Some weapons are feared for what they hit; the MG42 was feared for how it sounded. Its cyclic rate was so extreme — around 1,200 rounds a minute, against roughly 850 for the older MG34 and 400 to 500 for most Allied machine guns — that the ear could not separate the individual shots. They blurred into one continuous ripping note, likened to tearing cloth or a buzz saw, and it announced sudden death with no countable rhythm. Allied soldiers dreaded it above almost any other German weapon; American training films were made specifically to steady green troops against the panic it caused. To the men on the receiving end it was "Hitler's Buzz Saw."

The set mounts a two-man team firing prone on a rubble base — gunner behind the MG42, assistant feeding the belt — both in the rabbit-lined Kharkov parka of the Eastern Front. That murderous rate of fire had a cost: the gun devoured barrels, which is why a team never moved without the Grenadier with a Spare MG 42 Barrel and a runner like the Grenadier Running with MG 42 hurrying the gun to its next position. It anchors the fire in any winter diorama — the weapon the Kharkov-parka Grenadier carries slung, here in action.

W. Britain model 25055. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Two-figure set with gun on a base — a Waffen-SS MG42 team firing prone in Kharkov parkas. Boxed.