The M1917A1 was designated as a Heavy
Machine Gun for a very good reason: it was heavy! It
was not a weapon easily used in fluid combat or
assault. However, the weight of this water-cooled
weapon also gave it great stability which, with its
capability of sustained volume of fire, made it an
excellent defensive weapon.
The heavy was also very reliable. The
anti-freeze in its coolant
made it dependable even in the intense cold, as in the
Chosin Reservoir battles. For
stopping massed, or wide-spread infantry assault, the
.30 heavy was one of the most effective weapons the
infantry had during the Korean war.
The Chinese also used water cooled
heavy MGs with effect. Firing their eerie green tracers
at night to mark targets for their infantry, and soften
up the targets themselves, the old-fashioned, wheeled
Chinese MGs, with their metal shield for the gunners,
was an ideal support. Doubtless also using anti-freeze,
the Chinese water-cooled MGs were probably their most
effective weapon during the first year of the Korean
war. I won't qualify this with the term
'infantry weapon', because the Chinese army was
all infantry, at least during the first few months of
their crushing entry into the Korean war.
American forces used the light and heavy machine guns mostly at
a few hundred yards or less, contrary to their design
concepts. This was the nature of the battles our
company and platoon sized forces faced. The Chinese
used them at greater distances but, at least in the
early phases of the Korean war, used them sparingly at
these distances. Probably because of the difficulty of
transporting ammunition over long distances on foot,
which was often their only available method.
The North Korean armies, on the other
hand, were well supplied with the Maxim heavy machine
guns by the USSR, and used them in large quantities in
the Pusan Perimeter battles. The NK, well trained and
largely veterans of China's civil war, would site
these weapons at long distances to place grazing fire
on slopes we were attacking. Beyond hearing range,
using smokeless powder, sighted in with great
professional accuracy, the first inkling our troops
would have that they were under aimed fire would be
when their comrades' bodies and faces were suddenly
torn and shattered.