MG42, German general-purpose machine gun, used as a standard weapon by many armies around the world.
The MG42 was designed in Germany in 1938, and it was placed in action on all fronts by mid-1942. Its original calibre was 7.92 mm, but when West Germany entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the weapon’s bore was modified to fire the NATO standard rifle and machine-gun cartridge of 7.62 mm. The MG42 was redesignated the MG1 by the West German army after its modification in calibre; guns that had been reworked from the old to the new calibre were then called MG2, and a further modification to facilitate antiaircraft use was styled MG3. The gun without a butt, for tripod mounting, is 109.7 cm (43.2 inches) long with a barrel 56.5 cm (22.25 inches) long. With a butt, for use with a bipod, the gun is 122.5 cm (48.25 inches) long. It weighs (without bipod) 10.5 kg (23.1 pounds). The MG42 is fed by a metal link belt at a cyclic rate of fire of 700–1,300 rounds per minute. It is air-cooled and has a quick-change barrel.