In 1942, Germany began producing the weapon of the future. A rifle that was half a century ahead of its time, an engineering masterpiece that today costs more than a sports car and sells at auction for $300,000. But it was created for a war that had already been lost for soldiers whom Hitler personally forbade from fighting the way they knew how.
This is a story about how to make the perfect weapon that no one can afford. A story about how brilliant engineering was shattered by the simple arithmetic of war. And to understand it, we need to go back a year to an island where the elite of the Reich were beaten with hoes. On the 20th of May 1941, the sky over Cree darkened with parachutes.
7,000 men, the cream of the German landing force, elite Luftvafa paratroopers, rained down on the island, which was to be another triumph of the Blitz Creek. By the evening of that same day, half of them were dead or maimed. Not because they fought poorly, but because they simply had nothing to fight with.
The German RZ1 parachute harness required landing on hands and knees, then performing a forward roll. The paratroopers carried only a pistol, four grenades, and a knife. Rifles, machine guns, [music] and ammunition flew separately in containers that were scattered across the island by the wind. Many fell directly on the positions of the British and New Zealanders, and they shot the helpless Germans with their own weapons.
Cretton peasants finished off the paratroopers who were tangled in their straps with hoes and hunting rifles. New Zealand officers from the headquarters of the 23rd battalion fired at the Germans falling from the sky without leaving their desks. A company of the third battalion of the first assault regiment lost 112 of its 126 men in a few hours.
One battalion at Malem was missing 400 of its 600 fighters by the end of the first day. Cree became the largest airborne operation in history. The Germans won. But of the 22,000 paratroopers, 6 and a half thousand were killed, wounded, or [music] missing in action. More than half of the losses occurred on the first day.
It was a victory that destroyed the victors. In July 1941, General Curt Student, the architect of the Creed operation, arrived at the Furer’s headquarters. The Wolf’s Lair, a bunker complex in the forest of East Prussia. Concrete walls, dim lighting, the smell of dampness, and machine oil. Hitler awarded student the Knight’s Cross [music] and invited him for coffee.
It was an honor bestowed on a few. But after that coffee, the verdict was delivered. The furer declared that the paratroopers time was over. The element of surprise had been exhausted, and the enemy had learned to counter airborne assaults. From now on, paratroopers would fight only as regular infantry. No more mass drops. student, the man who had created the German airborne forces from scratch, listened in silence.
There was no point in arguing with Hitler. But Reich Marshall Herman Guring disagreed with the verdict. His green devils were a source of [music] personal pride. If they were forbidden to jump, then at least let them have weapons [music] worthy of their status. In December 1941, the Luftvafa approached the Army Weapons Administration with a technical assignment for a new rifle.
The response [music] was brief. The project was frivolous, technically impossible, and they refused to participate. The army pushed forward with its own plan, an intermediate cartridge, compact [music] weapon, and mass production. What would later become the Saint G44 assault rifle? Why did the Luftvafa need a full-size cartridge and a light gun? Physics would not allow it, [music] but Guring had a trump card.
He owned the Ryan Mal Borsig concern and could give orders directly, bypassing army bureaucracy. In essence, he was selling weapons to himself at a considerable profit. On the 14th of December 1941, the LC6 specification was sent to [music] six manufacturers. The requirements looked like a list of impossibilities. The length should not exceed [music] 1 meter like a standard carbine.
The weight should not exceed 4 kg. The accuracy should be sufficient for sniper shooting. The rate of fire should be comparable to that of the MG34 machine gun, the ability to attach a bayonet and fire rifle grenades, and of course, a full-size 7.92x 57 mm cartridge, the same as in machine guns.
It was like demanding that a car have the speed of a race car, the fuel efficiency of a moped, and the load capacity of a van all at once. The list of requirements seemed like a mockery of the laws of physics. But one engineer took it as a challenge. Of the six manufacturers, only one presented a working prototype. Its creator was Louis Stan from Reinmetal Bors, an engineer who had already achieved the impossible once before.
Stans grew up in Sardda, a small town in Tinia. And at the age of 19, he joined the Dice arms factory. There his mentor was Luis Schmeicer, the man who created the MP18, the first practicalsubmachine gun in history. From this school, Stang gained an understanding of how automation works and most importantly, how to make it work reliably.
In the 1930s, he designed the MG34, the world’s first universal machine gun, which could be used with a bipod, a mount, or an armored vehicle turret. Now, he faced an even crazier task. Strange found the solution where no one was looking. He took the gas system from a Lewis machine gun from World War I and reimagined [music] it for a completely new concept.
A long gas piston stroke, a rotating bolt with two locking lugs, and a spiral return spring. Proven mechanics in a body from the future. The main innovation was the straight layout. The barrel, bolt, group, and stock were located on the same axis. The recoil went straight into the shoulder instead of throwing the barrel upward.
Today, this is standard for any modern weapon. In 1942, it was a revolution. But the real miracle of engineering was the bolt’s dual mode of operation. In singleshot mode, the bolt remained closed, ensuring maximum accuracy of the first shot. In automatic mode, the bolt operated from an open position, allowing the barrel to cool between rounds.
No other rifle in the world did this before [music] or since. It was the engineering equivalent of an engine that runs on both gasoline and diesel, switching on the fly. The magazine was inserted horizontally on the left. This solution, strange at first glance, allowed the shooter to lie lower on the ground than with any other weapon.
For a paratrooper landing under fire, every centimeter could mean life or death. In the middle of 1942, the prototype passed tests at the Tarnowitz [music] proving ground. The impossible had become possible. The rifle was given the Index FG42. The masterpiece was ready. It remained to be seen whether Germany could afford it.
Perfection came at a price, and the bill turned out to be prohibitive. Stain’s original design required chrome nickel steel, a strategic alloy used for tank armor and aircraft engines. By 1943, every kilogram of this metal was worth its weight [music] in gold. Ryan metal was overwhelmed with orders and production was transferred to the gunsmiths at Creekhoff in the town of Sul.
This was a company that had made hunting rifles for aristocrats before the war. They knew how to work with jeweler’s precision, but they did not know how to work quickly and cheaply. A mil receiver, dozens of parts with tight tolerances [music] and hand fitting. One FG42 cost the Treasury several times as much as the STG44 assault rifle.
Meanwhile, two branches of the Reich’s armed forces were waging their own war, which had nothing to do with the front. The army controlled the distribution of materials. The Luftvafa depended on its supplies. Every ton of alloy steel that went to Guring’s project was a ton taken away from army programs. The army generals had no intention of helping their competitor.
They promoted their own St. G44, a weapon that could be stamped out by any factory with press equipment. While some Germans were dying at Stalingrad, others in Berlin offices were dividing up resources and sabotaging each other’s projects. Another compromise was built into the concept itself.
The Luftvafa insisted on a full-size cartridge for range and penetrating power, [music] but this cartridge turned the light rifle into a difficult to control beast when firing automatically. 20 rounds in the magazine were fired in a matter of seconds. The bipods bent under the load in combat. Army experts pointed this out from the [music] very beginning.
An intermediate cartridge was the right decision. But to admit this meant admitting that the competitor was right. By the end of 1943, the first batch of [music] 2,000 rifles was ready. And then the manganese steel, which had replaced the scarce chrome nickel steel, ran out. Production was in agony.
But the few rifles that had managed to roll off the assembly line were awaiting a test that would soon go down in history. On the 12th of September 1943, 10 DFS 230 gliders broke away from their tow planes over the Apenines. 90 men sat in them with one task to free Bonito Mussolini, the deposed dictator of Italy, whom the new government had hidden in the Campo Imperator Hotel at the top of the Grand Saso mountain range.
2,000 mters above sea level, accessible only by cable car, guarded by 200 armed carabineri. The operation was planned by Major Harold Moors. Several of his men carried weapons that no one had ever seen in combat before. The gliders landed on a rocky plateau 100 meters from the hotel, raising clouds of dust. The Italian guards saw these strange silhouettes and futuristic rifles with side magazines and offered no resistance.
Mussolini was freed in a matter of minutes without a single shot being fired. The glory did not go to Morse. SS officer Otto Scorzeni, who participated in the raid with 16 of his men, turned out to be the perfect herofor Gerbal’s propaganda. [music] He was 6 feet tall with a saber scar across his cheek and a cold [music] stare.
He received the Knight’s Cross and the title of the most dangerous man in Europe. Morris remained in the shadows of history. But the photos from Grand Saso spread around the world and on them was the FG42. The real test came later. From January to May 1944, the first parachute division held the defense at Monte Casino, an ancient Benedicting monastery on a cliff overlooking the Liry Valley.
The only road to Rome passed below. Whoever controlled the monastery controlled the route to the capital. Four Allied assaults crashed against the walls of Casino. four waves of infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft. The monastery was turned into a lunar landscape of rubble and craters, but the Germans held their ground.
In these ruins, the FG42 showed everything it was capable of. The battle took place in stone corridors where the echo of gunfire rang in the ears and dust from the explosions filled the eyes. precise single shots when the enemy appeared in a breach in the wall. Short bursts [music] when he jumped out from around a corner.
Instant mode switching without unnecessary movements. The Green Devils, as the paratroopers were nicknamed by the Allies, retreated only on orders, not because they lost, because the front collapsed elsewhere. In June of that year, the second parachute division met the Americans in [music] Normandy. Battles in the hedge of Bokeage, the defense of San Low, [music] the retreat to the fortress of Breast.
It was the largest concentration of FG42s in the entire war. The Americans captured trophy samples and could not believe their eyes. They had never seen anything like it. About 7,000 FG42s were produced during the entire war. This number is worth repeating to grasp its scale. 7,000. For comparison, more than 14 million Mouser carbines were produced.
[music] About 400,000 Saint G44 assault rifles. More than 5 million American M1 Garands. About 6 million Soviet PPSH submachine guns. 7,000 units for all fronts and all years of the war. This is not army equipment. It is a drop in the ocean. It is a statistical error. Resource shortages stifled production at every stage.
[music] First chrome nickel steel ran out. Then manganese steel. Then even ordinary sheet [music] steel became scarce. Each new batch required design changes to accommodate the materials still available. The army’s St. G44 was always given priority. The Luftvafa got the leftovers from the Reich’s industrial table.
In early [music] 1944, Army experts delivered their final verdict. The FG42 was incapable of replacing the submachine gun as a support weapon. At ranges of up to 400 m, it was no better than the STG44. At the same time, it was many times more expensive and required materials that were not available. The recommendation was clear.
Stop production and focus resources on the assault rifle. But the central irony lay deeper than production problems. Paratroopers were no longer parachuting. [music] After CIT, they fought like regular infantry. They did not need a compact rifle for jumping because there was no more jumping. They required many simple, reliable [music] weapons.
The FG42 was created for tactics that Hitler himself buried in July [music] 1941. For elite operations that were a thing of the past, for a war [music] that existed only in the imagination of the Luftvafa generals. 7,000 rifles disappeared in the chaos of defeat. However, several dozen copies ended [music] up at a test site on the other side of the Atlantic.
What would soon happen there would forever [music] change the history of weapons. The war was over. But the story of the FG42 took an unexpected turn. In the fall of 1944, the captured samples arrived [music] at the Aberdine proving ground in the United States. American engineers [music] studied the trophies and came to a surprising conclusion.
They called the Saint [music] G44 assault rifle, which many considered to be the progenitor of all modern automatic rifles, a mediocre design. But the FG42 made an impression. It was recognized as an outstanding example of engineering. In 1946, Bridge Tool and Dye was awarded a contract to develop a new unified machine gun for the US Army.
The engineers took a captured FG42, literally cut it in half, and welded the feeding mechanism from the German MG42 to it. The result was a strange hybrid, a Frankenstein’s monster made from two enemy systems, but it worked. It was the first prototype of what would become the M60 machine gun 10 years later.
The famous Pig, the workhorse of Vietnam, the weapon from a thousand war movies, carries the DNA of a rifle created for people who were forbidden to parachute. The gas system [music] with a rotating bolt, the straight stock layout, and the overall silhouette. All of this came from the FG42. American soldiers in the jungles of the Meong fired weapons whose pedigree led back to the dreams of Germanparatroopers.
Today, fewer than 100 original examples remain [music] in the world. About 50 are registered in the United States. At auctions, they sell for between [music] $250,000 and $350,000. That’s more expensive than most cars, more expensive than apartments in big cities. And what about Lewis Stanch, the man who created this masterpiece? After the war, he was tried by an Allied tribunal and sentenced to 2 and 1/2 years in prison.
After his release, he moved to the small town of Hustliban and opened a grocery store. The engineer who designed one of the most sophisticated weapons in history spent the rest of his life selling groceries and spices. He died in 1971 almost forgotten. Today his rifles are worth fortune.
He himself received nothing. War is not a competition [music] between engineers. It is a competition between economies, logistics and political decisions. The FG42 was flawless. It was ahead of its time, anticipated the future of small arms, and deserved a place in museums. But a flawless weapon in the hands of 7,000 soldiers loses out to a good gun in the hands of a million.
Rolexes don’t win wars. Wars are won by Casio, [music] those who can stamp out enough quickly, cheaply, and in sufficient quantities. The Germans created a masterpiece and that is precisely why they lost.
