A Near Mint WW2 Third Reich German Machinegunners Close Combat Knife / Bayonet For Heer & Waffen SS, Complete With Its Original Frog Belt Mount Also In Near Mint Condition

Seitengewehr fur Machinegewher-Schutzenor Kurzes' Seitengewehr 98. In black and silver livery. The short close combat type bladed knives used by German MachineGunners and provided as privately-purchased bayonets reference; The A to Z of Bayonets K: Karabiner 98 by Graham Priest.

Although patterned with a bayonet 'type' hilt it was not intended for that use as machine gunners never carried rifles, and its rifle slot is a psuedo fitting, possibly to get around the Treaty of Versailles which severely limited Germany's ability to re-arm {such as, with machine guns, tanks, planes etc.} after WW1.

This is a fabulous condition example, in fact so good we have not seen one any where near as good as this for over 50 years. This will the prize of any collection of rare 20th century knives and bayonets from WW! or WW2.

During World War II, American G.I.s called the German MG42 machine gun “Hitler’s buzz saw” because of the way it cut down troops in swaths.

The Soviet Red Army called it “the linoleum ripper” because of the unique tearing sound it made—a result of its extremely high rate of fire. The Germans called the MG42 Hitlersäge or “Hitler’s bone saw”—and built infantry tactics around squads of men armed with the weapon. However, the gunners had a need for a close combat defensive weapon, for guns were often over run, and this short close combat bladed bayonet fitted the bill very nicely indeed.

Many military historians argue that the Maschinengewehr 42 was the best general-purpose machine gun ever. It fired up to 1,800 rounds per minute in some versions. That’s nearly twice as fast as any automatic weapon fielded by any army in the world at the time.“It sounded like a zipper,” Orville W. “Sonny” Martin, Jr., who was a second lieutenant with the U.S. Army’s 13th Armoured Division, said in an oral history of infantry and armor operations in Europe. “It eats up a lot of ammunition and that makes for a logistical problem, but it eats up a lot of people, too.”

When the war began in 1939, the Germans had a solid, reliable general-purpose machine gun—the MG34. But it was expensive and difficult to manufacture.

The German high command wanted front-line troops to have more machine guns. That meant a weapon designed to deliver a high rate of fire like the MG34, but which was cheaper and quicker to produce.

Mauser-Werke developed a machine gun that fired a 7.92-millimeter Mauser cartridge fed into the gun from either a 50-round or 250-round belt. What’s more, the company manufactured the machine gun from stamped and pressed parts, welding the components together with a technique that reduced production time by 35 percent.

For reference, see; The A to Z of Bayonets, K: Karabiner 98 by Graham Priest.

Code: 25980