The ''Maschinengewehr 18 Tank und Flieger'' or MG 18 TuF, is a German dual-purpose

heavy machine gun A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light machine gun, light, medium machine gun, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable (carried by one person) and require weapon mount, mountin ...

that was designed to fill both anti-tank and

anti-aircraft Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

roles. Developed at the end of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, it fired the same 13.25 × 92mm SR or ''tankpatrone 18'' armor-piercing round later used by the

Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr The Mauser 13 mm anti-tank rifle ( ger, Tankgewehr M1918, usually abbreviated ''T-Gewehr'') is the world's first anti-tank rifle—the first rifle designed for the sole purpose of destroying armored targets—and the only anti-tank rifle to s ...

anti-tank rifle.

History

The genesis of the MG 18 was closely linked to the appearance of the first British and French tanks on the Western Front during 1916-1917. In October 1917 the ''Gewehr Prüfungs Kommission'' (GPK), on behalf of the Ministry of War, announced a six company competition for the construction of an automatic weapon capable of firing the new 13.25 × 92mm SR ammunition designed by the Polte cartridge factory in Magdeburg. The two finalists in this competition were Rheinmetall and ''Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg'' (

MAN A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromo ...

). The Rheinmetall design used a top mounted

pan magazine A magazine is an ammunition storage and feeding device for a repeating firearm, either integral within the gun (internal/fixed magazine) or externally attached (detachable magazine). The magazine functions by holding several cartridges with ...

similar to the Lewis gun, while the MAN design was a

belt-fed upright=1.35, An M60 machine gun belt loaded with 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges, aboard a U.S. Navy">7.62×51mm_NATO.html" ;"title="M60 machine gun belt loaded with 7.62×51mm NATO">M60 machine gun belt loaded with 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges, aboar ...

gun. After a series of tests and modifications, the MAN design was officially adopted by the German army on August 13, 1918. It was planned that some 4,000 MG 18s would be built starting in January 1919. However, it is estimated that only 50 guns were actually built before the

Armistice of 11 November 1918 The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice signed at Le Francport near Compiègne that ended fighting on land, sea, and air in World War I between the Entente and their last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices ...

and none were used in combat. Besides the end of the war, there were other factors which limited the number of MG 18s produced, such as lack of production capacity, cost, complexity, weight and poor mobility. The collapse of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

and the prohibition of design and production of weapons imposed by the

Versailles Treaty The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 19 ...

stopped any further development of the MG 18.

Description

The MG 18 was essentially a scaled-up

MG 08 The ''Maschinengewehr'' 08, or MG 08, was the German Army's standard machine gun in World War I and is an adaptation of Hiram S. Maxim's original 1884 Maxim gun. It was produced in a number of variants during the war. The MG 08 served during Wo ...

heavy machine gun, the MG 08 itself being a licensed derivative of the

Maxim gun The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian M ...

. The MG 18, like the Maxim gun, was a belt-fed, water-cooled heavy machine gun which operated on the basis of

short recoil Recoil operation is an operating mechanism used to implement locked breech, autoloading firearms. Recoil operated firearms use the energy of recoil to cycle the action, as opposed to gas operation or blowback operation using the pressure of the pr ...

and a toggle lock. Once cocked and fired, the MG 18 would continue firing rounds until the trigger was released or until all available ammunition was expended. In the anti-tank role the gun was fed by a 75-round belt, while in the anti-aircraft role it was fed by a 30-round drum magazine. Due to the weight of the gun, , a two-wheeled carriage was provided and a crew of 6 men were needed to service the gun. The MG 18 was designed for the ammunition of the

anti-tank rifle. With its much shorter barrel, the muzzle velocity only reached , compared to for the Mauser 1918; however, this was still sufficient to penetrate of

face-hardened Case-hardening or surface hardening is the process of hardening the surface of a metal object while allowing the metal deeper underneath to remain soft, thus forming a thin layer of harder metal at the surface. For iron or steel with low carbon ...

steel armor plate at , and at .

References

External links

13 mm TuF variant

{{DEFAULTSORT:MG 18 Early machine guns Heavy machine guns Machine guns of Germany World War I machine guns World War I German infantry weapons