Third Party Press

From Inrange TV - Das G43 Wunder-Gewehr ist Scheiße

Some criticisms are valid though his argument about the possibility of the gun firing out with only one locking flap in battery seems like a stretch, the HWaA would not go about adopting a rifle that was blatantly unsafe to fire for the user. While the K43 is a flawed rifle, that isn't going to stop from trying to get one!
 
Lots of rubbish information in a short video. The comparison with a preloaded M1 clip was plain stupid. But after I watched Ian McCollum waxing the HMG MP44 abomination, I don't really give a damn about what he and Karl are spouting off on YouTube. Karl would have been more believable had he made a video of himself sporting a pentagram necklace and biting a bat's head off while playing "Crazy Train" in the background.
 
Interesting video and guy.. seems overly dramatic and pessimistic (you can lose parts on just about any gun when field stripping it) … suffice to say ALL weapons have flaws (real or perceived) and things which are generally considered compromises..given the strategic situation in Germany at the time, the G/K43 is a good design IMO..
 
While the Garand is undoubtedly the better overall design, a couple things he failed to mention in the video. First being that the Garand was also originally designed with Bang system gas trap design and more than 50K were manufactured before it was scrapped. It also has a fair number of small fiddly parts (bullet guide, op rod catch, follower, etc.) that are easily dropped or lost in a cold, snowy trench. However, the biggest advantage it has over the G43 is that it won't eventually self-destruct itself as easily.
 
I think his argument was concerned with $$$$ value vs. physical & practical value. Karl is primarily a skilled competition shooter and has started an international competition shooting style based in physical and practical uses of firearms. I think he is comparing the idea of taking a G43 to a practical shooting competition and its value in that space, vs. the value placed on it by collectors and uninformed hype-motivated young people who have disposable income and play a lot of WW2 video games and decided they want a G43.

So Karl has an interesting unique perspective but must be taken with a grain of salt, understanding where he is coming from. I enjoyed the video, glad G43 content is making it out there.

I remember they days when the only G43 videos on YouTube were Hickok45 and the potato quality Forgottenweapons video. We are so spoiled with content now.....
 
Roger S said:
If he dislikes it so much why own one?
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Most collectors own a few guns that they despise as firearms. Those are frequently the most interesting ones.

I own a G/K43, and without checking my notes I've had about 7 or 8 of them pass through my collection over the years. The gun is, much like most other late-war German military designs, charitably described as the first draft of what could have been a good weapon pushed into service too quickly and before it was fully baked. Which, you know, makes sense when you're in the losing half of a war against all of Europe. As it exists it is a deeply flawed weapon and one that - as a pure shooter absent historical context - there is no reason to own in the modern era. That said, I enjoy and shoot mine because by the time you're at the point of collecting where you're starting to pick up obsolete semi-auto rifles from failed genocidal dictatorships it's really not JUST about the shooting any more, now is it?

Something that I do think is important to keep in mind is that Karl is also aiming for a much, much broader audience than collectors like us. With anything German, and especially anything German and WW2, and triply so if you're talking about your typical online Reddit poster or computer game forums poster in their teens - 30s, there's a massive halo and weird assumption that it's going to automatically be highly crafted, high quality, precision work. Anyone who's worked on German made stuff knows this is bullshit, but the perception is there and it is taken advantage of to this day by everyone from HK to BMW. Which means, in the firearms sense, that a lot of German guns get this weird fan base of people who assume that it's the best thing ever, like real life is a computer game and the Nazis were balanced against the Soviets by having better weapons while the Russians got more men.

This isn't unique to the G/K43, either. The P08 is a pretty average pre-1900 pistol that is prone to having frankly mediocre to bad triggers.* The Mauser 98 family is a solid class of bolt action rifles, but no more inherently accurate or ergonomic than any other bolt gun from the 1898 - 1945 window. And don't even get me started on the tanks. The Panther as an easy example had a crap transmission and criminally bad crew visibility from inside.

People like to romanticize tools and ascribe them mystical properties that they frankly don't have, and yeah that's happened with the G/K43 in some circles. So any time you're a youtuber making general-audience content that's something you're going to have to be swimming against.

*edit: the Swiss version tends to have pretty good triggers, but I would argue not as good as other Swiss guns with a less rube goldberg linkage between the trigger and the sear. I'll add that you can clean up Luger triggers with a shim, but it still doesn't fix the design being inherently kinda bad on the trigger front.
 
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luftpirate said:
I love K43s and don't really care what some Youtube chud has to say. All historical rifles leave something to be desired.
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Hah, you're using the word wrong. Karl is many, many things but a chud he is most certainly not - at least not in the way that the rest of the internet has been using it post-2016. I'm aware that there are other meanings, but they were never as prevalent as the modern one and certainly have been drowned out by it now.
 
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Roger S said:
If he dislikes it so much why own one?
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Because it’s cooool and has war eagles.

The G-43 was adequate considering the circumstances involved at the time- and it’s somewhat remarkable that it was designed, developed, and fielded in significant numbers in such a short time.
Given the prism of 80+ years to reflect upon it- it’s an easy target to pick apart and discover all it’s flaws.
Unlike the ubiquitous AR…it hasn’t had 60+ years of refinement.
It’s a fascinating historical weapon, in limited supply and highly collectible…just not much of a range companion.
 
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From a purely research/development and production standpoint, the G/K 43 series is impressive. It had operating and manufacturing problems yes, but it would have been further refined over time. The Germans were presented with the semi-auto problem, and they responded in relatively short order with a viable platform that could be reliably mass produced. Compare that to say, Japan (which recognized the need for the semi-auto but failed to commit) who ended up stuck with the 99/38 all the way through, great rifles as they were, they were no match for a platoon of G.I.'s with M1 Garands/carbines, BAR's and Thompsons.

I do not understand the market for these, and I'll probably never own one (IMHO and like collector grade 98k's these days, faaaaar too much money to tie up in a single rifle, when one could build an entire Japanese collection with that amount of money) but hey, they are pretty cool. Different strokes for different folks, I really enjoy my Japanese rifles/pistols. Japanese collectors are lucky that they’re semi-affordable still.
 
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I want to add something here, as a watcher of InRange TV:

I find it insufferable how Karl disingenuously engages in online discourse over topics like this. He has a pattern of posting content he knows is inflammatory, controversial, or down-right click-bait and then blames the people who react strongly to that content without acknowledging his own participation in beginning that cycle. He presents his arguments and never admits that he is doing so to provoke response.

This thread, here, is the goal of the video he posted about the G43.

I do not think Karl's goal is education, history preservation, or honest debate. I am coming to believe more and more that Karl seeks to promote his own brand through motte and bailey arguments which seek attention and view counts over fidelity in content. He claims something like "The G43 is shite" and will then walk his argument back to something akin to "I'm just saying the G43 was unreliable", all the while knowing he is making the content to capitalize upon the very hype he is discouraging.

I get really tired of online content creators constantly complaining about how toxic the internet is, how mean their viewers are, how stupic people in the comments are, ect... while they continue to fuel that cycle through content tailored to the very community they say they despise. Karl makes a lot of content complaining about how rude/toxic/dumb people who view his content are. Then he makes click-bait like this video.

Wait for it- soon on one of his platforms Karl will make a high-light real of the "greatest hits" from the backlash this G43 video will generate.
 
I don't waste my time watching his garbage. I figured out what he was about years ago and stopped watching. Simply put, he's trash. If I'm being brutally honest, that's how I really feel about the dude. He's down there with Military Arms Channel.

I'm starting to question Ian's methods too. If you want a chance to win this fobble, you have to go to this site and buy something to get on the raffle list. That's pretty slimy. I like the guy but he's starting to lose me.
 
Herk1994 said:
From a purely research/development and production standpoint, the G/K 43 series is impressive. It had operating and manufacturing problems yes, but it would have been further refined over time. The Germans were presented with the semi-auto problem, and they responded in relatively short order with a viable platform that could be reliably mass produced.
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I'd argue that the development process was kind of a tire fire. The semi-auto problem wasn't something that was news when the war broke out. Plenty of countries had been developing semi-auto weapons before then, and both the US and the USSR were fielding them in large numbers. The Belgians were almost to market with what would become the FN49 after the war, and the French were already prototyping the MAS38/39 that would eventually also become the post-war MAS49. The Germans were just way, way behind the 8 ball when it came to starting development of a militarily viable semi-auto long arm.

And then, once the war made it clear that one was needed, they stuck by the idiotic requirement that the barrel not be drilled for a gas port. Yes, the Garand also started life operating on the Bang principle, but conversion to the gas system we all know and love today was already started in 1940. This is something that the Germans would have certainly been aware of. What's more, the AVT-38 and SVT-40 are right there even earlier as examples of a gun that used a normal gas port.

And then, rather than just go with a design, they essentially put two prototypes into limited production and combat trials - the Gew41(m) which actually followed all of the OTHER idiotic design specs (including the crazy stuff about falling back to bolt-action use similar to a 98k if the gas system fails) and the Gew41(w) who threw most of that garbage out but stuck with the gas shroud.

And then, after all that and tons of evidence that soldiers in the field loved captured SVT-40s, the final evolution is to. . . just graft the SVT-40s gas system onto a Gew41(w), add a detachable mag, and call it a day. Don't get me wrong, adopting good mechanical fixes for a problem you have is laudable even if you're borrowing from the enemy. The Jerry Can is called that for a reason, after all. But that's a call they could have made years earlier.

If the Germans had been serious about developing a semi-auto rifle they could have done so any time after they officially tossed Versailles overboard. Even if we assume it would take the war to make them REALLY understand that the 98k needed a semi-auto companion the design process that was mandated by the HWaA's idiocy in 1940 still delayed the ultimate product by at least two years. There is no reason that they couldn't have fielded something akin to the G43 when they began producing the two flavors of G41.

And this is without even touching the problems endemic to the entire Nazi system that led to production delays, like Speer and Himmler constantly sparring with each other over what amount to territorial disputes.

You see the same thing in a lot of other German weapons development during this era. The StG44's design process was a similar trainwreck and there's no good reason they couldn't have had something largely approximating what they did produce in the field in 1942 or 43 at the latest. Same story for the FG42 - flawed weapon though it was - it became this weird Luftwaffe-only thing largely because of in-fighting between Goering's RLM and the HWaA, and as a result had much more limited resources assigned to it. Which, to be honest, might have ultimately been for the best, but in that case the real question is why any resources were devoted to it at all (the answer is Goering's ego).
 
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