its a ripper. I've been waiting some time for the transfer to come in and after a minor ATF screwup on the paperwork its here. We went out yesterday in the freezing cold and ran a few drums through it. Other than discovering that one drum was missing one of its dummy rounds everything ran great. The missing dummy was replaced with a live round that won't ever feed so that was a simple fix....I'll make up a few dummies to keep from having live rounds in the drums, no need to take any silly chances. Now I'm just waiting for the repro bipod mount from IMA to use my MG34 bipod instead of the ammo crate we were resting the thing on. Its really pretty nice to shoot, a lot smoother than the MG42 though not quite as fast.
The gun is a mostly matching amnesty registered dewat that has been reactivated. The barrel and extension are mismatched probably for that reason....welding and all.
Here are a few pics
Thats it for now. Thanks to John Baum for the very nicely translated manual. It was a big help with the drums.
Now you are one of the rare few that know what the Do17, He111, Ju88, etc. gunners felt like. I know this is tough given the conditions you were under but, how would you rate it's accuracy and its ability to be controlled/stay on target?
“… corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, … until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Accuracy???? we were knocking down 3/4 man size steel plates at 100yds with 3-5rd bursts fired with no sights. I did fire a longer burst into a small spot to see how much things moved and the answer is not much. I dug a hole about 6 inches across at 100yds. Recoil is easily manageable without a mount and the stock makes life much easier. I tried one short burst with the gun hand held and the stock braced under my arm. Its a pussycat. I tried a 10rd burst in my MG81 with no stock and it was not reasonably controllable in that manner, in fact it scared me. The MG15 would be easily controlled but fires about 1000rpm versus 1800 for the 81. Recoil is straight back with the buttstock attached so there is no muzzle climb. The big problem with the gun is the tiny barrel and the large mag capacity. Heat will kill the barrel pretty quickly with no cooling airstream so we can't shoot a lot. I do have a watercooled kit to swap out and that will be a more reasonable situation for the ground setup. Once I have some time to fiddle I'll get to work on that. I like watercooling and clouds of steam.
The bakelight on the thing is bakelight, not wood. I've only seen wood used on the Jap guns other than pistol grips. This gun has wood pistol grips but one of my watercooled kits has bakelight there too.
I won't be able to do any videos due to my upload/download speed but I'll try to get some better pictures when things warm up.
Cool, thanks for the report and insight. Once again AWESOME job!
“… corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, … until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Very cool!!!!! I would love to see more pics, or video of that, if you can ever get that done!
Interesting on the rate of fire/cooling part, I hadn't thought of that, but I wondered why so many of the ground kits were water cooled, it seemed anachronistic. Now I know.
Plan on taking it to any shoots??? It would be a blast to see that at the OFASTS shoot! You just need to make a section of Heinkel for it to sit in, as a mount, and voila! You'll have the absolute neatest thing on the line, Hands down!!!
I will probably take it out to the shoot in Wyoming next may. I don't get to the shoot in Ok as its usually the same weekend as a gunshow I do. Once I get the watercooled kit installed I'm sure we'll shoot it more.
You'd be surprised at how quickly a barrel can be burned out especially when its an aircraft gun. The barrel on the MG15 is smaller and lighter than the one in a K98k rifle. It was intended to have many cubic feet per minute of cooling air flowing over it though and airplanes like to keep the stuff inside them light. When the cooling air is dropped down to whatever happens to be there at the time things get hot very fast and the barrel throat erodes rapidly. I'm surprised no one ever did a watercooled MG81....the belt feed and high rate of fire would have made it ideal for that type of cooling.
I'll try to post more pictures when we get back from the Christmas break. These guns are very cool and not seen on the firing line as often as the 42's, 34's and other more common stuff.
The ground adapter finally showed up from IMA and with a little finish work on the molding flash it fit on the MG15. It looks pretty good and hopefully we'll get to shoot it soon. I also got the watercooled kit all put together on the MG15 receiver. It looks like it will be a good one for actually shooting and not warping the barrel. I love the clouds of steam and smell of oil in the air.....takes you back to the age of the steam locomotive.
The watercooled just have a certain nostalgia and class that is hard to match, really shows the blending of eras. I like the conversion.
I know this has been discussed at length before but did we ever establish where/when the watercooled Mg15 was used (e.g., late WW2, post WW2, East Germany, Poland?????)
“… corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, … until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
The bipod on the aircooled ground gun is as noted, an MG34 bipod. The germans used them on most of the converted aircraft rifle cal MG's. The MG81 had an adapter for the mg34 bipod too and it worked well. Since the MG42 bipod was a development of the 34 model they do look very much alike. On the early bipods the only part that was really any different was the piece to attach it to the gun.
The bipod on the watercooled setup is made specifically for the watercooled and not adapted from any of the german guns. The legs are short and the attachment is much different though you can see that the design is based on the MG34 type bipod. The little bipod keeps the line of the bore about the same as the aircooled gun but due to the waterjacked and its lower attach point the bipod has to be much shorter to do that. It doesn't seem terribly wobbly to me but it is narrower because of the shorter legs so probably not as stable as the full size MG34 bipod.
I was amazed that my 1941 gal coded MG15 receiver screwed right into the waterjacket. It was snug but not too bad. It fit in that waterjacket easier than it fit into the fzs aircooled jacket that came in the aircraft kit from IMA. The screw hole in the bottom to lock the receiver in actually lined up perfectly too. I have a feeling that the shooting we are going to do with this gun will be mostly in the watercooled setup. I hate wearing out the barrels by overheating and there is just no way to keep the aircooled barrels from burning up unless you are single shotting. My MG81 had the same problem. We had to keep the belts down to 25rds to keep things cool and you'd be shocked at how fast 25rds disappears at 1820rpm.
Here is a pic of the 81 single with the MG34 bipod and adapter on it.
The WC bipod also has a diferant method of attaching when closed,instead of hooking into a 'tit',it has a strap to holt it.I also had fit problems with the IMA AC kit,nothing serious. ---bil
"I dream of a world where I can buy alcohol,tobacco and firearms from the same drive-up window,and use them all on the way home from work!" Dogbert
Well I took the monster out in watercooled configuration this afternoon and things didn't go quite as planned.
I had to grease up the muzzle and rear barrel glands to keep them from leaking and I took a bit of the extra grease and lubed up the bolt and locking collar. I knew at the time that was a mistake since its still winter here but did it anyway. I didn't want to waste the grease I guess.....shoulda listened to the Finns-"wash all lubricants off with gasoline and run the thing dry. .."
Anyway the first problem was that the bolt closed pretty slow and if you think hangfires are interesting this was amazing. The bolt handle goes forward than slides that last quarter inch slowly and BANG!!!. If it had ejected all the way and run a few round through it would have been cool but it didn't work quite right. I swapped out the bolt and rear pistol grip assembly that I thoughtfully brought along in case my stupidity showed up and the gun ran properly again. Now the problem was with mags. I had one mag that ran great and all the others had some issues with feeding from only one side. I think the 10 degree weather probably didn't help me or the gun but I never was able to run enough through the gun to get the water hot so I packed up and decided to save things for another day. The good news was that the glands didn't leak.
One has to give you an A+ for effort, at least you know that you will be ready when the weather improves. The only good thing about operating a beltfed in that temp is that at least the beer does not get warm
“… corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, … until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
