The Dual Magazine MP 40,During World War II in 1942, the German Army decided that it needed to incre

The Dual Magazine MP 40,During World War II in 1942, the German Army decided that it needed to increase the magazine capacity of the MP 40 submachine gun in order to compete with the Russian PPSh 41 and it’s 71 round drum magazine.  The result was the MP 40/I, and oddity among World War II submachine guns which features two magazines, giving the weapon a total capacity of 64 rounds.  One magazine was loaded directly into the feeding mechanism, while the other was simply mounted off the the side as a spare. To change magazines, the user simply pressed on a switch in front of the magazine well and shifted the magazine to the left into feeding position.According to German doctrine, soldiers were not to use the second magazine often, and were encouraged to change out empty mags with loaded ones.  The second magazine was only to be used as an emergency spare, when a situation required extra firepower.While the MP 40/I is generally considered an experimental prototype, it was listed in the Wehrmacht’s registry of official small arms, so it was issued to some troops.  However few were produced and it’s use during the war was exceptionally rare.http://www.mp40.nl/index.php?page=mp40-ihttp://www.forgottenweapons.com/dual-magazine-mp40i/ -- source link

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