Despite around-the-clock bombing by British and American heavy bombers, the Germans during World War II produced an ever-increasing volume of advanced military materiel right up until the end of the war.
Even though they had terribly limited resources and were being squeezed on all sides, they still managed to field the first true assault rifle, genre-defining attack submarines, and surface-to-surface missile systems that the rest of the world would take a generation to best. However, what they really excelled at was jet airplanes.
The Americans had the P59 Airacomet, and the Brits the Gloster Meteor. The P59 never amounted to much. The Meteor did see limited service during WWII, mostly in chasing down V1 buzz bombs. By contrast, the German Me 262 was a veritable scourge in the skies over Western Europe in the latter days of the war.
The Me 262 had a top speed of 560 mph and sported four bomber-killing 30mm automatic cannon in the nose. To put that in perspective, the vaunted P-51 Mustang topped out at 440 mph. The Me 262 badly outclassed everything in the skies at the time.
It was indeed the swept-wing Me 262 that got all the press. However, the Germans also produced a corresponding twin-engine bomber that actually earned more love from Hitler. The Arado Ar 234 Blitz was a unique design powered by a pair of Junkers Jumo 004B-1 axial flow turbojets, the same powerplants that drove the Me 262.
Blitz is the German word for Lightning. Der Führer envisioned the Ar 234 as a war-changing wonder weapon that would seize the initiative and, once again, take the fight to the Allies. Fortunately for us all, the Ar234 was too little, too late.
Arado Ar 234 History
Development of the Ar 234 began in the latter days of 1940, when the Third Reich’s rampaging legions seemed unstoppable. The airframe was developed in short order, but it was February 1943 before the unique Junkers Jumo turbojet engines first became available. The Ar 234 saw its maiden flight on 30 July 1943.
The original plan called for a max production of 500 airframes per month by 1945. The Luftwaffe envisioned bomber, night fighter, and strategic reconnaissance versions of the plane. However, the exigencies of total war curtailed those projections drastically. Overall production by war’s end was only 214 machines.
Early versions of the plane did not include conventional landing gear, per se. These variants used a discardable wheeled trolley for takeoff akin to the Me 163 rocket plane. Landing was effected via a set of retractable skids that took up very little space in the cramped fuselage. However, in addition to having no braking ability at all, the prospect of having a dead airplane resting on the runway until somebody could get out, jack it up, and drag it into a revetment was obviously not tactically viable. Test pilots who landed these machines on damp grass described the experience as setting the airplane down atop a bar of wet soap.
Later versions did indeed include conventional landing gear. They also experimented with a variety of different engine configurations, predominantly driven by a chronic lack of Junkers Jumo powerplants. Regardless, by the time the Ar234 was ready for prime time, the Nazis were desperate. They had to make do with what they had.
Details of the Ar 234 Blitz
The Ar 234 was actually a really weird airplane. With a top speed of 461 mph and a practical payload of 3,300 pounds’ worth of bombs, the Ar234 offered significantly better performance than any comparable medium bomber then in service. However, the Blitz bomber certainly had its eccentricities.
For starters, the revolutionary turbojets drank a whole lot of gas at a time when the Germans were chronically short of the stuff. Around-the-clock strategic bombing prioritized petroleum processing facilities, making the production and delivery of quality fuels increasingly difficult.
Additionally, the Ar 234 was designed for speed and high performance. The plane’s slender fuselage left no room for internal weapons once the landing gear and prodigious fuel tanks were accounted for. As a result, the Ar 234’s weapons were carried externally on racks underneath the plane.
The really strange bit, however, pertained to the crew arrangements. The Ar 234 was a single-pilot aircraft. There was no gunner, bombardier or navigator. Toward the end of the war, producing competent, trained pilots became one of the weakest links in the German logistics chain.
However, it is asking a lot to expect a single aviator to fly an advanced twin-engine jet bomber through hostile skies infested with Typhoons, Mustangs, Thunderbolts and Spitfires and then accurately drop bombs on a well-defended target. As a result, German engineers developed some truly exotic tools in a failed effort to help those hapless guys out.
Forward visibility in the Arado Ar 234 Blitz was actually quite good. The entire nose of the plane was glazed for an exceptional field of view. However, the pilot still could not readily see the ground where he was dropping his bombs. Additionally, early models included a pair of rear-firing guns intended for use as defensive weapons. In an effort to allow one crewman to do all that stuff, the Germans included a curious periscope system that was meant to perform several different functions.
When directed rearward, this periscope was supposed to allow aiming of the two defensive machine guns. Doing this effectively while flying the airplane evasively was found to be quite literally impossible. The rear-firing weapons were deleted from later variants.
The periscope could also be rotated forward and used to control the aircraft during dive-bombing missions. That looks great on paper. However, when used in this capacity, the image seen by the pilot was vertically reversed. That meant that the controls responded in reverse of what the pilot saw, but only in the vertical plane. Up was down, and down was up.
As I said, that’s asking a lot of a guy managing a machine all by his lonesome with half the planet trying to blast him out of the sky. Additionally, egressing from the plane in an emergency involved unstrapping and exiting via a cramped hatch in the floor. Nobody ever was quite sure who was supposed to be controlling the stricken airplane while the pilot tried to pull this off.
Operational Use of Ar 234
There were never enough qualified pilots or engines, and the gas issue became critical in the war’s final months. However, the Arado Ar 234 was used to attack the Brussels train station as well as the Antwerp shipping docks. A few examples were encountered in the ground attack role around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.
The most high-profile missions of the war for the Ar 234 involved a maximum effort on the part of the Luftwaffe to drop the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. Though this effort was ultimately successful, Allied engineers bridged the river nearby in short order, rendering these efforts superfluous.
The Ar 234 was used as a fast reconnaissance platform. Accurate intelligence was critical to allow the German high command to allot dwindling defensive resources, and the speedy Blitz bomber excelled in this role. Regardless, most completed Arado Ar 234 Blitz bombers still never saw action for lack of fuel, engines and pilots.
Ruminations
The real limiting factor in the use of the German jets was actually metallurgy. The tendency of a metal part to elongate or stretch when subjected to heat and stress is called creep. Turbine blades in modern jet engines are good for thousands of thermal cycles and tens of thousands of flight hours. By contrast, the Junkers Jumo 004B-1 turbojet engine typically had to be replaced every 10 flight hours or so. As soon as the turbine blades stretched to the point where they contacted the engine housing, they were done.
The Ar 234 Blitz was nonetheless a truly groundbreaking design. Sleek, fast, and well ahead of its time, had the logistics and engineering been up to the task the Blitz bomber really could have had an outsized influence on the war. The Germans still would have lost, but it might have taken a bit longer. We should all, therefore, be thankful for the primitive state of 1940s-era German materials science.
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The Highest Altitude AA Guns Ever
Modularity is the holy gospel in military circles these days. Distilled to its essence, a modular weapon system uses a single basic chassis that can then be customized to perform specific missions. Think of it like Barbie dolls for gun guys. By mixing and matching accessories, you can be ready for a hard day at the office, a vigorous romp through the woods, or a festive night on the town.
Springfield Armory has gone all in on modularity. Their superlative Echelon pistol is built around a removable, serialized Central Operating Group (COG). The COG is a steel chassis that can be fitted with sundry slides, frames, and assorted ditzels to make the gun into pretty much whatever you wish it to be. And then there is their extensive line of AR rifles.
The Springfield Armory SAINT’s all orbit around common receivers. There’s one size for 5.56 and another for 7.62, but those two basic designs can be had as carbines, long rifles, and handguns. That’s the cutting edge in modern small arms design.
One might be forgiven for believing that this was all a new fad. However, it seems that one Georg Luger, an Austrian of some renown who contrived the most popular handgun cartridge in all of human history, became enamored with the concept of modularity more than a century before it so suffused the modern military mindset. The P.08 Parabellum pistol he designed was indeed a prescient thing.
Origin of the Luger
In 1893 Hugo Borchardt designed a handgun based loosely upon the toggle lock of the Maxim machine gun. He christened his creation the C-93 (Construktion 93). The C-93 fired a 7.65x25mm bottlenecked high-velocity cartridge, weighed more than two and one-half pounds, and was better than a foot long. To make things worse, the pistol grip met the frame at a right angle. That made most everything about the gun awkward. However, it was nonetheless still an undeniably groundbreaking design.
Deustche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) produced the C-93. Georg Luger was a DWM employee tasked with promoting the radical new pistol to both military and commercial users. Georg took the basic Borchardt action, fixed most of its most obvious flaws, and, in so doing, changed the world of combat pistols forever.
The basic Luger action was indeed an amazing thing. The technical term is biomimetic or biomimicry. This means a mechanical contrivance that is patterned after something found in nature. Common examples include Velcro, the Japanese Shinkansen “bullet” train that was inspired by the beak of the kingfisher bird, and certain adhesives that were based upon the feet of the gecko lizard. In the case of the Luger pistol, the action was inspired by the human knee joint.
When extended and locked, the mechanism can support a great deal of linear force. This allows the firearm to manage fairly high-pressure cartridges. Upon firing, the upper half of the gun slides backward along a track in the frame.
The hump on the back of the frame cams the toggle lock upward, breaking it in the manner of the human knee. This action then ejects the empty case. A spring in the butt drives the bolt forward to strip a round from the magazine and repeat the cycle.
It is a fairly straightforward thing to demonstrate this with an unloaded example of the gun. Press the muzzle against a firm surface, and you can watch the way the action operates. It really is an inspired design.
Curiously, the US Army actually came fairly close to adopting the Luger in .45 ACP as a service pistol. In 1901, the U.S. Army Ordnance Board bought 1,000 copies for field testing with the mounted cavalry. These Model 1900 Lugers sported American Eagle stamps over the chambers, 4.75” barrels, and U.S. Army ordnance flaming bomb proof marks. Possession of one of these original guns today would serve as a down payment on a decent house.
Variety Is the Spice of Life
While a serviceable combat pistol in its basic form, Herr Luger envisioned his P.08 Parabellum as something much greater. An early leaf spring design was changed to the more efficient coil spring drive in 1906, but the guns remained externally identical. The aggressively swept grip met the frame at a 155-degree angle. Throughout the sundry variations, the basic Luger frame remained common to all variants. Most all frames were cut to accept shoulder stocks.
In 1904, the Imperial German Navy adopted a modified version of the Luger Parabellum pistol designed for use in close-range ship-to-ship combat. The Navy Luger was designed to give U-boat captains a weapon with which they might snipe at their opposite numbers while their ships duked it out in surface engagements. That’s honestly fairly ridiculous, but it made for a cool gun.
This novel pistol sported an extended 6” barrel as well as a two-position rear sight selectable for 100 and 200-meter ranges. When fitted with a detachable shoulder stock, this gun formed a nifty little carbine at a time when the industry standard was a meter-long bolt-action rifle firing massive cartridges the size of your middle finger. I doubt they were ever used effectively for their intended purpose.
In 1908, the German Imperial Army adopted a standardized version of the P.08 Luger pistol with a 4” barrel. This was the definitive model issued throughout the German military on all fronts during both world wars. Production finally ceased in 1943 when the Luger was supplanted by the more advanced Walther P.38.
The Germans produced more than two million copies of this weapon by the end of World War I. Despite being compact, powerful and reliable, the Luger’s trigger wasn’t all that it could have been. However, it was an eminently serviceable sidearm and a prized war trophy during both world wars.
In July of 1913, the Kaiser personally authorized another major variation of the standard Luger pistol. This firearm included a 7.9” barrel along with an eight-position tangent rear sight graduated out to 870 yards. The gun included a board-type shoulder stock with an associated leather holster. There was also a complicated clockwork 32-round snail drum magazine intended to increase the gun’s onboard firepower. These long-barreled weapons were technically intended for use by German artillery units for close-in defense.
Without really intending to do so, Herr Luger had produced one of history’s first Personal Defense Weapons. As a result, these artillery Lugers were prized by both aviators and Stormtrooper assault units. At a time when most infantry weapons were massive polearm-style affairs, the artillery Luger made for a proper fast-handing carbine.
Denouement
All of the sights were too small and too complicated to be particularly effective. There was even a weird cam built into the rear sight on the artillery Luger that supposedly compensated for spin drift or Coriolis effect or some such. You can see it in action if you look really close while adjusting it. This thing is insanely overbuilt.
The eight-round, single-stack magazines sport dimpled floorplates, because you have to tug on them a bit to get them free. The action, though inspired, is all externalized so it is susceptible to battlefield grime. However, given that the state of the art at the time was a double-action revolver, the Luger family of pistols was amazing for its era.
All three of these firearms were built around a common frame. By mixing and matching upper assemblies, you could theoretically make that one chassis into a service pistol, a stocked target handgun and a close quarters carbine. The Germans did not issue the gun to be used that way, but they could have.
Georg Luger designed the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge in 1901. That inspired little round is produced in the billions each year worldwide, even today. At around the same time, Herr Luger also serendipitously contrived the world’s first truly modular combat weapon. He was indeed a man well ahead of his time.
Special thanks to www.WorldWarSupply.com for the cool replica gear used in preparation of our photos.
French troops armed with MAT-49 SMGs bring in a captured Viet Minh guerilla during 1954.
Author’s collection.
After the harsh lessons of World War I, the French military planned a complete revamp of its infantry small arms. By 1922, new firearm concepts were being embraced, including a light machine gun design, a semi-automatic rifle and a submachine gun (SMG). The light machine gun would soon become the FM 24/29. The semi-auto rifle wouldn’t arrive until 1951, in the form of the MAS-49. Meanwhile, the French would dabble in submachine gun design, also using many foreign types, until they finally combined the features of many SMGs into their own—the MAT-49.
A Slow Road to a French SMG
With a second world war looming, the French reviewed several SMGs available on the international market. Nothing particularly impressed them, so by the spring of 1940, French forces faced the German blitzkrieg with a small collection of disparate SMGs. Several hundred MP 28/II (9 mm) were obtained from Belgian sources. An order for 3,000 of the expensive Thompson M1921 SMGs was placed in late 1939. A second order for 3,000 Thompson guns was placed but was not fulfilled by the time France fell in June 1940.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, the French experienced a small SMG windfall, as they inherited about 3,200 Erma EMPs from Spanish Republican troops that fled to France and were disarmed at the border. Most of these guns were chambered in 9 mm, and the French decided to take them into service as the Pistolet-mitrailleur Erma – Vollmer de 9mm. While the Erma EMP was a fine SMG, the French had little more than 1,500 magazines available, and consequently, only about 500 of the weapons made it into action in the spring of 1940—many of these were issued to the Corps Francs with about one EMP per platoon (two magazines per gun).
During the 1920s, France made a significant commitment to national defense, and this came in the form of the extensive Maginot Line fortifications to secure the Franco-German border. While the practicality of the French forts is debatable, the Maginot Mentality’s impact on the nation’s military budget is undeniable. Many new weapons systems were cancelled outright, and many more suffered extreme delays in their development. Such was the case with the MAS modèle 38 SMG, which started out as the 9 mm STA 1922 and MAS 1924 immediately after the Great War.
These design concepts were stranded in limbo until the French military adopted the 7.65 mm French Longue cartridge (7.65×20 mm Long) in the mid-1930s. With the new ammunition came the experimental MAS-35, and then “Pistolet Mitrailleur MAS modèle 38” (MAS Model 38 Submachine Gun). The new SMG was desired in quantity, with 19,500 ordered in January 1939, but fewer than 2,000 were in service by the time of the German invasion in the spring of 1940.
The MAS-38 has a unique appearance, created by an odd layout of the receiver and buttstock—the barrel is offset from the receiver by about six degrees, with bolt recoiling through a tube that runs through the stock. Despite its odd look, the MAS-38 is a particularly high-quality SMG. Mostly machined from solid steel, it featured a buffered sear assembly to enable greater longevity of its internal parts. The entire weapon is just 24.5 inches long and only weighs 6.3 pounds. It fires from an open bolt, with a cyclic rate of about 600 rounds per minute. Magazine capacity is 32 rounds.
During the occupation, more than 20,000 MAS-38s were made under German direction, and these were used by Wehrmacht forces as the substitute standard “MP722(f),” and some were provided to Vichy French security forces. After the war the French continued production in quantity, with estimates ranging up to more than 100,000 produced by early 1950s.
Albeit quirky, the MAS-38 served France well. Robust and compact, it was France’s lone SMG design in the post-WWII colonial wars and was used primarily in Indochina. The 7.65 mm ammunition is somewhat underpowered, and while controllable the weapon offers no forward hand grip other than grasping the front of the magazine well. The stage was set for a French SMG design for a new age.
Welcome To The MAT-49
French forces finished World War II with a collection of SMGs from both Allied and Axis sources. Most numerous among these were the British Sten (9 mm), the US Thompson (.45 ACP) and M3 Grease Gun (.45 ACP and 9 mm), and the German MP 40 (9 mm). Individually or collectively, all these submachine guns were good and plentiful options, or at least good enough, by the standards of the era. As France became involved in a pair of post-colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria, the French Army’s World War II-era SMGs saw service in the early stages of the conflicts.
The “make-do-with-what-you-have” approach initially saved money for the cash-strapped French Republic, but the logistical nightmare of spare parts, plus multiple ammunition and magazine types, caused the French to seek out a single domestically produced solution. National pride certainly played a role, as did the economic strategy of restarting the French armaments industry. At a time when many nations were phasing out submachine guns, the French took the opportunity to use all they had learned about SMGs to create a sub-gun that was distinctly their own.
The Desire for Compact Firepower
To meet the burgeoning needs of their new mechanized forces in NATO, and their rapid deployment airborne and Foreign Legion forces, the French placed particular emphasis on a space-saving design featuring a collapsing stock. By 1949, after testing several designs, the Pistolet Mitrailleur de 9mm Modele 1949 was selected and production soon began at Manufacture d’Armes de Tulle (M.A.T.)
The new SMG was chambered in 9 mm, and production was centered around a metal stamping process that created a sturdy, yet cost-effective weapon for a wide range of applications. The MAT-49 was simple and rugged featuring a retractable stock made of heavy gauge wire. With its stock retracted the MAT-49 is just 18 inches long—with its stock extended, it is 28 inches (with a 9.1-inch barrel).
A unique feature is the folding magazine well, which tucks in neatly beneath the barrel—allowing a safe, compact carry that was particularly appealing for paratroops and vehicle crews. The magazine well could be quickly folded back into the firing position, and the well provides the forward hand grip. The weapon has a bit of heft, weighing nearly 9.5 pounds with a loaded 32-round magazine.
There is no manual safety on the MAT-49, rather, there’s a prominent grip safety. The gun is blowback-operated, firing from an open bolt, with a cyclic rate of 600 rounds per minute. An experienced shooter can easily trigger single rounds. The MAT-49 uses a 32-round, double-stack, single-feed magazine—spring tension is tight, and the magazine loading tool is essential. There was also a 20-round, single-stack magazine, designed to be more resistant to sand and grit, and this was issued to troops in desert environments.
The MAT-49 At War
The MAT-49 was still quite new when its combat career began, arriving in Indochina during 1950 to see action against the Viet Minh’s general counteroffensive late that year. Through four years of bitter fighting until the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954, the MAT-49 became one of the iconic weapons of the First Indochina war. Many thousands were captured by the communist Vietnamese, and these would be used by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong guerrilla forces.
The enterprising Vietnamese communists extended the service life of many of their captured SMGs by creating the “MAT-49 M”, equipped with a longer barrel and rechambered to use the 7.62×25 mm Tokarev round. These variants featured a higher cyclic rate (900 rounds per minute), and a 35-round magazine. The Viet Cong used these against US forces through the 1960s, and spare parts for the MAT-49 M were produced into the 1970s.
During 1958, the North Vietnamese sent a group of (unmodified) MAT-49 SMGs to Algerian communists fighting the French—an international gift of captured weaponry. Meanwhile, the MAT-49 fought on both sides of the war in Algeria from late 1954 until early 1962. Never fancy, but always reliable, troops trusted the MAT-49 to do its deadly work wherever they served. The weapon itself is a testament that the Cold War was much longer and far bloodier than most care to remember.
By 1979, more than 700,000 MAT-49s had been made, beginning at Tulle in 1949, and then at St. Étienne in the mid-1960s. The receiver and grip safety were updated along the way, but the rock-solid MAT-49 stayed functionally the same throughout its long service. While the French were at first reluctant to adopt an SMG, when they finally did their design provided a long-standing validation of the submachine gun concept, across three decades and three continents.
