Switzerland has always been and remains a country that is associated with the high quality of manufactured mechanisms on its territory. Regardless of what exactly Swiss designers are designing, watches or weapons, you can be sure that the development of each unit was approached with special care, and strict quality control in production ensures that the products are very competitive in the market, even despite the price.
In the twentieth century, Switzerland was noted for not taking part in major military conflicts, taking the position of the so-called armed neutrality. The geographical position of the country, the high level of training of soldiers and technical equipment in the army, rather than the role of Switzerland in the world market, contributed to the preservation of this position. In addition to the fact that the Swiss designers gained their own experience, they adopted advanced solutions from other countries, which were improved and brought to perfection.
Just like in other countries with a capable army, by the end of World War II, Swiss military officials were concerned about developing their own single machine gun, which was supposed to partially replace heavy and light machine guns in the army, and, if possible, become a weapon installed in as additional for armored vehicles.
The effectiveness in combat of MG-34 and MG-42 machine guns was demonstrated more than clearly, having already proved in practice, and not in theory, that one and the same design can be used for different tasks. In addition, the country was armed with a very good rifle cartridge 7, 5x55, which was not only successfully used in weapons already adopted for service, but also perfectly fit into the concept of a single machine gun.
Cartridge 7, 5x55 Swiss
Despite the fact that this cartridge was developed in 1911, it is still in production and is in demand, albeit small, but in the civilian market. From the military environment, this ammunition was almost completely replaced by NATO standards, like many other things in its time. In the Swiss army, the cartridge served under the designation 7, 5mm GP11, and it can also be found under the name 7, 5mm Schmidt-Rubin M1911.
This ammunition did not appear out of nowhere. This cartridge is an upgrade of the slightly older 7, 5mm GP90 ammunition, which was developed in 1888 by Edward Rubin. The very first rifle for this ammunition was the rifle of Rudolf Schmidt, which was reflected in one of the designations of the already updated ammunition. Cartridge 7, 5mm GP90 had a shorter sleeve - 53.5 mm, in addition, it was loaded with a lead bullet without a shell. A little later, the cartridge received a sheathed bullet, but its shape remained the same. In the process of modernizing the cartridge, the sleeve was lengthened to 55.6 mm, the powder weight and the composition of the powder were changed (apparently for this reason, it was decided to lengthen the sleeve so that there was no temptation to use the updated cartridge in the old weapon). The bullet itself became spindle-shaped and was subsequently repeatedly subjected to changes, including to increase the armor-piercing properties, expand the range of ammunition.
The real bullet diameter of the GP11 cartridge is 7, 73 millimeters. In the version of the cartridge with a bullet with a lead core, the weight of the bullet was 11.3 grams. In the barrel of a Schmidt rifle, this bullet accelerated to a speed of 840 meters per second, respectively, its kinetic energy was slightly less than 4000 Joules. But these insignificant numbers did not determine the ammunition, its main advantage was its quality. Even with gross cartridges, it was possible to achieve a very high accuracy of firing, which was very quickly appreciated by hunters and athletes, whose choice made this cartridge very popular even before the start of World War II.
You can, of course, question the preservation of the same properties in the production of ammunition in wartime, but Switzerland did not suffer from a lack of production capacity or from a lack of quality materials, so that even during the Second World War, the quality of the cartridge did not fall.
"Beta" version of the Swiss unified machine gun
Before the appearance of the first, officially designated as a single machine gun, the Swiss army had various versions of the Hiram Maxim machine gun, as well as the LMG-25 light machine gun designed by Adolf Furrer. Both of these machine guns were powered by 7, 5x55 cartridges and, although they had their own shortcomings, they completely satisfied the military.
Maxim machine guns originally had the designation MG94, according to the year they entered service. These machine guns in the amount of 72 pieces were purchased from England and Germany, they were fed with cartridges 7, 5x53, 5. Subsequently, these machine guns were re-shot under the updated cartridge, and also began to be used as aircraft with an air-cooled barrel. In 1899, another variation of the Maxim machine gun entered service, with the designation MG00, in principle, this weapon was no different from the previous one, the main differences were mainly related to the machines. This machine gun was also later re-barreled under a new cartridge.
The final variant, which has not been renamed anymore, was the MG11. This machine gun was already initially powered by an updated cartridge 7, 5x55, a small batch was ordered in Germany, but the beginning of the First World War forced the production of this weapon to be launched already in Switzerland. Subsequently, the machine gun received minor improvements in the form of a simple telescopic sight or the replacement of a metal feed belt, but its design did not change until it was removed from service in 1951.
Much more interesting was the LGM-25 light machine gun. The fact is that this light machine gun was used, both with a bipod and with a light machine, which, in conjunction with a full-fledged rifle cartridge 7, 5x55, with some stretch allows it to be classified under the category of single machine guns, if, of course, we close our eyes to lack of the ability to quickly replace the barrel and store food.
Weapon automation deserves special attention. The barrel of the machine gun was rigidly connected to the bolt carrier, inside which the bolt was located, connected to the bolt carrier through three levers. Under the influence of recoil when fired, the barrel, and, accordingly, the bolt carrier, rolled back, while the bolt lever system interacted with the tide in the receiver, which set it in motion. As a result, the movement of the barrel and bolt carrier was much shorter than the movement made directly by the bolt itself. The supply of ammunition and the ejection of spent cartridges was carried out through the bolt carrier. The return of the mechanisms to their original position was carried out by one return spring, which pushed the bolt carrier with the barrel forward, and thanks to the tide in the bolt carrier, the levers moving the bolt also took their place, which picked up the next cartridge from the store during its movement.
It was all invented for a reason. Due to the fact that the mass of both the bolt group and the machine gun barrel was used throughout the entire stage of reloading the weapon, it was possible to achieve a very high stability of the rate of fire, which, in turn, was limited to 450 rounds per minute, with a relatively light bolt group and a small length receiver.
Such an automation system had its own disadvantages, which, as for me, had much more advantages. The main drawback was that the bolt-action lever system, in its folded position, protruded beyond the dimensions of the receiver. This led to two problems at once.
Firstly, the movement of the levers had to occur in a horizontal plane, since with their vertical arrangement, even the smallest lever overlapped the sighting devices, which would force the rear sight and front sight to be placed on the racks, which in turn would force the shooter to expose a large area of his head under enemy fire when aiming. In addition, with the vertical arrangement of the levers, it would be necessary to move the trigger either forward, creating a risk of injury to the shooter's face with the lever, or backward, increasing the total length of the weapon. Based on this, the location of the magazine attached to the machine gun can only be horizontal, which, in principle, is not such a big drawback, especially when using the machine.
The second, much more serious drawback is the need to protect the shutter group from contamination. It is clear that when firing, you can protect the levers from contamination only by placing them in the casing, as was done with the short lever on the right side. The magazine receiver is a part that completely breaks the symmetry of the machine gun receiver and closes the short lever. So that the place does not go to waste, the store retainer is also located there, and in front of the store on top, a small fire mode switch, also known as the fuse switch, was placed.
So that instead of a machine gun a hippopotamus did not turn out, they did a different thing with a long lever, namely, they limited themselves to protecting it only in the stowed position. The long lever is protected by two covers, which open automatically when the shutter is cocked, closing the moving lever itself from the back and top from the shooter. In principle, provided that in the process of firing the main dirt can only come from above when firing a machine-gun crew, this is quite enough.
The question of the absence of a belt feed for this machine gun will be quite natural, since with the difference in the speed of movement of the barrel and the bolt carrier in comparison with the speed of movement of the bolt itself, it is not so difficult to organize the power supply of the machine gun from the belt. Obviously, the main problem was the strength of the bolt carrier, in which an additional slot would have to be made at the bottom to eject spent cartridges. And although this problem is not at all a problem, when developing a machine gun already officially named as a single one, such a weapon design was not considered.
In general, if a machine gun could be powered by a belt, if the barrel of the weapon was easily replaceable, if the rate of fire was raised at least one and a half times, then it would be possible to speak with confidence about a single machine gun, but all this is not present in the weapon, although the rudiments of a single machine gun, of course, are.
The body weight of the LMG-25 is 8, 65 kilograms. The total length is 1163 mm with a barrel length of 585 mm. Food is provided from detachable magazines with a capacity of 30 rounds. The rate of fire is 450 rounds per minute.
The first Swiss single machine gun MG-51
Swiss military officials developed the requirements for a new subclass of weapons for their army at the end of 1942, having carefully studied the German MG-34 and MG-42 machine guns. By 1950, two leaders emerged, both domestic (for Switzerland) bottling - W + F and SIG. Obviously, the command had special warm feelings for the German machine guns, since the winner turned out to be very similar to the German weapon, although it had its own characteristics. The losers did not remain in the loser, selling their development to Denmark, but more on this in more detail a little later.
The automatics of the MG-51 machine gun is built according to the scheme with a short barrel stroke, the barrel bore is locked by means of two stops that can be set apart. The choice, as practice shows, is not the most successful and durable, but in the Swiss version it was possible to achieve not only a good resource of the bolt group, but also a relatively high accuracy throughout the entire service life of the weapon. The tape feed mechanism completely repeated the German MG-42, however, and the competitor had it the same, apparently this requirement was prescribed by the military. The mount of the machine gun barrel was also completely copied. Power was supplied from a metal non-scattering belt with an open link.
The receiver of the machine gun was made by milling, which negatively affected not only the cost of the weapon, but also its weight, which was 16 kilograms. To these 16 kilograms, you can add the weight of the machine, about 26 kilograms, and the movements of the machine-gun crew become similar to the movement of handymen with a stretcher on a construction site on payday. The total length of the machine gun was 1270 millimeters, the barrel length was 563 millimeters. The rate of fire is 1000 rounds per minute.
Despite the fact that the MG-51 machine gun had a fairly large weight for a weapon of this class, it is still in service with the Swiss army, although its production was curtailed. The replacement for the machine gun was the Belgian FN Minimi, which feeds on ammunition 5, 56x45. Based on this, we can say that Switzerland is rejecting uniform machine guns.
If we give an objective assessment to the MG-51 machine gun, then this weapon loses on several points at once to machine guns of this class from other manufacturers. First of all, you need to pay attention to the milled receiver, thanks to which the weapon has such a mass. A receiver made from one blank, from which all unnecessary was cut off, was too expensive to manufacture, both in terms of material costs and production time. The large body weight of the machine gun made it difficult to move the machine gun crew, but the same weight made it possible to conduct a fairly heap of fire when using bipods, although the ability to quickly change position seems to me to be of higher priority in the context of using a single machine gun.
It is possible that these shortcomings of the weapon were the main reason that the MG-51 machine gun was never offered for export, however, the weapon lasted 50 years in service without significant upgrades and improvements, which means it met the requirements of the Swiss army.
Single machine gun MG-50
As mentioned above, the main competitor in the MG-51 machine gun competition was the SIG's MG-50 machine gun. Despite the fact that this single machine gun was lighter, like the machine proposed for it, it lost in the accuracy of firing, which was the main reason for the refusal. It should be noted that in terms of reliability, the design proposed by SIG had an advantage, as well as in terms of durability, not to mention the cost of production. Weapons were also cheaper to repair. But this is only in comparison with the MG-51, when compared with other models of single machine guns, it becomes obvious that the MG-50 was not ideal either.
The automatics of the MG-50 machine gun is built according to a scheme with the removal of part of the powder gases from the barrel of the weapon with a short piston stroke, the barrel bore is locked by tilting the bolt in the vertical plane. The tape supply system, back, was taken from the German MG-42 machine gun. An interesting point in the weapon was that the barrel was removed together with the discharge of powder gases and the cylinder of the machine gun's gas engine. The only significant advantage of this solution is perhaps the faster replacement of the barrel of the weapon.
At the development stage of the MG-50 machine gun, the weapon was tested both with the 7, 5x55 cartridge, and with the 6, 5x55 ammunition, which was used in the Swiss version of the Mauser M-96 rifle. They paid attention to this ammunition due to the rather large amount of these cartridges in warehouses. In addition, a smaller caliber cartridge made it possible, albeit slightly, to reduce the weight of the carried ammunition. The possibility of switching between 7, 5x55 and 6, 5x55 ammunition by replacing the barrel of the weapon was not excluded, so we can say that the designers of SIG looked a couple of decades ahead when the fashion of an easy transition from caliber to caliber came. If we talk about the comparison between the ammunition when used in the MG-50 machine gun, then the cartridge showed itself well, but at distances over 800 meters, a clear advantage was fixed for a larger caliber ammunition.
In addition to the fact that a single MG-50 machine gun was tested with "native" ammunition, the company considered the possibility of using foreign ammunition and, as it turned out later, this was not done in vain. In addition to Swiss cartridges, German ammunition 7, 92x57 was used. This ammunition was chosen in view of its wide distribution, the calculation was on the fact that not all countries had the opportunity to conduct their own developments, the result of which would be a single machine gun, and there were more than enough people who wanted to get such a weapon to arm their army. Thus, a machine gun for common ammunition was provided with success in the weapon market, in theory. In practice, the MG-50 turned out to be not as promising as it seemed to the manufacturer. The economy in the post-war period was not in the best condition and most countries could not afford the purchase of weapons, since all funds were directed to the restoration of industries and infrastructure.
Denmark was the only country that allowed itself to purchase this weapon, but in this case there were some nuances. Firstly, the weapon for Denmark was adapted to use the more powerful American ammunition.30-06 (7, 62x63), with which the designers coped quite successfully, without making significant changes to the design of the weapon itself. Secondly, the purchase was a one-time purchase for SIG, after fulfilling its obligations under the contract, the production of weapons in Switzerland was completed, and in 1955, the company began developing a new, more advanced weapon model. In service with the Danish army, the MG-50 machine gun was listed under the name M / 51.
The body weight of the machine gun was 13.4 kilograms, the weight of the machine proposed in the competition was 19.7 kilograms. Obviously, the MG-50 machine gun had an advantage over the MG-51 in terms of weight, but, even so, it cannot be called light by modern standards. The barrel length of the weapon was 600 millimeters, while the total length was 1245 millimeters. An interesting feature was that the rate of fire of the weapon, depending on the tasks assigned to it, could vary from 600 to 900 rounds per minute.
The machine gun was fed from a non-scattering metal tape, consisting of pieces of 50 rounds, parts of the tape were connected to each other by a cartridge, thus, 5 pieces of tape were assembled and placed in a box of tape for 250 rounds, which was also borrowed from the Germans.
Single machine guns of the MG-710 family
After the failure in the competition for a single machine gun for the Swiss army and the sale of its own version of the weapon to Denmark, SIG did not give up and began to develop a new model of the machine gun, already taking into account all the wishes of potential customers, that is, the machine gun was originally designed not for internal use, but for export. Despite this, the first version of the weapon with the designation MG-55 was developed for cartridge 7, 5x55. Subsequently, there were options for the MG-57-1 machine gun chambered for 6, 5x55 and MG-57-2 under 7, 92x57.
Having brought the design of the machine gun to acceptable results, the designers of the SIG company designated the weapon as MG-710, on the market this weapon was offered in three versions: under the Swiss cartridge 6, 5x55 MG-710-1, under the German 7, 92x57 MG-710-2 and the most mass for ammunition 7, 62x51 MG-710-3. It was in this version that the weapon was adopted by the armies of Chile, Liberia, Brunei, Bolivia and Liechtenstein. As is clear from the list of countries where weapons were put into service, the MG-710 machine gun did not become widespread and, although it became quite famous, it was not popular. Machine gun variants 1 and 2, due to the ammunition used, although offered for some time for purchase, were soon withdrawn, since the demand was zero. Since 1982, the production of this machine gun has been discontinued.
From the first glance at the weapon, it immediately recognizes German roots. Most sources indicate that the machine gun was created on the basis of the German MG-45. It is not entirely clear how you can create something based on something that was not in mass production. Rather, the same MG-42 was taken as a basis, and the improvements that were applied in the design were already completely Swiss, since when comparing the data that is available on the MG-45 and MG-710, it becomes clear that the design improvements, even and are similar, but achieved in different ways.
The automatics of MG-710 machine guns are built according to the scheme with a semi-free bolt, which is braked by two stops in the front of the bolt, which enter the grooves in the barrel. You need to pay attention to the fact that it is the stops that are bent to the sides, and not the rollers, are used, although the principle of operation is completely similar. The barrel bore is locked due to the fact that the wedge-shaped part of the bolt group interacts with the lugs, forcing them to be held in the grooves in the barrel. After the shot, the powder gases through the bottom of the sleeve and the front of the bolt group act on the wedge supporting the protrusions, which moves back, allowing the protrusions to come out of the grooves and allowing the bolt to roll back after the bullet leaves the machine gun barrel.
Like other semi-breechblock weapons, the MG-710 proved to be susceptible to contamination in the receiver and demanding lubrication depending on the ambient temperature. Despite this, there were no specific complaints about the reliability of the weapon, and those that were present were associated, most often, with the lack of normal maintenance of the machine gun.
A much more interesting point in the design of the weapon can be called the fact that it could be fed from both non-scattering and loose belts, although it was not possible to find out if any manipulations with the machine gun were required to change the type of supply belt.
The body weight of the machine gun is equal to 9, 25 kilograms, the machine gun has a mass of 10 kilograms. The barrel length is 560 millimeters, the total length of the weapon is 1146 millimeters. Rate of fire - 900 rounds per minute.
Conclusion
It is not difficult to see that the Swiss designers did not succeed in creating the design of a single machine gun, which could become the basis for subsequent upgrades and serve for a long period of time in the ranks of the armed forces. Despite the fact that both our own developments and borrowed, in one form or another, foreign were used, the result still turned out to be worse than expected. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue with the fact that even such not the most popular designs, made with Swiss precision and attention to detail, worked flawlessly and for a long time.
We can say that the Swiss were let down by German machine guns, the design of which, although it was very advanced for its time and meeting all the requirements, was clearly not able to compete with single machine guns with a gas venting automation system in terms of low cost of production and reliability in adverse operating conditions.
It is not entirely clear why a rather interesting self-developed automation scheme, used in the LMG-25 machine gun, was not used. Despite the fact that the use of levers in the design of bolt groups of firearms has already become a relic of the past, such an automation system seems to be very promising in view of the fact that the powder gases themselves do not directly act on the lever system of the bolt, which makes it possible to manufacture relatively light bolts when using powerful rifle ammunition. However, like any design, such a bolt group is not without its flaws, but there are flaws in the automatic gas outlet system and in the semi-free shutter, and in general there is nothing ideal.
As for the competition for a single machine gun for the Swiss army, there is information only about the finalists, that is, about the machine guns of the W + F and SIG companies, and there were obviously participants in this competition from other countries. Such information would help to understand why the Swiss preferred German designs in their performance, since it was not only the combat experience of using the MG-34 and MG-42, but also in comparing these weapons with other designs.
Sources of photos and information:
forum.guns.ru
forgottenweapons.com
gunsite.narod.ru
forum.axishistory.com
