement in this new machine gun was a much higher rate of fire and the
flexibility of feeding the ammunition belt from either of both sides. Often two
machineguns were combined with a single trigger as a twin machine gun under the
designation MG81Z.
Conversion of the
MG81 for the ground role included the addition of a bipod and a
shoulder pieces, either a steel piece that could be retracted or a wooden pice.
Many of the numerous twin
MG81Z were
used in the role of anti-aircraft machine guns where they reportedly proved
especially useful. More than 46,000 were built; of the 33,164 in use on
1.7.1944, 20378 were
MG81Z, the rest single-barrel
MG81.
The MG 81 was an air-cooled, recoil-operated belt-fed (using the standard
ammo belts of the MG 34 and MG 42) 7.9mm machine gun weighing only 8kg (empty,
in the original aircraft version 6.5kg) (MG81Z:
12.9kg) and having a length of only 96.5cm; the short barrel length of 47.5 cm
made for a slow V0 of only 705m/s (when
using standard
7,9mm Mauser
ammo with sS projectile; with the stronger
V-Patrone
it reached between 760 and 790m/s depending on projectile type); the high rate
of fire of 1600/min was not unproblematic for field use.