25069
W. Britain
This MG42 gunner wears the rabbit lined 3⁄4 length anorak peculiar to
members of the Waffen-SS and widely issued to troops serving on the
Eastern Front. In the postwar years militaria collectors have named this
the Kharkov parka due to photographic evidence of its use by Waffen-SS
forces during the Third Battle of Kharkov, although this garment was
also in use during the winter of 1944-45 on the Western Front. The
German MG42 was designed to use the standard German 7.92 X 57mm Mauser
rifle round and to be cheaper and easier to manufacture than its
predecessor, the MG34. It proved to be highly reliable and easy to
operate with a very high cyclic rate of about 1200 rounds per minute
compared to around 850 rounds per minute for the earlier MG 34. This
made it extremely effective in providing suppressive fire resulting in
it being universally feared by Allied troops. Its unique sound was
likened to tearing cloth leading to the nickname “Hitler’s buzzsaw.”