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Detail of centrefire automatic machine gun, MG42, 1943, PR.13309. Royal Armouries, CC BY 4.0
MG42 Machine Gun (PR.13309)
The MG42 general purpose machine gun was the main gun of the German military towards the end of the Second World War. It was designed by the German engineering firm Großfuß AG, and this specific example was manufactured by Steyr in Austria. It was manufactured by forming shapes from sheets of steel under extreme pressure. Production line workers only needed to be trained on specific machines for specific components rather than needing the skills to make the whole gun. This sped up the entire process. This gun would have taken just 75 hours to make compared to 150 hours for its predecessor, the MG34.