MG-17 German Aircraft Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
•
15m
The MG-17 is a belt-fed 8mm machine gun that was used on a large number of Luftwaffe aircraft early in World War II. The gun was developed by Rheinmetall through its subsidiary in Solothurn, Switzerland (as a way to evade the Versailles Treaty restrictions on arms development). The basic action is a short recoil system with a rotating locking nut holding the bolt and barrel together. The basic system was adopted by the Austrian and Hungarian armies as an infantry machine gun, but its main use was in an aerial role.
For aircraft use, the MG-17 was equipped with a belt feed mechanism which was easily interchangeable for either left side or right side feeding. It used a pneumatic system of controls to allow remote charging and firing, and was mounted in the wings or cowling of the Bf 109, Bf 110, Fw 190, Junkers Ju 87, Junkers Ju 88, He 111, Do 17/215, Fw 189, and others. Later in the war the 8x57mm round would become insufficient and the Germans would move to 13mm, 15mm, 20mm, and ultimately even 30mm aircraft guns, but the MG-17 had a huge roles in the early years of the war.
Note that the gun in this particular video has been outfitted with a homemade adapter to mount it on a tripod, so that it can be fired without needing a 75 year old airplane as an accessory.
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
LAR Grizzly: A 1911 on .45 Winchester...
Developed in the early 1980s by Perry Arnett, the LAR Grizzly was manufactured from 1983 until 1998. It was an expensive gun (base price was $675 in 1985), a huge gun (48oz / 1.36kg), and a powerful gun - its .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge throws a 230 grain bullet at 1450 feet/sec (15g @ 450 m/...
-
Lanchester MkI: Britain's First Emerg...
The Lanchester MkI was the first British effort to produce a domestic submachine gun during World War II. The British military had rejected these types of arms as "gangster guns" prior to the war, and did not see them as useful in a military context. Well, that opinion changed rather quickly as t...
-
Gebrüder Rempt Four-Barrel Enormous F...
In 1917, the German military issued a contract for the construction of 2500 of these unique and impressive 4-barreled flare launchers. They were manufactured by 7 different companies (this example being from Gebrüder Rempt), and were intended for the illumination of airfields. To this end, they d...
