FG 42
In 1941, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), asked for a selective fire weapon for the paratroopers. Senior Staff Air Secretary Ossenbach at the Luftwaffe Weapons Development Branch (at Tarnewitz near Lübeck) was asked to develop this new weapon. The Reich Air Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium or RLM) wanted to develop an automatic rifle which would be fired from the shoulder. It would replace the bolt-action rifle, submachine gun and light machine gun for air assault. The weapon would also make logistics simpler and give more firepower to a normal paratrooper.