Third Party Press

FG42 and its Grenade Launcher

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."


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:

235m.jpg
Here is #2:

250m.jpg

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:

250m - Circled.jpg

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:
FG42 - #973 - small.jpg

Here is #1151:

1151 (1).jpg


Why ? I don't know. Am I the first to discover this ? Is this even correct ?
Differing views are welcome.
 
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Even if the grenade launcher set was never officially introduced, I would expect the Luftwaffe to have ordered at least 1000 copies of the 235m/171mm set to fit the 1000 or so Type 1 FG42s with the notch/recess.
There is a "Schiessbecher" pictured on Espeholt's website with a BAL1 stamp (Rheinmetall, correct ?):

1726506552628.png

Source :
 
BAL1 would be Rheinmetall (probably the plant at Sömmerda, but not 100% on that), but that looks like a normal WaA to me.

Here is the pic of the damaged FG with launcher still attached.
That’s the one. I bought some good 98k’s from him.
 
Got an email back from The Royal Armouries, serial number 833 does not have the grenade sight notch, serial number 1607 does have the notch. Waiting back on some pictures.
 
Serial number 1759 from the national infantry museum collection has the notch for the grenade sight
 

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Thanks, and it does not have the extended triggerguard. Interesting. I begin to think that it was a modification.
Here’s number 1153 from a militaria site on malta, no grenade sight notch and has an extended trigger guard.

 
Here’s number 1153 from a militaria site on malta, no grenade sight notch and has an extended trigger guard.

Puzzling, because #1151 has a notch:
 
Serial number 190 does not have the notch and has the standard trigger guard. https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/88/349/krieghoff-fg42-type-i-class-iiinfa-cr-machine-gun
Indeed:
 
Indeed:
Whoops, got ahead of myself and didn’t even bother checking the other threads! Feel free to delete those duplicates.
 

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