German MG08/15
by Simon Buckley
 

The German MG08/15 or ‘light Maxim’ was the light version of the standard MG08 Maxim machine gun. Following numerous encounters with the newly-issued British Lewis light machine guns, the German infantry complained that they had no light machine gun of their own except for a very small number of Danish Madsens. While the MG08 was extremely accurate and reliable it was very hard to move around quickly and almost impossible to advance with an infantry attack.

Therefore in 1915 the German army set up a commission to design a new light machine gun. The strongest contender was the light MG13 Parabellum, however to put this into mass production would have required huge new facilities, so it was decided to simply lighten the standard 08 design to make it more portable. This was done in several ways: 1) Parts of the receiver were cut-away to eliminate unused space and weight. 2) The barrel water jacket was reduced in size from 5 inches (125mm) to 3.5 inches (87mm) and from 7 to 5 pints capacity - still enough cooling to fire up to 6,000 rounds. 3) The complicated 08 muzzle booster (which assisted the recoil-operation of the gun) was replaced with a simpler but equally effective design. 4) A butt-stock and pistol grip was added and the heavy sled was replaced with a light 1kg bipod to allow it to be used as a light MG. 5) The armoured steel used to make the receiver of the 08 was reduced in thickness from 4mm to 3mm - still enough to stop shell fragments and low-velocity bullets damaging the gun. 6) The 08 mounting for the optical sight was also removed.

For all this it was still essentially the same gun as the 08. It used the same barrel, breech block and ammunition and was just as powerful and reliable and also technically as accurate, (although its bipod was not well designed which reduced accuracy somewhat).

It first went into production around April/May 1916 and began to be issued to the troops in small numbers soon after although only around 1,500 had been delivered by the end of that year. It was first used in battle in small numbers at the battle of the Somme in June 1916 and proved far more light and mobile than the MG08, especially when used with its specially designed patronenkasten drum which held a 100 round belt and which was clipped on to the side of the gun. By early 1917 the light Maxim was replacing MG08s in most front-line trenches, these being held in the second line trenches to provide heavy long-range sustained fire.

A seldom reported fact is that, like all Maxim designs, the 08/15 was actually far more reliable than its contender, the British Lewis. The Lewis had a very complex mechanism which often jammed in the mud of no-man’s land, its magazines were open underneath allowing in dirt which clogged them, and like all magazine-fed .303 automatic guns, it suffered from ‘rim-over-rim’ jamming, where the rims of the .303 rounds in the magazine would interlock and cause the gun to fail - ironically when German troops captured Lewis guns and converted them to 7.92mm they no longer suffered from this problem as the German rounds had no rims! The 08/15 wasn’t much longer or much heavier either – with a fully-loaded 47 round magazine the Lewis weighed almost 14kgs!

Never the less, by the end of the war the MG08/15 had developed an undeservedly poor reputation for reliability and portability with some troops, mainly because, unlike the heavy 08, it was dragged forward into no-man’s land during attacks and consequently got much muddier and jammed more often. This gave rise to the German phrase ‘nullacht funfzehn’ (08-15) which refers to something unremarkable or standard. (It has even given the title to a famous German post-1945 novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst - "08/15".)

Despite all this it was instrumental to the German stormtroop tactics of the Michael offensive in 1918 where it’s reliability and portable sustained-fire capacity was very useful for suppressing and eliminating Vickers and Lewis gun emplacements as the German troops stormed their trenches.

It remained the standard German light machine gun until 1936 and many were taken to war in 1939 until sufficient numbers of MG34s could be produced.

Despite over 130,000 being made by November 1918 many were scrapped or sold off under the treaty of Versailles, and it is today a very rare gun.

The MG08/15 shown below is from the collection of the author of this article:

Technical Data:
Calibre: 7.92mm
Length of weapon: 1400mm
Length of Barrel: 719mm (an MG08 barrel with adapter on muzzle for 08/15 muzzle booster)Weight: 14kg empty 16.5kg with full water jacket
Muzzle velocity: 845 m/second
Rate of fire: 500rounds/minute
Feed Type: short 100 round belt or long 250 round belt
Sights: 2,000m
Operation: recoil, gas-booster assisted