"Unless an artillery strike took out the position, enemy soldiers would be behind their MGs in a few seconds after the barrage let up and ready to mow down the attacking infantry."
And yet, in the latter part of the war, in which such barrages were used, they were successful. At least, far more successful than the earlier tactics of 3 weeks of barraging followed by a slacking off for an hour or two, followed by a leisurely walk across no man's land.
Once again, you're absolutely discounting how noisy a battlefield is, and you're assuming that the Germans:
1. Having just been through an artillery barrage, are able to hear.
2. That they're able to hear firing from approaching troops that are varying distances away while their own machine guns are chattering away and while the men spaced every few feet on either side of them are keeping up a continuous fire.
The entire purpose of a creeping barrage is to allow assault troops to get as close to German lines as possible. At the point at which the barrage would lift, the assault troops would go from a walk to a charge to cover the gound in as little time as possible, hopefully before the Germans could set up their machine guns (which were taken into the bunkers at the commencement of a barrage).
For 3 years troops advancing across no man's land had been doing so while firing full-power rifle rounds, which apparently had little to no deterrent effect on the defenders.
To say that muzzle flash, smoke, and noise from the guns of the assault troops would somehow be a critical decisive factor completely ignores that inconvenient truth.
What the Pedersen device did was give a far higher rate of firepower and, with it, a better chance at hitting some of the people who are firing at you.
Once American troops got inside the trenches, that advantage in firepower would have been devastating.
"In the annals of a war which was all foolishness and stupidity, the Pedersen device was probably one of the most foolish and stupid."
In a way yes, but in a lot of ways, no.
The foolish aspect of it was its application. To use it you had to remove the bolt from your rifle, empty the main magazine, install the Pedersen device, and install the magazine.
Too many parts and pieces and too long to convert the gun.
As a firepower concept, no, it wasn't stupid or foolish. It was an interesting step in showing the way forward, and it was an interesting solution to what seemed to be an intractible problem.
100 years after the fact I suppose it's really easy to pass judgement and say "I FIND THIS LACKING!"
Since you have so declared, you must have a solution (that was also readily available to those involved at that time) that would have allowed the Allies to sweep forward from their trenches and in three days take Berlin without the loss of a single man.
Do tell.
