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They were too busy posing for a photo op to remember to run the charging handle back forward?

That's it, you win

The thing that threw me off is it looks like he's firing it as the empty portion of the belt looks like it's jumping around, but it must be an optical illusion.

The belt is rolled over on itself. Kind of forms a loop.

Is this an authentic photo? The receiver looks nice and dark, the BBL jacket looks totally worn.....just like my Izzy kit. (I duracoated the receiver to cover the welding and left the jacket bare)

Those 2 guys just dont look authentic. Maybe Im wrong, but they just dont have the 'look' of a 1940's German male.

Also the German Army was pretty anal about using the proper equipment. It looks like they are posing shooting at an aircraft but are not using their anti-aircraft sights which they are suppose to be carrying with them.

--fjruple

I've seen this type of picture before, often with the belt in upside down or wrong end first. They're pictures posed by the guys to send home or just to show them getting to play with the guns. They obviously don't know what they're doing, since neither the guns nor the soldiers are ready to fire.

Most newbees in the German army didn't know anything about machine guns other than to say "Hey Otto, take my picture!" while making machinegun noises.

So we have concluded that the picture is staged. Thats fine, Ive done it and so have my Soldiers, countless times. (You should see the support guys when they get a chance to sit behind a M2 or a Mk19)

But....my question is......is this picture really from the WWII era, or a very well done recreation by modern actors?

As stated earlier, the gun is on a AA tripod with no sights, the receiver and BBL dont match, the emplacement they are dug into seems to make it very impractical to shoot at angles below 45 degrees...there are flowers growing which means this pit wasnt freshly dug. At this point Im playing internet sleuth. I think the pic is from a modern day reenactor done in sepia. (very well done, I may add, but nothing gets by us MG42.US detectives)

It may look like theyr on a beach or something like that. Looks like sand.

Without recognizing one of the guys in the picture, it's pretty difficult to say whether it's wartime or not. It was made as a scan of a photograph, and wasn't originally a digital picture. The file doesn't have any camera, lens, or gps data.