Guillaume d'Orange
Senior Member
The Luftwaffe tested the FG42 for quite some time, certainly from at least February 24, 1943 until April 16, 1943.
Those dates appear in a trial report performed in Tarnewitz dated July 2, 1943.
Two grenade launchers were tested, but as Michael Heidler wrote in the following article in Small Arms Review:
"The rifle grenade launcher for the FG 42 has neither been officially introduced nor issued to the troops."
smallarmsreview.com
The two configurations were:
#1 : launcher sight 235 m and cup launcher 171 mm length.
#2 : launcher sight 250 m and cup launcher 176 mm length.
Here is #1 attached to an FG42:
Here is #2:
You can easily see that #1 and #2 have different mounts and that the mag shall be removed to fix #2 on the upper rail of the receiver.
You can also notice that there is a notch or recess on top of the receiver between the magazine well and the handguard, (below circled in red) that allows to fix #1:
The rifles pictured in the Tarnewitz report were pre-series made by Rheinmetall. Currently, I have gathered a good amount of pics of various Type 1/Type E with the fzs code (presumably all made by Krieghoff).
I have noticed the following weird thing, no Type 1 with a serial number below #973 has the notch circled above, whereas all the ones after #1151 have it.
Here is #973:
Here is #1151:
Why ? I don't know. Am I the first to discover this ? Is this even correct ?
Differing views are welcome.
Those dates appear in a trial report performed in Tarnewitz dated July 2, 1943.
Two grenade launchers were tested, but as Michael Heidler wrote in the following article in Small Arms Review:
"The rifle grenade launcher for the FG 42 has neither been officially introduced nor issued to the troops."
Trials With Rifle Grenade Launchers For The German Paratrooper Rifle FG42 - Small Arms Review
FG 42 (type 1). The rifle grenade trials were carried out at Tarnewitz with this early type rifle.
smallarmsreview.com
The two configurations were:
#1 : launcher sight 235 m and cup launcher 171 mm length.
#2 : launcher sight 250 m and cup launcher 176 mm length.
Here is #1 attached to an FG42:
Here is #2:
You can easily see that #1 and #2 have different mounts and that the mag shall be removed to fix #2 on the upper rail of the receiver.
You can also notice that there is a notch or recess on top of the receiver between the magazine well and the handguard, (below circled in red) that allows to fix #1:
The rifles pictured in the Tarnewitz report were pre-series made by Rheinmetall. Currently, I have gathered a good amount of pics of various Type 1/Type E with the fzs code (presumably all made by Krieghoff).
I have noticed the following weird thing, no Type 1 with a serial number below #973 has the notch circled above, whereas all the ones after #1151 have it.
Here is #973:
Here is #1151:
Why ? I don't know. Am I the first to discover this ? Is this even correct ?
Differing views are welcome.
Last edited:
