This heavy machine gun appeared out of nowhere this last month. It’s manufactured by Breda in 1939. It all matches however the barrel has a 1938 roll date so I am assuming they dated the major parts upon manufacture and then assembled them later. It’s a dewat obviously but a nice one, with a moving bolt and a topcover that lifts to reveal the guts of the gun. A great back drop to my Carcanos!
Another bit of kit I’ll never get to use. The Italian M30 Breda Light Machinegun fired Carcano 6.5×52 rounds just like the standard Italian military rifles of the time. This is a stripper clip designed to refill the horizontally fed magazines for this gun.It holds 20 rounds.
Here is a mid/late war phosphated anti-aircraft sight ring for the MG34 machinegun. The gun was placed on the drelfuss tripod mount and this sight attached. The sight is unmarked.
The big problem with owning machineguns, functional or not, is how do you display them.They weigh about 30 pounds and personally I don’t trust them to stay on a wall hanger. A few weeks ago I found a Lafette for the MG42. This one is original 1941 manufacture but used postwar by the Austrian Bundesheer. It has all original pads as well as the correct range card still attached. Looks lovely. Of course the feet will do terrible things to my hardwood floors so I still have to solve for that.
Finally after 5 years of searching I have snagged a Maschinengewehr 42. This example is manufactured by Wilhelm-Gustloff-Werke, as indicated by the dfb stamped on the side of the receiver rear. Gustloff used a two digit code to indicate the year of manufacture. In this case it’s MU which is 1944.
Heavily overpainted but still with the original dunkelgrün paint showing through underneath. Yes I did attach this to my MG34. Yes it did fall off with 50 rounds in it and hit my toe.
This is my 1938 Mauser manufactured MG34. It is numbered 8998 and matches except for the stock. It is stamped BSW 1938. What’s nice about these pre-war mg’s is the machined top cover, compared to the stamped ones that they changed to later. Again, it’s a demil. But it’s also a beast. Thank you Arms Code of Canada.
Kiwi Medals 