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WWI German lMG08/15

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Product Description

An extremely rare WWI German lMG08/15 aircraft machine gun made by Erfurt in 1918. Perforated jacket, Klingstrom cocking lever removed, rear cover FWF safety lever, Gewehr Fabrik logo to fuzee spring cover (very rare on logo on lMG08/15). Top cover missing, barrel welded at muzzle. Retaining most original finish. Serial number 8339a.

The lMG 08 was developed by the Spandau arsenal as a rigidly mounted aircraft machine gun and went into production in 1915, in single-gun mounts, for use on the E.I through the E.III production versions of the Fokker Eindecker. A lower case letter "L" beginning the prefix meant luftgekühlt (air-cooled) rather than Luft (air). The lMG 08s were later used in pairs by the time of the introduction of the Fokker D.III and Albatros D.I biplane fighters in 1916, as fixed and synchronized cowling guns firing through the propeller.The LMG 08/15 version was developed using the same airframe mounting geometry as the earlier ordnance to allow interchangeability between the earlier lMG 08 and later LMG 08/15 models, with the still well-perforated cooling jacket reduced to a 92.5 mm diameter. The lMG 08's and lMG 08/15's would always be used as fixed forward-aimed synchronized firing ordnance in dual mounts on German single-seat fighter aircraft, first appearing most notably on the mass-produced examples of Robert Thelen's Albatros D.I and D.II fighters in late 1916, and singly on German armed two-seat observation aircraft for synchronized forward-firing armament. A device, occasionally fitted to the rear surface of the LMG 08/15's backplate, told the pilot how much ammunition was left to fire, and later on a significant upgrade to the gun's aerial usability was the fitting of the Klingstrom device on the right side of the receiver, which allowed the gun to be cocked and loaded with one hand from the cockpit. Various cocking/charging handle styles evolved with a simplified distinctive long handled cocking/charging device finally becoming preferred late in the war.

LMG 08/15's used the 30mm "two hole" ammunition belts of the flexible Parabellum MG14 machine gun rather than the wider "three hole" belts of the MG 08/15 water-cooled infantry weapon. It is possible that these belts were used as they were a bit lighter and less bulky than the wider "three hole" ground gun belts and certainly made for standardization which would have been easier for the armorers and in addition allowed for smaller and lighter "tubes" or "chutes" that guided the empty belts into storage containers in the aircraft after firing. It is a common misconception that the tubes or chutes coming out of the fixed mounted aviation LMG 08/15 fixed guns were for expended cartridge cases; in actuality these attachments were for guiding the empty cartridge belts into a container inside the fuselage of the aircraft so that the belts would not interfere with the operation of the aircraft. As the entire MG 08 Spandau family of German machine guns ejected their empty cartridge cases forward through a round hole in the receiver under the barrel (as can be clearly seen on many videos) these cartridge cases were guided out of the aircraft (except on post Fokker Eindecker Fokker designed aircraft) through tubes from under the barrel to the bottom of the fuselage. With Fokker designed aircraft following the Eindecker the cartridge cases were ejected without tubes from the receiver hole directly into open trays that guided the tumbling cartridge cases backward and sideways onto the sloped fuselage decking which them streamed down past the cockpit on either side. These trays are clearly visible in photographs but have rarely been recognized for their purpose. Hermann Goering, who flew both the Fokker Dr.I andFokker D.VII was obviously so annoyed with the case tumbling out in front of him that he had deflectors made on his aircraft to ensure the empty cartridge cases did not find their way into his cockpit. On photographs of Goering's aircraft these plates, only seen on his aircraft, are very prevalent and have even been recognized in scale models of his aircraft copying his particular planes, but even then most historians have failed to recognize their purpose. Both empty belt guides and trays were attached directly to the machine guns rather than to the aircraft. In the famous film showing Australian officers handling the LMG 08/15's from the crashed Baron von Richthofen's triplane, the Fokker type belt tubes/chutes and empty cartridge trays can be clearly seen still attached to the guns.More than 23,000 examples of the LMG 08/15 were produced during World War I but hardly any survive today.

 

 

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