Chapter 34: Submachine Guns And Light Machine Guns—if It Works, It’s Good
Lelouch’s first stop after returning to the country was Thuringia, to find the Bergmann Company; this was not chosen randomly.
Because he knew that historically, this company had made a huge contribution to the German Army’s heavy machine gun to light machine gun project, and later achieved remarkable results in the submachine gun field.
Lelouch wanted to form a Storm Commando Unit, and light automatic firepower was an unavoidable key point.
Moreover, these things were the most difficult and slowest to show results among the several projects Lelouch wanted to tackle this time, so they naturally needed to be prioritized.
“Captain Lelouch, Captain Immelmann, you two are so young and promising; you’re only in your early twenties, yet already captains—you’re definitely going to be generals in the future.”
Boss Emil Bergman was very politely making small talk, and he invited the two to sit in the back seat of a Benz sedan, while he himself sat in the passenger seat.
After getting in the car, Lelouch also politely got straight to the point: “Mr. Bergman is really too enthusiastic; no wonder Your Highness told me to come find you first upon returning to the country.
I’ll be imposing on you for the next few days; the 6th Army Group has some armament needs, and we’ll have to count on the Bergmann Company for strong support.
But rest assured, as long as you can produce what His Highness needs, future orders and profits will absolutely be no problem.”
Bergman: “Serving the Empire is our duty; shall I take you to your accommodations first?”
Lelouch checked his watch; he had flown for six hours early in the morning, and it was just past noon now: “Captain Immelmann flew for 6 hours, he needs rest; I slept enough on the plane, so let’s discuss business right after lunch.”
Bergman couldn’t help but admire Lelouch’s dedication, so he temporarily adjusted the plans and arranged for the company’s technical director to join the welcome lunch banquet.
Germania is a food desert; no one cares about eating and drinking, so the lunch was very simple, handled right in the company cafeteria. It was just a few extra dishes specially added for the honored guests, like baked pork knuckle and Tatar beef.
In this kind of setting, the key is still to take the opportunity to get to know some contacts and talk business.
Lelouch boldly devoured a whole baked pork knuckle by himself, and at the table he also met two well-known designers.
“This is my company’s technical director Louis Scheisser; this is the famous designer Hugo Scheisser.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Lelouch wiped his hands while raising his glass to toast and exchange pleasantries with the two respectively.
After brief contact, Lelouch could see that this company had a very strong family-style management atmosphere, typical of authoritarian decision-making style.
Boss Emil Bergman was the nephew of the founder Theodore Bergman.
Even in the technical field, it was the two designers both surnamed Scheisser who called the shots.
Historically, Old Scheisser, that is Louis Scheisser, retired in 1916 due to old age and illness, then his son Hugo Scheisser took over his position and subsequently developed the MP18 submachine gun.
Even the person in charge of the technical position could inherit it “hereditarily”; this was almost unimaginable in later scientific research companies, but very common in early 20th-century Germania.
Mauser, Siemens, Porsche—many families had fathers and sons, even grandfathers and grandsons, who were all technical experts.
Lelouch had no time to lay the groundwork slowly, so after toasting, he steered the topic to the field of automatic light weapons:
“I hear that since the war began, your company has been researching the lightening modification of our country’s automatic weapons; any latest progress?”
Because this era didn’t yet have the new term “submachine gun,” historically the first submachine gun wouldn’t be invented by an Italian until a year and a half later. Lelouch had to use other terms as substitutes in discussion.
The Germania Army was indeed initially quite slow in the area of automatic firepower lightening.
Their MG08 heavy machine gun was an extremely fine and practical machine gun; range, accuracy, and reliability all surpassed Britain’s Vickers heavy machine gun, with comparable rate of fire.
But it was really too heavy in terms of total gun weight—the Vickers heavy machine gun weighed only 40 kg fully loaded, while the MG08 could reach a shocking 65 kg!
The gun bodies differed by 8 kg, and the mounts differed by over 20 kg—the MG08 used a four-legged mount weighing a full 37 kg!
Of course, this four-legged mount performed extremely well, giving the MG08 the world’s best shooting accuracy and stability at the time; no recoil was felt no matter how it was fired, but it was just too heavy. This meant it could only be used for positional defense and was utterly unusable in mobile offensive operations.
A small part of the German Army’s “low attack, high defense” characteristics could be attributed to this heavy machine gun’s lack of mobility.
After the war began, including Mauser, DWM parent company, and DWM’s Karlsruhe subsidiary in the Duchy of Baden, as well as the Bergmann Company right here, all attempted various lightening modification plans.
Among them, the Bergmann Company was probably the furthest along.
However, it was only November 1914 after all; facing Lelouch’s inquiry, Old Scheisser still lacked confidence.
He hurriedly explained: “We’ve done our best; the Empire’s previous heavy machine gun design philosophy was a bit off-track, overly pursuing absolute firepower for positional defense at the expense of mobility. Turning it around all at once isn’t that easy.
We’ve also considered imitating the Danish Madsen light machine gun to develop a new one, but that would require scrapping and restarting many things, taking at least a year or two. If it’s just lightening the MG08, it should be ready in a few more months, but I can’t guarantee exactly how light it will be.”
Lelouch: “No rush; first tell me, in the 4 months before the war, how much progress did you make? How light have you gotten the heavy machine gun currently?”
Old Scheisser couldn’t immediately recall these technical details; after all, he was retiring in two years, so he gave his son a look.
Hugo Scheisser quickly took over: “MG08 full weight before modification is 65 kg, of which 28 kg is the gun body, 37 kg is the four-legged mount. To turn it into a light machine gun, the four-legged mount can be directly discarded; I temporarily developed a bipod of only 3 kg, reducing 34 kg.
Additionally, I made some simplifications to the gun body structure that don’t affect performance, which can reduce another 3~5 kg.
Currently I have two plans: one is a water-cooled light machine gun continuing the water-cooling mode, full weight 27 kg;
The other is air-cooled mode, that is, removing the water jacket and replacing with a perforated metal air sleeve, saving another 5 kg for a full weight of 22 kg. But the air-cooled vent sleeve structure still needs gradual testing and optimization; we can’t guarantee cooling efficiency yet—because the Empire never tried air-cooled machine guns before, everything has to start from scratch, borrowing from foreign goods.”
Lelouch stroked his little mustache, carefully pondering in his mind for a moment.
He knew that historically, the Bergmann Company had based on the MG08 heavy machine gun and helped improve the MG08/15 light machine gun. But without anyone interfering to push it, this thing still needed over half a year to pass testing, and a year to enter production.
A 22 kg light machine gun, though two-thirds lighter than 68 kg, was still too tiring to carry in combat.
Besides, the machine gunner had to carry at least one belt; this era used full-power rifle rounds, the Mauser 7.92 bullet head alone weighed 15 grams, plus casing and propellant over 20 grams total; a 200-round belt was 5 kg.
Lelouch thought for a moment and proposed two plans: “Further optimization of the barrel cooling structure can be taken slowly. I have some machine gun lightening R&D materials previously captured from the Belgian Lewis Company; you can reference them, maybe avoid some detours.”
As soon as Lelouch spoke, Hugo Scheisser’s eyes lit up; he obviously knew this peer in the field, Lewis.
With his materials, mutual referencing should fill gaps, absorb others’ strengths, and improve R&D progress and quality.
And he didn’t know that historically, before the Belgian company fell, the Lewis Company escaped the German Army’s encirclement with the king and cabinet, then went to Britannia, and in 1915 helped Britannia finalize the Lewis light machine gun.
In this life, due to the butterfly effect caused by Lelouch, the German Army ultimately annihilated the Belgian remnants in Ostend, preventing the Belgians from breaking out on a large scale.
Although high-end weapon designers like Lewis surely had high priority and escaped the encirclement on a Lin Xian Class light cruiser with the king and cabinet.
But in that chaotic wartime environment, many of Lewis’s assistants and peripheral technical personnel definitely couldn’t get a ticket to escape, and much related technical material was later captured by the German Army.
When Colonel Lister’s 16th Infantry Regiment entered Ostend and accepted the Belgian Army’s surrender, other officers were busy collecting valuables, but Lelouch thought to first sort through whether the Belgians had any worthwhile military industry materials to capture, and he indeed picked up some personnel and blueprints.
Of course, these things were all reported to superiors later; this time, His Highness nodded approval for him to bring them to help the Bergmann Company accelerate R&D progress. It also conveniently earned Lelouch some personal favors.
This feeling was like Liu Bang entering Xianyang; others were busy with “taking goods and enjoying women,” while only Lelouch, like Xiao He, first sought maps and records.
While speaking, Lelouch pulled out several blueprints from his carried materials and pushed them in front of Hugo Scheisser.
Hugo Scheisser unfolded and looked for a bit, then beamed with joy, and gave feedback: “With these, the MG08/15’s R&D and production progress can be accelerated by another half year. It can be finalized by early next year, mass-produced in the first half! And I estimate it can be 2-3 kg lighter than my independent design.”
“Finalized by early next year… that’s within two or three months? For a mature weapon, this cycle is acceptable. But right now, I need a small batch of samples that can be obtained and put into combat testing within one month; can that be done?”
Hugo Scheisser suddenly felt troubled: “One month? If directly machined without opening stamping molds to cut costs, it can be done. But costs would be high; as R&D samples, it’s fine.”
Lelouch waved grandly: “You can make it even simpler—your air-cooled machine gun sleeve design is still perforated round tube style; that’s too hard to machine, better to directly make it bent square tube!
It’s a gun sleeve, not the barrel itself; does round or square matter? As long as it cools! And for test samples, the cooling holes on square tube don’t need to be so dense. Holes can be a bit larger, fewer in number.
Ensure that in complex combat environments, if mud or dirt gets into the cooling holes, soldiers can directly stick fingers in to clean them out. If you make the holes so dense and finer than fingers, they can’t be simply maintained on the battlefield.”
Lelouch casually pointed out several improvement points, all aimed at cost reduction, ease of production, and increased battlefield maintainability.
And these improvement points weren’t hard to think of—as a military enthusiast, most people know that the later MG34 general-purpose machine gun was actually more refined than the MG42, but cost high, hard to produce and maintain. MG34 used precise round tube air-cooled sleeve, while MG42 switched to square tube, directly stamped from thin steel plate, greatly reducing production cost.
Historically, MG08/15’s air-cooled sleeve was also going to be round tube, but with Lelouch, there was no need to take these “refinement” detours.
On the real battlefield, square tube and round tube have almost no difference in cooling efficiency, but production cost and battlefield maintenance are greatly improved; isn’t that great?
Hugo Scheisser listened to his suggestions, feeling both pleased and worried.
He could certainly see that Captain Lelouch’s methods could reduce costs, increase reliability, ease of maintenance, ease of production…
But for a Germania Empire military industry enterprise to no longer pursue refinement, but instead cost-cutting and efficiency… Hugo Scheisser’s mind still couldn’t quite turn around.
And Hugo’s father Old Scheisser couldn’t comprehend it at all; he immediately retorted: “Captain Lelouch! Our Bergmann Company has always made premium products; how can we skimp on money to make shoddy goods?”
