I recently watched a show on the National Geographic channel called Megastructures about the evolution of the machine gun. (I'm not quite sure what machine guns have with megastructures but I digress.) One thing they did was show an example of tactics used in WWI trench warfare. They had a British former soldier that was an expert machine gunner using a Vickers M.G. At first they had a him positioned directly in front of a recreated attacking line of troops. The "troops" were portrayed by a line of balloons on strings tied off at various heights and allowed to sway in breeze. When firing from the front, with I believe a 250 round ammo belt, he wasn't particularly successful. If I recall he got maybe 10%, or less, of the attacking balloons. Frankly this is the way I'd have thought was the proper way to position the gun.

Then the same thing was set up again, but this time the gunner was placed on a flank firing the length of the attack line. It was incredible how much more effective this time. Firing this way just about every bullet, if it didn't hit the nearest balloon, just kept going until it did hit something. About 90% of the balloons were taken out.

I must say this was quite eye opening to me.

BTW, it was a good show but I had one complaint. It showed the .50 "Ma Duce" several times, and related how long the basic gun had been in existence, and then went on quite a bit about Maxim, but never once mentioned John Browning and his incredible string of automatic weapons he developed.

This tactic also works well with catapults and cannons in Medieval 2 Total War! :-)

Cheers,
Jim

This is one of the reasons why certain aspects of Saving Private Ryan were not very realistic. On the Normandy beaches, most of the Germans weapons, from MGs to artillery, were set up to fire along the beach rather than out to sea. They tended to be shielded from the sea, in fact, so that their muzzle flashes could not be seen as well from out at sea, making them harder for ships to target.

Rob

Makes sense when you think about it. Straight on, you have gaps, between heads and legs, for example, where bullets might pass harmlessly. On the oblique, those gaps become smaller.
You can see this on a partly cloudy day. Directly overhead, the clouds look far apart but as you look lower towards the horizon, they appear to cover the sky.

It was on over here a week or two ago too

Very good demonstration of enfilade fire, which is a very old military tactic. That's why castles (for example) have projecting towers, allowing fire along the face of the wall. And why Vauban and similar type forts have projecting bastions and caponiers in the ditches. All of these allow flanking fire, far more damaging to the enemy.

David

Yes, the German were well up on this. I have the old Bellona publication about German field works of WW2, & a surprising number of the bunkers featured have firing slots in the sides rather than the front. Of course, a proper machine gun position would have several guns with overlapping fields of fire. Another point worth making is that the Maxim design of machine gun, & the Vickers in particular, are actually quite "stable" as machine guns go, in that without operator input, each bullet follows the same path, unlike, say the MG42 or GPMG, which have a tendency to "spray" the target. So to hit advancing troops head on with the older types, one would have to virtually aim at them. The mass casualties of battles like the Somme were caused by enfilading fire, particularly from flanking high ground; this is quite clear if you actually visit the area.

IIRC some of the tripod monthed MG's had a "lock" that would keep it form moving when fired (well other than the tripod moving as a Whole)

You can see the lock in the pic Below (it runs between the crossbar and the MG and has a adjusting knob on it)

Matt the lock is called a T&E mechanism for Traverse and Elevation. When enabled, it provides a stable platform for the machine gun to fire. Most early MGs had this. In the case of the .50 cal, that weapon is so powerful that after a couple shots, you are firing wildly off target, so you use the T&E mechanism to aim on. I believe there is a little lateral movement for adjusting the target.

Jeff

Hi regarding flank firing, it seems logical.
Let's imagine if you look a bunch of soldiers on parade, you see regular gaps between each of them, which disapeared when you move slightly on one side, were they seems to be stuck together. So your bulletss had more chance to hit one of them in that position.
And as David said, that was the main goal of the architecture of Vauban forts
http://www.linternaute.com/sortir/sorties/architecture/citadelle-vauban/diaporama/10.shtml


Best,
Julien

interlocking fields of fire ! Double your pleasure -double your fun!

Waffen SS tactics had the section deployed to protect the machine gun when in a defensive position. This way the section could take upto 80% casualties but still have 80% firepower.

The machine gunner was invariably the senior private in the section apparently.

Taken from a book I have unsurprisingly called Waffen SS tactics of WW2 or something like that.