First up, you may recall that a while back we had some photos of an MG17 belt-feed adapter salvaged from the wreck of an Me-109. The fellow who owned that piece was hoping to restore it to functionality, and use it on his MG15 ground gun. Well, he did finally get it completely disassembled and sent us some more photos:
He also came to the conclusion that it would be more work to fit onto his MG15 than the project is worth to him, and is wondering if anyone out there would be interested in having it for the parts – he just wants to recoup his initial investment. It is a left-to-right feeding adapter (they were mounted in pairs, so there are versions that feed both ways). If you are potentially interested, drop me a line at admin@forgottenweapons.com and I’ll put you in contact with the owner. He reports that the internals are in pretty good shape, with the exception of the rechtsförderung, which was pretty far gone and fell apart upon disassembly.
On a totally unrelated note, I also was sent a link to a YouTube video of some interest. It is a home recording made of the 1968 closing ceremony of Springfield Arsenal, when the facility was shut down for good. The film is short, jerky, and has no sound (think Zapruder film, but in black and white) – it’s really pretty lousy except for the subject matter. It’s hard to say for sure, but at about 0:44 in the speaker on the podium appears to be John Garand. Thanks for pointing that out, Lee!
Oh, and one other thing – I will be doing a couple hours of “ask me anything” over at Reddit on Sunday the 29th, from 4-7pm PST. I’m sure it will be entertaining (possibly too entertaining), and if you have anything gun- or non-gun-related that you’ve been wanting to ask that will be a chance to do it wil my undivided attention.
Reddit?!?! You crazy
We have a lot of readers on Reddit – and I am very happy to have people who are less knowledgable (less obsessed? 🙂 ) in the audience. If I’m only talking to people who are as hopelessly deep into the subject as me (you guys know who you are…) then I’m not doing much to expand appreciation of these guns. This ties into why I avoid political commentary and gun rights material as a general rule – I believe that if I can help people develop an interest in and appreciation for the deeper aspects of guns, those folks will take care of the politics issues on their own initiative. Once I’ve got you hooked on how cool they are, you have a pretty good incentive to ensure that you are able to possess them.
I think you’ll be pretty safe on /r/guns! The site has an excellent cross section of shooters from around the world.
Small German correction: It is definitely “Zuführerteile”, not “-teilen”. That’s a typical American way of trying to build a German plural.
And I got a feeling that “MG17 Zuführung”, “MG17 Zuführungsgehäuse” and “MG17 Zuführungsteile” will be more appropriate: Although the other variations are grammatically possible, there is a particular style for technical words (simple rule: the clunkier the better). Using google as language corpus seems to prove me right (300 für Zuführergehäuse, 600 for Zuführgehäuse and 900 for Zuführungsgehäuse).
I think the sprocket is called “Zuführer” if this is true, “Zuführergehäuse” would be correct.
One could assume that, but as alternative:
The Zuführer is part of the process called Zuführung and the whole process is encapsulated by the Gehäuse.
Or The Zuführer executes an an action called zuführen, so it becomes a Zuführgehäuse.
All versions can be explained. That is why I would stick to the typically German way of forming the words. The tendency of our bureaucracy to create compound words for processes build on the normalisation of verbs with the suffix -ung has been a running gag for over a century. Grammatically, the -ung form form emphasises the continuation of a process.
Regarding the video – it would be ironic if that were Garand. Springfield forced him into retirement (basically laid him off) and then had to hire him back to “fix” the M14. I’ll bet he had no love lost for the Armory’s management.