Poll - Favorite 7.62mm MG

[perardua]

The L7A2 GPMG. I accepted it into my life as my personal saviour and have yet to regret the decision.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by perardua

The L7A2 GPMG. I accepted it into my life as my personal saviour and have yet to regret the decision.

Imagine some person in a post-apoc future coming upon that statement, and a religion growing up around it..."have you accepted the Jimpy as your personal lord and savior?"

[perardua]

Frankly, that would be awesome. I am so tempted to go away and start working on the tenets of that religion. Possibly in the style of the Holy Hand Grenade.

[pmulcahy11b]

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest mother f**cker in the valley,
Thy Jimpy and thy Holy Hand Grenade, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a firebase before me in the presence of my enemies;
Thou annnoistest my head with Kevlar; My ammunition runneth over.

[Abbott Shaull]

Being when I was in, the M60 still was in inventory. The M240s were with Mechanized/Armor units due to being the co-axis gun on the Tanks/APC/IFV/CFVs roaming around in the US Army, but the ground element in those unit usually lugged the M60.

The M60, much like the early M16s suffered from number of issue that were due to training. And again, both weapon with such low tolerance it shows when compared with AK/PK family.

Since we are dealing with GPMG for multi roles. I still have a fond spot for the M60, but it wouldn't matter all were good systems. The two things I would have to look at, is how the gun was to be used primarily, and if it would the end user would want to make accurate short burst or use the spray and pray method of sending rounds down range. I mean would the weapon be vehicle mounted with the option of taking it that mount for dismount use? Would it be used be the Platoon MG team weapon? Vehicle would probably be M240, if it was the Platoon MG or dismount team MG it would be M60 from the past. The PK wouldn't be bad choice if you were looking for spray and pray too keep head downs.

MG3 being basically WWII designed (ironic same one used as based for the M60 and M240/MAG) scaled to 7.62N wouldn't be bad choice either. Forget which WWII era gun it based off, I want to say MG42 and Allied troops hated it since it had such a high rate of fire. Of course by this time of the war the Germans had the habit of issuing less Rifles and more sub-machineguns too. Oh well.

[HorseSoldier]

MG3 --> Directly descended from the MG42.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Yeah, the history of the MG3 goes something like this -
MG1 was reverse engineered from original MG42 but couldn't be put into production soon enough so MG2 was produced in the interim.
MG2 was basically the MG42 re-chambered from 7.92mm Mauser to 7.62mm NATO.
MG1 went through a few tweaks to become the MG3
I think the MG2 was also updated to the MG3 configuration.

While the M60 took parts of the MG42 and also the FG42 rifle, the FN MAG is not related to the MG42 at all. The MAG is basically the Browning M1918 BAR mechanism turned upside down and given a belt feed.