Hitler's Garands, Rough Forged, and a piece of history

1,748 Views | 3 Replies | Last: 2 yr ago by Aggie12B
agfan2013
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AG
Howdy guys, I enjoy reading this board from time to time but am usually over on the outdoors board more often. My family has a rifle I thought would be neat to share over here, especially the discussion that goes behind it for those that are interested in the history of small arms in WWII. Might be a bit of a long post so I do apologize in advance.

WWII has always held an interest with me as both of my grandfathers served in the European theater. The grandfather on my dad's side sent back a lot of stuff during his time there including a German K43 rifle. I originally started looking into the rifle back when I was finishing up at A&M but life gets busy and it took until last month (9 years later) for me to get back into looking at it.

I found a G/K43 forum on gunboards, read through the book Hitler's Garands that we had gotten years ago and found out the author had just released a newer updated version (Rough Forged), and watched a youtube video on how to break the rifle down and clean it. So, I got after it and cleaned up the rifle and learned a lot by reading the books and the message board.

To make a long story short, it is really not recommended to shoot these even with an updated gas system as many of the parts are fragile and I decided I dont want to break a piece of history. Many guys will get a "shooters grade" rifle with replaced parts if they want a rifle to shoot frequently, but most don't shoot the nicer/rarer rifles. I'm a little disappointed I wont be taking the rifle to the range but what it means to our family as a piece of war spoils that my Grandfather sent back is priceless. I had a lot of fun researching and learning about the rifle and with the backstory now out of the way, a lot of what I found while researching was really interesting and also part of what I wanted to share to see if anybody here had thoughts or perspective on it.






To quote Darrin Weaver who wrote both of the books and is one of top experts on German self-loading rifles "When the German Wehrmacht plunged into Poland in 1939, the individual soldier found himself issued with weapons and equipment little different than his father had been given in World War One." Most troops were still carrying the K98k as Germany had placed greater priority on developing tanks, planes, etc.



The Heereswaffenamt (their version of an ordinance department, abbreviated HWaA) was staffed with many WWI veterans turned into bureaucrats that had less than stellar experiences with the very early semi autos that made their way into the war and had very outdated notions/preconceptions about them. One of the biggest stipulations was any new rifle research "could not have the barrel be bored to extract gas to operate the mechanism", as they believed this would weaken the metal and shorten the life of the weapon. So originally, they were against one of the best ways to make a rifle semi-automatic in function.

Thus, the G41 was designed using a "bang system" which used propellant gases that were captured by a cone-shaped gas trap at the muzzle, which in turn deflected them to operate a small piston which then pushed on a long piston rod that opened the breech and re-loaded the gun. Not the greatest system as it made the front of the gun very heavy and capturing all that gas caused a lot of fouling to build up and thus the gun wasnt known for being very reliable in field conditions. They also had intricate receivers that took a lot of machining and man hours to make. An early US Army report on some captured G41s stated "A thorough test at Aberdeen proved the G41(W) is much inferior to the US Rifle, Cal .30 M1, in reliability under severe conditions. It fell down especially in the mud and rain tests, and breakages were very numerous".

While the Germans fought on the eastern front against Russian troops sometimes better equipped with their semi-auto rifles the HWaA finally decided it wasnt the end of the world to drill a gas port in a barrel after looking at some captured SVT-40s and made design improvements on the G41 into what would become the G43. The receiver was simplified (and would continue even more so as the war went on) a gas port was drilled and a piston system very similar to the SVT-40 was installed and testing showed a lot more promise in reliability and manufacturing ability so several contractors were lined up to get started producing the rifle: Walther, Berlin-Lubecker Maschinenfabrik, and Wilhelm Gustloff-Werke

To save time every rifle was milled with a scope rail as Hitler originally wanted the rifle to be used as a sniper rifle, but with the army moving to the standardized 4X ZF4 scope, the gun became more of a designated marksman rifle that was used in squad support vs a true sniper weapon. Rifles that came off the assembly line were test fired and the ones that showed greater accuracy in the test shots were set aside and fitted with a scope. Part of what makes the rifle my grandfather brought back so special is the serial numbers on the gun match the serial number on the scope mount, through the war and post war years many rifles got separated from their mounts as they changed hands, so it is pretty rare to have a matching set.

A common misconception is that the G43 and K43 are different, usually that the K43 is shorter, but there is no difference in the two, it was just a change in nomenclature for the HWaA and the two are the same rifle, G43s are earlier in the war and K43s are later. Later rifles did not include the bolt hold open and had several other small changes that sped up production time as the Germans were desperate to crank as many out as possible as many knew by this time they were losing the war. In total about 400,000 of the G/K43 were produced (50,000-ish with scopes) which pales in comparison to the number of K98ks produced over the years (10 million+).

At the end of the day I think this is a really neat piece of history my family has and I enjoyed learning about the German small arms decisions leading up to and during WWII (also learned about the MP43-MP44/STG44 development that Hitler originally forbade, but that would take an already long post and turn it into a novel). If any of this interests you I highly recommend Weaver's book, Rough Forged, it's a great book on the subject as the original book, Hitler's Garands, is no longer being produced so it runs $400-500 for a copy these days

My grandfather who sent it back:
CanyonAg77
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AG
I don't know a thing, but thanks for posting
Gric
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AG
Very interesting. Thanks for posting
Aggie12B
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AG
Very Cool Rifle and and even Better Story. Thank you Very Much for sharing the pictures and the story of your grandfather.
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