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2022-12-21 16:24:09 UTCginnykim
per Wikipedia:
The MG 08/15 had been designed around the concept of portability, such as the French Chauchat,
which meant that the firepower of a machine gun could be taken forward conveniently by
assaulting troops, and moved between positions for tactical fire support; as such, the MG 08/15
was to be manned by two trained infantrymen, a shooter and an ammo bearer.
In the attack the weapon would be fired on the move (marching fire) while on the defense
the team would make use of the bipod from the prone position. To accomplish that,
the MG 08/15 had a short bipod rather than a heavy four-legged sled mount,
plus a wooden gunstock and a pistol grip. At 18 kg (40 lb) the MG 08/15 had
minimal weight savings over the MG 08, being "a cumbersome beast to use in the assault."
Intended to provide increased mobility of infantry automatic fire, it nevertheless remained
a bulky water-cooled weapon that was quite demanding on the crews and never on par
with its rivals, the Chauchat and the Lewis Gun.
Accurate fire was difficult to achieve and usually in short bursts only. The fabric ammunition
belts were prone to stretching and there were cartridge extraction problems when wet.
The designation 08/15 lives on as an idiom in colloquial German, 'nullachtfünfzehn'
(zero-eight-fifteen [de], pronounced Null-acht-fünfzehn), used today as a term to
denote something totally ordinary and lacking in originality or specialness.