The Madsen-Saetter is a general purpose machine gun that had the unfortunate luck to compete against the MG42/MG3 and FN MAG. It is a quite nice gun to shoot, but not quite up to the overall standard et by those other two guns, arguably the best of their type ever made in the West. This example is part of the ale to Indonesia, chambered for .30-06 and using German MG34/42 or DM1 belts.
Prototype
Madsen M1888 Forsøgsrekylgevær: The Strangest Semiauto
Development of the weapon that would eventually become the very successful 1902 Madsen light machine gun began many years earlier, in 1883. Two Danes, Madsen and Rasmussen, began working on a recoil-operated self loading rifle […]
Light MGs
Project Lightening Episode 03: Walking Fire
Project Lightening is a collaborative series with Othais and Mae of C&Rsenal in which we test all seven light machine guns and automatic rifles of World War One and put them through a series of […]
Belt-fed
Belt-fed Madsen tank gun
We spotted this interesting gun at SAR West 2011. It’s actually a parts kit, as the sides of the receiver have been chopped up and discarded. But the remaining pieces make for a very interesting […]
To call a gun “good” one has to expand thousands of rounds counting “main between failure” otherwise it is highly subjective first feel. To me the RoF seems bit too high which adds to wear and tear. The German link fits because 30.06 was based on Mauser shot; head diameter is the same
Some folks are suggesting the next weapon to check out – AA52, long overdue. I’d also add Brazilian Uirapuru, if you can get hand on one. They are definitely FWs https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Mekanika_Uirapuru
How about a trip to Brazil or/and Argentina?
“(…)“main between failure” (…)”
What is main between failure, as opposed to mean time between failures?
“(…)he RoF seems bit too high which adds to wear and tear(…)”
According to https://modernfirearms.net/en/machineguns/denmark-machineguns/madsen-saetter-eng/
The gas block is fitted with a manual gas regulator that permits adjustments for various conditions and rates of fire.
and
Rate of fire 700 – 1000 rounds per minute
It is typo, you nitpick. If you were English speaker you’d know right a way.
MEAN BETWEEN FAILURE is a measure of reliability.
Loved the video. I was afraid we wouldn’t get a chance to see it fired.
I know it’d be a huge pain in the ass, but I’d love it if we could ever get a real set of “systems” videos showing the range of action for machineguns as systems; including the gamut of operations from bipod LMG mode to tripod support fires. You really see some differences when you do that, which most people don’t appreciate unless they’ve crewed the guns, themselves.
My biggest problem with talking about the need for better tripods while I was still on active duty was that there was really no effective way for me to demonstrate the issues like the lack of an ability to change command height or illustrate the advantages of having the gunner below the muzzle line with a periscopic sight system. You can talk about it all until you’re blue in the face, but unless you can actually see the advantages, you simply can’t communicate the damn point to most people.
Yeah, because most people think that a machine gunner just sits at the rear and sprays the entire field indiscriminately until his weapon explodes from overuse. Not to mention that there is some stupid media stigma against any “gadgetry” that makes a machine gun more “complicated” than a bullet hose on a tripod. The moment you present that periscopic sight, some idiot is bound to think you’re creating an automated gun bot that some evil despot could use to massacre some helpless civilian neighborhood. I could be wrong.
I’d just like to keep my guys alive.
One of the young men I trained wound up taking a round just under the brim of his helmet in Afghanistan, responding to fire during a patrol. If he’d been behind a current MG3/Lafette tripod with the periscopic sight, his head would never have been exposed enough for him to get hit.
That’s really the extent of my concernt, TBH. I just loathe the waste of life. Especially the ones I’m responsible for.
I agree with your opinion on the matter. It’s just that some folks I know want weapons to stay as pure weapons and not “one more step to an evil killer robot.” They fail to see the difference between survival gear and eldritch artifice.