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Landships II -> Landships WW1 Forum -> Individual weapons & tactics -> The Madsen again?
Post Info TOPIC: The Madsen again?
James H


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The Madsen again?
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The Madsen saga seemed to have ended with the gun being issued to German mounted infantry, Musketen Bataillons, used as flying reinforcements. As they wore out or were destroyed or captured they were replaced by Lewises and these units were disbanded and merged into the general infantry.

This picture of Belgian troops in what must be late 1914 or very early 1915 claims to show a Hotchkiss, but it looks very much more like our old friend. Wonder how that got there?

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Centurion


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Don't know were the Belgians got theirs but see the rather faded photo attached. It shows soldiers of the UDF (no not a Northern Irish group but 'the Union Defence Force a South African unit) in German South West Africa (today Namibia). Two men are lying down with Madsen machine guns - they certainly got around. but never in great numbers.

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James H


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This picture could be the same blokes as those in the top one. It appears to be the basis of the illustration of Carabinier Cyclists in L&F Funcken's Uniforms & Weapons of Soldiers of the War 1914-1918, even down to the man wearing the leather jerkin. The weapons seem to be, from left to right: 1889 Mauser rifle; something wrapped in a protective cover, possibly a Short Hotchkiss or his fishing tackle; and a Madsen.

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Centurion


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The Colt mg seems to have been favoured by a number of cyclist units (I've even seen a photo of one mounted on the handlebars!) probably because of its lightness. Probably the Madsen would also be a good choice for the same reason. A Colt would be about the right size to match the fishing tackle.

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James H


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As far as I can make out, the Belgians managed to rescue some Short (Portable) Hotchkisses from the fortresses, and equipped the Cyclists with them. I haven't seen any mention of Colts, but then again I hadn't seen any mention of Madsens.



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Centurion


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You might be interested to know that the Madsen was issued in some numbers to the German army in WW2! This was facilitated by the capture of large numbers in Denmark and Norway (it was the Norwegian army's main light machine gun). The Germans went to the trouble of producing a substantial mount specially for the gun (see attached) which seems to defeat the idea of having a light machine gun.

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Lafettenheini


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 And here are is a copy of handling indstructions from The German WWII Army
 about the madsen 1903/24 out of my archive which shows that you are very
 right informed .  Yeah it was indeed a problem for us Germanns-more man
 than weapons....
 
Greetings
Gerd

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Peter Kempf


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Again: thanls for a great post. Haven't seen that material either.

Do you have more weapons manuals?

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Lafettenheini


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Yes-i have -but mostly from Infantery-weapons and artillerie of WW- II.
Here a small list : MG 42, 12cm Granatwerfer 42, MG 15 , Gewehr 98/40
10 cm Nebelwerfer 40, 2 cm Flak 30 ---and so on.
Also special books of german machine guns ,infantery-weapons of the world(with detail drawings of nearly all famous guns you can imagine ) .
You must know i pick up any material about war and gun`history since 38 years.
Has come together a pretty big archives by the time.
If i see that i can help to answer appearing questions in posts i have read or in future
i will do it with pleasure!
Hope my english is not too bad , so that anyone can understood me.

sincerely

Gerd Heinrichs

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James H


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We might be getting somewhere here. The unidentified object carried by the Belgian cyclist looks interestingly like the thing in the fourth of Lafettenheini's images: Laufbehälter or barrel-holder. Is it therefore a carrying case for a spare barrel?



-- Edited by James H at 12:39, 2007-06-29

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Lafettenheini


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James - you have eagle-eyes !
It is the carrying case for a spare barrel. I have just recoqnized by looking on
the original site that the ordernumbers don`t fit to the parts.
For example : Oil-can is 5f and not f2 ...

by for now
Gerd

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James H


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Lafettenheini wrote:

James - you have eagle-eyes !

Nein. Zusammenarbeit.

MfG.



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Gordon McLaughlin


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On the subject of the Madsen automatic rifle and its wide distribution, I was surprised to see that Mother was apparently armed with two Madsens when demonstrated at Hatfield Park on 2nd February 1916.  This may be well known but I hadn't noticed it until today.

Gordon McLaughlin

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Centurion


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Correct those Madsens got everywhere

Peter With whats in this thread combined some discussions/diggings done elsewhere I could update the  article on the main website. Would you wish this done and how would I go about it?

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James H


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As Centurion says, there are a couple of threads and an article on the Madsen, this most exasperating of weapons.

A.J. Smithers says that "at the trials of Mother on December 3rd 1915, specimens of Vickers, Lewis, Hotchkiss and Madsen guns were produced. Where this last came from is a mystery; it would have been the ideal weapon. There seems no obvious reason why the existing gun should not have been copied but people were punctilious about patent rights in 1915. The Hotchkiss was chosen as second best."

Stern says in his autobiography, "For the lighter armament of the Tanks we tried every machine-gun to see which was most suitable - the Lewis gun, the Hotchkiss gun, the Vickers and the Madsen, which were all lent to us by Colonel Brown of the Enfield Lock Small Arms Factory. The Hotchkiss was eventuallly selcted."

This makes us only slightly wiser. How did this gun get from Denmark to just about every army in the world without anyone being sure how it happened?

-- Edited by James H at 00:54, 2007-07-01

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Lafettenheini


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Hallo James !
How it gets to about every army in the world ?
Hope to bring some light in the darkness .
Therefore i have not only documents of handling it. i will put here in the following my
translation of a chapter out of the book : Infanteriewaffen-illustierte Enzyklopädie der
Infanteriewaffen aus aller Welt Band I
basicmodell and versions of this weapon have been known since one decade before WW I
in many countrys. In some of them they where allmost put in use.Even before the 15.june
1899 the director of the royal faktory of armyweapons in Kopenhavn-Julius Alexander Rasmussen has put such a construction of a machinegun for patent but sold it the same time
at the Kopenhaven dansk rifle syndicate ( DRRS ) . Customized to the modell DRRS
Thedor Schouboe,an expert on arms in the rank of a lieutenant have let patented almos his
better constructión at february 1902.
On this site the first light machine gun of the world was born. That it hasn`t been known either under the name of his constructers nor under the name of the produktioncompanys
is perhaps basing on the supervising of the man who orderd some technical specifications and the immediately serialproduktion. This was the danish minister of defence -Madsen.
The forces of denmark put in the MG 1903 therefore not as the first ones. Since a year before it was taken in by the russians. It was namend there as cavellery-MG-REXER-Madsen
Mod.1902. Later on there followed 32 states especially small ones. There where used nearly
100 different issues of this model in several calibers from 6.5 to 7.92 later on in 12.7 mm
now signd up as heavy MG. It was even tested by specialists from great britain and germany but not taken over regulary. ( someones may have found the way to the tanks -my opinion )
personally statement : the spreading of the madsen is the result of licence production like
many other guns.
opinion )

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James H


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That is extremely helpful. The equally good news is that someone has got round to publishing a site devoted entirely to the gun, with lots of useful links.

The main site is: http://madsenlmg.enigmamachine.co.uk/index.html

There's a link to here where you can see a Madsen being fired (go to Part 2): http://users.pandora.be/debroers/debroers/_private/Overzicht%20items.htm

and this site has some good detail:
http://gotavapen.se/gota/artiklar/kg/swedish_kg1.htm

Wikipedia has a page but some of the facts seem to be muddled. They're asking for expert advice.

This weapon never ceases to surprise.

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Lafettenheini


Colonel

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Many thanks James !

Now i have seen some well known weapons fireing including the " Knochensäge -Mg 42 " so
called by my father who said it was his best friend in WW II . It has saved his life and that of his guysin the most horrible situations you can even imagine.
After he told some episodes he had these nightmares from he was waking up crying.
Therefore he did not even want to see any movie about war .

He allways said : Thank your gentle God that you never have been in it !

Sorry that i mix up facts with private memories but theese came up by invastigations on war
to me . But even someone told that the remind of the horror may even hold up a new war.

Bye for now

Gerd

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