In each of our Photo Of The Day articles, we bring you the work of great and inspiring photographers from around the globe.  Today we’re taking a closer look at a German door gunner with an M3M Heavy Machine Gun made by FN Herstal. The NHIndustries NH90 is a medium-sized battlefield helicopter. It is made by NHIndustries, which is a collaboration between Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo and Fokker Aerostructures. The NH90 is used in many missions by the German Bundeswehr and here we see it doing training in Putlos, Northern Germany.

In this exercise, the door gunners were using either the MG3 from Rheinmetall or the M3M/GAU-21 by FN Herstal.

Preparing the M3M/GAU-21.

A belt of 12.7x99mm / .50 BMG ready to go out the door.

Below: Notice the tracers and cloud of smoke, which I assume is produced by the M3M.

Source: Bundeswehr. Pictures by Maximilian Schulz.

For an even larger helicopter, check out the German Ramp Gunner in the Sikorsky CH-53G helicopter.