MG34 Platoon

The MG34 platoon is a unit available in Flames of War equipped with an MG34. It earned a ferocious reputation in WWII as the primary MG on tanks, as well as serving as the inspiration for the FG42 and his far more sexy cousin, the MG42. It is widely considered the first general purpose Machine Gun.

IRL

The MG34 started out as a derivative of the Solothurn M30 Machine Gun. The Germans tinkered with the design until they created the beast known as the MG34. The design was worked around the new concept of the "general purpose machine gun"; during WWI, you had heavy machine guns capable of long sustained fire for static defenses, and light machine guns that could be carried to provide suppressive fire for advancing forces. The Germans wanted something that was not only capable of both roles, but also ideal for air defense. After working out the kinks in it, they were sent into service in the Spanish Civil War, and were well liked for their performance as well as their general reliability.

Contrary to the name of this unit in the game, the MG34 was heavily integrated into the German squad structure. The only times they were kept separate was in reserve in the HQ, and these were typically tripod mounted weapons. German infantry doctrine dictated that when not killing Jews, the squad should push pretty hard and also have the MG as the center of the unit. This contrasts with the Western Allies, who believed that the Rifle was the center of an effective infantry unit. While this gave the Germans a major advantage in Blitzkrieg tactics and defensive positions, this also meant that this gave the German Infantry squad a single point of failure. As soon as the squad's machine gun ran out of ammo (which was a given in a protracted fight, especially with that high ROF), broke down, or was knocked out, all too often the remaining infantry would retreat.

MG34s typically shot 7.92mm (that's roughly .31 caliber for you Yanks), and could be equipped with a drum that held from 50-75 rounds, or could be equipped with the infamous belt magazines for sustained fire (although German doctrine instructed that sustained cyclic rate fire was wasteful and should be avoided). It had an effective range of about 2 kilometers and variants of the base design were used on everything from tanks to AA turrets to aircraft. Additionally, unlike earlier machine guns, the MG34 had no need for water to cool it. Being air cooled also made it significantly lighter than its forebears. While this meant that the MG34 couldn't fire hundreds of rounds at a time through a barrel without it melting down, it could detach its barrel and swap it for a cold one in less than a minute. The MG34 was also the first to include an option to be fired in single shots like a rifle, which was used mainly for ranging shots with a tracer round, and also by a few snipers in the correct circumstances.

Small aside:

After reading that last sentence, you're probably wondering who the hell would be insane enough to use a goddamn machine gun as sniper rifle. The thing is, a MG uses rifle-caliber ammunition (if not bigger) with the same effective range, correctly set on its tripod it is a perfectly stable firing platform, and its traversing-elevating mechanism allows it to compensate for distance as well if not better than your regular's sniping rifle stock and bipod. USMC sniper Carlos Hathcock is famous for sniping with an even heavier "Ma Deuce" .50 BMG in Vietnam, but he was not the first nor the only man to use a machine gun to snipe. That said, it remains an infrequent happenstance because first a MG's tactical role is to throw firepower downrange and suppress the enemy, and your platoon leader won't be happy if some giggling idiot borrows his fire support to take potshots at the enemy from very far. Second, a fully-equipped MG is also not man-portable; which heavily limits its usage as a sniping weapon. But, it can be done, and a single shot semi-automatic setting on a MG is not as stupid or useless as it sounds at first.

At the time, and even until the end of the war, the MG34 retained its status as one of the most advanced weapons on the battlefield. The only LMG that came 'close' was the Russian Degtyaryov DP-27 LMG in terms of cost, portability, adaptability and ease of use, but even those paled in firepower with only roughly one third the rate of fire of a MG34 and no belt-feed mechanism for sustained fire.

And before you try to say that this was Wehraboo wank, kindly remind yourself that A) its design predates the Nazis even if they were the main users, and B) pretty much every LMG since WWII has used the base design of the MG34/42 as its overall design because, yes, it was *that* good! The only design element that is no longer in use is the MG34's insane rate of fire, as using a man-portable machine gun for air defense is no longer viable.