Soviet soldier with a makeshift Anti-Aircraft setup using captured Nazi machineguns, WW2, during or after 1941

The limiting factor is the ammo. Those are 50 round basket drums. At 17 machineguns, that’s 850 rounds before the setup runs dry. He could completely empty it 2 seconds if he just held the trigger down. This fellow might get 2 or maybe even 3 bursts off before he runs dry, if he is controlling the bursts tightly.

I don’t know how exactly the triggers are being controlled, but I’m confident all the MGs are fired at the same time. There is some kind of horizontal rod affixed to each gun that I suspect touches the trigger that isn’t normally part of the guns, this is similar to various spade grip modifications that exist for single machineguns. I don’t know how all the rods are slaved to the central spade grip, but being that there’s only one grip with the rest of the triggers covered, and that the only reason you’d do something like this is to make a mass fire emplacement all those guns are firing at once.

A Russian source from 2017 claims it was a captured German setup so that further muddles figuring out exactly what was used to construct it. I suspect the base is a spotlight frame, but don’t care enough to sift through German and Soviet spotlights to find a matching one.

MG 34/41: […] Practical: 150 rounds/min

Following the link, the 150 RPM comes from German doctrinal use in a light machinegun role. This is kind of unrelated, but just a reminder that wikipedia can be a little vague sometimes.

Yeah, it must get really hot really fast. Curious how effective it was. I can smell it from here, the smell of burning oil and spent rounds. Nothing quite like that smell of MGs firing at the rapid rate.